Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

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“Why are they listening to your orders?” Svelte Dancer had tens of thousands of questions swimming in her head.

“It’s a quest reward. Remember, you must be the one who deals the final blow,” Gu Fei instructed.

“What if I’m not?” Svelte Dancer still had questions.

“Perhaps they would complete the Bounty Mission on my behalf?” Gu Fei made a guess. “I’m not too sure myself, this is the first time I’ve done this.”

“What’s their attack power?” Svelte Dancer asked.

“No clue,” Gu Fei answered.

“So how would I grasp the timing to make the final strike?” Svelte Dancer was fuming.

“Your intuition?”

“Are you asking me?” Svelte Dancer wanted to choke Gu Fei.

“Hurry up. Look how far they’ve gone. Do this well, I’ve faith in you.” Gu Fei patted Svelte Dancer’s shoulder, no longer giving her a chance to ask another question as he turned around and jumped out into the open street.

“Hello everyone,” Gu Fei waved to the sea of players in front of him. Even though he currently did not have a single PK point and he could cheekily act impudently, having to go back and forth going after his Bounty targets was ultimately a very troublesome matter, so Gu Fei felt that he would be a lot happier if he could passively retaliate to their attacks.

“Thousand Miles Drunk!” The players very quickly identified Gu Fei after that greeting. The shout ‘Thousand Miles Drunk’ echoed all throughout the players outside the Jail, making it hard to tell if they were welcoming him with warmth or hatred.

There were really a lot of players present this time, and so they would of course be greatly emboldened by this. After seeing how arrogantly Gu Fei had made his entrance, there were actually players who immediately made the move to offer their ‘welcome’. Going up against players in the tens of thousands, even Gu Fei would be vanquished in a head to head clash, so what he needed to utilize right now was the terrain. Ducking away from the first arrow that came hurtling toward him, Gu Fei accurately threw out a Lightning Bolt that landed right on the Archer’s head.

Insta-killed!

Evidently, this Archer was not some powerful expert as a single Lightning Bolt was enough to kill him. Gu Fei checked himself again, and saw that he did not gain even a single PK point. He had successfully retaliated with a passive counterattack this time.

The crowd began surging toward Gu Fei like the coming tide, and that was precisely the effect he was going for. He immediately took a step back, but it did not seem like he was trying to run away, instead giving off the impression like he wanted to use the terrain of the streets for a fight to the death. Gu Fei did not dare to underestimate the intelligence of his opponents, if he were to turn tail and flee after greeting everyone with those two words upon leaping out, it would have been far too obvious that a scheme is afoot.

Gu Fei backed away into his original hiding spot, the corner of his eyes sweeping over to find Svelte Dancer still dawdling. He panicked, but he was unable to shout out and remind the lady either; after all, he was in plain sight of his enemies. Just as he was worried that his messaging skills would be too slow to send a message over in time, he finally saw Svelte Dancer’s figure slowly become transparent as she entered into Stealth.

Gu Fei sighed in relief. The approaching arrows and spells were still finding their way to him, but all Gu Fei had to do was turn his body and lean in close to the wall, he could let all of these attacks just brush past him. A bunch of Thieves were properly leveraging on the advantage of their Fleetfoot state and had managed to reach within arm’s reach of Gu Fei in an instant, each of them wielding their daggers in hand as they came plunging over. Gu Fei remained as calm and composed as ever, observing each and every oncoming dagger as he proceeded to either dodge or parry them with his own sword, blocking each and every strike from connecting. These Thieves were still happily yelling, “QUICK, WE’VE CAUGHT UP TO HIM!”

In the end, the first to answer them was none other than Gu Fei; it was an answer that was none other than a quick lick of flames from his Twin Incineration. Were it not for the fact that he was waiting for the chance to passively retaliate against these people, these Thieves would not have even gotten the chance to surround Gu Fei before they were all slain.

