Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Two cities separated Linyin City from Baishi City; It was not an easy trip to make. This was mainly because the territory of Linyin City, which was inside a huge swathe of densely packed woodland, teemed with Hunters. And since more and more players were crossing the level-40 threshold, the number of Hunters in the jungle increased by the day, too. Given that it was the peak hours for gamers to be online in the server right now, encirclements and traps abounded in every few steps.

Ye Xiaowu, who had more knowledge of this VR world than anyone out there, was able to tap into this in such a time like this. He might not know how the Linyin City’s players divided the entire jungle among themselves, but he at least knew the monster distribution in every area in this region. No matter how messy these players set their traps, there was no way that they would set them in places without monsters, right?

Thus, by circling around and taking detours, a lone level 36 Priest managed to traverse through the jungle without bumping into any sort of trouble. This was the second time a player had achieved this feat in Linyin City. The first person to succeed in this was also Ye Xiaowu, which he achieved by himself when he was making his way over.

He made sure to follow the main road upon leaving the jungle. Despite his extensive knowledge, there was simply no way Ye Xiaowu could change the fact that he had baby legs. It was already rather late by the time he reached his destination, and in comparison, Gu Fei was already long offline. Ye Xiaowu did not make any other stops and just headed straight to the Knights’ Barracks the moment he entered the city.

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Over by the Knights’ Barracks in Baishi City, Silver Moon was sitting at the steps within the barracks alone. How many days had it been since he was stuck here? He could not even remember the exact number himself. All he knew was that he had not once gotten far from the barracks ever since he got slain while on the road to Linyin City.

On that fateful day, Silver Moon discovered that Dusky Cloud and his men were waiting right outside the barracks for him to appear, so how could he not know what the whole lot of them intended to do?! Silver Moon already figured out that something was amiss the moment he saw those people standing by in advance. Afterward, when he attempted to motivate Oathless Sword and the others to lend him a hand, he was, instead, given the cold shoulder and soon received the system prompt: [This player is not accepting messages from anyone not in his friends list.]

Silver Moon felt as if he had fallen into a bottomless pit in that moment. Losing that helping hand, he was left wondering who else he could persuade into aiding him. Having carefully mulled over his situation once over, the shrewd Silver Moon very quickly realized that he had fallen prey to another’s machinations. Furthermore, this plan devised was quite devious. It did not simply send him over to the spawn point for Dusky Cloud to camp him out; more importantly, it had ensured any hope of escape or assistance for him was ruined in the process.

The boss of Traversing Four Seas had deleted him from his friends list. Silver Moon no longer put any hope in the man, but what about the comrades from his mercenary group? Even though he had abandoned those people in an attempt to first make his escape, Silver Moon had no one else to turn to so he decided to harden his pride and give it a shot. In the end, before he could even fire off a message, he received a series of prompts as each member of his mercenary group left the group, with some even expressing their contempt and choice expletives before leaving. Silver Moon instantly became the only member of the Silver Moon mercenary group. He tried to privately message some of these players, but just like what had happened with Oathless Sword, all he received was the system prompt: [This player is not accepting messages from anyone not in his friends list.]

“Young Master’s Elite!” Silver Moon grinded his teeth. Even though he did not know what sort of plan his adversary had devised, he had no doubt in his mind that the lot of them were the perpetrators for his current predicament.

As a scum that abandoned his brothers-in-arms at such a critical period, Silver Moon still failed to realize that his action was what had caused everybody to desert him, even as he started nursing a deep-seated resentment for someone else’s plan enacted against him…

“Looks like I can only depend on myself…” Silver Moon spent a whole hour contemplating over how to get himself out of his current predicament, but still failed to come up with anyone else he could use. He even thought of groveling and begging Vast Lushness for help, but he ended up giving up on that as well. However, this was not because there was a limit to his scummy ways, but that he had a considerable understanding of Vast Lushness. He would only be inviting her to spit in his face if he looked to repent right now.

