Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

The ex-soldiers had a really nimble reaction. When they saw this strange white light appear out of nowhere, they cared not who this was, and the first thing they did was fan out and surround the person. Following which, some of those who had left the tavern came barreling right back in. No one knew who was in that flash of white light, nor could they confirm if that was not Gu Fei.

“Could he have accidentally logged out?” Ye Xiaowu wondered. Talking about the performance of Parallel World’s servers was redundant; even with recent technological advancements, there was no way to account for all the natural disasters and other serendipitous incidents! Stuff like suddenly losing power or getting disconnected from the internet – it would be far stranger for people not to be forcefully logged out when such things happened.

The white light very quickly dissipated; Ye Xiaowu and his men nearly mistook the man inside the light for Gu Fei and almost opened fire, had they not happen to catch a glimpse of the person’s equipment. Taking a closer look, everyone could tell that, while this person was very similar to Gu Fei, he was definitely not the man.

Meanwhile, after this man appeared and saw that a bunch of people were pointing bows and crossbows at him, he took stock of his foreign surroundings and subsequently showed a confounded look.

Ye Xiaowu and his men muttered to themselves, There’s no doubt this person isn’t Thousand Miles Drunk, but why does this newcomer look so much like him? Isn’t his sudden appearance here a bit too much of a coincidence?

Just as they were uncertain on what to do, they saw someone squeeze out from a corner of the tavern and wave at the man slowly being revealed by the vanishing white light. “How did you get here?”

When this person heard Gu Fei’s voice, he turned to ask, “Where is this place?”

Even Gu Fei was a little confused by his question, staring at him. “Are you still drowsy?”

This man’s expression did indeed look sleepy as he blankly checked his surroundings once again.

There was no reason for Ye Xiaowu and the others to waste their time listening to Gu Fei’s conversation with this newcomer, so the moment they saw Gu Fei appear from the crowd, a single command was all it took for them to ruthlessly open fire at him once more. Since Gu Fei dared to step out in the open, he was obviously mentally prepared for this and quickly somersaulted backward and ducked behind a table for cover. With all the tables stacked together in a corner, everything was all the more concentrated so he did not need to flip the tables any longer for him to disappear from sight. These ex-soldiers were all in tears. They only had one thought in their heads. There’s just no way to escape our mistakes…

These ex-soldiers were prepared to rush Gu Fei even as they saw that he and the newcomer knew each other. They began worrying that the person would lend a hand if they attacked, so several of them turned their ranged weapons over to him.

This person was visibly dissatisfied with this. Glancing at these people with their weapons pointed at him, he said, “What are you targeting me for? He’s right over there!”

Gu Fei was facing another round of bombardment from Old Lightning and Thunder when this man pointed at him. Poking his head out from within the flames, he said, “Gu Xian, you’re too much of a hypocrite; you don’t have to sell me out even if you’re not here to help!”

Gu Xian was unfazed by this accusation and just calmly made his way over to one of the tavern’s walls amid a flurry of arrows. Upon realizing that he did not plan to lend a hand to Gu Fei, these ex-soldiers naturally disregarded him as an enemy, and even got worried about the man when they saw him boldly walk in the line of fire. Just as the ex-soldier saw that Gu Xian was about to be hit by an arrow in flight, the former was just about to shout ‘be careful’, when he ended up witnessing the latter casually swung his hand out, plucking the arrow mid-flight before tossing it to the side as he continued onward.

Everybody in the tavern was now regarding this strange man, who had suddenly appeared from thin air, with shock. Gu Fei also felt plenty of emotions when he saw this scene from behind the pile of tables. Logically speaking, Gu Xian did not practice any kung fu, so he should not have such a quick reaction, but it just so happened that the man was born with quick reaction time; why else would he be hailed as a genius? Still, that move he had executed just then showed that his reaction time had indeed seen an improvement. With this thought in mind, Gu Fei poked his head out again and shouted, “That’s some reaction you’ve got there! It’s all thanks to this game, yeah?”