There was no way that these weak Thieves would be able to withstand such an attack, and the handful of them was instantly eradicated on the spot. However, always waiting for the enemy to make the first move before he could retaliate wasted too much time; just dragging things out by that couple of seconds had allowed the enemy to charge up en masse. When Gu Fei saw that there was no way for him to contend with such numbers, he went back to his old tricks of climbing the wall and pointing upward with a hop, Blinking right up to the top of the nearby roofs once more.

“Get the ladders!!!”

Up on the roofs, Gu Fei could vaguely hear someone shouting something from amidst the chaos below. When he turned around to look, he saw several players each pull a crudely made wooden ladder out from their dimensional pockets. Since Gu Fei was always pulling out this move of his, the others would of course come up with a plan of their own that specifically counters what he was doing.

Gu Fei wasted not the time nor effort to admire the sight of these men climbing up their wooden ladders; the enemy still had ranged players still chasing after him with their attacks from afar, and there was no way that he could escape from this even after climbing up to the roofs, so all he could do was to accelerate his efforts and run. Turning his head around as he ran, he spotted the melee job classes begin their climb of those flimsy looking ladders, while the ranged players carried on their chase by attacking from the streets below from the sides that flanked the stretch of roof he was running on.

Escaping would not be difficult, Gu Fei thought to himself, when he saw his message light up. Pulling it out, he saw that it came from Svelte Dancer. Gu Fei was momentarily flustered, thinking that the lady had actually failed, but upon reading the message, realized it was just Svelte Dancer with another question, “How am I going to escape after doing the deed?”

“Hmm… That would be a test of your resourcefulness and courage,” Gu Fei was already sweating as he said this. He had really completely forgotten about coming up with any viable solution for this part of his plan. This was no time for jokes either, so after he sent that last message, he very quickly added, “You can make your way back first if you can’t think of anything. We’ll just come up with another solution together again.”

“You’re useless!” Svelte Dancer replied thusly and that was that. Gu Fei had no idea what she planned to do, so he very quickly sent a message to ask, only to receive a harsh rebuke, “Stop yakking! Don’t get in the way of this madam working!”

Gu Fei quickly shut up and silently concentrated on escaping. In the time he took a few more steps, Gu Fei suddenly thought to himself, why am I so focused on running away? Wouldn’t this cause the enemy to become suspicious? I’ll need to act like I’m fighting them! With that in mind, he very quickly glanced at his cooldowns and saw that Blink was ready for use. Taking another look behind him, the Thieves were hardly accustomed to traveling on the rooftops, so they were not as fast as the Archers down below on the streets. Unsurprisingly, all the other babylegged job classes were already beginning to lag behind everyone else as the gap grew as the chase continued.

Gu Fei quickly analyzed both his left and right, feeling like the Archers on the street to the left were in the lead by just a bit, meaning that he could begin cutting them down in size an extra step or two earlier. Thus, he did not hesitate as he leaped right down to the left street.

As long as the Archers had enough levels and were not too shabbily equipped, they would most certainly possess a movement speed that was faster than Gu Fei’s own. These Archers were almost closing in on their target, and just as they were raising their heads to begin wildly peppering their arrows, thinking to themselves that they could turn around and shoot if they continue to follow on for a bit, they had not expected for Gu Fei to suddenly somersault down to their street.

Once a melee player successfully dove into the midst of Archers, it was almost a guarantee that they would begin panicking. It was unknown just how many arrows had been fired from these Archers that had been chasing after Gu Fei all this while, but Gu Fei figured he should have been relegated as the passive combatant for a really long time. Without even getting up from this landing, Gu Fei was pirouetting as he unleashed a Twin Incineration, carving out two complete rotations in that one moment, insta-killing dozens of players on the spot.

After that, Gu Fei sent out his Palm of Thunder, Lightning Bolt, a horizontal cut… Any attack that he could execute was thrown out, and because these Archers had been grouped up rather tightly in their pursuit, they had objectively provided Gu Fei with the opportunity to kill them all. Gu Fei followed this up by quickly casting the two AoE spells he knew, and since the street barely had any space for players to hide, players were scrambling to duck to the sides even as others clustered for safety; their screams were resounded throughout as the flames burned unceremoniously. Gu Fei seized this chance to flash his sword amidst the carnage, causing a total massacre.

