Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

While the two of them were opportunistic in nature, they were also good at making friends. Now that they had acknowledged each other as brothers-in-arms, Silver Moon also acted as how a comrade should and retrieved his King’s Blade from his dimensional pocket for No Smile to take a look.

No Smile would, of course, have no problems appraising Silver Moon, and with that one look, he could see that, aside from the high Sword Aptitude requirement of King’s Blade, there was yet another tough requirement he had to meet: 25 Command.

Anyone that had a bit of knowledge about Parallel World would be aware that a player’s Command stat was critical for a party leader. With 1 point in Command, a leader could create a ten-man party. Any starting player would have 1 point, and those who often got selected as the leader would accumulate experience toward the stat, but the problem was that the limit of this stat at the current stage of the game was 9. Apparently, players would have to search for other means to acquire the necessary experience points to further increase it, and no one was currently aware just what other means there were.

No Smile, who had spent a long time in the company of Dusky Cloud and his lot, naturally heard about the matters pertaining to Silver Moon. He knew that this man had been able to triumphantly swing his King’s Blade in Yueye City at level 30; that could only mean that he had already reached the necessary requirement for the blade’s use at level 30. Achieving the necessary Sword Aptitude for King’s Blade was not actually a tall task because many players knew that there were equipment out there that boosted masteries, traits that gave masteries, and other equipment that significantly increased players’ proficiencies. As for Silver Moon, for him to have gotten a hold of such an item at level 30, just showed how much of a forerunner he once was. And regarding this 25 Command stat that the man needed to meet, No Smile reckoned that it had been possible through the use of other equipment, which Silver Moon had unfortunately lost. Seeing that Silver Moon still had his equipment that granted him Sword Mastery, his sword proficiency must be sufficient. Thus, all that he was missing was the 25 Command stat.

“Silver Moon bro, you have a piece of equipment that adds Command?” No Smile asked, despite not having heard of this sort of equipment.

“Yup. I owned a necklace that grants me +20 Command called the Torq of Leadership, but I’ve sadly dropped it. D*mm*t. To think I managed to drop it even though I’ve stored it in my dimensional pocket. How g*dd*mn unlucky. I hope that the guy who has picked it up meet a fate worse than death,” Silver Moon cursed. The chance of dropping items upon death in Parallel World was much lower when the player in question had no PK points to speak of, and the chance of dropping an item in the dimensional pocket was even lower than that.

“I’ve never heard of such equipment before; it should be pretty hard to get a hold of, yeah?” No Smile asked.

Silver Moon nodded. “That Fleeting Smile guy searched for me and explicitly mentioned that it is because he needs the power of my King’s Blade. I’ve yet to tell him that I can’t activate the sword’s inlaid skill.”

“But since you’ve successfully gotten out of your mess from before, you should tell him about it so that we can see how he will handle this. If that person truly has access to insider information, he should be able to help you obtain this sort of gear or maybe even show you a way to directly raise your Command stat,” No Smile said.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking of doing right now as well.” Silver Moon nodded.

Ye Xiaowu was not in the least bit surprised when he received this news from Silver Moon, and he was completely aware of what the requirements to the King’s Blade were. Sword Aptitude was not a particularly difficult stat to obtain, especially at this stage of the game. Reaching 25 Command was the key here. Ye Xiaowu had appraised Silver Moon’s equipment and discovered he did not own anything that boosted his Command. As for Silver Moon only informing him about this after he got rescued, Ye Xiaowu was not particularly bothered by it. Instead, it was Broken Water Arrow who expressed his discontent. “He’s scum all right!”

Ye Xiaowu patted him on his back. “That may be the case, but we still need to help the man. Being able to unleash King’s Blade meant that we can forgo quite a bit of manpower.”

“How are we gonna do that? Help him increase his Command?” Broken Water Arrow asked.

“That’s impossible,” Ye Xiaowu denied flatly. “Increasing a player’s Command will require unlocking the Prestige system. That would also require the game world to make a breakthrough in a particular content, and we can’t touch that.”