These ex-soldiers were on the verge of having a fainting fit. Gu Fei had actually left his original hiding place behind that pile of tables as he was now poking his head out from a different spot behind the pile of table. Poor Old Lightning and Thunder were still blanketing that prior area with their spells!

Gu Xian ignored Gu Fei. Walking over to find a player who was busy watching the spectacle, he asked, “Where is this place?”

“White Foam Tavern.” This person answered even as he curiously regarded Gu Xian.

“I mean what city I am in,” Gu Xian clarified.

“Baishi City.”

“D*MN!” Gu Xian angrily cursed before turning to look at Ye Xiaowu and his bunch. These people were once more fanning out in preparation of completely surrounding Gu Fei in a circle, but in order to prevent the man from slipping into the crowd again, they asked the players near the corners of the tavern for their cooperation. Gu Xian watched this as he asked someone standing next to him, “Who are those guys?”

“I don’t know!”

Since Gu Xian could not get an answer, he simply shouted, “Gu Fei, what trouble have you gotten yourself into again?! Can’t you be more discreet?!”

Before he heard Gu Fei’s answer, Ye Xiaowu’s heart raced. That person hasn’t called Thousand Miles Drunk’s IGN but ‘Gu Fei’… Is that Thousand Miles Drunk’s real name? If that’s the case, there’s no reason this man won’t lend a hand since they know each other in real life! The modern era was changing with every passing day, and even though online gaming became more and more accepted in society, the friendship people forged online might not be as close as those in real life… Meanwhile, friends in real life were bound to see much of each other. Take a colleague for example; even if two colleagues had a passable relationship, if one asked the other for help, and the latter refused, everyone would feel awkward the next day, and that would be unconducive to building a good rapport between them! Even if the other was a really hated superior, there was essentially no choice but to lend a hand.

The rapport formed through online games might be far more emotionally pure, while the interpersonal relationship found between people in real life would often be intermingled with pros and cons, so there was really no way to compare the two.

Thus, when Ye Xiaowu realized that Gu Fei and Gu Xian knew each other in real life, he immediately did not dare to let his guard down. This man pulled the arrow out in mid-flight moments ago; is that something any normal person can do? Could it be…

Ye Xiaowu gazed at Gu Xian; while he could not see where Gu Fei was, his voice could be heard from another pile of tables, making it seem like it was a voiceover for the inanimate object as he gave Gu Xian a quick rundown. “That man is called Fleeting Smile; he’s a game employee. He claims that I’m affecting the game balance, so he’s here to rectify me.”

“Fleeting Smile? Which one is he?” Gu Fei only voiced out Fleeting Smile’s IGN but did not point him out, so Gu Xian still had no idea who he was even after hearing all that. All he saw was someone staring right at him, so he could not help but stare back at Ye Xiaowu. “Are you the one?”

Ye Xiaowu nodded.

“Game employee, huh.” Gu Xian walked over. “Then, let me give this game of yours a suggestion. Ha ha!”

Ye Xiaowu was wary of the newcomer, but he was still unprepared for Gu Xian to make his way over to him. However, the statement he just made was unexpected, and this moment of shock allowed Gu Xian to continue. “I agree with the punishment of losing proficiency, level, and money when players forcefully log off, but you can’t just teleport me randomly like this! I forcefully logged out over at Xiawu City, yet I actually came online here in… Which city is it again?” Gu Xian turned to ask the player he had spoken to from before.

“Baishi City,” the person blankly answered.

“Baishi City… Yeah. Why in the world am I suddenly here in Baishi City? Why would forcefully logging out result in this? Have you guys ever made a statement about this? I’ve never once met this issue forcefully logging off every day; just what is going on? How many cities away am I from Xiawu City?” The distance between cities was more or less the same, so the term ‘city’ was used to denote the distance between two cities; one city would just be the distance between two cities, and two cities would naturally mean that there was another city in the middle between two cities.

