Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

“Look, it’s that log cabin right ahead,” Gu Fei pointed toward their final destination to his three companions.

“Drunk bro, do you think there could be danger here?” Fireball was checking out their surroundings quite nervously.

“Of course there would be,” Gu Fei nodded with certainty. Skygazing Under the Tree had sent his men to disclose information about a potential ambush to him, very clearly notifying him that Colored Clouds had already sent men here. Furthermore, Young Master Han was currently hanging around with those people, and given his methods, why would he not completely utilize such an opportunity? Then there was Skygazing Under the Tree who was pretending to be a good samaritan. The man might have a small guild, but his ambition was sizeable to actually dare to compete with Carouse, Colored Clouds and other such large guilds. Who knew where that guild would be lying in wait around here, spying on him!?

“Little Willow, this place is dangerous. Quick, hold my hand,” Fireball instructed Will-low very seriously.

The three of them threw a side glance at the man in unison, with Will-low giggling, “There’s no need for that. I’m not afraid.”

“Is that so? But I’m very afraid. Give me some of your strength!” Fireball said.

“How about I give you a kick?” Gu Fei interjected. Fireball was really becoming more and more impudent right now.

“Are you courting death, you rascal!?” Svelte Dancer no longer cared to give him face any longer, wearing a serious expression when she asked him this question.

Fireball finally understood that he had overstepped his boundaries so he quickly tried to explain himself, “No no no. I just saw that the atmosphere is a little tense, so I decided to diffuse the tension for everyone by cracking a few jokes. Since no one likes them, I won’t do it the next time.”

Everyone took a deep breath. Fireball’s shamelessness was beyond just the garden variety. It was really and truly… Shameless.

“Okay, let’s get to it!” Gu Fei said.

“The reeds here are so tall, making it so convenient to hide ourselves in it. There’s no telling just how many people are out there lying in wait for us,” Will-low gave her assessment of the situation.

“Who knows, maybe we are already surrounded on all sides,” Gu Fei said.

“It’s hard to tell who’s the enemy! Who knows if the players currently hiding in the tall grass and bushes right now are here to ambush us or are just couples being intimate with each other?” Fireball finally said something that was not complete nonsense.

“It’s better to be safe than sorry, why don’t you just use your spells and clear our way through? It’s not like people would lose anything dying now anyway,” Svelte Dancer was actually quite the self-centered lady, and she was not particularly concerned with others she was unrelated to.

“That’s no good!” At the end of the day, Gu Fei was unable to bring himself to do something like that.

“Ah!” Fireball suddenly cried out as he quickly turned around, “Something got me!”

The others immediately spun around agilely as well. But there was nothing aside from the lush, well grown beds of tall reeds that grew everywhere around them. Fireball pointed to the back of his head and asked, “Was I shot?”

“Nope,” the three replied.

“Then what hit me?” Fireball was very puzzled. He looked down and actually found something by his feet. Fireball picked up a balled up piece of paper from the ground, and realized that there was something wrapped within. Carefully examining it, he saw it was a chunk of rock, but simply could not see how this rock could be construed as a weapon that could be lethal in any sense.

“Might be someone who… got careless?” WIll-low suggested. They were in a place where passions and emotions ran high, so for couples to end up flirting with each other, throwing items at one another, it was quite possible that Fireball had been subjected to an accidental hit.

“Wait a minute, the paper in your hand…” Gu Fei realized that there was something more to it.

Fireball had been focusing entirely on the rock, so when he heard Gu Fei prompt him, he quickly took a look at the paper and saw that it was not just a blank piece of paper: There were clearly circles and crosses drawn on it, though it was hard to tell what it all signified. Fireball tried to look at it vertically and horizontally, but he could not make sense of it at all. He handed the paper over to Gu Fei as he said, “Take a look.”

Gu Fei was also a little nonplussed after he examined the piece of paper, and Svelte Dancer was all the more clueless as well. However, it was Will-low who was the first to realize what she was looking at, pointing at the square box that had a series of numbers written in it that was drawn right inside a circle, “Everyone, check this out. Doesn’t this here look like the log cabin!? The numbers shown here are the coordinates.”

