Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Foe-herder and his guild were ostracized by the three large guilds, and he was very displeased. But he did not dare to go up and argue with them about it this time, since he was just left with this one life and there was no way to ensure that the other guilds might not backstab him ruthlessly, pretending their grip on their weapon momentarily lapsed and ‘accidentally’ kill him. By the time that happens, it would take a long time before he would be able to get any resolution to the matter.

However, just through his internal contacts that he had planted in the three guilds, Foe-herder was able to distinctly learn about the things that the three guilds were up to. Now that his suspicion toward Ye Xiaowu had been dispelled and the fact he was unable to work together with the three guilds, Foe-herder suddenly thought of the wrong guidance that Ye Xiaowu had provided.

Since the man could still be trusted, then the mistake that he had made would only be a result of being misled by Thousand Miles Drunk and his bunch. Thus, the problem was with his judgment, which meant that there must surely be some important lead relevant to the quest over by Yunjiao Quarry, without any shadow of a doubt. As such, Foe-herder immediately led his most trusted guildmates over to the location and searched for any traces, going so far as to dig around the place, literally and metaphorically. They carried on digging until Broken Water Arrow and Youthful Reflection both arrived at the scene, yet nothing had turned up in the meantime.

“D*mm*t!” Youthful Reflection cried the moment he stepped into Yunjiao Quarry, immediately recognizing the players there to be men from Cloud Herder guild. He was a smart man after all, so he instantly understood what Foe-herder was trying to do.

But when he saw that these people were all still busy, Youthful Reflection had instead laughed, as he very quickly deduced that they had not managed to find anything.

Broken Water Arrow’s expression had become a lot more dignified, looking toward a certain direction before calling Youthful Reflection, “Over here.”

The two pretended for a bit, acting as if they were just the average player doing missions, mingling with the other players. Because this clue was already Foe-herder’s last hope, he had already reminded everyone to take note of all the players with unknown origins. When Broken Water Arrow and Youthful Reflection both first arrived, both were not wearing emblems and they had their faces covered. There was nothing more conspicuous than that, so it was hardly a stretch that they were being watched closely by the men from Cloud Herder.

“Let’s not alert the others,” Foe-herder instructed. “Let’s act like we do not care for their presence and let them carry on with what they are doing. We’ll eliminate them the moment we know what they are up to!”

“Roger that!”

Broken Water Arrow and Youthful Reflection were walking amidst the crowd, and it was apparent that Broken Water Arrow had been told by Ye Xiaowu just where he had to go to find the item he needed. Without taking any detours, he simply had his eye on what he needed to achieve here and went straight for it. When Broken Water Arrow was right in front of the target location, Broken Water Arrow came to an abrupt stop and stared ahead of him, a little surprised.

“What’s the matter?” Youthful Reflection came over to ask.

Broken Water Arrow did not reply, merely pointing his hand in a certain direction. Ahead was one of the excavated tunnels here in the Quarry, and the men from Cloud Herder had already dug out a sizable hole there.

“Can’t we go over?” Youthful Reflection had his doubts.

“We can’t… The thing that we needed was inside that hole…” Broken Water Arrow was pointing to that hole as he spoke.

“This…” Youthful Reflection was stunned. If the location where said item was supposed to be unearthed had already been dug, that meant that the item had already been picked up by someone else. And if that was indeed the case, why did the men from Cloud-herder continue to keep digging here?

“Is there anything else?” Youthful Reflection asked Broken Water Arrow.

“Nope,” Broken Water Arrow answered.

“So they have already…” Youthful Reflection was confusing.

Broken Water Arrow shook his head, “There’s no way that they would be so careless as to miss finding it. I’m afraid that this means that someone else has already dug the item out and made off with it before these people did.”

“F*ck! Who could have done this?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps it was discovered by a random player on another quest or something,” Broken Water Arrow said.

“D*mm*t. So what do we do now?”

“We’ve got no choice… At least this is someone from one of the guilds, so perhaps we can get in touch with whoever found it,” Broken Water Arrow said.

Seeing that this was such a vital quest, to think that it might inexplicably fall into the hands of some random guild left Youthful Reflection feeling extremely despondent. It was such a pity that the failure of this quest would result in the entire city assaulter’s side to be defeated; that was an outcome that no one could benefit from. The only hope that they could hold out for was that the player who picked up the item was from some infinitesimally small guild, so maybe they would be able to offer a more appropriate reward in exchange for the ownership of the quest.

Youthful Reflection was thinking about all this as he was about to inform Oathless Sword about what happened here when the players from Cloud Herder suddenly surrounded the pair. Foe-herder had received the report about how the two men had suddenly come to a halt, looking like they had some sort of scheme to hatch. Foe-herder had also become impatient by this point and decided to have the showdown.