“So, what do we do?” Broken Water Arrow asked.

“This equipment of his couldn’t be taken back by the system, right? He must’ve lost it when he got PKed, which meant that another player out there must have gotten a hold of it. I wonder if there’s any news of it being put up for sale in the market. It will of course be best if we can just buy it back with money,” Ye Xiaowu mused.

“If he dropped it, that must be back in Baishi City. Did you not take a look along the way?” Broken Water Arrow asked.

Ye Xiaowu laughed bitterly. “I came back here straight after meeting up with him. Besides, that rascal only told me about not being able to attain the requirement for it after we reached Linyin City. You’ve even shown your disdain over him for it.”

“Then, that means we’ll have to make a trip back to Baishi City,” Broken Water Arrow said.

Ye Xiaowu nodded. “Head over to the market and take a look around. Inquire after it, and I’ll head over to the forums and make a request to purchase it. Currently, the need for the Command stat has yet to reach such high levels, and players aren’t fully clear to the value of this stat, so there won’t be much use for that item. Hopefully that guy who picked up the equipment wouldn’t have too much of a foresight to hold on it.”

“Is there only this one piece of equipment in the game right now?” Broken Water Arrow asked.

“How would I know?” Ye Xiaowu laughed mirthlessly. He was no more than a normal player right now, knowing something like this would require him to check the backend data; therefore, there was no way he would know the answer to that question. Logically speaking, this sort equipment should not appear in the current stage of the game, but acquiring over-level equipment was a huge feature in Parallel World, and that was something that had to do with the famous chain quest system.

The random lot of quests had an extremely strong degree of freedom when linking up to form chain quests, but it could not be denied that sometimes there would be players out there that just happened to be really lucky, getting a chain quest made up of a string of easy quests. Despite there being a BOSS at the end of the chain to ensure difficulty in the final stage, with how randomly these chains were constituted, that did not mean that the prize would all be concentrated at the end. Take Gu Fei’s chain quest as an example; Moonlit Nightfalls and the Midnight Spirit Robe were the final reward, but Eddie’s Emblem, the ‘Sacred’ he got on his Flames of Baptism were also considered as quest rewards, yet he had obtained them all in the early stages of the chain quest.

“I’ll make a trip over to Baishit City then!” Broken Water Arrow said.

Ye Xiaowu was not courteous as well. After all, the man’s job class was better suited for making this trip, and it would be far more efficient and faster.

—————————

After Silver Moon and No Smile registered their accounts to the spawn point over in Linyin CIty, both men anxiously awaited Ye Xiaowu’s reply together. Soon, Silver Moon was a little excited after receiving the message and told No Smile. “That guy said he’ll deal with it.”

“What a capable guy!” No Smile was impressed as well.

“I wonder where he’ll get it?” Silver Moon mused.

No Smile naturally wanted to know about this as well. The two men shared the same sentiment that acquiring equipment was nothing significant, but if they were able to get a grasp of the process, they would find themselves a path to riches!

Silver Moon gingerly probed Ye Xiaowu about this. Of course, he did not express it explicitly but tactfully mention how he wanted to help. Since the man was helping him acquire Command, he felt responsible to lend a hand at least, hoping that the man would not treat him like an outsider and call him about it.

In the end, Silver Moon had no idea how he should react when he heard Ye Xiaowu’s answer. “D*mn. So much for him being capable, it turns out that he intends to buy it back…”

No Smile was disappointed as well but still consoled himself. “At least, that shows that the man has substantial funds to his name.”

Silver Moon, however, shook his head. “Actually. what use is there to something like the Command stat right now? Only a dozen or so players are needed when organizing parties to grind; 2 points is more than enough. As for organizing a group to PvP, Parallel World’s system doesn’t exempt friendly fire, so there’s no need to even group up for that; recognizing one another is far more important. Honestly, the only use of having a large party is when participating in a large-scale battle! Still, even then, all a guild or mercenary group needed was a handful of players with high enough Command. Thus, the equipment with the Command stat can be deemed as a niche demand, so unless it’s very difficult for players to acquire equipment that adds Command, it’s utterly worthless otherwise.”