“Oh?” Everyone took note of their own coordinates before looking at the log cabin. Aside from a geographically challenged idiot like Royal God Call, the rest more or less could gauge the direction where the log cabin was situated and its coordinates more or less coincided with what was written down on that piece of paper.

“I understand it now. The markings of circles and crosses must be referring to the enemy’s positioning up ahead! Look at this here, and then the side note here, FS3. This must mean that there are 3 Mages there, and this ZS4 here means 4 Warriors. DZ refers to a Thief, while MS are Priests and QS means Knights. All of them are using the short-hand form names for all the various job classes that the forums use,” Will-low finally deciphered the piece of paper that they had been given.

“D*mn, so this was actually an attempt to give us information about the road ahead. Just who could be such a kind soul?” Fireball was astonished.

“Skygazing Under the Tree?” Gu Fei took a guess. He could not think of anyone else that would think of such an idea.

“Perhaps it’s falsified?” Will-low suggested.

“We’ll know if it’s really a fake once we give it a try. From our current position, there should be an ambush if we head out in this direction. But the job classes are not marked out, perhaps this means that this other party isn’t too thorough in their investigation. I’ll go take a look,” Gu Fei said.

“What about us?” The other three asked.

“You three can stay hidden over here first! Just from this makeshift map we were given, we can tell that there’s quite a lot of ambushes in this spot right here. We can also utilize the tall reeds to go about our business quietly,” Gu Fei answered.

“Go on quickly then, Drunk bro!” Fireball nodded his head.

“I’m off,” Gu Fei lifted his sword and arched his back, keeping his body hidden inside the tall reeds as he made his way toward the location that he had chosen. Aside from the coordinates of the log cabin being written on the piece of paper, there were no other coordinates provided for any of the other locations depicted. After all, the paper was not too large, so not much could be drawn on it. Simply going by just the ambushes that were drawn, it was hard to tell if there could be a certain degree of error on how it was represented. Gu Fei could only vaguely judge where the direction of the ambush could be, though he was not exactly worried about accidentally stumbling into it even if there were three to five players lying in wait.

Fireball was very excited to stay behind and hold their ground. He had lost the chance of being alone, just one man and one woman, but he now had the opportunity to be one man and two women huddled within the tall reeds.  Which man out here in Yunjiao Lakeside could boast something as magnificent as what I’m currently experiencing? Were it not for the fact that his messages would not get through, Fireball would have really wanted to reveal his present situation to the men from Forever in Flowers right now. However, because of the scare that he had gotten from before, Fireball did not dare to tease the ladies about this, and all he did was fantasize about it in his mind for the moment. In the end, he heard Svelte Dancer speak to Will-low, “There’s plenty of enemies out there, we should be more careful.”

“Yes, let’s go into Stealth!” Will-low said.

Svelte Dancer nodded her head, and the two activated their Stealth, disappearing into thin air.

“Hey!” Fireball panicked the moment he saw that he was suddenly all alone.

“What are you crying out for? I’m right beside you,” Svelte Dancer’s voice could be heard right next to him.

“Must you be in Stealth?” Fireball was in tears. At this rate, it was essentially no different from having no one around him even if there were one thousand ladies beside him!

“Safety first, don’t whine,” Svelte Dancer reproached.

“But what about me?” Fireball asked.

“If you’re so free, just dig out a hole and bury yourself in it!” Svelte Dancer snapped.

“Pfft…” The sound of a suppressed snicker could be heard from Will-low. Fireball was downcast, but he truly had nothing else to do, so he decided to lie down on the ground, “fine. I’ll go dig out a hole.”

Gu Fei was headed toward his target location, inching closer and closer with every step. He continued on until he felt like he had gone past the point of overshooting it.

No, there was apparently no ambush as depicted on the piece of paper that they had been given. However, Gu Fei did not have the talent that Young Master Han had when it came to reading maps and reflecting it through the in-game coordinates; he felt that there was a good chance that he might have veered off his destination without realizing, and that was why he changed a direction, and this time moved toward somewhere more concentrated. Gu Fei was convinced that even if he had strayed off a little this time, he would surely alert the ambushers when he passed by, which was why he began moving toward this direction.