Without any friends he could utilize, Silver Moon thought of approaching his enemy for a compromise. Dusky Cloud was about to fall asleep staking out at the Knights’ Barracks when Silver Moon approached with a genial smile and made an effort to converse with the crowd. Silver Moon knew that Dusky Cloud’s party had set their eyes on his valuable King’s Sword, so perhaps these people might be hunting him down so doggedly entirely because of his weapon. Silver Moon figured that he might find a peaceful resolution to this situation with that chip in hand.

With a smile on his face, Silver Moon slowly expressed his idea. His gift of the gab was the real deal, so all sorts of idioms and phrases were thrown like ‘all it takes is a smile to melt away past enmity’, ‘a real man must take heed of the grand scheme of things’, ‘the world will be us for the taking if we work together’. Every possible nauseating flattery he could come up with flowed with ease from his mouth to sweet-talk Dusky Cloud until diabetes nearly set in. By the time he ran out of descriptive phrases, Silver Moon had taken the risk of stepping out the spawn point to show his sincerity in hopes of better bonding with Dusky Cloud.

Dusky Cloud was immediately roused by this. Silver Moon thought that his rhetoric had succeeded in swaying the man, so he quickly reached out to shake the hand of Dusky Cloud.

Dusky Cloud reached his hand out as well, albeit with his dagger in it. That stab was so vicious Dusky Cloud seemed to be wishing to punch a hole through Silver Moon’s stomach. The whole lot of men with Dusky Cloud instantly surged toward their target, making it such that Silver Moon had no way of retreating as he got surrounded.

It was murder – a righteous murder. These men had waited for a very long time; none of them could bear for it to end too quickly as everyone wanted to properly savor this moment. Aside from Dusky Cloud’s original stab, the rest unequipped their weapons and proceeded to slowly shear off his HP with the lowest damage they could inflict, wreathing him in as they sent him to his grave.

In that moment, Silver Moon regretted his erroneous view of Dusky Cloud’s character and reflected on his impulsive action, and lamented having an all-Endurance build… The beating he received from this encirclement seemingly stretched on forever. Going on for several minutes in this fashion, plenty of those squeezing from the outside that did not manage to get their hits in even grew impatient with their fellow comrades eventually.

Before he expired, Dusky Cloud spat a hock of phlegm at Silver Moon. “M*th*rf*ck*r! You’ve sure got plenty of rubbish to spout!”

The revived Silver Moon felt extremely miserable and furious, yet he no longer dared to step out of the spawn point. With a bellyful of impotent rage, Silver Moon wasted a round of saliva at the crowd of players waiting outside before finally logging off helplessly.

Silver Moon could already tell that the hatred Dusky Cloud bore toward him had already gone beyond the material and was all completely spiritual at this point. There was no way Dusky Cloud would stop at just killing him once. The next day when he got online, Silver Moon gingerly observed the interior and exterior of the spawn point but discovered nothing.

Silver Moon was naturally not about to keep himself holed up in the spawn point, so even though it was dangerous, it was a danger he had to take a chance with. Hence, he steeled his nerves and made his way right out of the spawn point. Safe! Silver Moon was prepared to take a step back to the spawn point at any time, but Silver Moon was beside himself with joy when he saw that no harm came to him.

However, he took no more than three steps away from the Knights’ Barracks when a whole bunch of Stealthed Thieves appeared, blocked off his retreat, surrounded him, and ganged up on him once more.

Silver Moon tried his best to resist, but this bunch of men with Dusky Cloud used the same trick as before, surrounding the man as they slowly tormented him by attacking him without their weapons. But, this time, some of them went a little overboard and aside from just beating him up without weapons, a handful of them had actually taken off their armor and other equipment as well. They intended to fully savor every drop of HP from Silver Moon, by ensuring their equipment did not grant them any bonus in any sense while they beat the man up. Yet, how could the Attack Power from Silver Moon, who possessed the level-70 over-level weapon King’s Blade be considered as child’s play, though? Out of these naked Thieves, one actually managed to die from Silver Moon’s retaliation.