“Three cities…” Ye Xiaowu answered.

“Three cities? F*CK*NG H*LL!” Gu Xian was already right before Ye Xiaowu at this point, and he blew a gasket the moment he heard the answer. Gu Xian’s hand shot out and gripped Ye Xiaowu by his neck.

“Randomly teleporting players three cities away? Do you guys even have any sense of responsibility? Yours truly has been forcefully logging out every day precisely because I don’t want to walk far, yet now you’re asking me to travel over three cities just to return to Xiawu City? Are you looking to get yourself killed?!” Gu Xian bellowed. His IGN Windchord was acknowledged as within the ranks of the Ten Great Adepts for the Fighter job class, and he was one of the top experts in this game. Ye Xiaowu, who was just a fragile Priest, was being wrung like a chicken by Gu Xian’s vise-grip around his neck. Ye Xiaowu’s face was draining color fast. This person had started off this conversation by saying he was giving a suggestion, yet Ye Xiaowu never could have foreseen to be in such a situation as a result. For them to fall out so abruptly… They were having such a peaceful chat moments ago!

F*ck, my HP is dropping… Ye Xiaowu discovered that this Fighter was exerting force around his neck with this choke, and it dealt the slightest amount of damage as his windpipes got crushed. Worse was the unbearably suffocating sensation he had as Gu XIan kept his hold around his neck.

Broken Water Arrow and the others were not too far from Ye Xiaowu, yet never did they expect this person to dash forth and try to murder him so abruptly. The ingrained mentality of these ex-soldiers appeared yet again. No one began firing at Gu Xian in the first moment and, instead, had their arms out, gesturing for him to calm down. “Don’t act rashly!”

The formation they originally had ringing Gu Fei rapidly changed; in the blink of an eye, Gu Xian became the focal point of their encirclement. Gu Fei stood up from behind the pile of tables and showed much confusion as he looked at the scene before him. “Is it actually useful to hold someone hostage?”

This one utterance from him reminded Broken Water Arrow and the others that they were in a game, and players who died would only just get revived, so what use was there to take someone as hostage like this? Everyone immediately prepared to mount a rescue on the hostage after they thought of this. Gu Xian could tell what these men were planning and hurriedly extended his hand out to stop them. “Wait a moment; I’ve still got things to say.”

Everybody subconsciously came to a stop. Gu Xian continued asking Ye Xiaowu. “If I let you go, is there any way that you can send me back to the location I logged out from last time?”

Obviously, such a thing was impossible, especially since Ye Xiaowu had already resigned from the game company. Moreover, this was the first time he had come across someone’s location being tampered with after forcefully logged off. Ye Xiaowu could easily understand why this person would be so incensed after being teleported three cities over, but the problem was what he had gleaned when he heard what the man had just said. He was someone who frequently forcefully logged out, and his equipment, money, levels, and skills had all been confiscated as a result, yet he did not seem to care about any of this, so why was he showing such a temper from this one teleportation? Compared to all those other losses, a mere teleportation did not seem to be that huge of a deal!

Ye Xiaowu was wondering about this, yet he found the grip on his throat slacken as Gu Xian eased off Ye Xiaowu’s windpipes to let the man answer him.

Ye Xiaowu shook his head right away. “That’s impossible.”

Forget about Ye Xiaowu being an ex-employee, if he were still working with the game company, he could not really do it even with the necessary permissions. The players must bear the consequences of them forcefully logging out. This was a staunch stance that the game company emphasized on, and no one would be the exception to this.

Broken Water Arrow and the others looked at Gu Xian. They were wondering just what he would say after being given a negative answer. In the end, he did not say a word, merely clutching Ye Xiaowu’s throat anew and tossing him to the side like a piece of trash picked up by the roadside. The Priest was sent flying right at a pile of tables in one corner of the room. The crowd’s gazes followed Ye Xiaowu’s flight, wanting to see the embarrassing state he would be in after being thrown like that, but who would have thought that a flash of white light would appear the instant he crashed into the tables? Ye Xiaowu had actually been insta-killed with that throw.

