The young prince (Anduin) didn't care about those things. Very soon, the plot of Harry Potter losing his parents shortly after birth deeply moved him. This thing called a "movie"—hundreds of times more shocking and magical than any play performed at the Royal Theatre—completely immersed him, and he couldn't pull himself away.
In contrast, Vereesa was having a terrible time in the game. She was either killed by a single breath attack or whipped to death by a tail swipe. Of course, this didn't mean the battle-hardened elven ranger wasn't strong; it was simply that a game has game rules. No matter how high you could jump or how far you could leap in the real world, the movement and dodge distances in the game were fixed. Furthermore, the available moves were limited, and she couldn't use the legendary skills she relied on in reality.
Additionally, regardless of how rich her real-world experience was, she had never fought the Black Dragon from the game. She had no idea what the attack patterns of this giant beast were. It was much like the difference between a Velociprey and a Great Jaggi—they looked similar, but their combat styles were entirely different.
The reason Dughan and Krein had failed initially was that they tried to hunt a Great Jaggi using tactics meant for Velociprey. Mastery required extensive play, or like a normal player, starting from a baseline difficulty like the Rathian to gradually familiarize oneself with the mechanics before finally reaching the pinnacle represented by the Fatalis or Crimson Fatalis.
Beyond that, what infuriated Vereesa the most was the absence of bows and arrows in this game. Although she knew how to use firearms, the way Rangers and Hunters in Azeroth used guns was fundamentally different from the styles of Light and Heavy Bowguns in Monster Hunter.
In a short while, she had died three times, leading to an immediate mission failure. Vereesa had barely even managed to touch the Black Dragon. She was furious—truly furious. For a proud person, failure translates directly into anger and resentment.
Moreover, Vereesa was one of the few people in this world who had personally witnessed and fought alongside the five Dragonflights. She had assisted Ronin in seizing and shattering the Demon Soul at Grim Batol, freeing the trapped Red Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, and eventually helping the four Dragonflights repel Deathwing, the Aspect of Death.
Granted, her role in the final battle had been limited, but she had been indispensable during the process of seizing the Demon Soul. Because of these experiences, she found it impossible to believe that an unprofessional, brash young man like Wayne could actually repel a Black Dragon.
She thought of her husband, Ronin—how wise, decisive, determined, and unyielding he was. Then she looked at Wayne—greedy, slick, rude, and frivolous. Vereesa wanted to project every derogatory term she knew onto this young man, against whom she had already formed a negative bias on her way here.
However, Vereesa was a high-status figure. Although she asked the same question Dughan had asked back when he couldn't beat a Velociprey, she suppressed her rage and maintained as much rationality as possible. She asked Wayne, "I heard you learned the method to fight dragons through this game, and that's how you repelled the Black Dragon that day?"
Though her tone didn't fluctuate much, Wayne could tell she didn't believe a single word of it.
She had already made up her mind: if she discovered today that Wayne was merely a fraud weaving stories to swindle money, not only would she take her nephew Arator back to Dalaran for strict discipline, but she would also order the children out, draw her bow, and burn this place to ruins with arrows of magical fire.
[Extreme Threat Detected][Threat Level: High][Defense Mode Initiated]
The moment Vereesa harbored murderous intent, an alarm rang in Wayne's ear.
"Calm down! Don't move!" Wayne immediately ordered the "Vending Machine" system to stand down. He wasn't afraid of Vereesa being impulsive; he was afraid of the system being impulsive. If it could survive a Dragon-level threat, a High-level threat was nothing. If he actually injured the wife of Dalaran's leader, it would be the headline of the Stormwind Daily for weeks.
Besides, Wayne had seen this sort of thing plenty of times. Someone wanted to burn down his shop. The current net cafe structure was entirely stone, and the floors were marble tiles. Only the dormitories and lounge areas on the third and fourth floors contained flammable wood. Even if she set a fire, it wouldn't burn much.
The best way to face skepticism was to slap the skeptic twice with reality, forcing her mouth to shut and her heart to close its doubts.
Wayne first turned to the blonde child sitting behind them. "How is it? Is it interesting?"
"Mom... Awesome!" The blonde child (Anduin), jolted out of his amazement at the game content, subconsciously blurted out the first word, but since he remembered Vereesa was right there, he forcibly swallowed the rest of the word "Mom."
Wayne ignored him, put on his headset, and said to Vereesa, "Just stay in the camp and don't come out. You'll just die again if you do."
Wayne grabbed his Bowgun and charged toward the Black Dragon. Vereesa watched Wayne's screen intently.
Fluid, effortless, experienced, and a bit brutal. To the current Wayne, who was wearing nearly top-tier equipment and possessed muscle memory for every move, the difficulty of the Black Dragon was about the same as a Rathian.
Sleep shots for sedation, Large Barrel Bombs for explosions, pellet shots to the head, piercing shots through the body, and cluster bombs...
Ten minutes later, a line of text appeared on the screen. Wayne clapped his hands and told Vereesa, "Done. It's dead. It's that easy."
Vereesa struggled to maintain her composure, trying not to frown or let her mouth hang open to avoid showing any sign of shock. But she had seen the entire process with her own eyes. Tail swipes, lunges, dragon breaths—the Black Dragon couldn't touch Wayne once, just as she hadn't been able to touch the Black Dragon once.
Arator chose this moment to "twist the knife." "Auntie, you see, I wasn't lying..."
Unfortunately, this comment landed right in the center of Vereesa's frustration. "Shut up! You don't have a say in this! I'll settle the score with you when we get back!"
A single sharp rebuke from Vereesa silenced Arator completely. She turned back to Wayne and asked, "What other games are there besides this?"
Wayne replied without hesitation, "Lady, you have to learn these games. It's like chess or poker; easy to pick up, hard to master. With the little time you have, it's too late to start anything new. I suggest you watch a movie like this little... friend here. Your two sons can watch together as well."
"A movie?" This was actually her greatest concern. In Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas, there were not only the undead who had been raised after death but also many living people who had been deceived by the Cult of the Damned into joining the Scourge. Their methods of seduction, aside from using rhetoric to build an unrealistic, "reset" world, involved using dark magic to create illusions and perform mind control.
"Fine," Vereesa nodded. She saw her two sons standing there for a long time, looking on with longing eyes. A mother would always feel for her children. However, what she was thinking was: Let's see what other tricks you have up your sleeve.