Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Royal God Call felt stunned, “Now?”

Gu Fei nodded his head.

“But the level grinding has yet to end!” Royal God Call blurted out.

“It doesn’t really matter whether I’m here or not!” Gu Fei stated bluntly.

“Actually, it’s like this,” Royal God Call came over to Gu Fei and pulled him to a side, whispering, “ You see, there are so many ladies around watching. If I kill you off right under their gazes, although you’re helping me with my ‘Bounty Mission’, I... I... I will definitely be hated by them.”

Gu Fei laughed coldly, “You’ve got quite a lot of request for this.”

“It’s just a small request...” Royal God Call pitifully pleaded.

“Forget it. I may as well go all the way with helping you; we’ll find somewhere without anyone around for you to do the deed!” Gu Fei decided.

“Thank you brother! My dearest brother!” Royal God Call emotionally cried out.

As both returned to the grinding party, Royal God Call went back to pulling monsters and Gu Fei went back to standing by the side while feeling totally bored. The nosy Luo Luo came by once more, “What were you two muttering over there all sneaky-like?”

Gu Fei glanced at her once, “Players who are sympathetic to Vast Lushness stand over there.”

“Hmph!” Luo Luo pettily rolled her eyes, viciously bestowing Heal on to Gu Fei in retaliation before walking off in a huff.

Many people would be envious of Gu Fei being able to squat there and attain free experience points. However, the recent circumstance was far from why Gu Fei was playing this game. He cared naught about the experience points or equipment drop, as he only wanted to train his kung fu by fighting creatures that could react to his every move. If this simple wish of his could not be achieved, what was the point of even grinding like so?

Gu Fei squatted to one side while drawing circles on the ground as he groaned, attracting everyone’s attention to him. They could not help but think, This b*st*rd is really hard to please. He seems dissatisfied with our current grinding efficiency.

Suddenly, Gu Fei stood up and waved to everyone, “You guys keep on grinding. I’ll head over there for a while.”

“Where?” everyone asked. When Gu Fei earlier said ‘over there’, he waved in a large circle.

“Over there!” Gu Fei circled a random area once more before turning around and running off. With his speed, his figure became a black dot in the distance very quickly.

“It’s too boring. I’ll go grind by myself. Call me when you’re done over there,” Gu Fei sent Royal God Call a message.

There were no words from him after this. Finding a spot not too far away, Gu Fei grinded on the monsters there alone. Luo Luo sent him messages from time to time to ask where he had run off to, yet Gu Fei casually found some excuse to stall her from finding him. He only returned to the party when Royal God Call messaged him that they were about to leave.

“Hi!” he cheerfully greeted everyone. After using his kung fu for a bit, Gu Fei’s gloomy look from before was replaced by a happy expression now.

Everyone threw him side glances, yet he paid those no heed. Grabbing Royal God Call, he went toward a different direction as he announced, “You people go on ahead. I still have something to settle with Royal.”

“Ah! Sis Luo Luo...” Royal God Call stared longingly at Luo Luo as she led the troop of ladies back to the city.

“Do you want the lady or the Windchaser’s Boots?” Gu Fei asked him.

Royal God Call looked visibly conflicted when Gu Fei presented this choice to him. His face was scrunched up as if he was torn between the two most difficult choices of his life. He could only stare dumbly after the ladies as they slowly got further and further away.

“Do it! I’m facing away from you, or else my conditioned reflex will react,” Gu Fei said as he turned around and faced his back to Royal God Call; he even went as far as to cover his ears with his hands. After practicing kung fu for so many years, his body had developed a reflex toward combat. He feared that if he faced an attack that he was aware of head on, he would instinctively dodge it. It was said that a conditioned reflex that did not require any thought was the fastest at reacting to an attack.

Royal God Call nocked his arrow, pulled the bow, and stared at Gu Fei. His hands were actually trembling slightly. Gu Fei was indeed true to his word, so how could Royal God Call do the deed knowing that?

He waited for quite a long while and still the arrow did not arrive. Gu Fei turned around and saw Royal God Call with his bow pulled, standing there in a daze! The dumb look on his face irked Gu Fei, “What are you hesitating for?! Quickly fire your arrow already. I need to head to prison soon since I still have class tomorrow!”

The shout shocked Royal God Call, causing him to release the arrow in his hand that flew out with a sharp whoosh. It was just as Gu Fei had suspected; his body already reacted accordingly before the arrow even struck his forehead. Turning his body sideways, he cleanly evaded the arrow.

Royal God Call instantly got mad. He had released the arrow after much intense and nerve-wracking thought, yet Gu Fei easily dodged it.

Gu Fei helplessly said, “That’s the reflex I trained out as a kung fu practitioner. Try again!” With that, he turned around and covered his ears once more.

Royal God Call was immediately inspired by what Gu Fei had done. Nocking his bow, he shut his eyes. Indeed, his heart was much more settled now that he could not see Gu Fei. He gritted his teeth and released his arrow once more.

Royal God Call slowly opened his eyes after half a minute, only to see Gu Fei staring at him with a disgruntled expression.

“What?” Royal God Call asked, annoyed. Although his eyes were shut tightly when he fired off that arrow, he was confident that his hands had already achieved the steadiness that came from his familiarity with the various archery skills. He was therefore unlikely to miss a target that he had aimed an arrow properly.

