Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Young Master Han was fiddling with a money pouch, causing it to produce jingling noises. “I’m finally rich again!” as he said this, all sorts of emotions welled up inside him.

Royal God Call, who was sitting beside Young Master Han, gazed enviously at his dark red money pouch. Drooling over it, he asked, “How much money is inside that?” In Parallel World, a dark red money pouch could hold up to 1000 gold coins.

“420 gold coins,” Young Master Han said proudly, “Order whatever you want; it’s on me.”

Brother Assist was about to speak up when Young Master Han narrowed his eyes at him, “You know what’s appropriate to order, right?”

“Of course,” Brother Assist smilingly said. He then called Ray over and ordered five glasses of the cheapest liquor.

“Where’s Sword Demon?” War Without Wounds asked as he took his glass of liquor.

“Grinding! He’ll be arriving soon,” Young Master Han answered.

“Tsk tsk,” Brother Assist sighed in admiration, “Miles must have ignited a fire in him! I noticed that everyone’s eagerness to level up is quite high lately!”

Everyone remained silent. Gu Fei’s ascent to level 31 had caused quite an impact to these few gaming experts.

“Have you guys been browsing the forums?” Brother Assist suddenly asked.

“What’s new?” Young Master Han asked after taking a swig from his freshly served liquor.

“Yueye City’s biggest guild is currently hunting Miles. They seem to know that he’s Fugitive 27149,” Brother Assist relayed.

“Did that guy have poop as his zodiac sign? Why are flies buzzing around him wherever he goes?” Young Master Han sarcastically asked.

As he was saying this, the curtain of their private room was lifted up. An exhausted Sword Demon walked inside, falling backward onto a seat while saying to the four, “I just received a letter from Miles.”

“A letter? The kind that we have to retrieve from a mailbox by the city gate?” Royal God Call asked.

Sword Demon nodded his head. At each of the city’s four gates, a mailbox stood close-by. The players used them to mail letters or items. Friends, who had not spawned in the same city on the first day of the game’s open beta, usually used those mailboxes to provide monetary or equipment support to one another. Correspondences in the form of a written letter, however, were rare to come by. Although the players communicating through letters were not restricted to a certain word count, only a few would have so much to convey that they had to resort to writing a physical letter in Parallel World – unless they were writing a love letter.

Everyone threw Sword Demon a weird look as soon as they thought of that.

Sword Demon took out the letter from his dimensional pocket and tossed it onto the table.

“Can we?” the rest asked while looking at the letter, “There’s no untold secret between you two, right?”

Sword Demon rolled his eyes. He did not even bother to answer them.

Everyone lunged forward to snatch the letter at the same time. In the end, the Agility-based Royal God Call got it first. Ever since that last incident where they each snatched the reward from Amethyst Rebirth on their own, the gang had all been working hard to improve their reaction speed. At present, their reflex and reaction speed were basically the same. But when it came to the actual speed of carrying out an action, the one who had added points toward Agility was still at an advantage.

“I’ll read it aloud!” Royal God Call ardently opened the piece of letter.

“‘Hello to Brother Sword Demon and the other fellow experts.’ That’s the greeting. ‘You have all been on my mind as I’m writing this. To think that it has been such a long time since—uhh—so many hours have passed since I left Yunduan City. I’m now in another city near Yunduan called Yueye. One can reach this place by trekking through the Oolong Mountain Range for three hours. The PvP culture is strong over here, and the local players are suffering from a big guild’s terrorization. I managed to complete a chain quest in a village called Yeguang near Yueye City. Afterward, I found myself fortuitously reaching level 31, even acquiring two pieces of new equipment along the way. Ho ho ho!’ Ah, sh*t, he’s quite the braggart.”

Royal God Call continued reading after his unsolicited remark, “‘I miss Brother Sword Demon and all you fellow experts very much right now. Of course, I miss Yunduan City as well. I can only wait until my PK points are cleared off before returning and meeting you all again. Until then, farewell.’”

