Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

“Drunk bro’s mighty!!!!”

At such a time, there was only one person who would be able to shout something so sickeningly mawkish, and so loudly as well: Fireball. Sword Demon, Drifting and the others would of course not be echoing this together. They were all experts with actual standings, each with their own pride. However, there were now a lot more players from Extremely Heaven Defying and Amethyst Rebirth who were easily fooled without knowing the truth, so hearing Fireball shout so brightly, others also joined in, resulting in this particular sentiment being picked up by everyone in the crowd, everyone loudly proclaiming, “Drunk bro’s mighty!”

“Thank you, thank you!” Gu Fei waved his hand to acknowledge the crowd.

“How shameless can you get?!” Svelte Dancer could not stand it.

“It’s common courtesy,” Gu Fei was being absolutely serious, making it difficult for people to tell just what tone he was adopting.

“Stop wasting time. Carouse’s Mage Formation has scattered, so take this chance to follow-up!” Drifting pushed Gu Fei outward.

“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” Gu Fei was solemn all of a sudden.

“What?” Everyone looked at him.

“I’ve died 20 times now…” Gu Fei said.

Everyone paused for a moment, but soon caught on what that meant.

Dying 20 times meant that the player would be unable to step out from the spawn point for 20 minutes… This was catastrophic news, as that essentially meant Gu Fei had exited the City Wars event. 20 minutes. That was more than enough time for either the encampments outside the city to all be swallowed up by the eroded soil or all the spawn points in the city to be conquered. This was precisely the reason why Sword Demon did not dare to head out into the fight. What he could not bear was not the punishment of the loss of 15 lives, but the suspension he would get as a result.

At the moment, Gu Fei was standing right on the threshold of the Mage Academy, unable to take even a step out from the place. There was an invisible wall that the system had in place that kept him sealed inside the spawn point.

It was at this time when a system message from the city blasted out: The Archer Range has been conquered.

The Mage Academy was now the last location standing. Several players respawned at this location, and they were the remaining players who were part of the city defender’s forces that were at the Archer Range. Since the Mage Academy was the last spawn point they could revive in, Royal God Call was also one of these people, hurling curses at everything the moment he spawned it.

“It’s still too early to count your chickens before they hatch! Line up and get ready for the attack!!” Southern Lone Blade bellowed as the players formed up their defensive line once more. Conversely, when the city assaulters were made aware that this was the final spawn point left standing, their morale was greatly bolstered. All of them came charging right toward the Mage Academy regardless of all costs. Thousand Miles Drunk was the one who had made them vomit blood en masse, yet none of them showed any fear despite seeing him stand on the transom of the Mage Academy.

“ATTACK!” Southern Lone Blade pointed with the tip of his claymore as the Mages on the city defender’s side were the first to open fire. Fire covered the skies as it spread out, and the ensuing damage behind this was rather frightening. The players in the front that were spearheading the charge were the first to get killed, but none of them as a whole cared. The players behind stepped past the flashes of light that came from the players in front of them as they carried on the attack, but Brave Surge, who was also a Mage, had already seen through the crux of their attack: They had split their Mages into two separate groups, taking turns to attack. So the moment one wave ended, that did not mean there would be a cooldown period after…

“Hold it!!!” Brave Surge shouted out loud, preventing the players from suffering through the second barrage.

Unfortunately, not a lot of players had heard him. So aside from his own fellow guild members and those that were near him that intentionally came to a halt, the majority of players had continued to charge toward the Mage Academy.

Sure enough, the second wave of spells arrived, and a sea of flames raged.

“I knew it,” Brave Surge chuckled coldly. With a wave of his hand, his underling immediately went dashing forward now that the spell bombardment was over.

But the third wave of spells was unleashed at that moment…

While it was only just a single spell that looked very small all by itself, the power it beheld was great, and those players from Carouse that were caught in the area who did not have full HP all got insta-killed by it. Who else but Thousand Miles Drunk could possess such power as to accomplish something like this?

“You’ve hoodwinked them!” Drifting cast Gu Fei a side eye.

“It wasn’t by choice,” Gu Fei showed a look of innocence. He did not intentionally plan for this. He had cast his spell out at the same time Southern Lone Blade had called out to attack, but because his spellcasting speed was so slow, his spell had only materialized after the two waves of Mages finished their bombardment. In the end, this mistake had accidentally struck the enemy, and the two spells that Gu Fei cast easily cleared out a whole circle of Brave Surge’s men.

Brave Surge was beating his chest in grief and had completely lost his composure, pointing toward the Mage Academy and chastised Gu Fei for being an absolute failure of a Mage.

