Virtual World: Close Combat Mage
chapter-717-30041322

Chapter 717: Chapter 717 – Working Together

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

“What are you going to do?” Everyone was looking at Xi Xiaotian. Gu Fei was very irritated by this. How did that swindler lass become the one in charge?

Xi Xiaotian did not bother to be courteous, counting out her fingers as she explained, “Even though the situation sounds really simple, there are actually plenty of fine details that need to be carefully deliberated. The idea that I came up with would first consider the current circumstances that we’re in. During the City Wars event, there’s sure to be plenty of open fighting and unseen underlying turmoil between the guilds. With everything in the state of deadlock presently, looking for Brave Surge to discuss this sort of collaboration would have a high chance of cheating our way into his confidence. However, it is also because of the current state of affairs that means that Brave Surge would be very suspicious of other guilds setting up potential traps if he was the sort that was more distrustful of others.”

“Why is it so complicated?” Svelte Dancer, a lady who enjoyed things to be clear-cut and straightforward, was beginning to feel vexed when she realized how convoluted things were.

Xi Xiaotian only chuckled as she continued, “There are two possible scenarios out of this, and we have no idea which one Brave Surge would choose. It is very possible that he might choose the more appropriate option to wait and see, so we’ll need some people to help give that man a bit of a push.”

“What do you mean by that?” Everyone was confused.

“Did everyone picked up the mission to assassinate Brave Surge just now?” Xi Xiaotian asked.

“That’s right!” Everyone nodded.

“I did not,” Xi Xiaotian shook her head. “The target I’ve picked was the third name on the list, Foe-Herder.”

“What you mean to say is…” Those who were quick-witted had already had a vague idea of what she was planning to do.

“We need to do a round of marketing. We can’t accomplish our ‘quest’, so we’re attempting to auction it off to the two guilds now.” Xi Xiaotian finally told everyone her real plan. “Brave Surge might hesitate if he were to hear about this news, but the moment he hears that we’ve also sought after Foe-herder’s aid as well, he would surely bite the bullet and go through with it even if he was skeptical, and the same could be said for Foe-herder as well. Actually, if we were able to get Oathless Sword instead, the rivalry between those two guilds is a lot more vigorous, making it that much easier to exploit. Unfortunately, the mission for Oathless Sword was temporarily unavailable for me when I tried to pick it up just now, possibly due to someone’s recently failed attempt.”

“Would… Would this work?” Everyone was astonished.

“Actually, if we have enough strength on our side, we could all grab even more guild leaders, gather them all together and eliminate them all once and for all. However, we lack the manpower right now to achieve anything more; considering that these are all players who are guild leaders, there’s no way we would be able to instantly finish them all off easily. Take now, for example. We need five players working together in order to insta-kill Brave Surge. So if Foe-herder were to join us, we might not even have enough manpower to deal with him afterward. However, it could already be considered a success if we can use this opportunity to slay Brave Surge!” Xi Xiaotian declared.

“Isn’t such a method a little too despicable?” Gu Fei asked.

“We’re simply too weak to go up against a thousand-man guild. How would we have any chance to succeed if we do not resort to a slightly distasteful method like this? Do you really think they would accept a 1v1 duel with you?” Xi Xiaotian retorted.

“Argh, why are we still harping on this for!? If we can lure that person out and that gives us a chance to assassinate him, who cares what method we use? But how are we even going to get in contact with these guild leaders? We don’t even have any means to send a message to them!” Svelte Dancer said.

“We’ve no choice but to make the trip in person. However, I am unable to go to two different locations at one time. Someone will have to volunteer to meet up with the other. Who’s up for this?” Xi Xiaotian asked.

“I can’t do this. It’s not like me to do this sort of thing,” Svelte Dancer was the first to step down. Everyone nodded. It was more appropriate for Svelte Dancer to buy things. For her to be selling things, on the other hand… Most people would realize there was something amiss. Actually, it was not that people who were rich like Svelte Dancer would not cherish the value of things. Equipment and items that Svelte Dancer no longer had any use for were not something that she would just randomly dump on the streets. Anything that could be sold would be sold, but it was unfortunate that most people already had a fixed impression of how a top pay-to-win player like Svelte Dancer would be. A good number of players would most definitely find it a bit strange if she were to come out and host this sort of auction.

