Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-598

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

“Sir, where are you?” Gu Fei’s student hurriedly asked, none of them understanding why their teacher was about to blow a gasket.

“Wilderness Camp. You guys shouldn’t make your way over; it’s too dangerous here,” Gu Fei replied. Given that it was a level 45 grinding map, it would naturally be dangerous for his low-level newbie students. Gu Fei had to protect them from themselves.

“Then, what do we do?” His students were children, after all. With Gu Fei making decisions for them over these past few days, none of them knew what to do with themselves now that they were abruptly given free rein.

“Go level on your own. Teacher here will join you all once I’m free,” Gu Fei replied.

Having settled his students’ matter, he watched the crowd below the 9527 outcrop open a path for those Fighters to bring monsters over as these men all began letting each one over modestly.

“You first.”

“No, you!”

“It’s better if you go first.”

Gu Fei, who was standing atop the outcrop, was piqued. “Just toss one over already.”

Finally, everybody elected the Fighter at the forefront as there was barely enough space for him to kite a monster and was at risk of dying to it at this time. There was no time for civility, so the man grabbed hold of the Campfire Patroller’s waist, lifted it, and flung it over.

Everyone’s gazes followed the monster as it flew up and fell back down. The monster went straight up with that player’s Seismic Toss, before landing squarely back down at the same spot on the ground.

The crowd all looked at this man with contempt, and the player himself felt rather embarrassed by his performance. Swiftly adjusting his position again, he gave it another try.

The throw this time was perfectly placed as the monster went out in a perfect parabolic arc and landed right onto Gu Fei’s feet. With his sword at the ready, Gu Fei lashed out. White light shone. The monster had been slain.

Gu Fei laughed bitterly. “Go easy, bro. You barely left it a sliver of HP with that toss. How am I supposed to fight it like that?”

All the Fighters realized what he meant. This was not the time for them to show how powerful their equipment was. Thus, each of them removed whatever they had that increased damage, working with the bare minimum as best as they could. Quite a few of them even went as far as to remove all their equipment, revealing their torso. Unfortunately, because their figure followed what they had in real life, many found a chunk of gut hanging there.

“Hup!” Another Fighter heaved, using both his arms to pick up a monster, only for it to slam head-first onto the rock. Players raised their middle fingers at the Fighter, and even Gu Fei shook his head vigorously.

Thereafter, a third, fourth, fifth, etc. made similar failed attempts… Gu Fei was on the verge of falling asleep. There were not many people who chose to play as Fighters in Parallel World to begin with, and an even smaller portion of them had made it to level 40. Within this subset, an even smaller pack was capable of solo grinding monsters five levels above theirs. Simply put, there was just this handful of Fighters in the huge crowd present, and it just so happened that these few were struggling with completing this minor task; a good 80% of the attempts ended up with the monsters crashing right onto the rocky outcrop. The Fighters were also in anguish at this, for none of them had ever practiced doing anything like this before! It was nothing but a large rocky outcrop and not a plateau. Certain parts of it sloped, pitted, and slanted, so none of them could simply just toss the monsters up and be done with the task. It was necessary for them to toss the monsters right into position accurately, and this position was a spot none of these Fighters had sight of. All they could do was gauge where Gu Fei was standing and make their attempts accordingly, but it was just regrettable that none of their senses was so refined as all of them failed even after spending a long time with the task.

The crowd’s eyes followed the monsters that went soaring through the sky in every direction, sighing infrequently at this display. Gu Fei watched all this and felt that the Fighters were just tossing the monsters randomly. Uncertain of just when they would manage to make a proper throw, he simply pulled out his friends list and searched for Eternal Dominion. “Where are you?”

“Strolling around.” Eternal Dominion was searching for business, which he humbly called strolling.

“Stop that. Come over to the Wilderness Camp and help out,” Gu Fei said.

Eternal Dominion perked up. There’s usually business to attend to when Gu Fei asks for help! There was no further development with that matter Gu Fei had previously called him over for, so Eternal Dominion had no idea what to do now as well!

Thus, he did not ask further questions and just hurried over to the Wilderness Camp, asking Gu Fei where he was at on the said grinding map.

“A huge rocky outcrop. That’s where I’ll be.”

Eternal Dominion arrived at the Wilderness Camp and quickly spotted the mass of players surrounding the 9527 rocky outcrop.

“He’s surrounded!” Eternal Dominion got excited as he started calculating how much he would earn for each kill here, considering how large this mob was. However, when he got closer, he realized that Gu Fei was sitting all calm and composed atop the outcrop, not looking in the least bit like someone trapped. Meanwhile, there were monsters infrequently shooting up in the sky, creating quite the spectacular sight.

