Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-152

Chapter 152 - So Close to Disbandment

The ladies’ somewhat muffled screams and exclamations reached Gu Fei’s ears as he exited the forest from the other side. The light from flames flashed periodically behind him, and he could somehow imagine the waves of heat radiating from them.

“He he he! We hunted five more,” Fireball proudly sent this crude, short message to Gu Fei.

Gu Fei smiled wryly, “How very tasteless!” Lifting his head to determine his direction, he bounded toward one of the locations Fireball had just provided him.

It was at this moment in time that July had sent out a message on the guild channel, “The enemies in the forest are very loathsome and abhorrent. Everyone, watch your steps. They are using the traps a level 40 Archer will obtain when one advance his or her job class to a Hunter.”

As this message was sent out, Svelte Dancer who had been quiet all this time eagerly asked, “Where are they?! I’ll come over right now!” All of Forever in Flowers’ fifty members were present for today’s PvP match. So far, there were five deaths on their end – one by Gu Fei and the other four by Svelte Dancer. Those five casualties were the five players who had teased Svelte Dancer from the start. She had not gotten one kill point ever since then, so a burning anger steadily built up within her. When July gave her the direction, Svelte Dancer hurriedly asked, “And Miles? Where’s he?”

“Do I have to come, too?” Gu Fei asked.

“No! I alone will do,” Svelte Dancer quickly rejected his offer.

“I knew you would say that,” Gu Fei sighed. She’s so competitive. Since I’ve gotten a huge amount of information from Fireball, should I share it with her? With this thought in mind, he sent out a message to her, “Found a lot of enemies. Do you wanna join me?”

“A lot? How many?” Svelte Dancer asked, skeptical.

“Short of thirty, I think?” Gu Fei sincerely replied.

“Tsk! Who are you trying to fool! I would find them long ago if there really were thirty of them gathered together,” Svelte Dancer derided.

Gu Fei had no words to say. Since it was not convenient for him to reveal how he had gotten his hands on this information, he could only sigh and say, “I’ll take them myself, then.”

“Hmph! Go do it yourself!” Svelte Dancer snubbed.

Gu Fei shook his head, “You better not regret it!”

“Nagger!” Svelte Dancer countered.

“It’s really hard to be a good person!” Gu Fei sighed inwardly. The information Fireball had given him did not just cover the men’s hiding places, it also included routes for him to sneak attack the men; truly, Fireball had thoroughly betrayed his brothers.

Upon arriving at his first small hill, Gu Fei circled his way to the back of it and looked up. Five players were craning their necks to peek at something before them as they lay sprawled on the hilltop. Gu Fei immediately recalled how Fireball had crawled into the tall grass to hide from the higher level monsters when he brought the latter to grind for levels for the first time; it looked exactly like what these players were doing! Truly, birds of the same feather flocked together. Thinking of this, he clambered up the hill and reached the enemies’ backs very shortly, “Hey!”

“What?” The five actually did not turn around.

Gu Fei irately stabbed his Moonlit Nightfalls into the ground and said, “Your sense of awareness is far too low!”

“Speak if you’ve got something to say. Otherwise, scram!” They were still staring intently ahead and were very much unwilling to turn around.

Gu Fei could only stab Moonlit Nightfalls into the person on the extreme left.

“Stop messing around!” The person dismissively waved him off without looking back, but he did so when he saw that his HP had dropped quite a lot. “You’re mad! What are you stabbing me so heavily for?!” Properly looking at Gu Fei, the player was momentarily stunned, “Who are you?”

The other four men finally turned around when they heard their companion ask this question, before freezing and asking in unison as well, “Who are you?!”

“Are you a new recruit? When did you join? I haven’t seen you before… Oh, what’s your name?” someone asked him a series of questions.

Gu Fei did not know how to answer all his questions and simply said, “I’m from Amethyst Rebirth.”

“Amethyst Rebirth!” The five widened their eyes. “Are you a woman?” They looked at Gu Fei from different angles to see if he had any feminine features on certain parts of his body, yet his voice alone had already convinced them that he was truly a male. This was when the five finally realized something: There was a man in Amethyst Rebirth.

“Has Amethyst Rebirth begun accepting male players?!” They were very excited. “The f*ck we’re doing here for then?! Let’s disband the guild and join Amethyst Rebirth! Quickly tell Moony!” They spoke among themselves, completely forgetting about Gu Fei.

“Ahem…” Gu Fei had no wish to be ignored.

Everyone smilingly regarded him, “We’ll all be brothers next time.”

Gu Fei crashed right there and then. He had only said four verbal lines to these five from start to finish, yet Forever in Flowers Guild was already on the verge of disbanding.

Over by Forever in Flowers’ guild channel, this atomic-bomb-like information was thrown out. “Moony! Did you know that Amethyst Rebirth has begun accepting male players?”

“Eh?! Who said that?!” The speed of this reply from Guild Leader Sakurazaka1 Moony was very fast. Truly, he was far too wise regarding sexual matters for his age that he even came up with the ‘Hunting Babes with Trap’ method. But despite his focus mostly being on chasing skirts, Sakurazaka Moony’s level was not low. In fact, he was the level 40 Hunter that was ranked eighteenth on the Archer leaderboard.

“The guy right next to us! He is from Amethyst Rebirth!” someone among the five men answered.

“Is that so?!” Sakurazaka Moony exclaimed in astonishment, adding, “F*ck! Let’s disband the guild and join them, then!”

