Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-144

Chapter 144 - End of the First Round of Battle

One, two, three, four, five, six… Gu Fei did a head count of the players chasing after him. There were six players behind him, yet eleven players stayed with Svelte Dancer. This made Gu Fei feel displeased. Do these people deem me as below par compared to her?

This thinking should not be blamed on their opponents, though. Who would actually regard a Mage with depleted mana as a threat?

As such, the six men enthusiastically chased after Gu Fei without a shred of fear. Just as they were five meters away from Gu Fei, someone among the six fell onto the ground with a loud thud.

The other five men stopped on their tracks in astonishment. When did someone initiate an attack on them? None of them even sensed it coming toward them! All of them looked at Gu Fei who had not moved even a bit from his spot with widened eyes. They then looked down on their comrade who had fallen to the ground on his back with his four limbs sprawled. The person seemed to have received quite the shock as he repeatedly shouted, “Am I dead?! Am I already dead?!”

The five men were not amused and were mildly annoyed by his antics, especially when they spotted the banana peel on his sole.

“How can you be so careless?!” Gu Fei admonished.

The five ignored the man on the ground and headed toward Gu Fei with a roar. Witnessing the might of Gu Fei’s Spell Damage, they knew that now was a once in a lifetime opportunity to take him down with his empty mana.

“Make haste!” The five rushed toward Gu Fei. Two meters away from Gu Fei, a Warrior among the five activated Charge with a bellow.

Gu Fei sidestepped and sent a slash to the nape of the Warrior who had gone past him with Sacred Flames of Baptism.

The Warrior, whose Charge did not connect with anything, looked backward when he felt a breeze coming from behind him and saw in time Gu Fei’s Chinese broadsword heading closer to his neck. This almost frightened him to death, especially since his Charge had yet to end. Continuing to stomp the final two meters, the Warrior thought to himself, It’s over. By the time I stop charging forward, my head will have fallen off my body.

Unexpectedly, the Warrior’s head was still intact when he finally halted his steps. Checking his HP, he saw that it had barely dropped. Now that he thought of it, what sort of damage could a mere Mage inflict?

The Warrior perked up when he finished thinking of that and promptly raised his claymore to launch an attack on Gu Fei once more. His four guildmates had also arrived at his location and joined his assault on Gu Fei by wielding the weapons in their hands. Behind them, the player who had become a victim of the discarded banana peel finally recovered from his shock and managed to get up and join the fight.

However, Gu Fei did not view these melee opponents as a threat and merely sent cuts sailing through the air with his Chinese broadsword toward them. A cleave, thrust, slash, twist, cut… Every stroke and every move he made always hit his targets.

The men grew astonished the more they fought with Gu Fei. The nimbleness that Gu Fei was displaying seemed unbelievable to their eyes. While none of their attacks or skills could hit Gu Fei no matter which angle they struck him, Gu Fei’s counterattacks could not be dodged by them. Although the damage dealt by each strike was low, it was only a matter of time before their HP were reduced to zero. Furthermore, his Chinese broadsword’s occasional fiery glow signaled the proccing of an additional fire attack that seared them quite painfully.

They truly regretted not bringing a Priest with them to chase after Gu Fei, as the Mage with empty mana whom they had initially thought could be killed off easily turned out to be—“AHH!” A scream echoed when one of them died from the Chinese broadsword’s fiery glow.

The five men were even more flustered now. Seeing the cuts and bruises that they had sustained from this fight, the possibility of them dying from simply being burned by the Mage without a Priest’s support was large.

“Priest! Let’s get us a Priest!” With this realization, the five immediately turned around and fled. They no longer tried to stop Gu Fei from recovering his mana, as it was more important for them to keep their lives.

However, they received an even greater shock when they turned around. It turned out that their guildmates who had not chased after Gu Fei were in more dire straits than them.

Svelte Dancer’s fighting style of using Fleetfoot was more extraordinary than Gu Fei’s. Her form flitting through the crowd and reaping the lives of the men very much resembled a combine harvester. The six men could at least activate their skills once or twice when facing Gu Fei. As for the players that that had remained behind, they could not even keep up with Svelte Dancer’s speed and would even accidentally unleash their skills upon their guildmates oftentimes. At present, five out of the eleven players facing Svelte Dancer had been subdued by her.

With Svelte Dancer in the front and Gu Fei at the rear, these five men were now at a loss on where they should go. Upon realizing that the two were unparalleled experts, they all lost their hopes of winning this match.

In the current eleven-versus-two scenario, Gu Fei and Svelte Dancer actually won with an overwhelming advantage. The eleven men completely lost their will to fight and only made despondent attempts at resisting. Gu Fei and Svelte Dancer increased their PvP tempo and very quickly took down the remaining ten players. When only a Warrior was left, he tremblingly backed away with his claymore placed in front.

Getting killed in the PvP tournament was not scary since it had no penalty whatsoever. Nonetheless, the Warrior felt frightened by his opponents’ overwhelming strength. The two’s act of demolishing their guild of forty-five men was precisely what left the Warrior quaking in his boots.

“Just who are you two?” the Warrior asked, bewildered.

Gu Fei and Svelte Dancer looked at each other, “What should we say?”

“I shan’t bother you two anymore. I’ll just do it myself!” The Warrior raised his claymore horizontally to take his life.

“Don’t!” Svelte Dancer hurriedly shouted.