Eternal Dominion strove to squeeze his way through, and the players whom he tried squeezing past all turned to let him through the moment they saw that he was a Fighter. Reality proved that those Fighters present were not up to the given task as none of them was lucky enough to resolve the matter. Everyone had enough seeing how long they were taking to muddle their way through this.

Eternal Dominion’s arrival gave the crowd an impression of a savior descending into their midst, despite none of them being aware just who this person was.

Gu Fei had quite the range of vision standing so far above the masses, so he had long since spotted Eternal Dominion coming over. He waved at the Fighter shuffling through the crowd.

Eternal Dominion waved back as he continued to make his way over.

“Toss a monster to me.” Gu Fei pointed the small mob of monsters near the rocky outcrop that the other players had pulled over, looking like a corral of monsters these Fighters were sharing for practice.

Eternal Dominion went forward. He moved to grab hold of one when Gu Fei reminded him. “Go easy on it. I only need you to throw it up here while inflicting as little damage as possible.”

Eternal Dominion paused, deftly shed his equipment, and grabbed a monster. With a wave of his arms, the monster was tossed in the air as per the rest of the attempts, except that it landed squarely right by Gu Fei’s feet.

Applause thundered.

Eternal Dominion was nonplussed as to why this applause happened. After recovering from this moment, he cupped his hands at the corners of his mouth and shouted to Gu Fei. “What did you call me over for?!”

“It’s fine already!” Gu Fei shouted back. The players were still applauding; there was no way that he could be heard without raising his voice.

“What?!” Unknown if Gu Fei did not do what Eternal Dominion did, but despite shouting deafeningly, Eternal Dominion could not catch a word Gu Fei said.

“I said it’s fine!” Gu Fei hollered once more, and this time, Eternal Dominion heard it clearly. He was left feeling stunned.

The monster that had landed by Gu Fei’s feet began moving. Getting to its feet, the monster was now searching for its aggro target. Since the monster did not sustain too much damage previously, and the threat generated was hardly significant, all it took was a few stabs from Gu Fei’s sword before he successfully redirected its aggro to himself. Currently, a majority of the players crowding the rocky outcrop absolutely had no idea what Gu Fei was doing and only chose to hang around because they were curious as to what he was doing. The moment Gu Fei managed to peel off aggro and maintain his threat in those few moves, plenty of Warriors nodded their heads approvingly. This Mage is rather good at being a MT. They were all immediately a little confounded after this thought passed, however. Is there ever a Mage that could be a MT?

What happened after was the real lesson in its actuality. Just like what he had done before, Gu Fei continued explaining his actions as he fought the monster. It was at this time when quite a number of clueless players began chattering. The crowd buzzed, and many players could only see Gu Fei’s lips move but could not hear what he was saying. Barks of admonishment were thrown, and curses were soon flung in every direction.

The players thronging was in chaos, but even without anyone stepping out to maintain order, they all soon became quiet, as everyone’s eyes were now drawn to him. The Mage was not lecturing at the moment, but was instead demonstrating a very vivid and flashy swordplay, which quickly captivated everyone present. Once everybody was breathlessly staring at this display, Gu Fei cleared his throat. “Now that you’re all settled, let’s officially begin the real demonstration.”

Gu Fei started from the top and showed every move in the fighting routine, exhibiting and explaining as he went along.

This very instance was historically that one day Wilderness Camp saw the highest number of players present, and it was also historically the quietest day in it.

The breeze, a single sword at work, and Gu Fei’s voice explaining things as he went about his demonstration were all that could be heard.

Using plain and simple words, Gu Fei needed not pull out technical terms. Even those latecomers that were all confused as to what was happening quickly realized what they were witnessing and were all dumbfounded by it, their eyes fixed on the display before them.

Nevertheless, quite a good chunk of this monster’s HP had been wasted during the commotion before, so the lesson was abruptly interrupted half way through. Gu Fei shot a quick glance to Eternal Dominion below, indicating for that man to throw him up another monster.

As it turned out, the monsters that they had been corralled beside the rocky outcrop were all cleaned out, so these players quickly went looking for monsters beyond. Now that everybody knew what they were doing here, the whole process went smoothly. Pulling a monster, they brought it right over to Eternal Dominion, who then grabbed onto it and tossed it right up, letting Gu Fei leash the aggro and continue his explanation…

Once that monster was killed off, Gu Fei did not bother asking the crowd further questions but, instead, gestured for another monster. He repeated the whole process once more for the players present before sheathing his sword. “Alright. Everybody should have a good idea at this point, right?”