He got nearer and nearer until he went past it further and further once more.

Gu Fei had completed yet another lap, yet he still saw no one. Deep in his heart, he felt that something was off. He was already very close to the log cabin, so even if the information was false, anyone who intended to ambush him should have noticed his presence by now. Why was there no movement in the least?

Gu Fei hurriedly contacted Svelte Dancer and the others, “How are things on your end? Something is a little strange here.”

“Strange? How so?” Svelte Dancer and the other two were all safe and sound, and Fireball had dug out a pit that was knee deep already.

“I’ve circled around the place, but I don’t see anyone. Even if this information we received was falsified, it really does look like there’s no ambush set up,” Gu Fei said.

“Should we come over?” Svelte Dancer asked.

Gu Fei hesitated. He was an expert when it came to fighting alone, but now that he was stuck in a four-man team, he truly had no idea when someone equally idea-less like Svelte Dancer asked him to come to a decision.

“Wait first,” That was the only reply Gu Fei could give. He carefully observed his surroundings once more, and suddenly noticed a hill behind him. The terrain here in Yunjiao Lakeside was not a flat plain with a lake in it; it was actually surrounded by hills on three sides. The first time he came here, Royal God Call the rascal was on the offensive while occupying the high ground afforded by the slopes here. On an even plane, the tall reeds would most definitely provide very good cover for players hiding within them, but would the same be said if someone were to position themselves up on that elevated slope?

“Oh crap!” Gu Fei had not forgotten that there was a certain magical tool in Young Master Han’s possession right now. A spyglass, something that should not even appear in the possession of the players, had been a key component of many of their battles. Take this maneuver of hiding in the reeds. Players might not have been able to discern this from afar when people were still around level 30, but now that Sharpshooters had access to the passive skill Eagle Eyes, and the existence of Young Master Han’s spyglass, there was a good possibility that they might have noticed the four of them arrive near Yunjiao Lakeside from their high ground. As for the solo expedition that Gu Fei went on, they would definitely have the ability to track his movements if they had the spyglass to keep an eye on him.

The ambush as depicted on the piece of paper might not be wrong, but the paper was not alive, while humans were; if the other party had a clear view of Gu Fei’s movement from the high ground, they very well might have the ability to reposition their men. Perhaps even the players who first drew on the piece of paper had not thought about this possibility.

“You guys should flee first!” Gu Fei quickly sent a message to the three.

“What’s the matter?” The three asked.

“We might have already been surrounded,” Gu Fei replied with this message as he tossed a Descending Wheel of Flames out. He figured that anyone around them should be the ambushers, and it was unlikely for couples in love to be anywhere nearby. But even after he threw the AoE spell out, his surroundings were still as quiet as ever, which Gu Fei found hard to believe. Just what was their enemy thinking of doing? Was there no ambush, or were they just withstanding the damage that he inflicted? Gu Fei did not pause to hesitate and ignited a Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno at the same spot that he had first thrown his spell. He even stood up from the patch of reeds that he had been crouched in, very visibly staring right at that area.

There was no movement or sound, and this quietness persisted. There was neither the flash of white light from people dying, nor the glow from a Priest’s Heal. Could there really have been no one here? Am I overthinking it too one-sidedly? Did they have no intention of ambushing me at all? But then, what was the deal with that piece of paper then? Could this just be a simple prank?

While Gu Fei was completely clueless as to what was happening, Skygazing Under the Tree and his men were unusually excited.

“He’s made his move; he has finally made his move,” Skygazing Under the Tree exclaimed with jubilation to his men, looking really proud of himself now that the plan he had deployed was becoming perfectly realized. Such a valuable quest must definitely be snatched back.