“All hail, Moony!” they praised.

At the same time, the rest of Forever in Flowers’ players hiding in various spots in the map had also seen the big news posted on the guild channel. They were bombarding one another with questions to inquire more details about what was just posted. In the end, they were all saying in unison, “Disband! Disband this guild immediately!”

Meanwhile, Fireball and his fellow friends, who knew the truth of the matter, felt helpless upon seeing the chaos on the guild channel. They tried saying a few words, yet those were quickly buried by the other members’ incessant messages. Furthermore, the six were still busy dealing with the entire Amethyst Rebirth Guild that they could really not spare a moment to deal with this problem. Fireball hurriedly sent Gu Fei a message, “Drunk bro, I only asked you to slay them. What did you do to get the whole guild to disband?”

Gu Fei did not know how this had happened as well. Since he could not see the chaos on the Forever in Flowers’ guild channel, he was unaware that such a huge matter had been happening in these few minutes. Currently, he was blankly staring at the five men gleefully chatting before him, trying to decide whether to slay them now or wait for a bit more. “Screw that! I don’t know anything, either!” was Gu Fei’s reply to Fireball.

Knowing that a misunderstanding must have occurred somewhere, Fireball quickly sent Sakurazaka Moony a message, “Moony, don’t be so hasty. I know that guy from Amethyst Rebirth and he got in by accident. Amethyst Rebirth isn’t accepting any male players at all.”

“How did that happen?” Sakurazaka Moony bewilderedly fired back.

“I don’t have the time to explain everything in detail right now; just know that there’s no way we can join Amethyst Rebirth,” Fireball replied.

Sakurazaka Moony immediately retracted his recent announcement by explaining that the information he had received was false, but his words were also very easily drowned on the guild channel by the members’ excited chattering about the matter. In his anger, Sakurazaka Moony immediately changed the guild channel’s setting and made it so that only the guild leader could send out a message. With that done, he unhurriedly cleared out the guild channel’s chat logs and calmly sent out a message: “Upon closer inspection, the matter of Amethyst Rebirth accepting male players was proven to be untrue.”

Since they could no longer send out messages on the guild channel, all resorted to privately messaging the guild leader to the point of causing Sakurazaka Moony’s personal inbox to incessantly ring with notifications. With over fifty different messages stuffed in his inbox that continued to increase by the second, Sakurazaka Moony had no choice but to revert the guild channel to how it was and say, “Chat here, but do it one at a time. Maintain a clean channel.”

The ones who understood the matter were Fireball’s group and the five men beside Gu Fei – the rumor started from them, after all – so Sakurazaka Moony called out to the five men by name and asked for a proper explanation.

“What we said is true. The guy is standing beside us now,” the five insisted.

“What did he say?”

“That he’s from Amethyst Rebirth.”

“And? Did he say that Amethyst Rebirth is accepting male players now?” Sakurazaka Moony inquired further.

Not one of them responded to this question this time, as Gu Fei had obviously not said anything about that.

“Next time, clear up everything first before assuming anything.” Sakurazaka Moony was extremely angry. Disbanding the guild was no big deal, but giving everyone false hope was a grave sin, especially since Sakurazaka Moony was the most delighted when he heard the news.

The five men were completely crestfallen as they looked at Gu Fei once more.

“Shall we begin now?” Gu Fei asked as he perceived the change in everyone’s attitude.

“Begin? What are we beginning?” They dispiritedly asked.

“The guild match, of course!” Gu Fei did not know whether to laugh or cry at their lifeless reaction.

“What’s there to gain by pitting ourselves against you? Go and play by yourself.” They were currently irate, so they did not regard Gu Fei seriously. This was even more so when they saw on their Appraisal that Gu Fei was only a level 39 Mage.

“Take this!” Gu Fei no longer spared another word on this matter. A PvP match was all about doing one’s best, after all. He was already showing the five men mercy by not launching a sneak attack on them when he had the chance earlier. It would be far too unreasonable for him to refrain from attacking them simply because they did not wish to take him on, right?

Gu Fei swung his sword downward toward a target, yet the person evaded it by tumbling backward while shouting, “Oi, dude! You really plan to attack us?!”

“Of course,” Gu Fei said matter-of-factly as he raised his sword to strike once more. That slash just then was not really an attack, but more of a warning to them that he was serious about wanting to PvP.

“Kill, kill, kill!” The five men chorused as they finally acted.

Naturally, Gu Fei became serious as well and quickly eliminated one of them with a few sword slashes. Seeing one of them die before they could complete their preparations, one of the remaining four men exclaimed in shock, “F*ck! He’s the real deal!”

As these words left the person’s mouth, Gu Fei thrusted his sword toward him. Following this, Gu Fei executed his Gu Family’s sword style, Zhao San Mu Si, as he chanted the words for Twin Incineration. Moonlit Nightfalls’ blade glowed fiery red as it struck the four players, insta-killing the two men through that slash with spell and disposing of the other two men through that slash with spell and another stab....

Not a tinge of suspense existed in this sequence. While an ordinary player could perhaps dodge an average Mage’s Twin Incineration, Gu Fei’s amalgamation of the spell to his spectacular swordsmanship would certainly obliterate any average player. Only death awaited anyone who would receive this particular attack of Gu Fei, so he unsurprisingly cleaned up the five men in the blink of an eye.

“You go, Drunk bro!” Fireball creepily sent this short message over.

Chapter Notes:

[1] This IGN refers to a Chinese cosplayer.