The players from Carouse that were still alive completely sympathized with their guild leader’s tragic indignance. They swarmed forward, hoping to be able to help stand up for their guild leader, only for Drifting to step forward from the frontlines and raise his magic staff. Uttering a single sentence ‘Twin Lotus of Emerald Flames’, he mimicked a flamethrower and immediately reduced all the surviving stragglers in front of him to mere white light.

“Beautifully executed!” Gu Fei praised Drifting.

“Push outward!” Sword Demon commanded.

The experts tacitly understood the order and stepped out from the Mage Academy, choosing to advance instead of retreating.

“Hey, I can’t get out!” Gu Fei cried out.

“Just stay still there, don’t create a scene,” Svelte Dancer chided as she passed by.

“Thousand Miles Drunk, you’ve caused me much distress,” on the other side, Royal God Call had even come in from the side to cuss him out.

“What took you so long?” Gu Fei asked.

“The Archer Range got taken over. I’ve died several times there,” Royal God Call’s tears were streaming down his face.

“Oh, and here I thought you got lost again,” Gu Fei quipped.

Hearing the word ‘again’ only made Royal God Call cry even harder.

At the moment, the battle outside the Mage Academy’s courtyard gates was already underway. Even though the spell coordination from the city defenders was rather impressive, the city assaulter’s sides boasted thronging numbers. The damage output they dished out was simply insufficient, and when the enemy had finally arrived right before them, Southern Lone Blade ordered the Warriors to make their last stand holding the frontline. A single blurry figure came dashing and lashed out, throwing the players at the forefront of the enemy lines all over the place as the man’s attack connected. Indeed, this assailant was none other than Sword Demon. What he did was akin to a windshield wiper, erasing a whole row of players in just a single swift unstopping motion. After withstanding Sword Demon’s Shadowmist Assault, those who managed to live found themselves heavily damaged. Following on this, Southern Lone Blade commanded the Warriors to take this chance and make their move, immediately eliminating another row of enemies.

However, Sword Demon’s Shadowmist Assault had a very long cooldown, and he was unable to repeat this scene so soon. The enemy increased their pressure once more. This was no longer a skirmish, but an attempt to push Southern Lone Blade and the others back.

The Mages all opened fire in unison, as both sides started to face off against each other’s spell bombardment. The city defenders were still being precise, only throwing out their spells where the enemy was piled up together, but the city assaulters were essentially able to bully the city defenders with their numerical superiority. None of them cared for friend or foe as they randomly blasted away. The Mages in the distance were tossing out spells that did not even get anywhere near the hairs of their enemy, completely casting right into the midst of their own formation. It was evidently somewhat too much, and everyone began cursing and swearing in anger until finally this sort of irresponsible actions no longer occurred again.

“Withstand it all! Everyone do your best to withstand this. The only thing we need is time!!” Southern Lone Blade bellowed, dying right as he finished shouting this aloud. Nobody was invincible once the battlefield had descended into such levels of chaos, and any sort of PK skills that a player possessed would no longer be of any use at this time. Coordination was hardly effective either, though this was the time when the effectiveness of equipment came into play, enabling those who possessed good equipment evidently surviving a few more seconds.

Southern Lone Blade was a Warrior who had the best equipment out of everyone, so he ought to be the last one standing. However, he spent too much time talking that he ended up receiving too many attacks, which ironically caused him to be the first to be killed off. He was the perfect example of what if meant for a tall tree to end up withstanding the most wind.

Sword Demon had very sinisterly taken cover amidst the shadows in the courtyard, just waiting for his Shadowmist Assault’s cooldown to finish. The city assaulters were far too eager to dash into the Mage Academy that even though Sword Demon had originally been maintaining his Stealth, he ended up revealing himself when someone accidentally bumped into where he had been standing as they were all rushing toward the building within, though no one seemed to mind which side he belonged to. When Sword Demon’s skill was available, he did not care to spare a shred of courtesy as he unleashed his Shadowmist Assault and abruptly cleared out a path of players just like that, diving right in to the relative safety the Academy provided at the same time.

“If you want to get past, you’ll have to get through me first!” Gu Fei shouted. The troops led by Sword Demon and Southern Lone Blade to hold off the invaders had already returned after being drowned out by the stampede. Gu Fei was standing right on the doorstep to the Mage Academy, as the other players who all spawned behind him went about to were all gathered together. Against the faceless mob that was throwing themselves right at him, Gu Fei did not even take a step back, lifting his hand to cast a spell, prepared to welcome the enemy altogether, Sword Demon and Southern Lone Blade had both already been commanding their teammates that ran past him again.