“Hmm, there’s something that I have to mention, and that even though this was a scheme that we’ve come up with because we’ve got these missions, it is just like what someone had mentioned before; it’s a little despicable. As such, whomever who steps up to this task might very well find yourself becoming a target for these large guilds’ revenge, so you must be mentally prepared for this eventuality,” Xi Xiaotian reminded everyone once more.

“What’s so scary about revenge? I’ll go!” Cirrus stood up when he realized that Gu Fei and he were the only two men in this group of players. With Gu Fei being a public figure, making it impossible for him to step up to the task, he felt that he would really be throwing his own face away if he did not step up to volunteer.

“Okay, what are you prepared to say?” Xi Xiaotian still wanted to assess him for his viability.

Cirrus thought about it for a moment before he said, “I’ll say that our guild had managed to get a hold of a vital quest, but because we are just a small guild, we lack the ability to accomplish it. Thus, we now plan to contact a few of the large guilds and sell this quest to them. If they are interested, I’ll invite them to meet at a set of coordinates. Will that do?”

“No. There’s something very important that you must mention: The quest is only available to the guild leader. Without this condition, what will we do if a large guild just randomly sends a bunch of men over to represent the guild?” Xi Xiaotian said.

“Okay… So how should I express that? Tell them it’s a requirement for the quest?” Cirrus asked.

“That’s right. However, the other party might request to directly contact our guild leader, and have a direct conversation about the matter. How would you answer that?” Xi Xiaotian asked.

“Well… Tell them that our guild leader… Has turned off all incoming messages?” Cirrus was having difficulties finding an acceptable response.

Everyone laughed. It was evident that this reason would not work.

“At such a time, the most reliable solution would be to get someone to pretend to be this guild leader of ours. This person will have to be a neutral third party player, and this would allow them to contact each other. Because all of us are part of the opposing forces, none of us can step up to this role, and this represents a rather difficult hurdle that we have to get past.”

“What are you looking at me for? Do you want me to pretend to be this guild leader? That’s impossible!” Gu Fei said.

“Of course not. What I mean is for Amethyst Rebirth to lend us some of their ladies, so we’ll then be able to free up one of the players here to act as the guild leader.”

Everyone was a little overwhelmed. What had been a rather simple matter was now an intricately planned arrangement that had plenty of steps after Xi Xiaotian was done considering every fine detail. Everyone quickly realized just how professional this lady was when it came to the art of swindling, demonstrating both her skill and expertise by how thoroughly she considered every faucet of this scheme.

“If you really want to make it foolproof, the best is if we get the two players making contact to temporarily quit the guild as well, so in case it was really as what Sword Demon had said, in the event that the other parties are inside the encampment, and we can’t go in without exposing ourselves,” Xi Xiaotian added.

“So what you mean to say is you wish to borrow three ladies from Amethyst Rebirth?” Gu Fei was a little conflicted about this because Xi Xiaotian’s method made him feel uncomfortable. However, it was indeed a necessary ruse that players would play on the opposing parties. To put it in more polite terms, this was no more than luring a snake out of its hole, and there was really nothing that he could really identify as underhanded. None of the others had any sort of reaction to Xi Xiaotian’s idea here, aside from Svelte Dancer’s impatience over how tiresome and long-winded everything was.

“Quick, what are you waiting for!? Go and find the people we’ll need to do this!” Svelte Dancer only cared about speed, and was not in the bit bothered with Gu Fei’s internal discord as she pressed him to hurry.

Gu Fei hesitated some more, but he ultimately felt that he should not let his emotions get in the way of getting the job done. There was no reason for him to feel so nauseated by this plan, considering this to be a possible method that Young Master Han could come up with if he swapped sides. At the end of the day, his hesitance stemmed from his many opinions toward Xi Xiaotian, but when it came to such things, it should not matter, right?