Walking over, Foe-herder saw the two were masked, so he asked, “Who are you?”

Youthful Reflection saw what sort of situation they were in, so he pulled off the cloth on his face and smiled, “It’s me.”

“And you are?” Foe-herder turned to regard Broken Water Arrow, as he silently revealed his face as well.

Foe-herder saw his face and became even more certain of his deduction. He nodded, “Looks like I guessed correctly. Is there still something here that is related to the quest?”

“To be precise, it’s a quest item. Did you guys not find it?” It was no longer the time to beat around the bush.

“Hehe, we’re just waiting for your guidance,” Foe-herder said.

Broken Water Arrow shook his head with much regret, pointing at the cavity behind him, “It should have originally been there.”

“Is that so?” Foe-herder looked to the left and right. “Who’s in charge of that location over there?”

Immediately, a player answered, “Our team was the one excavating it, but we found nothing!”

“Have you checked through it thoroughly?”

“Of course! There’s no way we could have overlooked anything,” That player very confidently called out.

Foe-herder knew this person as well, and he was someone who was trustworthy and dependable. As such, he turned his gaze to Broken Water Arrow and Youthful Reflection, somewhat confusedly asking, “So what do we do now?”

“It’s very simple. Someone has previously dug out the quest item before you did. There’s no more time now, so you’ll have to hurry and find this person. It should have been a player from a guild who was assigned to complete missions here in order to be able to retrieve the quest item from this location. We must now make haste and mobilize all the guilds from the city to search for this player!” Broken Water Arrow said. Honestly speaking, neither he nor Ye Xiaowu were concerned about which guild ended up being the guild that completed this quest. They were more worried about a guild obtaining such a huge benefit as a result of their revelation of such important information, and that would most definitely make Ye Xiaowu harbor complex feelings about it for a long time.

However, Ye Xiaowu finally realized that for Thousand Miles Drunk to complete the quest that would lead to Yunduan City’s city assaulters to fail en masse was a far more unfair and imbalanced outcome, which was why he ultimately elected to leak this information and let the city assaulters skip the step and reach the completion phase of the quest, all in an effort to prevent Thousand Miles Drunk from succeeding. This might perhaps be another sort of imbalance, but Ye Xiaowu felt he no longer had any other choice in this matter…

“D*MM*T!” Foe-herder had not expected that he would have busied himself over nothing, to actually have someone else out there preemptively gotten away with what he wanted. However, he still had his doubts, “For a normal player doing missions out here, there’s no reason for him or her to dig at this place. It’s a cavity. There’s no reason whatsoever to dig it further.”

Broken Water Arrow did not have any explanations for this either. For players to even make their way here and dig at this cavity, that would be like Thousand Miles Drunk finding the underwater cave; they would need to have done it through a quest to get hints every step of the way to lead them to that point. If it was really a case of happenstance that some player actually managed to dig the quest item out… Then that would just be luck at fantastical levels. However, even if a normal player were to luck out and dig it out, the lack of any prior leads for the quest means that there would be no prompts at all, so there would be no instructions on how to use the item even if they got a hold of it. This was also the issue that comes with skipping to the last step which the three guild leaders had previously been very doubtful of.

Even though it was possible to skip right to the final phase of the quest, if they did not have someone like Ye Xiaowu who had complete knowledge of the quest’s storyline, the average player, without the step by step hints that the quest gave, simply lacked the circumstances to make such a deduction. Even if they were standing right at the final stage of the quest, how would they know how to continue on?

“Now’s not the time to discuss everything. Shall we go look for this person before anything else? If we don’t stop Thousand Miles Drunk, I’m afraid the city assaulter’s forces will soon be met with defeat,” Broken Water Arrow said.

“How much time do we still have?” Youthful Reflection asked.

“No more than an hour, tops,” Broken Water Arrow answered.

“D*mm*t, would we have enough time?” Youthful Reflection was already sending a message out to Oathless Sword. Foe-herder was presently stunned like a wooden block. He was already completely lost as to how to proceed on with the next step, and was completely lost as to where they should be headed to.

“Hello everyone!” It was at this point in time when someone suddenly appeared standing up above the tunnel entrance, waving to everyone below.

Everybody raised their heads and Youthful Reflection’s expression immediately turned ashen. He suddenly felt that this situation was about to turn into a tragedy.

Young Master Han!