The Thieves were finally closing in as they stumbled their way across the rooftops, each and every one of them jumping off to engage in combat with Gu Fei.

Gu Fei was originally unafraid of these two job classes, but it was completely another issue when the enemy was sending them out in such numbers. He would have been fine if it was just the Archers alone since they would have plenty of issues attacking the moment he began moving within their ranks, but the same could not be said for the Thieves. When this sea of players came crashing in on him, Gu Fei would hardly be able to hold them off all by himself as well, unless his Twin Incineration did not have any cooldown to speak of and he had unlimited mana to work with.

Brandishing his sword to cleave through the players awhile, he could see that there were more and more Thieves that were flooding around him, which caused Gu Fei to laugh darkly, “I know how to fly, what about you guys?”

With that said, he stepped onto the nearby wall on the other side where he had originally descended from and Blinked back up to the rooftops again.

The pursuers were all in an uproar, yelling for the players with the wooden ladders to come forward. However, the issue was that the ladders had been used when they were climbing up to the rooftops before, and the last few players who kept the ladders were of course at the back of the group, really far away from where they were currently needed. All these Thieves could only watch with their bare eyes as they messaged the other players in their agitation, telling them to circle around to the adjacent street…

Nevertheless, Gu Fei merely smiled and appeared utterly unperturbed, thinking to himself, how could these players be so unfamiliar with the landscape that they were currently in? Not every roof would have two streets flanking it. If that was truly how the city was designed, that would simply make for very boring architecture. Gu Fei evaded the arrows that were still flying at him, leaping along this large stretch of rooftops as he fled. He did end up gaining PK Value by this point, as Gu Fei could not be bothered to remain passively retaliating when he was facing down a whole troop of Thieves just now. There were even a good number of Archers that had pulled out daggers of their own and threw themselves right at him. Once he earned that first PK point, the rules regarding being the aggressor or the one retaliating in self defense no longer mattered. Every kill added a point, and when Gu Fei checked his PK Value now, it was already up to 17. He recalled casually killing all the players, but to actually have taken so many lives in that time only showed just how brutal his enemy was.

It was around this time when Young Master Han had coincidentally sent a message to him, asking about Gu Fei’s progress with his engagement.

“I’ve killed quite a few.”

“So I can begin?”

“Go ahead!”

The first idea that Young Master Han had was for him to probe the authenticity of these workshops, and he had retained a teleportation scroll from the various workshops. Seeing that the opportunity was now ripe for the picking, he immediately began using them and inspected the various locations.

——————————————

Back to Svelte Dancer, the lady was of course no simpleton. She had initially used her Stealth in order to blend into the crowd without anyone being any the wiser. Even though maintaining Stealth to follow those two NPCs as they continued forward was an excellent idea, in the event that any of the random players out there coincidentally possessed some means to detect Stealth, she would be very quickly snuffed out and there was essentially no explanation she could provide that would not be suspicious in the least.

That was why the best method would still be as Gu Fei had suggested: Svelte Dancer needed to take advantage of this chaos while everyone was not paying any attention to what was happening here to blend in and slowly edge on closer to the target.

Making this more convenient for Svelte Dancer was also an order that the enemy had given.

When Gu Fei had suddenly appeared, even though he acted as if he was determined to fight to the death, any slightly normal human being would not believe that Gu Fei was going to fight off this overwhelming number of players all at once. Forget about his strength, the enemy would all remember the 30 PK points limit that Gu Fei would have to keep within.

As a result, when Gu Fei suddenly came out to provoke them, all of them had viewed it as his attempt to expend their manpower, and they had also thought that he was trying to cause a diversion so as to create a chance for his guildmates in Jail to escape.