This, of course, fueled further anger from the crowd. After bellowing “This f*ck*r actually dares to resist!” these men became all the more brutal with their ravaging. Before Silver Moon died, his entire body got covered in their spittle. These men, who had not had their fill just from the punches and kicks alone, even made sure to spit on the man as well. Silver Moon was finally cowed and no longer dared to take any sort of risks. The man was afraid that these men might even use their noses next time, going as far as to add their nasal fluids into the mix…

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Silver Moon did not go online for several days ever since that incident, hoping that this would wear thin their patience a little. Furthermore, he no longer dared to make his way out of the spawn point openly after as well. Be it masking himself or changing his outfit, no matter what method he tried, Silver Moon would always end up being surrounded and trapped after taking a few steps out of the spawn point, succumbing to the inhumane encirclement once over. The man was in tears, for he knew that there was no way he could make it out of this spawn point at all.

Let’s just waste time here, then! Silver Moon gritted his teeth and began to compete with their patience. Who knew where the man found a footstool from, but he began to spend his day sitting a step within the cordon of safety, leisurely suntanning as time passed? Dusky Cloud’s men were, of course, dissatisfied watching him do this, but since the man was well within the safety of the spawn point, not even their spit could reach him. Silver Moon assumed a look of feigned ignorance and resolutely provoked these people in such a manner.

Silver Moon, who had finally managed to get back at them in this way, soon realized how foolish his actions were. He would only have a chance of escaping from this quandary if he slowly whittled the patience of these men. Would he not just be poking the beehive more if he continued provoking them like this?

Silver Moon ceased his action the moment he clearly thought this matter through. He, thus, began to control the amount of time he spent online, bearing in mind to only reveal himself for a moment each day to see how the situation was.

In the end, matters took a turn for the worse. There were originally only those men that Dusky Cloud had sent, but after a few days, Silver Moon did not expect to see his old colleague, his ex-subordinate, Blue Ease appearing with his men as well, and Blue Ease was of course not here to mount a rescue. When they met that day, he ruthlessly laid out Silver Moon’s despicable past to the people present, continuing on even after Silver Moon logged off in a hurry. The next day that he logged on, Silver Moon discovered that plenty of players he barely recognized were looking at him with contempt and even more groups of players outside the spawn point had assembled to kill him. Silver Moon was in tears again.

Silver Moon thought of many other approaches, such as contacting other professional gamers from workshops in hopes of extricating himself from the mess he found himself in. Unfortunately, his name reached a point where his notoriety preceded himself and was being viewed as the number-one b*st*rd in Parallel World. With such a heavy moniker hanging on his head, even workshops refused to work with him. While the players from workshops were in it for the money, it was important for them to maintain their image as well. Why would they be willing to stand beside the number-one b*st*rd? Of course, if Silver Moon was willing to foot a high enough price, there would be people out there that would take this risk anonymously for the sake of profit. Alas, Silver Moon was no Svelte Dancer. Besides the fact that he was a little more despicable, he was really just a normal gamer and did not have anything particularly valuable on him…

Give up his King’s Sword?

That was Silver Moon’s final bargaining chip. He believed that the value of his weapon alone was enough to spur many people into helping him. However, Silver Moon saw such a move as the last resort. When no other alternatives presented themselves to get him out of this… Silver Moon began to seriously consider using this as the situation continued, but it was in these last two days when he received a letter from this person known as Broken Water Arrow.

This was not a letter that came through the game. Silver Moon did not have any opportunity to visit the in-game mailbox. Fortunately, he had left an SOS everywhere, detailing quite a few methods for people to get in contact with him. In the end, what he received were mostly the curses and disdain from the players in Parallel World. Just as he was feeling disheartened by this outcome, he suddenly came across that message from Broken Water Arrow.