Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-36

Chapter 36 - An Utter Defeat

It began to drizzle in Yunduan City. Gu Fei and Xiaoyu rushed back to Amethyst Rebirth’s headquarters with the treasure chest of the guild quest.

Royal God Call was not really willing to hand over the treasure chest to them just like that. Back then, Xiaoyu was only about ten centimeters away from him. However, he was an Archer that specialized in long-range fights, while Xiaoyu was a Warrior that specialized in melee.

With Xiaoyu in front of him, Royal God Call had to either retreat to the side or the back to lengthen the gap between them. Unfortunately, he also had Gu Fei on his left, Fei Lian on his right, and the deep lake on his back. More importantly, the treasure chest was no longer in his hands….

They eventually ended the standstill by parting ways, and the person holding the chest left with it. There was a tacit understanding among them to forget the whole situation.

At present, Gu Fei felt suffocated by the stifling atmosphere that had settled inside the Amethyst Rebirth’s conference room. He casually walked over to the window and pushed open its casements.

All the girls’ faces wore a furious look. Their expressions remained unchanged even though Xiaoyu had managed to bring back a treasure chest. This was because everyone had just gone through quite an ordeal. Out of the seven teams that were sent out, only the duo of Gu Fei and Xiaoyu survived. When Xiaoyu shouted out “Sis July and Sis Luo Luo are dead” before, she had actually used them to represent all six teams.

Receiving such a traumatic experience in their first guild quest was seriously heartrending. Gu Fei could somewhat understand what they were feeling at the moment. Whereas male players were usually hailed as kings in online games, the female players were mostly seen as eye candies. These girls had banded together in hopes of proving themselves, yet they unluckily came across such a difficult hurdle from the get-go.

Someone was bound to snap soon after soaking in their thoughts for so long! Gu Fei closely surveyed the crowd, especially that one lady.

“How despicable!” As Gu Fei had expected, the first one to explode was indeed the Fighter called Lie Lie. She sent a stool flying with her kick, slapped the table, and cursed, “If they had the ability, they should face us for real! Those sneaky f*ckers don’t know how to fight fair!”

After voicing her grievances for almost ten minutes, Gu Fei more or less surmised that Lie Lie had been instantly killed by a stealthy Thief’s Backstab without even catching a glimpse of the opponent’s face. Hence, she strongly condemned the opponent’s fighting method.

Gu Fei could only scoff at her comments with regard to the matter, since he also had executed a sneak attack on Royal God Call a while ago.

While he enjoyed fighting face to face, he did not detest sneak attacks like Lie Lie. Gu Fei even considered such attacks to be on another level as they required a good grasp of the target’s mentality. Ability to grasp at the right opportunity and the strength to execute a decisive strike were needed as well for this sort of attacks to succeed. Therefore, the skill required to insta-kill with sneak attacks was no less difficult than beating an opponent one on one.

Lie Lie’s outburst had stirred up the others’ raging emotions as they began to voice their grievances as well. Gu Fei tried hard to sift through their jabbering to make heads or tails of the entire situation, and he ended up hearing one word the most: insta-kill.

Out of the twelve ladies that went for the guild quest, eleven were insta-killed while the last one was collaterally killed. The last struggler died when a Warrior opponent used Cyclone. She was not originally targeted by that Warrior; however, she had gone up with the intention of helping her guild mate fend off the Warrior. It resulted into them dying to Cyclone instead.

There were other words that were also prominently mentioned by them: Backstab, Cyclone, and Snipe.

Although the ladies did not have high levels, insta-killing them was still not an easy feat. Adding the fact that Gu Fei and Xiaoyu had met Royal God Call, he suddenly thought of three people after hearing the three skill names: Sword Demon, War Without Wounds, and Royal God Call.

Royal God Call could insta-kill players casually, but Gu Fei believed Sword Demon and War Without Wounds would be far deadlier than him.

Sword Demon, whose level of ugliness could make even zombies cry in shock, was easy to describe. But since Thieves usually unleashed Backstab while they were on Stealth, the ladies would have no idea of their killers’ features.

Gu Fei suddenly felt as if he was in hot water. If his guess was correct, then he had truly found himself between a rock and a hard place.

Gu Fei was of course more attached to the mercenary group he was in. After all, he did not think he could get along with the members of this all-female guild. Had it not been for the minimum-guild-member-requirement issue, he would have long since left the guild of his own volition. But if he were to consider everything, it would be hard to say who was in the right or wrong as this was a scenario created by the system’s quest design.

Parallel World’s system was entirely at fault here as it had distributed both quests simultaneously: one requiring the retrieval of the treasure chests and another requiring the safeguarding of the same chests. Gu Fei unluckily got caught in between the two parties involved.

At the moment, all of this was just a conjecture. It was unclear if the mercenary group was indeed the other party involved in this matter. Gu Fei thought up to this point and suddenly stood up, “I’ve got something on, so I’ll take my leave first.”

All the ladies were still busy with their discussion and hardly paid attention to Gu Fei.

Gu Fei chuckled to himself as he headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” someone asked all of a sudden.