The man who appeared above the tunnel entrance was none other than the man who was second only to Thousand Miles Drunk in terms of imbalance among the members of Young Master’s Elite, someone who would elicit such pain and hatred in others, Young Master Han. Even though it seemed like he had always been on the side of the city assaulters during the City Wars event this entire time, that hardly changed how these players, who had past interactions with him, perceived and acknowledged him. He was truly the sort of person that annoyed the very living existence out of everyone. If Thousand Miles Drunk was standing on the city assaulter’s side helping everyone slay the NPCs, every guild would most definitely treat him with love and show great esteem; but it was not the same for Young Master Han. No matter what he did, the immediate reaction they would all initially have would always be: F*ck, it’s this hateful guy again.

“Why are you here!?” Youthful Reflection shouted, realizing his own voice seemed to tremble a little. There would always be some scheme in play wherever Young Master Han showed up.

“You guys seem to be looking for something,” Young Master Han’s smile was pleasant. He would always be smiling when the necessity dictated it.

“D*MM*T!!” Everyone cried out in unison. All of them seem to have realized what happened.

“How did this happen!?” It was like Youthful Reflection was pleading the heavens for an explanation.

“Because I’ve always been paying attention to all your movements. Running to the east and west. You’re all very busy, huh?” Young Master Han said.

Broken Water Arrow was ashen faced. If the item ends up in Young Master Han’s hands… Are we going to end up losing to Thousand Miles Drunk again?

“You could not have been the one who found the item, right? Just you alone?” Foe-herder was still clear-headed at this point. Yunjiao Quarry was not tiny, and even if Young Master Han had been watching them running all over the place as he claimed, there was no way that he could have so certainly dig out the quest item so accurately, as there was simply no way he had enough time to find it with just him alone.

“Of course I’m not the only one,” Young Master Han chuckled. Gu Xiaoshang, as well as the players from Colored Clouds, had finally appeared one after another, surrounding the place.

“If I’m not mistaken, I seem to recall you saying something about having no time to waste?” Young Master Han asked.

Broken Water Arrow was helpless. Utterly helpless… While using Colored Clouds would also stop Thousand Miles Drunk, why was it that he got the feeling like he was being used? Young Master Han was standing up above, and it was evident that his eyes were on him. That look he had was most definitely one of mockery.

Just giving this mocking expression was not Young Master Han’s style. He needed to add a few words to rub salt into the wounds, “What’s the matter, comrade Old Broken? Quick lead us to where we need to go! Aren’t you in a hurry to neutralize someone?”

Broken Water Arrow was grinding his teeth. I’m not being used. I’m not being used… This might be what Broken Water Arrow was telling to himself, but Young Master Han’s reply told him: In your rush to neutralize Thousand Miles Drunk, you only ended up being played by other players.

“There’s no time to delay things any further, let’s go!” Youthful Reflection was putting the interest of the bigger picture in front of him right now. Even though he hated Young Master Han, he realized that the quest still ended up in Colored Clouds’ hands, and that was a sigh of relief for him. He had actually been worried that Young Master Han had worked together with the city defenders, Thousand Miles Drunk and the others, and willing to die than hand over the quest item.

Broken Water Arrow was hesitating. He was conflicted. Even though he already knew that a guild would end up benefiting in the end once this information was leaked, for Young Master Han to use such a method to force his hand meant that he had no choice but to spill the beans to Colored Clouds. Such a reverse ordered way of doing things was akin to putting the cart before the horse, meaning that he was no longer the one in the driver’s seat for this quest. The information that he and Ye Xiaowu had would just be a chess piece that Young Master Han was using to benefit a particular guild, and it was truly a very unsatisfying feeling to bear.

“We have no choice… In order to ensure fairness and balance for even more players, we need to prioritize resisting Thousand Miles Drunk’s advancement, so we haven’t got a choice but to be used by someone. Let’s just not nitpick over this too much anymore…” Ye Xiaowu said.

Broken Water Arrow was gritting his teeth and finally nodded, “Let’s go! We’ve got a teleportation scroll here, and it’s not too far away from the final destination. The person who picked up the quest will come on over with us together! We’ve already got enough manpower there.”

Seeing that everything had proceeded just as Young Master Han had predicted, Gu Xiaoshang could not stand it any longer and said, “You’re really too devious.”

“This is devious? Ever since I saw Fleeting Smile appear, I already knew that he will be up to something. Aside from using the game knowledge that he was familiar with to dictate how the story unfolds, what else can he do? There will be traces of you no matter where you go… This saying cannot be more appropriate when used on that man. For him to have led men out here, that must mean that something here would be relevant to the quest. Seeing how urgently he wants to take down Thousand Miles Drunk, that clearly means the impact of this quest would be great. A competitive quest would of course mean that there’s a chance for both parties to benefit, and whoever gets a hold of it would be the recipient of the boon. Even though we have no idea what to do, as long as there’s a god guiding us, praised be…”

Young Master Han was speaking to Gu Xiaoshang as the pair went over to meet with Broken Water Arrow, bringing along quite a few men as well. Nobody said a word about who was the holder of the quest item, and both Broken Water Arrow and Youthful Reflection did not bother asking either. Even if they were able to get the quest item to drop by killing the one holding it, there’s no way that they would snatch it so openly between one another; there was simply no time for such nonsense right now!