Gu Fei finally sent a message out across his guild channel, requesting for three volunteers to go and join the new guild.

“What’s the matter?” Gu Fei was only a figurehead in Amethyst Rebirth, merely the guild leader in name. Of course, all the ladies in the guild essentially only listen to July.

“Just a bit of rearrangement for our battle strategy. We need more helpers to work with us, and we currently lack three players,” Gu Fei said.

“Oh? Who wants to go?” July let her guildmates decide for themselves.

The moment the ladies that heard it was part of a battle strategy, none of them had any confidence to step up, afraid that they would only end up messing things up for the guild, so nobody made a noise.

“Actually, we just need the three to make up the numbers once more. They don’t have to do anything; After changing their guild, they could continue to questing in the city,” Gu Fei said.

The moment these ladies heard what Gu Fei said, their warm-heartedness was fully on display as a good number of them volunteered to do the guild swap. Gu Fei was fair, choosing the first three names that popped up, swiftly removing them from the guild. This was basically the very first time he exercised the privileges that he had as the guild leader.

“Sword Demon!” Gu Fei messaged Sword Demon. “I have three players here to join your guild for a bit.”

“Where did you find these three?”

“We’re temporarily getting three of your guildmates to leave the guild, and these three ladies from Amethyst Rebirth are to replace their presence while we continue with our plan,” Gu Fei said.

“Okay, get them to go apply to join us!” Sword Demon said. Requesting to apply to join a guild required players to head over to the Hall of Guild Creation, and a guild leader from far away would get a message from the Hall itself, so accepting these new members did not require the guild leader to make the trip back.

“What exactly are you guys up to anyway?” Sword Demon asked at the same time. The men that he had brought out with him could be considered to be the elite members of Extremely Heaven Defying, all of them experts in their own right. However, they were currently observing an encampment while in hiding, waiting for a chance to strike while trying to come up with a plan; they were hardly making any progress on their end, being even more inhibited than the city assaulters. Meanwhile, on Gu Fei’s end, the players that he had with him were simply the remaining stragglers left in the guild, yet they seemed to be very active. Sword Demon had no idea why he was feeling a little sour about it.

Gu Fei proceeded to explain Xi Xiaotian’s plan to Sword Demon, and the men beside Sword Demon also huddled in to hear what was being said as Sword Demon relayed everything to them. When Gu Fei was done, Southern Lone Blade was very impressed with the plan, exposing just how similar his background as a larcenist was with the swindler, sincerely impressed with the scheme at play here.

“This plan sounds really interesting. I feel that since they are going to go ahead with this, we should just scale it up in size; Won’t they have enough manpower if we were to go over and join them in this? Let’s wrangle up a few more guild leaders as well, and kill them all in one go. What do you think?” Southern Lone Blade was now fueling the flames, discontented with an inch and now wanted to take the whole mile instead.

“Miles, wait a moment. We’re discussing some things here,” Sword Demon replied to Gu Fei before turning around to speak to Southern Lone Blade, “Do you think it would work?”

“It will most definitely work. I’m sure you should know that we’re very well versed when it comes to the assassination part of such a plan…” Southern Lone Blade was not ashamed of mentioning their past.

“I wonder how amazing the reward would be if we were to kill off so many guild leaders one time over?” Brother Assist was very moved by the idea as well.

“If each of us grabs a guild leader, I wonder how many heads would we be able to take,” Flame Singed Clothes began counting.

“It would be a little too suspicious if we invite too many guild leaders. I think just the large guilds alone will do. How many level 6 guilds are there here in Yunduan City?” Southern Lone Blade and his men were all foreigners to these parts, so none of them had a very thorough grasp of the guilds here in Yunduan City.

“Five!” Sword Demon answered.

“Then just the five would do!” Southern Lone Blade said. “There’s no rush with the encampment here. The way I see things, all we’re doing here is monitoring the place anyway. Why don’t we head over there and assassinate some guild leaders?”

Sword Demon was more inclined toward the idea the more he heard it. That’s right! This plan does not sound too shabby, and has the conditions to scale. Assassinating all of them in one go would accomplish plenty of missions at once. It’s very appropriate.

