“Hey, hey. Wake up. Did you hear it? Did you hear the latest news?”

A boy shakes up his friend to wake him up from the desk he was sleeping on.

They just finished the class they were attending, and he’s ready to use any excuse to forget about it as soon as possible. And what could be a more juicy target than the latest DMA news?

“Uaaaaam… Hear? Hear what…?” The other boy sleepily raises his head, drool still on his cheek.

“This is why you’re always struggling with your grades. You’re always sleeping!”

The sleepy boy makes another yawn before retorting. “How is this any worse than what you do? Don’t you spend all classes reading random stuff on your mobile? If they catch you, you’ll have trouble.”

“Ahaha…” The boy laughs and scratches his head. “...you got me there…”

“Anyway. What did you want that you had to wake me up? I hope it’s something important, or else...” He shakes his fist, menacingly.

“Oh, how scary!” The boy feigns being scared in a clearly exaggerated way before bursting into laughing. “Hahaha! Everybody knows you’d rather die than exercise. I’m sure your punch hurts less than a mosquito bite!”

The boy reluctantly lowers his raised fist.

“Tsk! If you don’t have anything relevant to say, I’ll go back to sleep, then.”

“No, wait! Don’t you want to know the latest DMA breaking news?”

At the excited boy’s words, the still sleepy one finally looks at the other. He notices excitement on his face, so something big must have happened. “So? What is it?” He asks.

“A massive banning!”

“A massive what…?” The sleepy boy doesn’t understand what his friend is talking about.

“A massive banning! There was some problem in the forums and people started to write dangerous stuff. The things escalated until the admins had to go there and ban everybody involved. Can you imagine? More than fifty people got banned in a single day! Well, most of them only got muted for some time instead of completely banned because it was their first time, but still… More than fifty players, all at once!”

“Ok, this might be the biggest ban I’ve heard about…” He yawns, starting to show interest in the matter. “But isn’t similar stuff always happening? I’m sure somebody posted something about how ugly elves are yet again, and things turned awry…”

“Nuh, huh, you’re wrong. It wasn’t a faction war this time. It was something about a rat’s lab or something similar… I don’t know, but it was about a single dungeon this time.”

“This sure sounds interesting…” The sleepy boy’s expression finally clears up as the sleepiness gives way to excitement. “So, why did they fight?”

“I’m not sure, but we can find it if we search. They said the posts have been deleted, but I’m sure we can find somebody who made screenshots!”

“The tension between two player factions kept escalating due to the persistent and almost fanatical actions of one of those groups. Tired of them, the players decided to take action, and all hell broke loose.

Since the dispute wasn’t properly resolved, due to the DMA staff intervening, the leaders of the two factions decided to have a personal match to decide who was right. Of course, this match couldn’t be anything else than an invasion into The Mad Rat’s Lab itself, the cause the fight broke out.”