Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Even if I am unable to impede them, I should be able to take out one to three of them. This was what Sword Demon confidently thought to himself. He could tell that the enemies were in an emotional wreck; while they might be experiencing a burst of courage, they were sure to have lost their usual skilled coordination that came from their tacit understanding of one another.

Contrasting that to his side… Sword Demon glanced at Young Master Han whom he had fought countless battles with together. They were a little nervous since they were not holding a clear advantage, but Young Master Han happened to be the sort whose state of mind would never be affected by any circumstances they found themselves in. Considering that the severe narcissism he suffered was definitely a little abnormal, it could not be denied that this worked to be the strongest sort of self-confidence. Sword Demon believed that even if this man were eating dirt as he got stomped under the foot of another, he would still present that look of supreme arrogance.

Sword Demon had even sometimes considered that this was no longer narcissism, but that the man had long since hypnotized himself...

Despite the unfavorable circumstance, Young Master Han would surely not make a mistake. The coordination between the two would still be flawless. With such a thought in mind, Sword Demon firmly believed he would be able to take down two or three men.

Southern Lone Blade and his crew had already plunged into the fog.

When they realized that there was not a horde of reinforcement waiting to ambush them like they had imagined, and there were only a measly three players, their frame of mind took a turn for the worse. It was the ‘unknown enemies’ hiding within the fog that had always been mentally harassing them, so if the horde they had imagined were to appear before them now, they could at least practically explain their tumultuous emotions.

However, it turned out there were only three players! Just three. This was not a trap at all, so where was the real trap or ambush located? The six men were vexed, yet they did not stop their assault. This was the last bit of will to fight they had accumulated, and they had placed it all in this one charge. Stopping now would mean that in the bottom of their hearts, they were already compromising and giving up.

Of course, they would be unwilling to give up; Even if they were unable to see the horde of enemies, they would first use these three men to vent their frustrations!

Flame Singed Clothes was the first to slow down and stop. He would have to stop moving if he wanted to chant and cast a spell. At the very least, he did not forget about this ironclad rule set by the system.

“Palatial Balefire! Rise!” Flame Singed Clothes loudly chanted. Flames shot up the sky right before Brother Assist and Young Master Han, but neither of them moved when they heard him cast his spell.

Sword Demon already saw through where the spell would be placed, so his long-time combat buddy, Young Master Han, should be able to do the same as well. Young Master Han was gifted when it came to matters pertaining to coordinates, distance, and other spatial issues, and what he could perhaps see was even more thorough and clear than many others. Besides, it was not really anything difficult to begin with. Plenty of experts out there would be capable of doing this much. At most, players might occasionally make a mistake in judgment when they were repositioning themselves, but it was almost impossible for them to make such a mistake in the first round of spell bombardment.

Flame Singed Clothes should understand this point well, and he should of course know that the people he was facing today were not just the average noobs.

Unfortunately, Flame Singed Clothes had experienced far too many setbacks today!

His spells were seen through by the enemies he had met and produced absolutely no results time and time again.

The Palatial Balefire he had thought was impossible to overcome had easily been passed by Eternal Dominion’s wall climbing antics and Gu Fei’s Blink.

He had died to his Palatial Balefire back in Linshui City, with someone even curiously asking him if that counted as a PK point.

After that, he had unintentionally led the players of Blue Umbra Guild to his comrades, almost jeopardizing everyone’s lives over by the shore of Linshui City.

When they got to Xiawu City, when everyone was picking clients, he managed to find himself someone with a weird character in their name.

And after all those fiascos, he indirectly caused Blackwater to die to his Palatial Balefire when the latter helped him escape. No one asked him about his PK value this time, but he would most likely breakdown if anyone did—unbeknown to him, it was because of this 1 PK point he had gained that compromised their location, leading to their current predicament.

Flame Singed Clothes was stewing in deep frustration thanks to the string of defeats he had experienced today. Seeing this Knight and this Priest stand unflinchingly to his spell and treating it as if it were their background, whatever self-confidence Flame Singed Clothes had left simply vanished.

He originally did not cast his Palatial Balefire to burn the two. He had merely intended to conjure up a barrier to cut off the three men’s retreat, so that the ‘horde of enemies’ would not make their way over with ease. In the end, the two men did not do a thing, but it was precisely their inaction that had struck a heavy blow to him.

Flame Singed Clothes had planned to immediately toss out his Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno to set forth a firestorm as a follow-up to his Palatial Balefire, but he failed to do that right now as he had forgotten his spell incantation once more… He was no longer certain what he was supposed to do and just stupidly rushed forth with the rest, as if he were a Warrior.

The real Warrior was Southern Lone Blade, and he was leading the charge. As the one who was had the most wits about him among the six, he kept his eyes on the man standing at the forefront of the three men, Sword Demon. He raised his shield and prepared to activate his Charge toward the man.

Sword Demon changed his position and headed toward their flank.

While they intended to impede the six men, that did not mean that they must face them head-on. If Sword Demon were to hurtle forward to block them, that would mean he was the one who had lost his wits.

How could one man face six players in a direct clash? The only person who could do such a thing was Gu Fei, not Sword Demon.

Even though Sword Demon admired Gu Fei, he was not foolish enough to mimic how that man fought. He had his line of thinking, which was to fight by maximizing the unique features of his job class as best as he could.

The Shadowmist Assassin had already given everybody present a good interpretation of what this sort of fighting style was like: never mount an assault from the front. This was what it meant to be an Assassin. Since Sword Demon had advanced into this job class, he would avoid the sword tip of the Warrior and circle to his flank.

The player beside him was Flame Singed Clothes, and it was a Flame Singed Clothes who no longer knew what he should be doing.