“TRAMPLE THEM!” The city assaulters hollered. Skills and spells were being randomly thrown all around in, with no idea if it was a good or bad direction. In any case, the city defender’s formation could only hold for a while, and any opening or cracks in it would most likely instantly be torn. Very quickly, after stepping out to hold for not even 30 seconds, a whole pack of players was all sent back to the spawn point again.

“It’s my turn now!” Gu Fei yelled. This time, the city assaulters were all putting pressure to push inward, and quite a good number of them were already standing right in front of the Mage Academy’s entrance. With a single Twin Incineration, Gu Fei was able to turn these people into white light.

“Whoever has got the guts, step right up!” Gu Fei was looking exceptionally impressive carrying his sword like that.

Ten thousands of arrows were fired off in unison.

Perhaps that was too much of an exaggeration, but there were surely thousands of arrows in this attack. Gu Fei looked out. When did the Mage Academy courtyard get so packed? It was completely filled with players at the moment, and even the roads in every direction that lead to the courtyard had players all squeezed like sardines. There were even players on the rooftops of the neighboring streets, with all the Archers standing around, not caring if they were in range or otherwise as they all shot their arrows in his direction.

When Gu Fei shouted that line, the melee players were in fact a little reluctant to step up to him, but the cloud of arrows that were flying his way was as tightly packed as the mass of players, and the density of this attack might very well trump that of the Mages. Gu Fei swept his sharp gaze across and realized that there was no way he could avoid the projectiles if he tried to turn his body sideways like the last time, not even if he was paper-thin. Could he use his Blink? 6 meters was still too near. Gu Fei sighed as the rain of arrows came down, instantly turning him into a pincushion.

The city assaulters felt their own emotions surge! However, there was a long pause after this rain of arrows finished, leaving plenty of other players perplexed as they all yelled out together, “Continue shooting!” They were hoping to witness that magnificent offensive from before.

“What do you mean carry on shooting? Hurry up and seize the spawn point! What’s the point of firing arrows?!” Youthful Reflection bellowed.

It was like the players were all roused from a dream. While the rain of arrows was an imposing display of strength, what was the point of continuing to fire like that? If their goal was to conquer the spawn point, they would need to eliminate all the NPCs that were guarding the place and have their men inside the location for a whole 5 minutes.

5 minutes… Did they still have 5 minutes to spare? Besides, they would still need to take some time to kill off all the guards while being harassed by the city defenders… The city assaulters suddenly felt rather flustered. How were their encampments outside the city? It seemed like it had been a long time since they received any sort of news about it.

The guild leaders who thought about this each sent a message out to their scouts outside, but they did not expect for their replies to go something like “Relax, things are going very well for the encampments. The water flow has suddenly turned down to a trickle. Who knows, maybe nothing is going to happen with the encampments at all.”

The city defenders had also received this same news as well. None of them reacted too much to what they learned since none of them were able to do anything to help with this attack on the city assaulters’ encampments. They had pinned all their hopes to the quest, so if the system was not completely devastating the enemy’s encampments, all the hard work that the city defenders had put in would have been for naught.

In the time for all this to happen, several city assaulters had already managed to bust their way into the Mage Academy, and they were ignoring all the players inside as they went straight for the NPC guards that were protecting the place.

Even though their stats had seen an 80% decrease, their AI personality still remained; they took the initiative to defend the place as they dove right for the city assaulters the moment they got into the building. This might perhaps be the first time these city assaulters welcomed the attack from the NPC guards so openly, as this saved them quite a bit of trouble searching for them. Right now, these guards were not dashing in for their attack, but more like inviting themselves right into the arms of the city assaulters to kill.

But there was no reason the city defenders would just stand by and let them have their way with these NPC guards, right? As long as there’s still a single guard standing, the countdown for the conquest of the Mage Academy would not begin, and that meant they could buy themselves even more time. The moment the guards die, it would be completely impossible for 200 city defenders to succeed in repelling all the city assaulters just out beyond the courtyard gates.

At the moment, there were not too many city assaulters that had managed to barge their way in, so the city defenders still held a numerical advantage locally speaking. A group of experts and a mix of random new members came to fend the invaders off, and the handful of city assaulters very quickly met their demise. However, the city assaulters beyond the Mage Academy entrance had managed to make a breakthrough and after that first paltry wave of city assaulters was eliminated, while the NPCs were turning around to return back to their stations, someone else managed to step through, causing the guards to turn around in a hurry again. The city defenders moved swiftly as well, immediately cutting down anyone who tried to step into the Mage Academy. The entrance to the place was only so wide, and that chokepoint made it difficult for the city assaulters to fully utilize their numerical superiority. The players in the front that were busy being slashed at had all turned their heads around to shout, “Where are the Archers? Or the Mages? Provide us with cover! We’ve managed to make our way in!”