“So, is it difficult to acquire such equipment?” No Smile gazed at Silver Moon.

Silver Moon’s tragic expression was more than enough to answer that question.

“Where did you get it from, anyway?” No Smile asked.

“A chain quest that I’ve yet to finish till now. It is the initial reward I was given; all that quest required me to do was run some errands. I didn’t even have to fight a single battle; that alone speaks volumes of how difficult it is,” Silver Moon replied.

“A chain quest! Just getting that alone is hard enough!” No Smile exclaimed.

Silver Moon shrugged. “In any case, I don’t think I can progress any further from the current stage of the quest, so if that guy is willing to purchase the item for an exorbitant sum, I do believe he’ll be able to quickly get a hold of it.”

No Smile nodded and casually patted Silver Moon. “Then, let him do that for you. Shall we head to grind or quest?”

“Let’s take a look around the city first. Have you been here before?” Silver Moon asked back.

“Nope. Take a look around it is.” These two left the spawn point together and began to stroll down the main street, getting along well like two peas in a pod.

——————————————–

Ye Xiaowu and Broken Water Arrow were currently rather busy themselves.

Ye Xiaowu logged off and went to the trade forums in an attempt to purchase equipment that boosted the Command stat. Blankly putting up his post and refreshing, in the end, no one replied after the longest time, with even some old timers feigning knowledge mocked him by commenting that it was unlikely for anyone to have kept such equipment. Ye Xiaowu was originally composed, but he watched as his topic digressed into a discussion about the Command stat, and people started to express their opinions about it. The only thing they all had in agreement was that players who would care to buy such equipment were probably be off their rockers…

Ye Xiaowu was pissed! He watched as his topic got derailed for five pages, with not a single seller in sight. In accordance to the trade forum rules here, players could only talk about buying and selling, so it should not have gone off-topic like this. Ye Xiaowu complained to the moderators in his annoyance, and these moderators were truly well qualified for their jobs as one of them quickly replied to his complaint: ‘just chat and go with the flow.’

Ye Xiaowu did not know if he should be laughing or crying; this moderator was even someone he knew from the company, and he reckoned that he had probably spent a long period of moderating the dull trade forum and was likely bored being all alone there. It was rare for a thread to digress like this that it became something worth cherishing. Soon, Ye Xiaowu even got his thread stickied on top of the trade forum and highlighted for all to view. Ye Xiaowu really wished he could just head over and give his former colleague a good beating.

Ye Xiaowu was drowning in these off-topic discussions the whole night, but the online Broken Water Arrow did not have any better luck on his end, either. He searched through every stall in Baishi City’s marketplace, asked around, and even headed to check the Trade Exchange and the Auction House along the way. He was not like Ye Xiaowu, sitting down behind the monitor and refreshing the page with a click of a button; Broken Water Arrow had to run back and forth checking for updates, which was far more exhausting than what Ye Xiaowu did in any sense.

Unfortunately, neither of them had any results to show for after a night of work. That person who picked up Silver Moon’s Torq of Leadership looked to have kept the equipment, thinking it was a rare item.

After a whole night of searching, the two men messaged each other in the morning, reporting the miserable night they had spent respectively. This conclusion was more or less what the two had already expected. If any of them acquired what they needed, would they wait up to this moment to inform each other about it? Meanwhile, Silver Moon was truly shameless. Having a fun time playing around in Linyin City the whole night, he unabashedly messaged Ye Xiaowu first thing in the morning when he saw that man was online. “How is it, bro? Did you get the equipment with the Command stat yet?”

“F*ck*ng hell! You’re really quite the b*st*rd!” Ye Xiaowu almost replied with this.