Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-302

Chapter 302 - The Clueless Traversing Four Seas

Young Master's Elite’s six men dragged Xiaoyu to hide by the courtyard of the nearby dilapidated church. All of them crouched by the church’s wall as they staked out Mr. Adrian’s mansion. Soon, players of Traversing Four Seas arrived from every direction and surrounded the premise. Finally, the three core leaders, Oathless Sword, Youthful Reflection, and Gale Force, made it to the place and began positioning their guild members.

The airhead June’s Rain felt very confused. “Mr. Adrian is not here, so what are they trying to do?”

It was difficult to keep June’s Rain up to speed with their thoughts, so the six men chose to stay silent, instead. Only Brother Assist was a little anxious about everything. “Won’t Mr. Adrian be back soon?”

“Mhm-mhm. Didn’t he say he’s off to call the guards? What do you think he’ll do at the sight of many players cordoning off his mansion when he gets back with the guards?” Young Master Han asked.

“This…” Everyone could feel chill ran down their spines. “Isn’t this going a bit overboard?”

“No. It’s very interesting!” Young Master Han happily propped himself up against the wall using his arm. He then fished out a bottle of liquor from his dimensional pocket using his free hand. It was evident that he wanted to pair his drinking with the pitiful plight the Traversing Four Seas’ players would soon find themselves in.

Traversing Four Seas completed their cordon of the mansion. Holding the note in his hand, Oathless Sword took a deep breath and knocked on the door thrice before he darted behind the formation, making people wonder if he was truly a Warrior with how quickly he had moved.

Obviously, no one was going to answer the door since the mansion was currently empty. These players started looking at one another in confusion after waiting anxiously for quite some time.

Oathless Sword went forward and knocked on the door again. He did not rush to retreat behind the safety of his troops this time. Instead, Oathless Sword went up to the door and placed his ear right on its surface in an attempt to hear any sound coming from inside the mansion. Youthful Reflection and Gale Force followed suit. Eventually, the three men shook their heads.

“Shall we go in and take a look?” the three men exchanged glances before breaking in.

“He he he!” The six peeping men were giggling in their mirth.

“What are they doing there? Are they planning to steal gold ore, too?” It was now June’s Rain’s turn to feel anxious.

“Nah. They’re here to look for someone,” Gu Fei consoled her.

June’s Rain was instantly pacified. Indeed, it was very easy to placate naïve people.

Oathless Sword and the other two entered Mr. Adrian’s mansion and searched around it, but they could naturally not find anything suspicious. The trio saw that the place was a bit messy, but they could presently not think of why it would be so, and they walked out of the mansion filled with confusion.

The six men were all snickering by now. Suddenly, they heard someone outside the Traversing Four Seas’ cordon yell, “Who are you people?!”

The six men subconsciously jerked their necks back when they heard this. Mr. Adrian had finally returned. Gu Fei lamented to June’s Rain, “Hear that? The revived Mr. Adrian is still the same as ever, and his voice is just like last time.”

“Revived?” June’s Rain asked, confused.

“Never mind.” Gu Fei forcefully calmed himself.

All craned their necks out to continue peeping. Although they originally thought that Young Master Han had gone a little overboard when he purposefully set up the Traversing Four Seas against the NPC guards Mr. Adrian had called over, the sight of Mr. Adrian all by himself made them feel rather disappointed.

Brother Assist glumly kept his little booklet, “And here I thought I would finally get a chance to gauge a NPC guard’s strength!”

Before Oathless Sword could even send out the command himself, the Traversing Four Seas’ players had already taken the initiative to surround Mr. Adrian. Oathless Sword walked over in a dignified manner and waved the note in front of the NPC. “Mr. Adrian, we already know what you’ve done. Why don’t you give yourself up?”

All the players present felt very nervous, and this included the six men of Young Master's Elite. Oathless Sword was undoubtedly displaying an item to the NPC. Whether this would trigger any condition for the quest or not would entirely depend on this one move.

In the end, the NPC Adrian did not even glance at the note in Oathless Sword’s hand and merely continued to angrily point at the men surrounding him. “You burglars! Just what do you all intend to do?!”

Oathless Sword stepped even closer to Mr. Adrian and pushed the note right up to the latter’s eyes. “Read it. The note.” He was already using the item as blatantly as possible, yet Mr. Adrian was still ignoring his action.

The Traversing Four Seas’ members were disappointed; it seemed that the item was useless in this place.

The six men of Young Master's Elite felt very gratified by this outcome. Had Mr. Adrian allowed Traversing Four Seas to expose him this easily, they would have pretty much busied themselves with the quest for nothing.

Mr. Adrian was still trapped inside the players’ encirclement as the three core members of Traversing Four Seas had an emergency meeting, resulting in Youthful Reflection hailing Young Master Han: “The note is useless.”

“Is that so? That can’t be!” Young Master Han faked his disbelief.

“Are you guys sure that he’s the one?” Youthful Reflection continued to ask.

“Of course,” Young Master Han replied.

The three men continued to discuss the matter among themselves.

“Do you guys have any proof?” Youthful Reflection asked.

“Isn’t the note itself the proof?” Young Master Han asked back.

“But he didn’t admit to it!” Youthful Reflection exclaimed.

“Think of ways to force him to confess, then!” Young Master Han suggested.

Youthful Reflection slapped his forehead, and then he thought of the same method of analyzing and comparing Mr. Adrian’s handwriting. Thus, the three core members of Traversing Four Seas entered Mr. Adrian’s mansion again and began ransacking his place.