“That’s it?” everyone asked.

Royal God Call nodded his head.

One among them snatched the letter away, inspected it word for word, and then passed it to another.

“He must be bored out of his mind to be writing something like this,” Royal God Call commented.

Young Master Han was the last one to get a hold of the letter. He scanned the content of it a few times before saying, “This letter was signed by Thousand Miles Drunk, but it’s not actually sent from his mailbox.”

Sword Demon nodded his head as confirmation, “It’s sent by someone called Coward’s Savior.”

“Seems like that guy is trapped to the point that he can’t even deliver a letter by himself,” Young Master Han smirked, feeling a slight degree of schadenfreude.

“Is there a place in-game where somebody can get trapped but won’t die?” War Without Wounds asked curiously, “Safe zones, perhaps?”

“Someone who has accepted his ‘Bounty Mission’ can still slay him inside safe zones. He’s clearly not in prison. His level hasn’t dropped either... That’s weird,” Brother Assist said wonderingly.

Young Master Han got up slowly, “Let’s go.”

“Where to?” everybody asked.

“To that trouble magnet’s location,” Young Master Han curtly said.

In a valley called Youye outside Yueye City, Gu Fei, the trouble magnet, was sitting beside a bonfire while eating the chunk of grilled meat in his hand.

“You ain’t half bad at this, Coward! How high is your crafting level as a Chef?” Gu Fei asked this to Coward’s Savior, who was sitting at the opposite side, as he continued eating.

“There’s no level for crafting skills only proficiency! I didn’t practice for that long, so my proficiency is at 200 points!” Coward’s Savior answered.

“Oh!” Gu Fei did not know how many proficiency points one should have to be considered as highly proficient, so he made no further comment.

“Please don’t call me, Coward. I’m called Coward’s Savior! My name’s meaning changes once you skip the second word,” Coward’s Savior implored.

“Stop calling me ‘Master’, and I won’t call you Coward,” Gu Fei countered.

“I’ve stopped calling you that in ages!” Coward’s Savior cried.

“True! Actually, I’m just returning the favor for all the times you’ve called me ‘Master’ back then!” Gu Fei said. He had finally found a way to stop Coward’s Savior from calling him ‘Master’.

Coward’s Savior felt like weeping, yet no tears came out of him. All he could do was occupy his mind with handling the grilled meat on top of the fire.

Gu Fei, who was chewing on his meat, hurriedly scrambled up to his feet after checking the time. With a sword in hand and the grilled meat in the other, he faced toward a specific direction and yelled, “Repeating Fireball!”

A flaming dragon rose from the tip of his blade, as Gu Fei continued chewing on his chunk of meat.

“Go!” Gu Fei swallowed the chewed meat and yelled this.

The flaming dragon shot out from the blade’s tip and instantly split into four smaller fireballs, before heading straight toward the specified direction.

Nothing was over in that direction, but Coward’s Savior, who was watching everything, did not seem to be bothered by that fact. It was as if he had gotten used to seeing Gu Fei act like this. Just as the four fireballs spiraled two meters apart forward, the empty space ahead began to turn dim. And then... A newly spawned monster was blasted by the incoming fireballs.

The monster roared and charged toward Gu Fei.

“Fireball! Shoot!” Gu Fei chanted again while he was munching on another chunk of meat.

A small ball of fire flew out and exploded on the monster, leaving nothing but smoke behind.

“Bravo!” Coward’s Savior complimented reflexively, having grown used to seeing such a scene.

If the scene had been witnessed by another player, his or her eyeballs would have probably popped out by now.

Youye Valley was a level 50 grinding map. This meant that the monsters inside were around level 50.

As for the level of players in Parallel World right now? They were of course still stuck at level 30, except for this apparently uber-player who had managed to reach level 31 first. Fighting monsters twenty levels above his was a sight that would leave even the game designers in tears if they saw it.