All these people were standing together on one side, while Foe-herder and his men were all standing on the other side, looking extremely lonesome. He was feeling all sorts of feelings inside him right now, depressed when he saw how they were all about to depart to do the quest, He wanted to give the order and massacre the whole lot, disrupting the quest so no one could complete it, but seeing the forces of Colored Clouds had descended upon the place as they did, he knew that they must have already made prior preparations to this end, and even if a fight were to break out, there was no way for them to abruptly kill the key characters. And since everyone was teleporting straight out immediately, there was really no meaning for him to drag things out here.

“Guild leader Foe-herder, Do you… Do you want to come along?” Youthful Reflection had three scrolls, so he could of course spare a spot. Seeing the man standing there blankly, he had originally wanted to gloat at his misfortune, but he suddenly felt sympathetic to him right now. They had all busied themselves over this matter after all, yet none of them got anything out of it. Now that they were at the endgame, aside from Colored Clouds, all the other guilds ended up becoming the selfless Lei Feng. Foe-herder’s losses were particularly heavy this time round, having only his last life left; he did not even dare to meet anyone without 10 other players guarding him…

“There’s no need. You guys can go on ahead without me!” Foe-herder already had enough sacrificing himself for the cause, and he no longer wanted to butt in any longer. We’ll just leave the matter as it stands. Whatever happens, will happen, he thought to himself.

The teleportation arrays flashed as the three scrolls whisked the 12 players

It was natural for Oathless Sword to be despondent by this outcome. Even though the one who would be benefiting from the current situation was the woman he fancied, Gu Xiaoshang, this quest this time around was really something huge, and Oathless Sword was deep down a little unwilling to give it up. But no matter the case, the transfer of the quest was not something that he could change with his will alone, so at least he avoided the painful conflict of choice that would have ensued. At the moment, he was being quite nonchalant about the outcome, a genial expression on his face as he stepped forward to affectionately greet Gu Xiaoshang.

It was quite the harmonious atmosphere, and each of these guild leaders from large guilds more or less knew what was at stake by this point. Rather than bickering any further about what they could gain, it was better if they just finished Thousand Miles Drunk off as soon as possible! Otherwise, they could all forget about what they could reap, since all the benefits of the quest completion would just end up with the city defenders. With just so few guilds on their side, if they were to split what they had gained from the quest evenly between them… Plus the fact that it was legendary figures like Thousand Miles Drunk and Sword Demon leading the guilds, if they were to suddenly improve tremendously, they just might become even more difficult to handle. These were the thoughts floating in all these guild leaders’ heads right now, and it was rather farsighted and profound, not just considering losing just the City War event alone. After all, the benefits that came from this event were all focused on guild development; emerging guilds like Thousand Miles Drunk and Sword Demon’s would need to be suppressed. This was the one point that these large guilds did not have to mention to achieve a tacit consensus.

At the moment, the only one who was feeling very depressed about all this was Broken Water Arrow, especially since Young Master Han was throwing a mirthless smile his way from time to time. Broken Water Arrow really tried his best to control the urge to not just kill the man.

“Who’s holding onto the quest item? If possible, hand it over to someone with faster movement speed. We’ll open the passageway first, while the others can hurry along behind them,” Broken Water Arrow expressionlessly stated.

Gu Xiaoshang nodded, and an Archer stepped out. The Archer’s name was called Wing, and he was not anyone particularly outstanding within Colored Clouds, but it just so happened that he had been the person who managed to dig up the quest item when they were all combing through Yunjiao Quarry, so it was left to him for safekeeping.

“What is the quest item anyway?” Oathless Sword and the others were still in the dark about the nature of the item, and they could not help themselves but ask.

In the end, even Gu Xiaoshang and Wing shook their heads. They still had no idea what it was they had gotten in their hands.

“It’s a component to blow up a device. There’s a disused aqueduct around here, with only a wall separating it from the outside. Once we blow it up, we’ll be able to get inside,” Broken Water Arrow said.

“Is this the place where Thousand Miles Drunk had entered underwater just now?” Oathless Sword and the others asked.

Broken Water Arrow nodded.

“What is it?”

“Yunduan City’s water system hub,” Broken Water Arrow answered.