“Fine!” Sword Demon nodded and messaged Gu Fei. “There’s no rush. We’re gonna come over and coordinate things with all of you.”

“Ah?” Gu Fei had not expected such a result.

“Who’s over there with you guys?” Sword Demon asked.

Gu Fei reported everyone’s names.

“Call Royal and the others over as well… Oh wait, get them to grab the mission before they come out.” Sword Demon said.

“What mission are they getting?”

“Get a few more guild leaders, let’s make this big!” Sword Demon decided.

“Fierce. Too fierce…” Gu Fei muttered to himself when he realized he was evidently the only good person here.

“Okay, here’s the latest update on this matter. Sword Demon and the others have decided they will come over and give us a hand. We’re also going to increase the scale of the plan, and we’ll target the top five guilds altogether, wiping them all out!” Gu Fei announced.

“Top five? We can’t grab Oathless Sword’s mission, while I’ve had dealings with Colored Clouds’ Gu Xiaoshang before, so I sincerely doubt she would fall for this ruse because her guild is more focused on enjoying themselves. They may have developed into one of the larger guilds here, but they do not have any intention of vying for the top spot,” Xi Xiaotian said.

“Then just the guild leaders from the four large guilds will do.”

“We don’t have the mission for Oathless Sword!”

“Not having the quest does not mean we can’t kill him…” Gu Fei dismissed.

Ruthless! Each one is more ruthless than the last! Now that Cirrus was a part of this group, he had slowly gotten a better understanding of the members, while Bashful Countenance stood by the sidelines staring at everyone, horrified.

“In that case, we can’t randomly pick up a quest. We’ll need to plan this out properly!” Xi Xiaotian said.

Thus, the guild Extremely Heaven Defying began to gather, prepared to officially carry out their first ever group exercise. Out of the three newly added ladies, two had expressed their wish to continue peacefully be the fill-ins they were that kept the guild afloat and stay in the city, while one had expressed her wish to come out and participate in this operation.

“Hello, Will-low!” Gu Fei greeted Will-low. She was considered to be someone that he had known for quite some time, but it was just that they barely kept in contact with each other, so he had not gone out of his way to greet her before when all the ladies were together with them.

“Mister guild leader,” Will-low had also used the same greeting that the ladies from Amethyst Rebirth had used on him before. 30% of it was for show, but a good 70% of doing so was just to tease him.

“You seem to have put on weight,” Gu Fei said.

“Oh? You can tell?” Will-low was a lady who was extremely skinny, so she actually felt gratified when she heard his comment.

“Yeah, I felt as if I can put you down to the ground with a single slap before, but now, it looks like I’ll need two slaps before you would fall over,” Gu Fei mused.

This guy is really too violent… Bashful Countenance hid behind her cousin Brother Assist, quietly telling him that she wanted to quit the guild.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, these are all good people,” Brother Assist assured.

“Ahem. Will killing people during the City Wars result in them dropping their equipment after? We could still earn a bit of extra income if they do drop equipment. These are all guild leaders, so they would surely be worth a pretty penny,” Southern Lone Blade’s occupational disease appeared.

“Since we’re gonna go big, why don’t we make this auction a real thing? We can kill them after we collect their money!” Xi Xiaotian was also excited now.

“Are you sure they are all good people?” Bashful Countenance asked her cousin.

Brother Assist could not explain this away, so he quickly stepped up and got into the mix. “Let’s focus on the mission.”

“You’re all such a mess,” Gu Fei was angered as well.

“Don’t get angry, boss. We were all just kidding around, haha!” Glue quickly explained.

“It’s time to get serious; this is the City Wars event! When the time comes, we need to kill as many people as possible!” Gu Fei barked.

Bashful Countenance tugged at her cousin, not willing to let go. She was very insistent.

“Let’s all just talk about the mission, alright? Please,” Brother Assist was almost about to cry as he tried to appease Bashful Countenance. “Okay, stop with this nonsense, cousin. Wait till later even if you want to quit. There are only 20 members in the guild now. Won’t the guild end up disbanding thanks to your departure?”