Of course, it was impossible for them to swagger on out and leave, but as long as they have those few seconds of being free of attack when they get out, they would then be able to use teleportation scrolls to get away.

As a result, while they kept chasing after Gu Fei, the troop leaders were also calmly giving orders, gathering sizable firepower over by the entrance of the Jail. They had essentially sent a portion of their forces to go after Gu Fei, while another portion of them was gathered outside the Jail.

Svelte Dancer used this opportunity to head in the same direction without alerting anyone else. They simply treated her as another player who had received the same orders to head toward the Jail entrance like everyone else.

As Svelte Dancer made her way toward the entrance, her eyes were locked on the two guards. These players were completely unprepared for these two city guards. When the two city guards turned away from where everyone was heading and were no longer moving toward the Jail entrance, but was instead approaching the group of players where Black Index Finger was huddled within, nobody thought anything about it. Everyone had even taken the initiative to let the pair pass whenever they crossed paths.

By now, Svelte Dancer could already tell which of the players was Black Index Finger. As the guild leader, everyone else was subconsciously standing around the man with him at the center of the circle. The closer she got to Black Index Finger’s position, the more orderly the players were positioned. And in the middle of this formation, standing there with his sword planted to the ground was none other than Black Index Finger.

Having already sighted her target, Svelte Dancer no longer had the need to follow the city guards. Looking all around, she searched for a suitable angle for her to execute her sudden attack, slowly but surely shuffling her way over.

Closer and closer…

Svelte Dancer very anxiously counted the distance between Black Index Finger and the two city guards, and when she pretended to pass by and enter the circle of players from The Black Hand Syndicate, no one seemed to be paying any attention to her presence.

They attacked!

Svelte Dancer saw the two guards pulling out their swords and slashing out in unison all of a sudden, activating their Charge promptly as they stampeded toward Black Index Finger.

This unforeseen attack was truly too abrupt; nobody had expected these two NPCs to suddenly attack as they did. Even those that watched the two city guards pull out their swords and Charge out were still puzzled, “Just what are those two NPCs doing?”

Aside from someone with inhuman reaction time, there was basically no one out there that could successfully dodge this sort of unexpected attack. Unfortunately for Black Index Finger, he did not have this capability, so he had essentially reacted like everyone else. He had also wondered to himself just what the two NPC guards were trying to accomplish, only to end up being on the receiving end of their Charge there and then.

Black Index Finger was instantaneously sprawling on the ground when both blows connected, but he was not sent flying by the force of their attacks. This clearly demonstrated to everyone that the strength these two city guards possessed was average at best. Ironically, this was the fact that caused everyone to become suspicious. Many of them began shouting out “we’ve got spies among us” as others cried out “Who’s there?”. There were even some who attempted their Appraisal skill on the two NPCs.

The results stated they were 100% city guards. There were no doubts that either of them were NPCs. But if that was true, just what sort of city guards would actually be so weak? Did the twin Charge from both guards only create enough force to send Black Index Finger eating dirt?

The whole lot of them were about to dash in and finish off the two guards when someone suddenly yelled, “Don’t make a move!”

At the same time the shout rang out, the man turned toward Black Index Finger, “Is this a quest?”

When Black Index Finger heard this, he instantly connected the dots and realized what he meant. For two NPCs to appear out of nowhere, yet they possessed a level of strength that was no different from the normal city guards, attacking for no rhyme or reason; what else could this be, if not a quest?

Black Index Finger quickly pulled up his quest log, yet he did not make any discoveries. However, could this be a quest that would only be accepted after he got killed by the two city guards?

Black Index Finger was thinking about this as he got up to his feet. Presently, the two guards were being surrounded by the rest of the players, unable to get within reach of him.

But Svelte Dancer had already seized this opportunity. In that instant when Black Index Finger would be attacked, a huge number of players had sprung out to lend a hand. Depending on her high movement speed, Svelte Dancer had very quickly seized the initiative and was already right next to Black Index Finger. It was just that she had not expected the two little city guards to have been so weak, and seeing the lack of panic or fear on Black Index Finger’s face after everything, she could tell that there was a very high chance that he might very well have enough strength to take on the two city guards by himself.