“Burglars! You’re all nothing but a bunch of burglars! You people are going to pay for your actions!” Mr. Adrian continued to act his part and angrily berated the players.

Young Master Han reached inside his dimensional pocket and touched Mr. Adrian’s ledger, feeling quite pleased with himself. He eagerly awaited Youthful Reflection’s good news.

“There isn’t another copy of Mr. Adrian’s handwriting inside the mansion, right?” Brother Assist worriedly asked.

“Nope.” Young Master Han confidently answered.

“You’re so nasty.” The rest of them sighed. He was essentially forcing Traversing Four Seas to compromise with him!

After searching through Mr. Adrian’s possession for another round, the three men came out empty-handed. The three men were left with no choice but to take out a paper and pen and fiercely demand for Mr. Adrian to copy the note from where he stood.

Such a trashy method was basically a direct attempt to take advantage of the NPC’s rigid AI. Unfortunately, Adrian was someone who bore a heavy responsibility; he demonstrated a more sophisticated programing than the average NPC when he ignored their demand outright. Oathless Sword wished he could throttle Mr. Adrian right there and then, but no one could unfortunately go around breaking the system’s rule protecting NPCs from violent player interactions.

At such an impasse, Young Master Han’s message arrived with cold indifference: “How did it go?”

“We’re still working on it,” was Youthful Reflection’s reply.

“Perhaps, you should let our mercenary group’s Thousand Miles Drunk interact with Mr. Adrian. After all, he is the one who obtained the side quest,” Young Master Han suggested.

What he had said made perfect sense, game-wise. Oathless Sword dangling the letter in front of Mr. Adrian was ineffective, but it might be a different matter if Gu Fei was the one dangling it. At the end of the day, the quest and the item were obtained by him. Furthermore, Oathless Sword and his two core leaders were aware of another piece of important information that Gu Fei did not know: The Werewolves had explicitly said that they only trusted him.

“Does that mean our only option is to depend on that guy for this part of the quest?” Oathless Sword and his men were naturally aggrieved by this.

“Why don’t we just let him have a go?” Gale Force asked.

“Has anyone found any method to win the Werewolves’ trust yet?” Youthful Reflection asked everyone else. When all the guild members shook their heads, Youthful Reflection grinded his teeth and told Young Master Han to send Gu Fei over: “Fine. Let him have a go!”

“Hmm… Maybe this quest will end once Miles uses that note to interact with Mr. Adrian,” Royal God Call said.

“I doubt that.” Brother Assist shook his head, saying, “There shouldn’t be this sort of condition for all the quests in Parallel World. The identity of Miles is only unique to those Werewolves; any other NPC, just like Mr. Adrian, won’t treat him differently. Logically speaking, he doesn’t have any special interactions with this brand-new Adrian, so he won’t treat Miles differently.”

“Let me find out!” Gu Fei was planning to ask Fleeting Smile about this, but he discovered that the latter had already gone offline when he pulled out his friends list. “…Okay. I didn’t manage to find anything out. You guys can carry on discussing.”

Brother Assist was very curious about the person whom Gu Fei was getting his information from as that individual seemed to have a bigger information network than him, but Gu Fei had already said to him that he could not reveal anything about the person.

“Truthfully, there’s no guarantee that we can even resolve this matter by analyzing his handwriting!” War Without Wounds said.

“Are you questioning my deduction skills?” Young Master Han tossed him a sidelong glance.

“Don’t mind me. I’m just playing the devil’s advocate here, that’s all! Ha ha ha…” War Without Wounds quickly tried to laugh it off.

“What nonsense,” everyone scoffed.

“Alright, I’m heading over now!” Gu Fei stood up.

“Slow down! If you get there so soon, they’ll think that we are just spying on them from nearby this whole time,” Royal God Call cautioned.

Gu Fei looked at him with a baffled expression, “But we are hiding over here to spy on them.”

“That’s why you gotta hide it! How can we call this spying if you are gonna expose it?!”

The rest of them nodded their heads in agreement. “Wait a bit longer before you head over!”

June’s Rain’s eyes were glazed over this whole time, not understanding a word that they were saying.

As such, they intentionally waited for quite some time. Receiving a few more messages from Youthful Reflection asking Young Master Han to hurry Gu Fei over. Gu Fei moved to go to them. This was when a flurry of footsteps was heard coming from the main road. All of them craned their necks to look and were stunned by what they saw. Dozens of guards clad in armor emblazoned with Yueye City’s seal just so happened to arrive at this moment.

The Traversing Four Seas’ players, for their part, were clueless on why these unidentified NPCs were hurrying to their location. Such a scale of mobilization of NPCs was a rare sight, and these players could not help but ogle them as they marched toward them; some of the Traversing Four Seas’ players even attempted to engage the NPCs in a conversation. Brother Assist already had his little booklet out and ready, as Young Master Han repeatedly nodded his head. “What did I tell you all? How could my deductions ever be wrong?”

“Mr. Adrian!” the guards hollered.

All the Traversing Four Seas’ members present were startled. Adrian, who was still neck deep in the encirclement, shouted back, “Sir, I’m right here! Hurry and eradicate these burglars for me!”

“Burglars?” While the Traversing Four Seas players were still feeling confused, the NPC guards’ swords were already out of their scabbards. Raising his weapon, the captain bellowed, “Prepare to charge!”

In an instant, white light dispersed from the captain and a halo could be seen glowing beneath the feet of the guards around him.

“How OP! A party-wide skill!” The people secretly watching this scene from afar were the first to react to this.