Gu Fei felt touched when he looked back and saw that it was Xiaoyu who had called after him. Even though she was a little bit ditzy, she at least showed camaraderie now that they had gone through a near-death scenario together. Gu Fei lightly smiled after thinking of all this, “I’ve got something on, so I’ll be going first.” With that, he pulled open the door and left the guild base.

Everyone finally noticed that Gu Fei had left. When they remembered that it was only Gu Fei and Xiaoyu that were victorious in claiming a treasure chest, they crowded around Xiaoyu and started asking her about it.

After leaving the guild, Gu Fei pulled up his friends list and saw that all five members of Young Master’s Elite were online. Gu Fei recalled that ever since he had come to know Sword Demon, he never saw him go offline once. What a pro!

Gu Fei was more familiar with Sword Demon out of the five, so he naturally contacted him first to inquire about their involvement or non-involvement in the issue.

“Where are you?” Gu Fei messaged him.

“Ray’s Bar,” Sword Demon replied.

Ray’s Bar was just two streets away, so Gu Fei directly headed toward the establishment.

Gu Fei entered and greeted Ray before he went straight to the room they had all been accustomed to. He lifted the curtains and was startled for a moment. Besides Sword Demon, Young Master Han and Brother Assist were here as well.

“Miles is here!” Brother Assist greeted Gu Fei.

“What a rare guest! Come take a seat!” Young Master Han had always been generous with his snide remarks.

Gu Fei smiled and did not say a word. Sword Demon shifted to the side, making room for him to take a seat.

“Where’s Wounds and Royal?” Gu Fei asked.

“Who knows? Probably grinding!” Sword Demon said.

“All you guys do is grind. You don’t even know how to enjoy life properly. We play games to enrich our lives, to rejuvenate our drab and lonely spirits; that’s the most beautiful indulgence,” Young Master Han waxed loquaciously.

“Is he drunk?” Gu Fei asked Sword Demon.

Sword Demon lowered his head and massaged his temples, “That’s just how he is.”

Gu Fei looked at Sword Demon with sympathy as he continued to ask the three, “No missions today?”

Young Master Han lifted his glass with a smile, “Regular quests are unworthy of our attention.”

“What kind of regular quests?” Gu Fei pestered.

“Go to the Hall of Mercenaries and see for yourself!” Young Master Han snapped.

“You didn’t take any quest?”

“Are you deaf? Didn’t I say so already?” Young Master Han replied in annoyance.

Gu Fei was stunned for a few moments. This meant that this group was not the one that had ambushed Amethyst Rebirth! Gu Fei sighed in relief as he no longer felt as if he was caught between the two groups. Gu Fei did not care to find out the actual group behind the ambush. This was just a game after all! Killing and fighting were everyday occurrences. Moreover, this was probably a system-generated quest in which two groups were pitted against each other. It was not done out of spite or malice. In the end, Amethyst Rebirth failed the quest because the ladies’ skills were below par.

If they wanted revenge, then that would be something for another time. Besides, he was not certain that they would want him in the guild for that long!

Gu Fei finally relaxed as he lifted the curtain and shouted, “Ray, bring me a glass!”

The three in the room could not make sense of Gu Fei’s sudden look of elation. Young Master Han latched on to this as he said carefully, “Why are you glad when you heard we’re not on a mission?”

“I’m not happy because of that,” Gu Fei explained.

“What’s going on?” Young Master Han asked, “You’re acting a little weird today.”

“How so?” Gu Fei asked.

“You don’t come here if you have nothing in mind,” Young Master Han stated.

“What?” Gu Fei quickly said, “I just want to hang out with everyone!” Gu Fei had no intentions of telling them about the issue. Doing so would mean telling them about how he became Amethyst Rebirth’s member as well. Gu Fei was unlike Fireball in this matter. He did not consider mingling with a bunch of ladies as a wonderful thing, so it was something best left unsaid.

“What do you mean hang out? We’re not exactly that close,” Young Master Han remarked.

“D*mn, you’re being way too straightforward!” Gu Fei felt depressed. It was true that they had barely known one another for three days, and that this was just the third time they had met, but to say such things so bluntly was rather rude.

Sword Demon shook his head as he mumbled, “That’s just how he is.”

“Sword Demon, if you’ve got something to say, say it out loud!” Young Master Han smacked the table.

Sword Demon shook his head once more, “That’s just how I am.”

Gu Fei finally realized that there was something off with Sword Demon, so he suddenly asked, “What’s going on here?”

Brother Assist grimaced, “Can’t you tell? They have had too much to drink.”

“F*ck!” Gu Fei felt foolish, “Then, why are you still with them?”

“They won’t let me out! They got me sandwiched between them,” Brother Assist smiled weakly.

Gu Fei stood up, “Sword Demon, Ray has got drinks for you!”

“Oh, I’m coming,” Sword Demon stood up and shuffled out unsteadily.

“Let’s go!” Gu Fei indicated the way out with his head.

“That was easy!” Brother Assist sighed.

“Actually, I have something I wish to ask you,” Gu Fei frankly said as he and Brother Assist walked out of the room, randomly picked a seat by the bar, and sat down.