“With us leaking information, I do believe Thousand Miles Drunk should at least be able to conduct a surprise attack on them. Everyone shares the same advantage when in the tall reeds, yet it is still Thousand Miles Drunk who would hold the advantage despite having the lesser manpower. Haha, just think; now that they are all hiding among the reeds, would anyone be able to fend off a surprise attack from out of nowhere?” Skygazing Under the Tree said.

“But, how can we take back our quest this way?” One of his subordinates asked.

“Take note of Thousand Miles Drunk’s path of attack, and find an opportunity to get nearer to the log cabin. At the moment, someone from Carouse by the name of Beyond Thirty Miles is the quest holder, and I’ve already made arrangements over there. The moment we have our men interacting with the NPC, send me a message and I’ll give the order to initiate this operation. After killing Beyond Thirty Miles, the quest would be available for picking once more, and we can immediately do just that and expend a teleportation scroll right after to escape. Then, we can plan for the long term from there afterward.” Skygazing Under the Tree’s had planned this rather thoroughly. He was only borrowing Thousand Miles Drunk to stir up some chaos over by the log cabin. After all, given their capabilities, they simply did not have the means by which to get anywhere near the log cabin given how heavily guarded the place was.

—————————————————————————

As for things over by Beyond Thirty Miles, while he was holding onto the quest, it was hardly a secret among Colored Clouds. Skygazing Under the Tree had easily learned this information, and he already had someone undercover in Carouse who was right next to Beyond Thirty Miles right now. The moment they succeed here on their end, the undercover spy would reveal his identity and assassinate Beyond Thirty Miles…

Skygazing Under the Tree did a quick run through of everything in his mind once more and felt that everything was truly foolproof. All he needed to do now was wait for Thousand Miles Drunk to play his part and everything would fall into place. But after seeing Thousand Miles Drunk toss out two spells consecutively, and just when it looked like the skirmish had begun, Skygazing Under the Tree was suddenly skeptical, quickly contacting his spy in Colored Cloud, “What’s going on? Are they not fighting there?”

“I’m not too certain of the details, but I’m nowhere near there, and those orders are not being passed over the guild channel…” This spy reported.

“Something seems off,” Skygazing Under the Tree’s intuition told him that something was amiss. For the ambushing Colored Cloud to be so strangely calm, it really gave off the vibe like everything was well under their control.

“Guild leader, quick flee!” Someone suddenly pointed above his head. Skygazing Under the Tree looked up and saw that a Descending Wheel of Flames had formed right on top of him, so he swiftly went ducking for cover, shock gripping him: Did someone discover my tracks as well?

“Guild leader Tree, you’re rather infatuated with this quest, aren’t you?” Someone came walking out from the reeds. Skygazing Under the Tree lifted his head to look at the man, but he did not recognize this person, though the guild emblem pinned on his chest identified him in a glance.

“You’re from Carouse?” Skygazing Under the Tree was stunned.

“That’s right. We’re here to kill you, I do believe that you won’t have any qualms with that, do you?” The man calmly spoke as people from Carouse burst forth rushing to him impertinently. Skygazing Under the Tree did not miss a beat either, immediately throwing out the order, “Disperse.”

With this one order given, the paltry handful of men from Disembodied Spirits Under the Tree suddenly huddled into a mass and the person in the center unfurled a teleportation scroll. But because the circle of players on the outside blocked anyone from seeing this happen, the men from Carouse had not realized what was going on. Since the teleportation process was uninterrupted, in the time it took for Disembodied Spirits Under the Tree to lose two of their players, the Teleportation Array activated. Carouse only realized what had transpired only after they watched as every one of these players abruptly disappeared before their eyes.

“D*mm*t!” Guzzler was the man who was leading this attack, and he got very despondent; There was nothing to lose during the City Wars event, was there a need for these people to go to such extents? To actually waste a teleportation scroll just to escape… Of course, this was actually well worth it because Carouse had already finished setting themselves up over by the nearest encampment where the city assaulters would revive upon death. As long as they sent Skygazing Under the Tree over, they would hardly break a sweat killing him 25 times over. Skygazing Under the Tree had already expected them to do something like this, so he was determined not to die this time.

