Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-218

Chapter 218 - Two Hundred Forty-one Letters

Four undeniably peerless experts in the online gaming community, with the additions of a Terminator-like person and a Hidden Boss… Youthful Reflection’s hand trembled as he held on to the name list. Why was such a transcendent group unknown in Yunduan City? The information that Youthful Reflection had collected about the six from the Hall of Mercenaries was truly as shallow as a puddle....

These six men could not possibly have formed such a small mercenary group for no rhyme or reason. There must be some momentous goal behind it! Youthful Reflection’s heart was filled with worry. Even Silver Moon who had given Youthful Reflection all this information about the six could not answer the latter’s question and could only provided him two facts: The members of Young Master’s Elite were the culprits behind his Past Deeds Guild’s eradication in Yueye City and were the ‘event organizers’ of the Insta-kill Mage’s ‘meet and greet’ yesterday.

Youthful Reflection came to a sudden realization and began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Since he had been present in the conference at Ray’s Bar, he had quite a recollection of them. Royal God Call was already someone he knew of, while Young Master Han’s visage made him stand out from the crowd. Since Brother Assist was in charge of the event and a renowned figure, Youthful Reflection had naturally thrown him a few sideway glances as well. War Without Wounds was dressed very bizarrely that day, but everyone had shifted their focus on to Drifting once he turned up to the conference.

Youthful Reflection carefully recollected yesterday’s event in hopes of finding some clues on how to deal with Young Master’s Elite from it. It was at this point that Silver Moon provided him with something to work on: For an unknown reason, the Insta-kill Mage, Thousand Miles Drunk, seemed to have gotten into conflict with the other five experts.

Youthful Reflection pondered on this for a while and thought that it was probable. The five were probably proud experts, so they quite resented being eclipsed by such an indomitable existence like Thousand Miles Drunk. Royal God Call’s bratty attitude that day was enough proof of this. The five were most likely jealous of Thousand Miles Drunk’s fighting prowess that they ended up ostracizing him. This would explain why he appeared to be so disagreeable with them that day that he even strove to ruin the entire event with his antics.

I might be able to use this to our group’s advantage! Youthful Reflection excitedly thought to himself, unaware that the information Silver Moon had provided him was inaccurate.

Besides the names of Young Master’s Elite’s members, what else did Silver Moon know about them? His irresponsible guess of the six’s relationship and the ensuing fantasy he conjured about the group had somehow resulted into him providing misleading information about them to Youthful Reflection. Even if Young Master’s Elite had internal discord, it was never due to Gu Fei’s fighting prowess and was actually due to everyone having clashing personalities.

On Gu Fei’s end, he was quite a modest and amiable person that had helped his fellow mercenaries a number of times in the past. Examples of the aid he had given Young Master’s Elite were reclaiming Sword Demon’s Frost Memories, spending time in the underground prison for Royal God Call to acquire the Windchaser’s Boots, bridging a connection between War Without Wounds and the Amethyst Rebirth ladies, and so on.

As for the members of Young Master’s Elite… Sword Demon had long considered Gu Fei as a comrade; Royal God Call and War Without Wounds were not shallow individuals who would get jealous of his PvP might; Brother Assist’s passion for gaming lay not in fighting and was never concerned about Gu Fei’s ability; lastly, the narcissist Young Master Han viewed Gu Fei as nothing more than a muscle-head in comparison to his high intellectual capacity and actually thought of himself as the real indomitable existence in the group.

With all these being said, one could say that Youthful Reflection’s deduction of the chaotic relationship between the members of Young Master’s Elite was practically non-existent. However, the confidence he had in his intelligence made him conclude that his deduction was absolutely correct. Youthful Reflection then went ahead and composed a heartfelt letter of persuasion as best as he could for Thousand Miles Drunk.

He started the letter by expressing his utmost respect and admiration for Gu Fei, which he was more than capable on elaborating with lavish details given his early dealings with the latter. After the matter with No Smile, Youthful Reflection had personally led Traversing Four Seas’ hunt for Fugitive 27149 in the past. Although he had pitifully fallen into a trap in that underground passageway in Oolong Cave back then, Youthful Reflection had phrased it in the letter as if he had been very impressed by Gu Fei’s ‘despicable’ actions.

Using thinly veiled words, Youthful Reflection proceeded to probe about Gu Fei’s situation in Young Master’s Elite. He refrained from blatantly stating his intention and insinuation as he wanted Gu Fei to arrive at that conclusion himself. When he read the letter for himself, Youthful Reflection could not help but feel quite proud of his way with words.

Afterward, Youthful Reflection discussed about life and dreams and appropriately mentioned that only his large guild and mercenary group could home an existence like Gu Fei. Finally, Youthful Reflection strongly expressed his desire to personally meet Gu Fei, promising many benefits for the latter in return that even he found convincing when he read it back to himself after.

He then sent the letter that he proudly penned via the mailbox, easing the heavy rock that was burdening his heart. Since he already did his best, he could only wait for Gu Fei’s reply to his letter, hoping that he would be able to meet Gu Fei soon in order to directly convince the latter of leaving Young Master’s Elite.

Without him in the group, the other five men of Young Master’s Elite would still be first-rate experts. Nonetheless, they would be less worrying than before. If he managed to recruit a top expert into his guild, it would essentially be killing two birds with one stone as well.

Youthful Reflection had hatched a deeply thought about plan for this six-man mercenary group, yet he had regrettably approached the issue so erroneously from the start. How would he achieve the result he wanted? Furthermore, something he had not thought of was about to happen soon.

Gu Fei was unaware that he now had plenty of fans when he went offline yesterday, but the system’s notification about him having two hundred forty-one unopened letters when he got online today made him fully aware of this. Dumbfounded, Gu Fei rushed over to the mailbox by one of the city gates.

