Internet Mage Professor-Chapter 74: Teamwork

The team re-entered the game with a tense silence.

Their jaws were set, eyes focused, fingers hovering over controls with the kind of nervous energy that only failure could breed.

The environment loaded in—a gray hallway, dimly lit, the floor caked with grime and dark fluids.

From the outside, it looked like a regular rundown building in a post-apocalyptic game. But for them, this was more than pixels and code. This was where their pride had been buried. Twice.

They crept forward together. Slower this time. A bit more alert. A bit more careful.

They cleared the first floor, not effortlessly, but efficiently. Selin marked the corners now, Ruvin covered angles. Calien gave shorter commands. Erik didn’t run off. Nolan, standing behind them, observed quietly, arms crossed.

On the second floor, coordination started to fray.

A runner broke through Selin’s left flank and clipped her, causing a stagger. Ruvin hesitated, unsure if he should leave his position to help.

Calien shouted, but his voice came a second too late. Erik followed up, but overextended and took a hit from the back.

By the time they reached the third floor, their cohesion had bent into a thin line straining to hold. The moment the bloater appeared, that tension snapped.

The creature emerged from the far side of the hallway. Massive.

Breathing wetly. Its chest rose and fell with sickening effort, each inhale dragging phlegmy groans from a maw slick with drool.

Its bloated form shifted with clumsy strength, tumors pulsing like eggs ready to hatch. It turned toward them, that eyeless cavity where its face should have been twisting, sensing them not with sight, but rage.

"Go wide!" Calien shouted.

"Bait the swing!" Selin followed.

Ruvin rolled right. Erik pulled left. Selin threw a bottle to draw attention, and Calien stabbed for the seam beneath the shoulder.

But the bloater wasn’t the same beast from the movie.

This one was more unpredictable, almost sentient in its fury. It twisted too fast, pivoted mid-attack, slammed Ruvin with a club-like arm and threw Erik into a crumbled wall.

Acidic pus burst from a fresh wound, hissing against the virtual floor. Selin coughed as her vision blurred.

"Back, back!" Calien shouted.

"Don’t clump up!" Erik wheezed.

The beast surged, slamming its bulk into them.

They tried to follow the movie’s strategy.

Tried to twist it, stretch its seams, stagger its core. But they weren’t a unit. They moved too soon. Too late. Too wide. Too close.

They collapsed.

One by one.

Again.

And then, the words appeared:

GAME OVER.

The silence in the training room was deafening.

No one spoke. No one dared to. They could themselves be shamed.

And then, Nolan spread his arms a little and then slammed it to clap.

Not loud. Just sharp enough to pull their attention.

"Stop playing."

His voice, for the first time that day, wasn’t teasing or sarcastic. It was steady, commanding.

He walked to the front of the room slowly, hands folded behind his back.

"It’s hard to defeat that guy without teamwork," he said plainly. "Real teamwork. Not overlapping strategies. Not memorized steps. Not shouting at each other like fools. I don’t care if you’ve seen it in something, or read it in a guide or you made it on your own. You can’t fake synergy. You build it."

The students said nothing, still catching their breath from digital death.

Nolan turned and looked at them. "You want to know what teamwork is?"

He didn’t wait for them to answer.

"Teamwork is understanding your limits and trusting someone else to cover them. It’s not just reacting—it’s predicting. It’s knowing who’ll move where, and why, without needing to ask."

His voice deepened as he stepped closer, gaze scanning each of them like he was carving the words into their minds.

"Teamwork is when you breathe together. Not just think alike—but move alike. When one falters, the others don’t blame—they adapt. When one leads, the rest don’t resist—they follow, because the goal is shared. Because the victory belongs to all, or to none."

They sat still, their eyes locked on him like he had turned the air to glass and they were afraid to breathe.

"And teamwork," he continued, "means pain, too. It means you might get hit to protect someone. You might sacrifice your win for theirs. But in doing so, you create something stronger than any solo play."

No one interrupted. They didn’t even blink.

Then Nolan walked to the console again and projected a paused frame of the bloater, frozen in a grotesque pose, mid-charge. He gestured to it.

"You want to beat this thing?"

The students nodded slowly.

"Then stop fighting it like four solo players who happen to share a screen. That thing doesn’t care if you saw its weak points. Doesn’t care if you know how to stagger it. It’s not a script—it’s chaos. It adapts. And so must you."

He pointed to the bloater’s shoulders, the bulging seams under its arms.

"It twists when you bait it, yes. But only if you control the angle."

He moved his hand across the monster’s belly, where tumors layered each other like a diseased armor.

"Strike the seams when they stretch, but don’t go one at a time. Sync your hits. Time them so the body can’t contract. Force it open. Dissect it together."

Nolan took a deep breath, and his voice grew softer, not quieter, just heavier with weight.

"One of you needs to bait. Not two. Not four. One. The rest form a triangle—left, right, and rear. You rotate when he twists. One draw, two strikes, one reload. Repeat. Stagger its mind, not just its body."

He paused, turning to look at them again. freёwebnoѵel.com

"You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to move as one."

The room felt smaller, more closer.

The students were leaning in slightly now, unblinking, as if every word Nolan said was lighting something up inside them.

There was no confusion on their faces—no need for questions.

It was all suddenly, painfully clear to them.

"Forget ego. Forget the score. Forget who died first. Who hit most. That doesn’t matter. Not here. Not with him. That bloater isn’t a boss fight—it’s a test. Of control. Of unity. Of what you are when things go wrong."

He finally stepped back, voice returning to its calm rhythm.

"You want to beat him?"

They nodded again, more confidently this time.

"Then beat him together. Or die alone."

Silence fell once more, but it wasn’t the silence of failure. It was the silence before a storm. A gathering of will.

But just as Nolan turned back toward the control panel to reset the simulation, a voice broke through the tension like a crack of lightning.

"Sir!" It was Erik.

Nolan turned with a raised brow.

"Sir... something’s happening to you!"

Everyone’s eyes widened as they looked up.

A faint, almost imperceptible glow shimmered at Nolan’s fingertips, as if static electricity were crackling across his skin. It wasn’t obvious—at first. But as they stared, it grew stronger, brighter, a faint white-blue pulse emanating just beneath the surface of his veins.

"What..." Selin whispered. "Is that... mana?"

Nolan looked down at his hand, mildly surprised.

The faint light danced across his knuckles, curled between his fingers like ghostly threads of power, flickering without form.

He blinked, flexed his hand once, then chuckled under his breath.

"Well," he muttered. "That’s new."

But even as he tried to brush it off, something in the room had shifted.

The students, wide-eyed and silent, knew without speaking: something had changed.

And whatever it was—it wasn’t just in the game.