Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-222

Chapter 222 - Silently Suffer the Loss Again

Gu Fei determinedly rushed down the hill as he nimbly dodged the four Archers’ hail of arrows. Seeing that Gu Fei was almost upon them, the Archers stopped their attacks and hurriedly fled in terror instead.

Since the Archers had fast movement speed as well, Gu Fei was unable to catch up to any of them, especially when one of them would flee and the other three would continue to shoot arrows at him. Young Master’s Elite’s Grand Kiting strategy had one man running while all the enemies chased after him; in this case, it was Gu Fei who was the one being kited by the four Archers. It was under such condition that the PvP between both sides reached an impasse.

The four Archers happily praised Youthful Reflection for eventually making the right choice. By utilizing their speed, the Mage no longer posed a big threat; if they carried on fighting in this manner, the Mage would most likely be the one facing death.

Gu Fei continued to chase after the enemies, yet he could just not catch up to any of them no matter what. Eventually, the four Archers that kept on harassing Gu Fei from four different directions slowly became complacent, completely forgetting that Gu Fei had the Blink skill.

Blink’s cool-down time was one minute and it was already up. Gu Fei refrained from using it even now because he could not find a good opportunity to do so. He could only teleport himself for five meters, so he needed to narrow the distance between him and one of the four Archers for his skill to work.

Gu Fei persisted for quite some time until he finally found a chance to do it. He darted straight toward a particular Archer even as the other three peppered him with arrows, each of them feeling dissatisfied that none of their arrows had managed to hit Gu Fei so far. It was common knowledge that an Archer had a higher chance of hitting a moving target if he or she was closer to the person, so the three Archers impatiently tried to narrow the distance between them and Gu Fei.

The three men did not know that Gu Fei was keeping his attention on them, and once the latter saw an opportunity, he quickly pivoted and teleported himself before an Archer.

He did not have enough mana to cast Twin Incineration, so Gu Fei could only slash the man with his sword repeatedly.

Gu Fei sincerely praised Fleeting Smile for his recommendation. While he would have possessed the skill to slow down his enemies if he had chosen to advance into a Water Mage, he would have still lacked the speed to get near them. How would his spell slow the enemies down if it could not even hit them in the first place? When it came to fighting, it was still better to improve one’s skills rather than to think of ways to reduce the opponent’s skills. As a kung fu practitioner, how could he have allowed himself to be tempted by that superficial benefit and ignored this basic principle he had grown up knowing?

Gu Fei shook his head as he reflected on this. He continued to torment the Archer with his sword. It was a wonder what Fleeting Smile would say if he saw this fighting scene of Gu Fei.

With the death of the Archer Gu Fei had targeted, the other three Archers lost their elation. They finally realized that Gu Fei was an existence that transcended common sense which they had no way of dealing. Gu Fei would teleport himself over and slay them if they were near, and he would casually evade all their ranged attacks if they were far.

The three Archers kept their distance from Gu Fei and did not think of attacking him again. The three would even flee in a hurry when Gu Fei moved slightly.

Gu Fei decided to eat a piece of fruit to recover his mana, but even then, the Archers merely stared at him from afar. No one knew where that other Thief from before was at the moment. As he was wondering about Sword Demon’s whereabouts in the map, Gu Fei received his message: “I’m here!”

Gu Fei could not find Sword Demon ever since the latter had activated his Stealth before. The skill’s duration should have ended by now. In fact, the Stealth’s cool-down time should also be over and Sword Demon could activate it once more. Since none of the Four Seas players dared to get near Gu Fei, Sword Demon could only creep his way over to them.

Gu Fei waited for Sword Demon to make his move, yet his wait was unexpectedly cut short by the system’s announcement of Young Master’s Elite winning this round of the mercenary PvP tournament!

The three Archers and Thief truly lost their desire to continue this fight and a simple discussion on the Four Seas’ mercenary channel with their comrades led them to withdraw from the match. Sword Demon, who was about to launch his attack on the three Archers, was left feeling disappointed by this turn of events. Shrugging his shoulders toward Gu Fei, he deactivated his Stealth.

The system quickly reported the final score for this match and Gu Fei and Sword Demon were sent out of the PvP arena immediately after.

Upon his reappearance to the square outside the Hall of Mercenaries, Gu Fei immediately felt palpable killing intent being directed toward him. He quickly looked around and saw that the Four Seas’ members were looking at him with hate-filled eyes. All of Four Seas were hatefully glaring at Gu Fei, ranging from the ones who had participated in the match, which included group leader Youthful Reflection, to the rest who had not participated in it.

Gu Fei felt perplexed by this. He had fought many matches in this PvP tournament, and most of his opponents had been gracious losers and had even politely come to him to exchange a few friendly words after the matches. The only other exception was Cloud Herder mercenary group that that had fallen victim to Young Master’s Elite’s Grand Kiting strategy. It was completely understandable for that mercenary group to feel dissatisfied of Gu Fei and his friends back then. As for Four Seas, what reason did its players have to resent him more extremely than Cloud Herder?

Gu Fei swept his gaze over and did not see Young Master Han and the others. Everyone in Young Master’s Elite did not have the habit of waiting for the others who were still in the match after getting killed. Waiting for the others was completely up to each of them. Those who wanted would wait, while those who did not would leave.