This is going to be difficult… Svelte Dancer thought to herself. Given how weak these two guards were, there was no way that they would be able to break out from the encirclement after being surrounded, so how would she even get the opportunity to deal the final blow like what Gu Fei had planned? Was she supposed to attack right now? There were still many Priests positioned near Black Index Finger right now, and given that he was a Warrior with the support of so many Priests healing him, her burst damage would not be enough to insta-kill Black Index Finger outright. In the end, all she would accomplish from attacking prematurely would be dying for nothing.

Svelte Dancer thought about this in greater detail and figured that she did not even have the chance of suiciding herself in order to take down the enemy at the same time, which meant there was a chance that this situation remained unresolved. This was a particularly embarrassing situation, but no matter how terrible it was, Svelte Dancer had no choice but to helplessly admit to Gu Fei, “I don’t got any chance here.”

Gu Fei had already escaped from his pursuers by now and was presently waiting for an update from either Young Master Han or Svelte Dancer. The message from the lady was the first to arrive, and the moment he received bad news, Gu Fei had very humanely shown his concern for Svelte Dancer’s well-being, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I don’t have an opening to make the move. Those two city guards were simply too weak and were completely unlike the normal city guards we would see,” Svelte Dancer answered.

Gu Fei sighed, “Then you better make your getaway then. Don’t let yourself get caught.”

“Wait a minute, I see a chance!” Svelte Dancer suddenly blurted out.

“What?”

“Looks like Black Index Finger is digging his own grave!!” Svelte Dancer was very excited. This was because she had very clearly overheard Black Index Finger instruct everyone to let the two city guards pass, expressing his desire to solo the city guards.

“No heals. There’s no need to help me. These two aren’t that strong and there are no indicators of any sort about triggering the quest. What if there was a hidden condition for players to solo and defeat the two guards? It would truly be quite the disaster if anyone ends up jeopardizing this by helping me,” Black Index Finger pointed out.

Everyone nodded their heads with much understanding. It was not that Parallel World did not have such quests. When it required players to solo a quest, the ensuing expectation would be for the player to not be in a part or group, nor should they receive any aid from anyone passing by. Heals from a Priest would of course be seen as a form of help, so that would disqualify the solo aspect as well.

Everyone backed away a good distance, giving Black Index Finger the space to demonstrate his prowess. Black Index Finger was also very confident in his capabilities. He was a Warrior, so it was only natural for him to be familiar with the Charge skill. After taking the two consecutive blows, he instantly had a grasp of the damage that the two NPCs could dish out. He figured it was not difficult for him to take on the two unless their HP was so disgustingly bloated to the point that it was completely illogical, he would then figuratively cross that bridge when he got there.

After the two city guards made their way out from the encirclement, they immediately came lunging toward Black Index Finger. This in turn made him all the more convinced that this was a quest that belonged solely to him, so he took the initiative to attack with his Charge. This move sent one of the two city guards flying upon contact, eliciting a round of applause from the onlookers, cheering for their guild leader’s bravery.

The other city guard cleaved with his sword, and Black Index Finger had actually evaded this attack by ducking. He retaliated with a slash of his own onto the city guard’s waist. NPCs would of course react like how an NPC would, ignoring that one attack like it meant nothing as it continued to lash out with a cut from its sword. This time, Black Index Finger did not dodge the attack, taking the attack squarely on his chest, but he maintained his easy smile, showing how a single attack was not enough to scare him off.

Both sides began a fierce back and forth with their swords, and when the guard that Black Index Finger had first sent flying came running back into the fray, he ducked the entirety of his body, activating his Cyclone as a sharp cut that sang out. That city guard which had spent quite some time entangled in combat with Black Index Finger was the first to succumb to his pressure and died on the spot.