“How did this happen!?” Skygazing Under the Tree had made a clean escape and was bellowing with rage at the undercover spy he had planted in Carouse. He was livid that he did not even hear a peep from the spy about Carouse making such arrangements.

The spy was cursing the heavens in his heart: It was not like I am the guild leader, so how would I get wind of this operation? The guild bribe incident from before had tipped Brave Surge about the existence of someone in his guild belonging in Skygazing Under the Tree’s pocket, so now that he was planning to deal with Skygazing Under the Tree, he of course needed to be extra careful with who he chose for the job, and anyone whom Brave Surge did not trust 100% would all be excluded.

———————————————————–

Over by another part of Yunjiao Lakeside, Gu Fei had been keeping his eyes peeled in every direction the entire time, and when he spotted what looked like combat fire arising from a certain corner and the coordinates were nowhere near where Svelte Dancer and the others were at, he was momentarily confused over what happened. But since a fight broke out in the distance, he was convinced that it would be about time for the same to happen near him. Gu Fei was looking forward to the enemy making their move on him, but alas, everything was still as quiet as ever.

“Is there anyone out there?” Gu Fei could no longer bear it any longer and openly shouted.

“I’m just going to leave if there’s no one,” Gu Fei called out.

“Should I go over and complete the quest?” Gu Fei walked toward the log cabin.

“Boss, don’t be so rash!” Fireball and the others could hear Gu Fei talking to himself from where they were and messaged him.

“The three of you should leave first. Take a detour and head up the west side of the hill. I suspect that there are eyes there,” Gu Fei said.

“It seems like… We can’t leave any longer.”

Just as the last message came in, Gu Fei turned his head over to where his comrades were supposed to be positioned and saw AoE spells being wantonly cast on them. The reeds were swaying violently, evidently the result of the three doing their best to avoid being caught in the flames. Gu Fei quickly darted over, with every intention of lending a hand, but this one move that he made finally caused the other party around him to make their move in response. The sky instantaneously turned red, while tiny flames could be seen growing in size on the ground as it got hotter. The enemy’s spells had immediately centered on where Gu Fei stood, creating a circle of fire that covered a 30 meter radius, which was the maximum range that Mages could attack.

“So that’s what they were doing…” By now, Gu Fei understood the method of ambush that the enemy had employed here. They had been quietly positioning themselves the entire time, and they had absolutely no intention of engaging in close combat. By spacing out a 30 meter radius around their target, they were essentially cordoning off the area for Gu Fei to die in. And with the Mages all in action, the Archers also revealed themselves and were presently sending their Homing Projectiles right at Gu Fei.

It was unknown just how many spells were stacked on every bit of land around him. Since this was a setup done by their close friend Young Master Han, Gu Fei believed that the spells would be overlayed with just enough damage to insta-kill him. Did he have any other means of getting himself out of his current predicament aside from somehow Blinking a distance of 30 meters?

The Wheels of Flames came crashing down to the ground even as the Blazing Trees flared up. In the distance, Gu Fei could hear Fireball cry a most agonizing scream before he died, while the two ladies Svelte Dancer and Will-low had managed to stay alive by the merit of their movement speed.

Gu Fei could only do his best to sprint in a single direction, but no matter what he did, there was no way he could clear the 30 meters necessary before all the spells come alive.

Everyone from Carouse was ready to celebrate and high five one another, when they saw Gu Fei suddenly come to a halt, turn around and lower himself to the ground.

Palm of Thunder!!!

Gu Fei had already congealed a Palm of Thunder in his palm as he was running, and right before the enemy’s spells landed, Gu Fei had thrust his Palm of Thunder right to the ground all of a sudden.

The Palm of Thunder had the Repulsion effect, but there was no way that he could repel the very ground itself. In that instance, the one who was being repelled with the force of the strike was none other than Gu Fei himself.

This was just an idea that Gu Fei had come up with, and he had no idea if this would work or not, but he knew that he had no other options right now.

A blast of electricity sparking amidst the sea of flames was very eye-catching. Gu Fei had abruptly found himself up in mid air, flying out, and upside down.