“This doesn’t look good,” Gu Fei said to Sword Demon, who was standing beside him.

Sword Demon nodded his head as he slowly disappeared right before Gu Fei’s eyes. HP, Attack Power, skill cool-down, and such would all reset once players left the PvP arena. Sword Demon did not hesitate and used his Stealth, as even he could sense that the situation was off.

“Seriously?!” Gu Fei sent Sword Demon this message.

“Leave first; I’ll help you block them from behind!” Sword Demon replied.

“Ha ha! At least, you have the mind to help. Anyway, you leave first. Don’t worry about this.” Gu Fei did not plan to leave. He was always looking for a chance to PvP even if the opponents were difficult to deal with, after all.

Gu Fei could not sense Sword Demon’s attention, so he did not know if the latter really left. As for Four Seas, its members glared at him for quite some time before leaving altogether.

“Why are we not taking down that bozo?!” someone indignantly asked Youthful Reflection. Youthful Reflection had not been able to locate that incriminating letter after getting sent out of the PvP arena. Truly, he was just like Xianglin Sao¹ and caused the other ninety-nine members of his mercenary group to fall for Gu Fei’s vile actions. This matter had now reached the ears of Oathless Sword and Gale Force, the two other core members of Traversing Four Seas.

There was already bad blood between Gu Fei’s 27149 persona and Traversing Four Seas. Back then, the guild had lost considerable face with that ‘No Smile’ business. Although Traversing Four Seas had eventually emerged as Yunduan City’s number one guild, top brasses like Oathless Sword and Gale Force had always felt that that incident had tarnished the guild’s image. Without that incident, there would not be a dispute regarding who was the number one guild between Traversing Four Seas and Carouse.

However, when all was said and done, it was entirely the result of No Smile’s despicable actions. Even if the players of Traversing Four Seas wished to take revenge, they simply did not have the face to dig up old issues like that.

They could only silently suffer this disastrous loss at that person’s hands once more. Attempting to poach the opposing group’s member was already an unsavory move. Although their attempt was used to strike back against them, they could at most criticize Gu Fei for being even more despicable. This matter might resonate well with the other leaders who enjoyed poaching players, but announcing this publicly would be shaky at best. Everyone would definitely mock them, “Traversing Four Seas is really distasteful for trying to poach other people’s teammates. Serves them right to meet a more unscrupulous person who managed to turn the tables on them….”

Revealing the matter to the public would only make Gu Fei seem like an anti-hero of sorts for countering their plan with his ploy – for fighting fire with fire.

As leaders of a large guild, they must always consider the bigger picture whenever they handled problems and not rashly decide about matters. Youthful Reflection hated Gu Fei so much, but he could only grit his teeth at the moment as he told his men, “Let’s disperse. We’ll discuss this matter later.”

How would they discuss this matter, though?

During the guild match, the three core members of Traversing Four Seas got together and quietly discussed the issue.

“That guy is actually a member of Amethyst Rebirth! He he!” Oathless Sword was the guild leader, yet his thoughts had always been a little off-track from the beginning. Under the withering stare of the other two, he quickly changed the subject, “Uhm… What do you two think about this?”

“Kill! Ambush! Sneak attack! Hunt!” PvP was the most straightforward solution to problems in online games; Gale Force’s thinking was as simple as that.

Youthful Reflection felt that killing Gu Fei was not enough to settle this matter. After losing that incriminating letter, he began to think of ways to use the guild member Royal God Call one way or another for this matter. It would be best if he could let Gu Fei have a taste of his medicine, yet he could not think of any way to do so and could only leave it somewhere in the back of his mind – to use whenever the chance presented itself.

“Oh…” Youthful Reflection was hoping to outsmart the opponent, while Gale Force was suggesting for a more violent approach. Both waited for Oathless Sword to make the final decision. Oathless Sword pondered on this for a long time before saying, “Let’s go with Youthful Reflection’s suggestion! The members of Young Master’s Elite are experts, and we don’t know what they are planning. Let’s look for a way to strike a blow at these experts as we take care of Thousand Miles Drunk, killing two birds with one stone.”

Youthful Reflection was naturally 100% in agreement with this decision, while Gale Force reluctantly clenched his fists and chose not to comment.

Their current guild match was the least challenging of all their guild matches, so it would hardly affect Traversing Four Seas from clinching victory whether the three core members participated in the fight or not. Predictably, the opponents were completely eradicated across the whole PvP arena within half an hour.

Gu Fei had nothing to do during the guild versus guild tournament. Doing ‘Bounty Mission’ was no longer fun for him since he only felt that he was killing noobs, so he decided to grind his level on monsters in the wilderness. When the system notified Gu Fei of receiving a letter, he barely took note of it and merely continued to joyfully use kung fu to kill the surrounding monsters in this particular grinding map.

Entering the city to log off, he casually retrieved the letter in the mailbox in one of the city gates. He then looked at the letter’s envelope and saw these words on its surface: LETTER OF CHALLENGE!

“F*ck me!” Gu Fei could feel his blood pumping from excitement.

[1] A fictional character in a short story written by a prominent Chinese writer LuXun. The short narrative is about an old widow. The story addresses emotional, spiritual, and psychological breakdown of a human being.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Xun