The kind-hearted cousin was finally convinced by this reasoning, while she continued to hide behind her cousin.

“I suggest that we come up with a name for this exercise. Shall we call it Operation Decapitation? We are taking the heads off of all the leaders from the large guilds!” Fireball was getting invigorated. He enjoyed being a part of this sort of flashy things.

“Ahem. Okay, time to discuss the business at hand!” Being the guild leader, Sword Demon finally spoke up, and this rag-tag group of players from all backgrounds gave Sword Demon face. Seeing that he was about to speak, all of them became quiet.

“We’ve got four guild leaders right now. Oathless Sword, Brave Surge, Foe-herder, and Black Index Finger. Does everyone here know who they are?”

“Yes! How coincidental! Do all guild leaders have to have four characters in their names? Look at my ex-guild, Sakurazaka Moony, hehe. Though that’s not the case anymore. Boss Sword Demon only has two characters to his name, though now that Drunk bro is a guild leader, and he has a four character name too. Strange, why do you guys all like having names with four characters?” Fireball had strayed further and further away from the topic the more he spoke. Everyone was giving him the side-eye.

“Do you have any qualifications to talk about names?” Gu Fei asked.

Fireball froze, sweating. His biggest failure in this game was his name.

“Can you guys stop interrupting?” Sword Demon wiped his sweat. Leading this guild was hard work.

Everyone quietly expressed their decision to give him the floor once more.

“Because our targets are all prominent figures, we cannot treat any of them like they are just any other player. Our goal is to kill them in a single attack, insta-killing them the moment we act. Now, let us take a look at the information that we’ve collected on these people.” Sword Demon gestured, as Brother Assist happily took out his notebook filled with all the stats and information. Everyone came forward and surrounded him, and Brother Assist felt what it was like to be hit on the head.

Xi Xiaotian took a look at the information and quickly pointed out, “Brother Assist, have you not updated your information? This, this and that one there. These three pieces of equipment from Oathless Sword have long been replaced.”

“Is that so?” Brother Assist blinked.

“It’s the same for Brave Surge as well. He hasn’t used these two pieces of equipment for a very long time. Look, this is the equipment that he has now,” Xi Xiaotian pulled out her own notes and showed him.

“Is that so?” Brother Assist quickly took it in his hands, and began poring over it thirstily.

“How about Foe-herder and Black Index Finger’s equipment?” Brother Assist continued to ask.

“I don’t have any information on those two,” Xi Xiaotian shook her head.

“It’s been so long since I returned to Yunduan City, so even the information I’ve gathered is dated,” Brother Assist expressed his remorse.

“It’s going to be quite troublesome if we don’t have a good idea of what equipment they have,” Slyris mentioned.

“It’s not troublesome at all. Sword Demon and I can each insta-kill those two. We’ve got plenty of people in on this operation now. The two of us can surreptitiously blend in among the people,” Gu Fei said.

“It’s still more than a little obvious if a Mage was found keeping his or her face covered,” Slyris reminded.

“All four of these guild leaders could recognize you, right?” Everyone glanced at Gu Fei.

Gu Fei was crestfallen. Do I really have to stay on the sidelines and fart in the wind while engaged in this all-important Operation Decapitation?

“Actually, if you were to put on some serious make-up, people might not easily identify you immediately,” Luo Luo suddenly quipped.

“Our guild’s Miss May is a professional make-up artist. If we call her to help you, she could at least make it such that people would not be able to easily recognize you without close scrutiny. By that time, all you need to do is stand among some people, change out your equipment, keep your face uncovered, I reckon there’s no way that anyone would take note of you. You just might be able to blend in like that!” Luo Luo said.

“Miss May? Who’s Miss May?” Gu Fei sifted through his memories to recall how she looked.

“May’s Bloom. How many of the ladies have you even met in the guild?” Luo Luo derided him.

“May, June, July… Why are there so many ladies in the guild with months in their name?” Gu Fei was surprised.

“Who are you calling ladies in confinement!?” The ladies present were all riled.