The mailbox was filled with letters for ‘Thousand Miles Drunk’. Every stack Gu Fei took out would instantly cause another stack to be generated inside the mailbox. This repeated until he finally got all two hundred forty-one letters out of the mailbox. What made him depressed, though, was that each letter would take up a whole inventory slot if he was to put it into his dimensional pocket. He simply had no way of fitting all two hundred forty-one letters in him, so he could only carry the almost half a meter stack of letters in person as he carefully made his way toward Ray’s Bar.

“Oh, my god! What is that?!” Players he encountered on the streets pretty much reacted this way at the sight of him carrying lots of letters.

“They’re letters!” He explained to these players helplessly. Gu Fei sweated profusely, yet he could not even wipe the sweat off his forehead.

“Bro, you must have not opened your mailbox since the open beta!” someone exclaimed.

“How is it possible to have so many, though?!” another expressed his disbelief.

Gu Fei’s answer nearly caused their minds to collapse, “These are just letters from these past two days.”

For someone to receive so many letters over two days, just how many friends did this person have?! As Gu Fei continued on his way to Ray’s Bar, the surrounding players gazed at him with a complicated expression on their faces. What an enviable thing it was for someone to have so many friends….

Over by Ray’s Bar, Young Master Han was currently drinking by himself in their group’s usual room. Suddenly, Ray raised the curtain with his hand to let Gu Fei through with his half a meter stack of letters. Throughout his trip to the bar, he had been inclining his head to see the road ahead.

“Two hundred forty-one letters!” Gu Fei put the stack onto the table as he announced this, scattering letters all across its surface.

“That’s a really enthusiastic response!” Young Master Han chuckled, guessing that most of these letters were the result of Gu Fei’s identity being exposed by them. All those leaders who could not add him as a friend had no choice but to resort to writing letters to contact him, after all.

The content of each letter was pretty much similar to one another. Gu Fei very quickly read through three of them and a look of disappointment could be seen on his face, “Why is it all about this matter?”

Knowing that Gu Fei was currently reading the letters, Young Master Han smiled gaily, “What else are you expecting?”

“Does no one among them feel resentful about my action yesterday and wish to fight with me?” Gu Fei replied with a question as he continued to lightly read the letters.

Young Master Han was stunned. Did this guy reveal his identity in his hopes of achieving such an outcome? How did he come up with such a thought like that?

Gu Fei was on his fifth letter when he flashed Young Master Han a mischievous smile who had been sitting there in a daze all this while and said, “Since you don’t seem to have anything on right now, help me tear through all these letters!”

Young Master Han did indeed have nothing to do at the moment, so he did not reject his request. With a swig of his liquor, he took a letter, tore it open, glanced at the content, and tossed it away. A swig, a letter, a tear, a glance, throw… He repeated this process mechanically with greater efficiency than Gu Fei.

“Hey! Be more attentive! Make sure not to miss anything,” Gu Fei was quite dissatisfied with Young Master Han’s perfunctory actions.

Following his request, Young Master Han paid more attention to the matter and gave the letters two glances before tossing them over. Finally, a certain letter that was substantially well-written compared to the others earned Young Master Han’s three glances. He even casually flipped over the envelope itself and saw the sender’s name: Youthful Reflection.

This name caused Young Master Han to pause slightly. He then decided to read the letter carefully and immediately discerned Youthful Reflection’s intention for writing the letter: He wanted Gu Fei to defect from Young Master’s Elite before the match to lower the danger in the upcoming fight.

Young Master Han tried his hardest to stifle the laughter that came to him. It seemed that his plan had actually borne fruit so splendidly that their opponents were completely stumped on how to handle them. For a one-hundred-man mercenary group to resort into using such an underhanded method against a six-man mercenary group, it was simply too comical.

Originally, Young Master Han was not treating their upcoming match seriously, but since Youthful Reflection’s letter had very kindly given him a chance to gain an advantage for his group, Young Master Han resolved to not waste it. Conceiving a script in his mind, he then took out a quill and paper and tossed them over to Gu Fei.

“What are these for?” Gu Fei, who was going through the stack in hopes of encountering a letter of challenge, asked Young Master Han this after receiving the items.

“You should write a reply,” Young Master Han suggested.

“Why… Why do I have to?” Gu Fei asked.

“Don’t you know what courtesy is? These men politely wrote you letters, so how could you not have the decency to reply to them even once? Plus, I doubt this will end if you don’t give them a proper reply,” Young Master Han explained.

“Oh!” Gu Fei nodded his head in agreement to Young Master Han’s explanation. Quite a few of the senders of the letters had actually repeatedly mailed him two or three letters of the same matter; evidently, they had mailed him another letter when they had not received a reply for the first letter. They were probably hoping to garner his attention by continuously pestering him.

“Reply it is, then!” Gu Fei sighed as he picked up the quill and took a sheet of paper.

“Mhm. I’ll help you, too,” Young Master Han took a piece of paper as well.

Gu Fei felt surprised that Young Master Han actually volunteered to help him on this matter, as the effort required to reply to all these letters was higher than just reading through them.

“What should we write? Hmm… Let’s keep it simple. A few words should do,” Young Master Han told Gu Fei.

“Yeah. I’m just gonna write: ‘I thank you for your offer, but I refuse.’” After carefully thinking it over, Gu Fei came up with this.

“Oh, that’s very good. Clear and concise,” Young Master Han nodded his head in agreement and quickly busied himself with writing a letter of response on Gu Fei’s behalf. Unbeknownst to Gu Fei, the content of the letter Young Master Han was composing vastly differed from what they had agreed on. Gu Fei was too busy on his end that he did not notice what Young Master Han was doing at all.