The people nodded vigorously. Standing from his vantage point, Gu Fei felt that the crowd was a field of flowers swaying in the breeze.

“A lot of you joined us late, so you guys might not know about the two key points I’ve highlighted before. First, job classes whose Agility remain unadjusted will have to at least pour in eight levels worth of that stat. More Agility means much better control. As for job classes that have their Agility values modified, you’ll have to do the calculations yourself; second, the weapon for this fighting routine must at least the length of a single-handed longsword, otherwise there’s no way you can achieve this efficiency.”

This one utterance was like tossing a stone into a tranquil lake, creating thousands of ripples. Going according to Gu Fei’s strict requirements, pretty much all these gamers would be unable to use this fighting routine. The job classes that had plenty of Agility like Thieves, Archers, and Fighters would all use weapons that did not fit the requirement, whereas job classes that used one-handed swords like the Warriors, Knights, or whose weapons’ reach was even longer than a one-handed sword, such as the Mages or Priests, would hardly have enough of the Agility required. As a result, his fighting routine was essentially useless since no one would be able to make use of it.

Those already aware of this fact intended to first learn it before making further plans, but a substantial number of the latecomers were a little displeased with this. Having confusedly followed along this matter for such a long time, they wasted quite a good chunk of their time and emotional investment in this. It was as if the roast duck they had been looking forward so much arrived on their table finally, only to discover that their chopsticks were halved, making it impossible for them to snag any chunk of the meat with it; none of them was happy in the least at this outcome.

And so, the whole lot of them descended into chaos again, with some people begging and crying while others making an uproar. All of them were ultimately hoping that Gu Fei would be able to solve this problem. However, none attempted to threaten the man by exerting their numerical superiority, for none of these people was familiar with one another, and everybody knew just the identity of this hero and what he was capable of.

Before Gu Fei could give them an answer, Eternal Dominion already leaped right onto the rocky outcrop with a Swallow Dropkick, and had clambered atop in a few deft moves as he flashed a thumbs up at Gu Fei. “To think you could come up with such a wonderful way of earning money, just how did you develop your brain like that? I’m totally impressed.”

“What do you mean?” Gu Fei was mystified.

Eternal Dominion had his arms opened grandly, facing the crowd and booming, “Everyone, please settle down!”

Nobody knew who this Fighter was, but they recognized him as the very same man who had successfully been tossing the monsters up onto the rocky outcrop, and given how he had successfully climbed his way up with such ease, he showed a level of dexterity that nobody present could achieve, so the crowd began to simmer down and hear what this expert had to say.

“After that performance, I’m sure everyone is very clear that their grinding efficiency will increase by two or three folds using this fighting routine. Even though I know everyone here is unable to achieve this due to the harsh requirements mentioned, there’s no need for any of you to worry. We will soon be pushing out a routine that’s even more targeted – one which is in accordance to your job class, your stat point distribution, and a particular monster… Every such routine—” Eternal Dominion abruptly stopped at this point of his speech as he turned his head over to Gu Fei and whispered, “How much should we price this?”

Gu Fei was dumbfounded and had long been in a state of fugue.

Eternal Dominion saw that he was not reacting, but he could not possibly retract his statement now that the players below were still left in suspense, so he raised a finger high in the air and soon pointed it to the closest player after a moment of thought, addressing him, “Every routine will be yours for the price of 99 gold coins. WOW! That’s too cheap – not even 100 gold coins! Brothers, sisters, what are you waiting for? Seize this opportunity and order now! Take out your writing materials and write down your job class, stat point distribution, and weapon! We’ll tailor-make a routine just for you. The number 1 slayer, Thousand Miles Drunk, will be the one developing this unique routine to teach you. It’s guaranteed that you’ll learn and grasp it, so what are any of you waiting for? Quick get your names in right now!”

As Eternal Dominion delivered his fervent speech, Gu Fei was shocked to the point he had no idea what he should say. The crowd was silent as well. Gu Fei was just about to lift his leg and kick Eternal Dominion off the rocky outcrop when a player’s hand shot right up into the air, yelling, “Sign me up!”

Now that someone was taking the lead, there were suddenly a lot of others expressing their interest, too, and a countless number of hands shot up in the air, each of them shouting their intention to ‘sign up’. Eternal Dominion was elated with the scene before him. Standing where he was, he continued shouting, “Alright, everyone, keep it down! Listen to me clearly!”