Gu Fei expressionlessly reached his hand to his back and, after groping for a bit, pulled out an arrow shaft while gritting his teeth. He then returned the arrow to Royal God Call, saying, “Royal, my friend, please stop messing around and end it in one shot, alright?”

Royal God Call broke out in a cold sweat as he took the arrow back, “Sorry. I forgot to use my skill.”

Gu Fei did not say another word and merely pulled his sword out of his dimensional pocket. Turning around and covering his ears, he lightly warned, “If I’m not dead with your next shot, it’ll be my turn to slay you dead.”

“Relax!” Royal God Call calmed him down. As the saying went, ‘anything hard the first time around was easy the second time around.’ Having shot Gu Fei once, Royal God Call no longer felt conflicted like before. He steadily nocked his arrow and aimed. Shutting his eyes tightly, he released the arrow on Snipe.

“How was it?” Royal God Call asked aloud with his eyes still shut tightly. No one replied to his question, though. When he opened his eyes to look, Gu Fei was no longer around. Upon seeing that the ‘Bounty Mission’ on his mission log was displayed as completed, Royal God Call heaved a long sigh of relief.

Opening up his friends list, he sent a message to Gu Fei, yet the system humorously stated: [Your contact is not within a serviceable area.]

“F*ck...” Royal God Call cursed as he walked back to Yunduan City alone.

When Gu Fei received Royal God Call’s arrow on Snipe, his vision immediately darkened and, in the next moment, he found himself transported inside Yunduan City’s prison.

The underground prison was dimly lit and the air was deathly cold. In conclusion, his surroundings were hardly inviting. Looking around him, he saw that the cell he was in was quite large and had three or five other occupants. Everyone curiously glanced over at the newcomer. Some people were about to call out to him, but they ended up keeping their mouths shut upon getting a clear view of Gu Fei’s face who had just turned around.

Gu Fei looked around him and he became somewhat uncomfortable. Quite a few occupants of the surrounding cells were actually sent there by Gu Fei. In all honesty, nobody else, aside from him and Royal God Call, was actively doing ‘Bounty Mission’ in Yunduan City.

The biggest fear players had with PK value was the penalty of losing two levels if they died. It was actually not easy to die in Parallel World, as monsters in grinding maps were not exactly difficult to take on. A player with decent equipment would be capable enough of dealing with monsters of the same level. Thus, it could be said that the chances of them dying to the monsters while grinding were a lot lower than them dying as a result of PvP.

‘Bounty Mission’ was all about engaging in PvP, so players who were not confident of their skills would not risk their lives to go through such missions. This was how Yunduan City differed from Yueye City. Players over there embraced the risk of PvP every day as part of their online gaming lives. Naturally, they would try their hardest to protect themselves by not attaining PK value in Yueye City.

It could be said that Gu Fei was the reason why many players had to while their time inside Yunduan City’s prison. Some with higher PK value had to squat there up to eight or ten hours, but not everyone had the patience to stay inside an enclosed space for such a long duration.

The game designers were kind enough to design the entire prison as a big safe zone. Thus, players could log off any time they wished, except their prison time would only get reduced when they were online.

Many players did not have the willpower to stay in this sort of dull environment. Thus, despite the time the players needed to spend inside the cell only being a few hours long, they would often log on and off daily until they finished serving their time in prison.

Among the players Gu Fei saw in front of him, two looked very familiar as he had just sent them in here earlier. Several others looked somewhat familiar; he reckoned that he must have sent them in here several days ago. Gu Fei did not recognize the rest. But since no one else currently did the ‘Bounty Mission’ in earnest, Gu Fei reckoned that these players must be Royal God Call’s ‘customers’.

Gu Fei blankly stared at these people, not knowing how to break the ice. In the end, one of the possible ‘customers’ of Royal God Call came over and asked, “Bro, who sent you here?”

“Is it an Archer?” Someone began to describe Royal God Call’s general appearance to Gu Fei.

Gu Fei nodded his head honestly, “Yup!”

“F*ck that sh*tty twirp!” Some began to warm up a little with Gu Fei when they learned that he was sent here by Royal God Call as well.

Someone said a few consoling words to Gu Fei and pointed to the other players seated by another corner, “Those few over there, some sh*tty Mage sent them over here.”

Gu Fei wanted to cry, but no tears came out. He smiled wryly as he admitted, “That sh*tty Mage is me....”

“Ah?!” Some exclaimed in shock, quickly bolting a few meters away from Gu Fei, and others crawled over to the front of Gu Fei’s ‘customers’. After confirming Gu Fei’s identity, these guys began to stare at him with contempt in their eyes.

Gu Fei felt annoyed by all this. He was so focused on helping Royal God Call that he had overlooked this problem. These people currently gathered in this prison were the lot that that had the greatest hatred toward him!

But since the entire underground prison was a safe zone, players could not make any contact that would lead to PvP. Gu Fei was not afraid of being surrounded; instead, he was depressed that he could not use his kung fu to shock everyone into submission.

That crowd of men was not the least bit afraid of him as they gathered together and whispered in low voices, expletives being uttered every so often as they talked. Gu Fei sighed. It looked like these two hours here in this cell would not be easy. Maybe he should log off and try another day?

Just as he was pondering this, a few beams of white light shone as three players were sent in.