Gu Fei and the Warrior perplexedly looked at Svelte Dancer, only to see her drifting behind the Warrior and thrusting her dagger into him to take his life.

“You’re a kill point!” Svelte Dancer mumbled as she watched the Warrior turn into a stream of white light.

With the end of the PvP match, the system quickly displayed its result. Since Amethyst Rebirth had no casualties and Unbeatable under the Heavens lost all its members, Amethyst Rebirth received a perfect score in this PvP match. On the members’ contribution screen, Gu Fei who had taken down thirty-two players was awarded 32 kill points, Svelte Dancer who had killed off thirteen men was correspondingly awarded 13 kill points, and the rest of the ladies who had not done anything during the PvP match received 0 kill point. Because Gu Fei had the highest contribution, he was selected as this match’s MVP and was awarded another 10 kill points.

“What is this ‘kill point’ for?” Gu Fei asked Svelte Dancer. He did not know if his previous mercenary PvP match’s few participants resulted into the scoring being conducted fast, but he failed to notice this system prompt at the time.

Svelte Dancer replied, “I don’t know as well. But since there’s such a statistic, I believe that it is related to the PvP tournament’s final rewards!”

As they were conversing with each other, the two got enveloped by white lights and were transported back to the plaza outside the Main Hall of Guilds.

The other forty-eight ladies were now beside Gu Fei and Svelte Dancer. Their faces all showed varying degrees of confusion.

“Did you two kill all of our forty-five opponents?” The ladies stared at the two from within the surrounding crowd. Although none of them saw the whole battle, the system’s scoring showed that all forty-five members of the opposing guild had fallen by Gu Fei’s and Svelte Dancer’s hands.

“How depressing!” Svelte Dancer moaned, saying, “He took all the kill points.” She flashed Gu Fei a spiteful expression.

Gu Fei shrugged his shoulders. Twenty of his kill points came from his Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno. Gu Fei had no choice but to unleash the spell upon seeing the large group that he and Svelte Dancer were up against. If he could, he would not use an AOE spell at all! After all, he somewhat felt discomfited from gaining 20 kill points by casting a spell only once, as it was equivalent to losing his chance to PvP against twenty opponents with that one stroke. Thinking of that, Gu Fei felt even more dejected.

Amid the laughter and cheers, someone suggested celebrating this victory.

The only entertainment available in-game was visiting a tavern, but none of the taverns would have such poor business that it could take in fifty guests in one go. The Amethyst Rebirth’s ladies went to many establishments, yet they failed to find one that could accommodate all fifty of them. All they got was a lot of attention along the way.

Indeed, seeing so many ladies walking down the streets together was very eye-catching. It was made even more eye-catching by the fact that only one man was among these ladies.

Realizing this fact, Gu Fei began to walk with lowered head to the point of appearing stoop as he did his best to hide within the crowd of women. When their group passed by a log-off point, he hurriedly shouted, “A UFO!”

Such low level trickery would obviously fool no one, yet the reticent Gu Fei’s sudden exclamation startled the ladies. Without saying another word to the ladies, Gu Fei sprinted toward the safe zone and logged off.

This was how the first day of the event ended. Overall, people did not notice any unexpected outcomes. The first-rate guilds and mercenary groups, such as Traversing Four Seas and The Black Hand, that many considered as the most likely to win the tournaments easily got past the first round.

As for the inconspicuous mid-tier guilds and mercenary groups, not one cared about anything unusual happening to them. This was exactly what had happened between the low-tier guilds, such as Amethyst Rebirth and Unbeatable under the Heavens. The words of Unbeatable under the Heavens Guild held little wait, so no one bothered taking note of their accounts. Since this guild with forty-five members was eradicated by the opposing guild’s two members, everyone thought of this guild as weak and unimportant. After all, only an idiot would boast about losing in a match.

From the perspective of the Amethyst Rebirth’s ladies, they would naturally avoid promoting Gu Fei and Svelte Dancer’s PvP feat since the two were mum about it.

On the second day of the event, the officials announced the match-ups for the second round. This made it convenient for the various guilds and mercenary groups to research about their opponents and to formulate battle tactics accordingly.

However, everyone was extremely disappointed that the largest guild Traversing Four Seas and the second largest guild Carouse would not meet in this second round. Everyone was looking forward to this match-up, as it would be as good as defeating a strong opponent no matter who won or lost between the two guilds.

Sadly, fate did not work the way people wished it, and these large guilds ended up drawing some seemingly weak small guilds, instead. Quite a few players began to condemn the officials for fixing the drawing process and deliberately avoiding matching up the stronger guilds with one another.

Such sort of talks was definitely far too extreme. With only so few top guilds and so many small guilds in Yunduan City, the chances of a large guild meeting another large guild so early in the rounds were simply too minute. If the small guilds chosen to go against these big guilds were thick-skinned enough, they might have reasons to suspect that the officials were trying to undermine them by forcing them to meet strong foes in the early stages in order to prevent their existence from bringing trouble to the game company.

The real experts would never waste time finding excuses over this quandary and would instead face the problem head on.

“Level 4 Cloud Herder mercenary group with seventy-three members. This mercenary group is ranked sixth in Yunduan City. Its leader is Foe-herder amid the Clouds; number seven on the Warrior experience leaderboard. We struck the lottery, boys!” Brother Assist enthusiastically said as he announced their enemy group for the second round in the PvP tournament to the other five members of Young Master’s Elite mercenary group.