Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-208

Chapter 208 - Curtain Call

Over by Ray’s Bar, most of the people had already left. The Amethyst Rebirth ladies also said their goodbyes and took their leave. With their departure, Young Master Han and Brother Assist dove straight into that room that they were always occupying. War Without Wounds and Royal God Call rushed over in no time. Seeing that the bar was nearly empty, they quickly figured out what had happened and also hurriedly made their way to their usual room.

Inside, Brother Assist was currently counting all the gold coins they had earned from this business venture as Young Master Han looked on. War Without Wounds and Royal God Call originally intended to ask about the situation with Silver Moon, but the thought quickly fled their minds upon seeing the dazzling pile of gold coins on the table. The two asked instead, “How much?”

Brother Assist just finished emptying the last coin pouch. Lifting his head to look at the two, Brother Assist steadied himself first before he carefully announced, “18400 gold coins!”

“WOW!” War Without Wounds and Royal God Call almost fainted from happiness.

“We collected 3000 gold coins more than what we had initially expected. Although some guilds out there did not come despite our invitation, even more people whom we had not invited turned up.” Brother Assist picked up two coin pouches and weighed them in his hand. Before the four men was not a small mountain of gold coins but a pile of coin pouches stacked up high.

“18400 gold coins… Each of us gets 4580 gold coins! AHHHHH!” Royal God Call danced excitedly. Players could strut on the streets if they had several hundreds of gold coins in their pouches, while those with several thousands of gold coins could nonchalantly order two glasses of liquor in the taverns in one go – one to drink and one to pour to waste.

“We can’t split that much; we have to give some to Drifting,” Brother Assist corrected.

“That’s true. I’ll pass it to him, then!” Royal God Call nobly volunteered.

No one bothered with him.

“How much are we giving Drifting?” Brother Assist asked Young Master Han.

“You gotta at least give me 4000 gold coins, yeah?” someone answered. The four followed the voice’s origin and saw Drifting standing by the entrance of their room. Drifting stared fixedly at the mountain of coin pouches, but his expression was a lot calmer than Royal God Call and War Without Wounds.

“Who are you? Get out!” Royal God Call went over to drive him out.

Drifting reached out, ruffled Royal God Call’s hair, and he pulled him to the side.

“I wanna have a deathmatch with you!” Royal God Call declared, fuming.

Two more heads poked out from behind Drifting. It was Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool.

“Duel means one versus one. You better not play foul!” Royal God Call quickly added.

No one bothered with him.

Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool retracted their heads as Drifting entered the room and casually occupied a seat, “I’m the one who has done the most work today, so I deserve to take 4000 gold coins!”

He was not necessarily lying. When Drifting became the man of the hour due to Gu Fei’s disruption, he had to ‘entertain’ all those leaders and fend off all their queries as best as he could. As for Young Master Han and Brother Assist, all they had to deal with was the mental roller-coaster that the situation had created. They came close to problems but always managed to extricate themselves from it. The point was that it was not a particularly tiresome task, so it was definitely not as difficult as what Drifting had to go through.

“Didn’t we already agree on 3000 gold coins before?” Young Master Han began to negotiate with Drifting.

“When did we settle on that?” Drifting shot back.

“You opened with 3000, and I accepted that!” Young Master Han raised his three fingers.

“Didn’t you show me two fingers to represent 2000 gold coins, to which I said we would discuss the matter later?” Drifting refuted his claim.

Young Master Han shook his head and lifted his two fingers, “You’re mistaken. This doesn’t mean 2000 gold coins. This means ‘Oh, yeah. I accept!’”

Drifting was flabbergasted.

“Stop nagging! Since you’ve already settled the price, just take your money and leave!” Royal God Call quickly lifted three pouches of 1000 gold coins and tossed them over to Drifting.

“Forget it. 3000 gold coins it is!” Drifting waved his hand, showing his generosity. He then took the three pouches and stood up, “I’ll take my leave now.” With that, he left.

Royal God Call stuck himself next to the doorway and watched Drifting leave the bar before turning around and laughing uproariously.

“What’s so funny?” the three asked, nonplussed.

“That d*mb*ss!” Royal God Call replied between breaths, “Out of the three coin pouches I gave him, one only has 400 gold coins in it.”

The three exchanged glances.

“It’s time for us to split the money!” Royal God Call did some quick maths, “There are 16000 thousand gold coins here, so we can just take 4000 gold coins each.”

War Without Wounds was about to say something when Young Master Han waved his hand to interrupt, “Let’s split the money evenly! Let’s not worry about the minor details, or this will never end.”

War Without Wounds was intending to mention the extra compensation he was promised at the start, but he decided to just forget about it when he heard Young Master Han’s words. This whole matter had plenty of twists and turns, and it was truly not possible to quickly make a proper account of everything, so they might as well split everything evenly and be done with the matter completely.

As the four grabbed four coin pouches each, the curtain of the room rustled once more. The four of them looked up and Brother Assist was the first to speak, “Hey, Sword Demon!”

Sword Demon nodded in greeting, entered the room, and took a seat.

The four were still holding on to their coin pouches, and for some unknown reason, the sight of Sword Demon made them feel somewhat ashamed. War Without Wounds pushed one of the coin pouches in front of him over to Sword Demon, “Want one?”