Ye Xiaowu was indeed in tears as he saw Gu Fei easily handling the monsters while munching on a chunk of grilled meat inside Youye Valley.

It was the monitoring team that had caught wind of the current situation this time. Upon learning that a player was inside a level 50 grinding map, which was supposed to be empty at this point, the team started conducting an investigation. In the end, they found nothing that they should be concerned about – well, aside from the excessively high Magic Attack Power of the individual’s gear. The monitoring team checked Gu Fei’s equipment and suspected that someone had let Gu Fei obtain a high-grade gear early in this game through the back door.

Ye Xiaowu, who had repeatedly shown interest to Gu Fei, was of course everyone’s prime suspect.

When Ye Xiaowu was called over to the monitoring room, he smiled wryly and took out the footage that he had prepared long ago, “This is his entire process of doing the chain quest. See for yourselves if there’s a part that violates the rules.”

The entire group convened to analyze the footage.

M*th*rf*ck*r, I knew this would happen eventually! Ye Xiaowu sighed. He had been expecting something like this to happen ever since Gu Fei completed his chain quest and obtained Midnight Spirit Robe and Moonlit Nightfalls. He felt slightly relieved when he noticed that Gu Fei was not fond of using spells and was more partial to using a sword to slash and hack at his foes.

Who knew that this fellow would suddenly be enlightened and start incorporating spells into his attacks?

But after learning of Gu Fei’s current predicament, Ye Xiaowu could only laugh miserably.

The high-grade equipment allowed Gu Fei to possess high Magic Attack Power, enabling him to fight monsters beyond his level.

Meanwhile, Gu Fei’s all-Agility build and his unique techniques allowed him to evade the monsters’ attacks with ease.

Take a Thief for example; if a Thief focused on dividing points toward Agility and Strength, he or she would achieve a slightly faster pace and lower Attack Power than Gu Fei at level 50. That alone would be enough for the Thief to grind on level 50 monsters. As for the current Gu Fei, he could of course do the same thing.

Mages had the lowest HP and the weakest defense; however, this job class had the strongest AOE attack to make up for these weaknesses. And yet, Gu Fei had never utilized a Mage’s biggest advantage!

Ye Xiaowu went through Gu Fei’s data and was aware that he had not even learned the level 24 spell, Descending Wheel of Flames. If he had learned that spell and casted it in the level 50 grinding map, no other players in the entire gaming server could have held a candle to his leveling speed.

Currently, the guy was casting the same two spells to eliminate those monsters near him. As for the rest of the super high-level monsters in Youye Valley, he was using them to ward off the players hunting for him while waiting for his PK value to become nil. Ye Xiaowu could only put on a forced smile after seeing this.

Speaking of which, the guy seemed to be a spell-casting savvy, especially with his near perfect grasp of the timing to release spells. He was almost on par with a Priest that excelled in grasping the timing for bestowing Heal.

Little did Ye Xiaowu know that Gu Fei was bragging about the same thing to Coward’s Savior!

“Timing! Do you know what that means? The art of hidden weapons is all about timing.

“Hitting a wooden pole sticking to the ground and a target moving about is miles apart. No opponent will stand still like a pole and allow you to strike it at your convenience, so you must grasp the timing well. Figure out the target’s pace and pinpoint its next step. That’s how you land your attacks perfectly on the target with your hidden weapon.

“If you’re up against experienced opponents, they’ll surely change their pace often. Naturally, it’s going to be hard to hit the spot you’re aiming at. That’s when you need to put more strength into your wrist and fingers to boost the throwing speed of your hidden weapon! When your attack speed reaches a specific level, you can pretty much ignore your opponent’s change of pace, savvy?”

“Savvy!” Coward’s Savior answered with reverence and awe.

Gu Fei was overjoyed by Coward’s Savior’s enthusiastic response. To think that there’s someone passionate about kung fu inside this game! My mouth’s a little dry from all that talking. I’ll just take some respite. Since I’ve nothing to do again, should I write to another person? Gu Fei pondered on.