Naturally, Sword Demon was entirely unaware of Flame Singed Clothes’ current the state of mind. All he thought was that the presence of this Mage was a threat, especially after everybody had that dangerous brush with death back in Luori City thanks to his spellcasting. This was why he chose to dart toward this man in hopes of finding a chance to eliminate this potential complication.

Flame Singed Clothes did not react to this sudden change at all, as he continued to dash forward like an idiot.

“SINGED!” Southern Lone Blade was shocked. He had already turned and was prepared to deal with Sword Demon. Under normal circumstances, when facing such a maneuver, Flame Singed Clothes would quickly dodge into the cover of his shield, but, today, he instead daringly ran past him and continued to charge onward as if he were a Warrior.

Even Sword Demon was confused by this. None of them had thought that Flame Singed Clothes’ mental state would breakdown to this extent, as no one had understood why Flame Singed Clothes was so rough and rugged today.

“FLAME SINGED CLOTHES!” several voices bellowed to him.

Flame Singed Clothes suddenly woke up from his stupor. He merely had a bout of amnesia and was not like Blackwater from before, who had lost all sense of his self.

By the time he returned to his senses, Flame Singed Clothes had found himself separated from the rest of the squad, standing alone in an empty space on that battlefield, which was a huge taboo to a Mage.

Flame Singed Clothes’ countenance changed; Brother Assist did not miss this opportunity and dashed over to the Mage, giving the man a slash.

This slash was by no means weak. The damage output from Brother Assist had a qualitative leap upon advancing as a Dark Knight. Comparing across the job classes, Dark Knights actually came in second in terms of damage output from a basic attack, and it only lost to Berserkers on that front.

This strike, which applied a status effect to him, roused the Mage Flame Singed Clothes.

Brother Assist’s Twilight Blade had a 10% chance of applying the Weaken status on his opponents. While he had very fortunately procced it, it was unfortunate that it had occurred on Flame Singed Clothes. It was a pointless application since the effect of Weaken would severely reduce the amount of physical damage output of its target. It had no impact on Flame Singed Clothes at all as he was a Mage.

Brother Assist did not often participate in PvP, much less take on experts, but that did not affect his confidence at being able to dominate a Mage in melee combat. Meanwhile, Southern Lone Blade, who had originally been preparing to deal with Sword Demon, instantly changed his target and came to assist his comrade, Charging right over to Brother Assist.

Brother Assist’s lack of experience in such group battles immediately became apparent as his body began to perspire and his legs turned jelly, which were often symptoms found in noobs when they first PvP-ed. These symptoms did not occur when he was bullying a Mage in melee, but now that Southern Lone Blade was charging at him, Brother Assist instantly became a mess.

He scrambled to evade this Charge, but his movement was extremely uncoordinated. Southern Lone Blade was charging toward him with a shield and sword as a Guardian. The area of impact would be large, so that made it difficult to dodge; how fast could Brother Assist run now that he was moving so awkwardly? Half of Southern Lone Blade’s shield ended up colliding right into him, while he was not thrown into the air by the collision, Brother Assist ended up spinning round before collapsing on the ground.

Sword Demon really wished he could cover his eyes when he saw this, sighing to himself. I’ve long heard of Brother Assist, who is well-versed in theoretical knowledge, being a total noob when it comes to real combat operations. Seems that there’s plenty of truth to this rumor, after all.

Southern Lone Blade managed to save Flame Singed Clothes by knocking Brother Assist over; he followed this up with a blow to the fallen Dark Knight.

Brother Assist sure was fated when it came to proc chances today; he had just managed to activate that 10% Weakened status moments ago, and now he managed to obtain the Faint status from this one Charge. At the moment, he lay sprawled on the floor dealing with the status, unable to put up even a bit of resistance as he took that blow from Southern Lone Blade in its totality.

A flash of light basked the man as Young Master Han’s timely Heal caressed him. Knights possessed a balanced stat-point distribution, so their defense was not terrible, making them difficult to insta-kill. With a Priest by the side providing healing, it was essentially impossible for Southern Lone Blade to achieve anything.

Nevertheless, Southern Lone Blade was a bonafide experienced veteran. Seeing the Heal land after his strike, he did not waste any time and immediately stepped over the fallen Brother Assist and strode toward Young Master Han, not even turning his head back as he ordered Flame Singed Clothes, “Kill this man!”

Sword Demon and Young Master Han’s heart soured, as this was a scenario that they had not foreseen. Brother Assist had always been in a support role when he played with everyone, occasionally joining the rest to massacre their enemies. Most of the time, he would only join in to help speed up the process when victory was certain.

Strictly speaking, today was the first day he had acted independently like this. Even though he had myriads of theories when it came to PvP, his insufficient experience made him no more than a caricature of actual application.

Sword Demon and Young Master Han had originally calculated that the enemies would entirely focus on Sword Demon, so the battle could be dragged out as long as they could, with Sword Demon using his superior movement speed and Young Master Han supporting by the side. They had not expected Brother Assist to attack and subsequently get taken down, allowing their enemies to take advantage of this terrible situation.

Ignoring Sword Demon and Young Master Han, Brother Assist was still fainted on the ground, while Flame Singed Clothes was standing right beside him. Raising his staff, he pointed it toward Brother Assist.

Let’s see you dodge this now! Flame Singed Clothes’ confidence rallied once more.

It was at this tense moment that a weird sound was heard from within the fog. Soon after, they saw a grey figure, which was flashing blue and yellow, hurtle out from the fog and right into the crowd.

Everybody caught sight of this and exclaimed in unison, “BOSS!”

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