Sword Demon smilingly shook his head.

“You’re done with Silver Moon?” Royal God Call changed the subject, asking the question he and War Without Wounds had originally wanted to inquire about.

Sword Demon nodded his head.

“Do we need to inform Miles?” Royal God Call looked at Young Master Han with an expression that showed his glee in reveling in someone else’s misery. No Smile was one such target that Gu Fei had set his eyes on, and Royal God Call would love to see Silver Moon experience the same thing as No Smile’s.

“No need,” Young Master Han replied.

“Ending this only after three kills? That’s not like you!” Royal God Call said. Although Young Master Han was a Priest, he lacked compassion for others. He’s so indifferent that he would even sacrifice them if the need arose, treating enemies and friends alike as cold as the winter’s frost.

“I mean we don’t have to act on it ourselves anymore,” Young Master Han clarified.

“Who’s gonna do it, then?” Royal God Call asked, puzzled.

Young Master Han gave a slight smile, “Who else do you think would? When everyone left, Dusky Cloud also brought his men out in a rush, not even bothering to bid us goodbye.”

“Oh!” The rest of them finally remembered that episode.

“Such deep hatred!” Royal God Call marveled, “It’s been so long, yet Dusky Cloud still has such strong desire for revenge.”

“Didn’t they recognize each other in the bar from the start?” Brother Assist wondered.

“Dusky Cloud was the first to arrive, so he sat by the front. Silver Moon was one of the last few to enter, so he sat behind. If Silver Moon didn’t have so many things to say, Dusky Cloud would not even notice him in that crowd. By the way things have turned out, it’s likely that Dusky Cloud has already set his eyes on him, yet Silver Moon is still unaware of it,” Young Master Han explained.

“What goes around really comes around!” everyone sighed repeatedly.

“Let’s just sit and wait for some news!” Young Master Han was quite self-possessed as he took up a comfortable pose, “Ray, bring me two bottles of your most expensive liquor.”

Brother Assist and the others immediately stood up to leave the room when they heard this. Everyone would all suffer a huge loss if Young Master Han decided to split the bill without warning. Besides Young Master Han, the rest of them were unwilling to chip in money for this.

The rest ran out of the bar as if they had the devil at their heels, leaving Sword Demon alone with Young Master Han.

“Want a glass?” Young Master Han asked Sword Demon.

Sword Demon shook his head.

“How about a pouch, then?” Young Master Han offered a coin pouch to Sword Demon.

Sword Demon shook his head still.

Young Master Han could only lift his glass and toast to himself, “This ‘meet and greet’ ended quite successfully. Cheers.” With that, he downed the glass in one go.

“Successfully?” Sword Demon asked.

Young Master Han chuckled, “I have the money, all the guild leaders are pretty much satisfied, and Miles doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge; what more could I ask for?”

“What?” Sword Demon was not in the ‘meet and greet’, so he knew nothing of what had transpired during it.

Young Master Han narrated the situation as succinctly as he could, and Sword Demon listened to him wordlessly, only asking at the end, “Miles seems to have come prepared, so who told him?”

Young Master Han shrugged his shoulders, “You should ask him that yourself.”

“Brother Assist has announced it on the forums. Maybe, Miles read it there,” Sword Demon hypothesized.

“Does that guy even know how to visit the forums?” Young Master Han snorted derisively.

“That’s hard to say for sure,” Sword Demon replied.

“Then, it’s just a coincidence,” Young Master Han stated simply.

It was indeed purely coincidental. Gu Fei had ‘coincidentally’ visited the game forums that particular day. However, this was not something unprecedented. Gu Fei would always visit the forums every five levels to search for a grinding map with humanoid monsters that he could use his kung fu on. It just so happened that he rose to level 40 that day, so he visited the forums to begin his research after getting offline.

Brother Assist’s posts originally did not enter Gu Fei’s notice, but because the matter of an Insta-kill Mage was riveting to many, his posts made it all the way to the top of the forums. Given his familiarity with Brother Assist, Gu Fei casually read through one of his posts out of sheer curiosity, only to discover that the latter had continued with his plan to use Gu Fei in his moneymaking scheme.

Gu Fei felt very helpless. He did not wish to be treated like a product that could be sold, but he also did not wish to quarrel with his friends over it. In the end, Gu Fei decided to approach it as something to entertain himself.

Covering his face and using a weak spell… Gu Fei wanted to see how his fellow mercenaries would react when everyone barraged them with questions. Who knew that Drifting’s presence in the conference would give Young Master Han a chance to redirect the people’s attention away from him? After that, Silver Moon’s dastardly behavior infuriated Gu Fei to the point of having to reveal his real fighting ability.

Whatever the case might be, this ‘meet and greet’ was finally settled and the curtain was called. And for the entire Young Master’s Elite, the timely ‘savior’ Drifting, and most of the attendees, the event’s conclusion was more or less satisfactory.

The only one who ended up feeling miserable about everything was Silver Moon. His misery was not about to end any time soon, however, as the street he was walking on to rendezvous with his brothers had been blocked by Dusky Cloud and his companions.

“Boss Silver Moon, it’s been a while!” Dusky Cloud cheerfully called out to him. This trip to Yunduan City had really been worthwhile for Dusky Cloud and his buddies.