The ordinary players were very shocked when they saw this damage from a Seismic Toss. They did not think that this player, who had randomly appeared, would actually be so powerful.

While Gu Xian was indeed powerful, the thought process these ordinary players had were flawed. What made him powerful was his ability to throw in a kick and punch the instant he tossed Ye Xiaowu. This was something the ordinary players did not notice, but Gu Fei and the other experts present could easily discern what he did with their keen eyes.

“He he!” Gu Fei shook his head as he flipped out from behind the pile of tables, his disdainful gaze fixed on Gu Xian. “It’s not good to give in to anger.”

Gu Xian’s expression was surprisingly helpless, heaving a big sigh. “Three cities’ distance. My heart is already dead…”

“Then, you can just let your slothfulness be the death of you!” Gu Fei no longer bothered with the man. His eyes moved to Broken Water Arrow and his men. “So, do we continue this?”

Speaking of which, Gu Fei did not really have any ill-will toward this bunch of ex-soldiers, and he could tell that they were all straightforward men with great alacrity. Fleeting Smile was Broken Water Arrow’s friend, and the kind of men they were meant that they would naturally fearlessly face all sorts of adversities for their comrades. What they emphasized was the ideal of ages past, something once known as virtue, but was now often mockingly referred to as fidelity by others in today’s troubled world.

The common people were unable to demonstrate this, which was why they had such criticisms toward it. Attributing it to be a feudal concept that did more harm than good, such people would take the high ground in the argument and expound upon the destructiveness that the word had brought.

However, even if there was no need for emotions when it came to the law, solely stressing on the rules whatsoever was rather inhumane, yet that was Parallel World’s system…

Gu Fei was looking at the group of ex-soldiers, knowing full well in his heart that there was no way that they would give up like this. Sacrificing a comrade was a very painful occurrence to them, but knowing that the comrades they sacrificed in this game would revive at the spawn point immediately, these ex-soldiers actually experienced great happiness from it. It was only that whenever this happened, everyone would end up recalling the losses of their comrades during actual warfare, and they could not help but feel a sudden bout of despondence come to them. Nevertheless, everyone soon corrected their mindset, and after Gu Fei asked that question, all of them quickly raised their crossbows, nocked their bows, and hurled their grenades, launching a concerted attack at Ye Xiaowu’s murderer.

As someone who professed to be of a better caliber in close combat, Mountain Breaker Axe could tell that Gu Xian was also a martial arts practitioner, and he promptly gave up on engaging at range and bravely pounced straight at the man.

Gu Xian and Gu Fei were from the Gu family, so their kung fu were of course similar to each other. Still, there was a huge difference between the two men in this game: Gu Xian had Strength, while Gu Fei did not.

From this point alone, the fighting styles of these two diverged quite drastically. Mountain Breaker Axe had also chosen a Fighter in this game, so the Strength he had was not enough to keep Gu Xian suppressed. The two men exchanged blows, and the scene was very similar to that seen between Eternal Dominion and Mountain Breaker Axe this morning. But even though Gu Xian understood kung fu, he did not exactly physically practice it, so there was no way that he could have developed that deep-rooted mindfulness that Gu Fei and Eternal Dominion demonstrated. Just from how that move he used against Ye Xiaowu, wrapping his fingers mercilessly over Ye Xiaowu’s throat, showed just how very vicious he was when using kung fu.

Broken Water Arrow was all the more intuitively aware of this particular fact and quickly concluded that the kung fu this martial artist possessed was different from Gu Fei’s or Eternal Dominion’s. This person had no scruples when it came to gouging the eyes, digging the heart, kicking the nether regions and other such taboo moves; had this Fighter executed these attacks in real life, there was a high chance of his opponent ending up becoming an invalid or dead! Mountain Breaker Axe had already lost to Gu Fei this morning, but after trading blows with each other for several rounds, his understanding of the man deepened, and further fighting with Eternal Dominion had also let him better comprehend Eternal Dominion as well.