This shouting went on for quite some time before everything became quiet again, albeit the buzzing did not cease. It was apparent that the crowd was all heated by what they had heard and could no longer easily compose themselves any longer.

“Everyone, listen to me. Because we are in a hurry today, we did not carry the registration form with us. Thus, if everybody would please use their quill and paper to write down their information. Please include your name, job class, equipment, and stat point distribution. Let me emphasize again: the key stats we want to know is your Agility. From what we’ve seen from our spokesman Thousand Miles Drunk, I’m sure everybody can tell that our fighting routine is closely related to Agility, so we need to find out your Agility before we can create the most suitable routine for you. Alright, that’s all we have to say. Once you fill out all the necessary information, hand it over to me and that’s it. You can contact either Thousand Miles Drunk or me later via mail. Oh, I almost forgot to introduce myself. My IGN’s Eternal Dominion.”

“Eternal Dominion!” A round of exclamations sounded. With a reputation as one of the Five Unyielding Experts, he was behind just to a single man, but standing above tens of thousands. Of course, that one man he was behind was Thousand Miles Drunk.

“That’s right; it’s me. Seems that everyone here has heard my name before! Relax, everyone! We run our business based on the core principle of trust, so as long as you hand in your form and details, we’ll surely contact you. We’re not going to collect any sort of deposit, so remember to bring the necessary funds when we’re ready to teach you. Alright, I think that’s all there is to this. Anyone have further questions?” Eternal Dominion asked.

Everybody had seen all sorts of things that could be sold, but this was the first time anyone had heard of selling some fighting routine. Even though they found it strange, there was no doubt that the fighting style Gu Fei had taught them before was the real deal. If they were truly able to master it,100 gold coins would not be expensive at all.

As for all the terms and conditions Eternal Dominion mentioned, nobody thought that there was anything suspicious about them, so none of them hesitated any longer and each brought out their writing materials to submit their names. A good portion of them chose to hand it over to Eternal Dominion by hand; everyone was more at ease when they did it like this as it felt more like a real transaction.

“Don’t worry, everyone. We’ll separate everyone’s details by groups and contact you all through the system. You guys need only to do is check your mail from time to time to see if you receive our reply. It’s fine even if you delay it, for we have no expiry date for this. We just have to keep in contact with another, and that will do! Ha ha ha!”

“How about today? Will there be anything arranged today?” Some of these players could hardly wait.

“I’m afraid today is impossible. After all, we need to rest and prepare as well! Everyone, please head back. We’ll soon be in contact; don’t worry about it!” Eternal Dominion patiently explained.

Those players that had submitted their names and information each left with a sense of great anticipation. Why would any of these players be in the mood to grind at this point? All of them were busy dreaming of the day when they would grasp their personalized routine and work hard once that time came. Wilderness Camp, which had always been teeming with players, actually turned into a true wilderness after this. Some players who had no idea of what had transpired still came over to grind, and they simply could not fathom what exactly had happened when they saw how barren the place was of people.

Eternal Dominion hugged that whole pile of registration forms, hastily shoving it into his dimensional pocket. He lifted his head and, with a glance, saw Gu Fei still standing atop the rocky outcrop, posing like an immortal existence.

Eternal Dominion squinted in the daylight as he looked at the man, exclaiming after he confirmed that he was still alive. “That’s too incredible! No wonder you’re lauded as a genius. It makes sense why your Gu family is doing so well in the business sphere; I bet everybody in your family is adept when it comes to business. Just awesome!”

“I did a rough calculation, and I believe we’ve received about a thousand names or so. There should also be a bunch going to send their details by mail, so if a person pays 99 gold coins, with a thousand players—heck, even two thousand… that’s… that’s just too d*mn much. How are we gonna split this?” Eternal Dominion was almost giddy from the ecstasy he was feeling.

Gu Fei took a deep breath and lowered his head to regard Eternal Dominion. “I think you’re the real genius here!” He truly had not expected Eternal Dominion to be such a quick-thinker when it came to earning money. From how this crowd responded to this promotion, this particular business definitely had great potential. However, the problem was that Eternal Dominion had been far too bold with his words; Gu Fei’s students only gave him six questions a day, but Eternal Dominion collected almost two thousand questions at one go. Just how was he going at this rate? Gu Fei had the impulse to slay the man where he stood when he leaped off the rocky outcrop.

Brother Assist was dumbfounded as he enjoyed the entire scene before him. At the moment, he was running over excitedly, incoherently commending, “Incredible! Just too incredible!”