It was during the process of fighting with Eternal Dominion that made him realize how martial arts practitioners would mostly evade the heavy strikes and deal with the light. Their moves were executed skillful, yet the damage they dealt was low, but his exchange with Gu Fei after refuted his perception of this and defeated him. In any case, because of the ‘hidden grape’ incident, as well as Gu Fei’s final attack, which killed him, was a sudden move that relied on a spell from the game, he was still skeptical toward the prowess of kung fu.

This skepticism was finally eliminated as that fight with Gu Xian progressed.

Gu Xian knew all the moves available in the Gu family, but because he was not one to practice throughout his life, nor would he spar with anyone else, it naturally meant that there was no one to tutor him. Because of this, he did not share the mentality of Eternal Dominion and Gu Fei. He truly used any move in his arsenal whenever he saw it fit to use, neither going easy in the least nor being courteous with his moves. Every move he made went for the kill.

After five rounds, both men were still evenly matched in both their attack and defense; ten rounds later, Mountain Breaker Axe was already on the defensive; by the time they reached round fifteen, Mountain Breaker Axe could feel his heart turning cold. Just like Gu Fei, Mountain Breaker Axe was the sort that would often think. If this were in real life, what would this be like? It was fine if this was just an occasional thought that crept into his mind, but thinking about this while fighting with Gu Xian only chilled him further. He was almost certain that he would have ended up with broken bones, go blind, lose an ear, or his family jewels in the process if he continued fighting with the man and still managed to survive; this was a fate far more frightening than death!

The oppressive zeal that he had when going up against Eternal Dominion was slowly replaced with the chill he felt. Mountain Breaker Axe finally had a first-hand experience of just how horrifying kung fu could be if it focused on actually killing an opponent. He completely believed what Gu Fei had previously said: ‘What you’ve grasped was no more than simplified and expedited techniques. You’ve no time to really comprehend the essence of the moves.’

Twenty rounds later, Mountain Breaker Axe was finally defeated by Gu Xian. He was Seismic Tossed away with a raise of the man’s arm, albeit this time he was not killed from the fall. Rather, he was used as a weapon that hindered Old Lightning and Thunder by being sent crashing into them. Old Lightning and Thunder temporarily stopped their spell bombardment to avoid this. Gu Xian scornfully glared at the sea of flames the two men had created with their spells. “Show some promise; not even daring to come out and deal with the enemies face to face, you’ve completely thrown what face Gu family has.”

“Sh*t! I feel that you merely want to take on just one opponent!” Gu Fei’s voice was actually heard from a different position. These ex-soldiers were frenzied. We’ve been keeping an eye on him as best as we can already! How did he reposition himself? This Blink spell is simply too shameful; how can they have that in a VRMMO? It’s too illogical!

While they could tell that Gu Xian was not any less powerful to Gu Fei, their mission was to deal with Gu Fei at the end of the day, so they had no intention of contending with people unrelated to the task at hand. Thus, they did not really concentrate on attacking Gu Xian, and the rest did not bother lending a hand after Mountain Breaker Axe made the move to accost the man.

With Mountain Breaker Axe being summarily beaten, and they had no idea where Gu Fei had squirreled himself into, these ex-soldiers had truly found themselves to be in a troublesome situation.

“Focus on one!” Sniper God sent this message over the mercenary channel. Everyone nodded to acknowledge this command and no longer wasted time engaging with the not-visible Gu Fei. Everybody turned their arrows at Gu Xian, who was standing out in the open before them. In the end, they saw Gu Xian somersault and deftly land within the pile of tables in the corner.

“Show some promise…” On another end, Gu Fei was holding Gu Xian in deep contempt when he saw how he had done the exact same move he had done minutes before.