They were all killed off just as they shouted this, and players that stepped in to take up the same spot continued to shout this as they got chopped down as well. The Archers and Mages behind were under a lot of pressure. At the very least, a long ranged attack required them to maintain a line of sight, but now that they were in such thronging crowds, how could they even get vision of anything? Mages without a line of sight would not be able to see their targets, so there was no way they could even cast their spells at all. Archers could try and make arc shots, but the Archers would also require plenty of movement space. With how more and more reinforcements were making their way toward the Mage Academy, the place got even more crowded as everyone gathered, reducing the amount of space between people. Forget about drawing their bows, it was a miracle if they could even free their hand from the squeezing masses.

“Disperse, make space!” Youthful Reflection, the man in charge of Traversing Four Seas’ Archer Formation was hollering, but it fell upon deaf ears entirely. Anyone who was willing to listen wanted to move, but those who did not refused to cooperate, so it was pointless they listened in the first place.

The teams of city assaulters were all bloated, while the entrance of the Mage Academy acted like a bottleneck, causing them to be firmly stuck there. The entrance itself acted like the gates of hell; anyone who stepped through would instantly be slain by the city defenders inside.

“It’s a mess, everything is in a mess!!” Oathless Sword had finally made it, but he was still several hundreds of meters away from the entrance of the Mage Academy, and in front of him were players as far as his eyes could see. There was simply no way that he could make his way through. Oathless Sword shouted for people to let him pass, but no one paid him any attention. He then relied on the stupendous Strength he possessed, recklessly boring his way through the masses until he finally saw his general Youthful Reflection. The man did not have much Strength, so he was currently being squeezed to the point his face was like an eggplant. Oathless Sword looked to his side and saw his old competitor Brave Surge, yet another player who lacked any sort of Strength, being squeezed till he could not even see his eyes.

“What’s going on? Why aren’t we rushing our way in?” Oathless Sword sent a message to Youthful Reflection.

“Everything is in a mess. It’s simply too chaotic. We’ll be in deep trouble if this continues!” Youthful Reflection replied. But what could any of them do? Nobody had expected that the City Wars event’s final showdown would actually develop into such a scene. Even Young Master Han was also being squeezed into a twist right now. Nobody could have imagined when 200,000 players descend upon a single target, gathering into one small location like this, such a situation would occur and they would all end up so cramped that they would suffer internal injuries.

“Maintain the tempo of your attack. Clear each and every row of players. Don’t even engage in AoE bombardments at all!” Sword Demon had made the wisest order at this moment, preventing the Mages among the city defenders from thinking about using this chance to cast their AoE spells while the enemy were all lumped together so tightly packed.

Meanwhile, the main force in charge of clearing the entrance row after row no doubt belonged to Gu Fei. Killing off a row with every sweep of his sword, there would always be more after insta-killing those he slashed. It was highly unsatisfying, hating the fact his skill had a cooldown to contend with, making it impossible for him to follow-up his attacks after.

“Mages! Archers!” The players by the front were all yelling for assistance, but when they turned behind to look, it was already hard for them to catch even a glimpse of a Mage with how packed the crowd was. The thin, frail frames of all the Mages were all squished to the point that they were leagues away from the frontlines.

“Can we climb the walls?” Someone threw out an idea. The Mage Academy resided in a fairly large area, and the walls surrounding it were taller than 4 meters. Presently, all they could see were people sprawled on the wall, and no one was able to climb over it.

“Are we just going to be beaten just like this?” the guild leaders of the various large guilds, who had been very confident of the chances of their victory, were all repeating this one line in their minds now that they could not even see the entrance of the Mage Academy from where they were. Meanwhile, they felt utterly annoyed by all the unfamiliar faces that were being crammed around them.

“How are things over by the encampments?” the guild leaders all asked for an update about the situation beyond the city.

“Everything is peaceful!” the people outside reported.

“We can’t go on like this,” Young Master Han messaged Gu Xiaoshang, despite not knowing where she was exactly.

“So what can we do?”

“Kill! Kill to make space around you!” Young Master Han answered. “Contact the other strong guilds!”

Gu Xiaoshang was stunned, but she knew that this was not the time to talk about decency and morality. Very quickly, she connected with the guild leaders from all the other large guilds and raised her suggestion.

“That’s right! Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?” All the other large guild leaders were slapping their foreheads when they heard it.

“Kill! We’ll make enough space for ourselves by clearing the rabble!” The various guild leaders of Yunduan City’s large guilds gave the order. Oathless Sword led by example, ignoring who was around him as he unleashed his Cyclone, immediately clearing out some space all around him in the chaos. Over by the other side, where Brave Surge was being crushed and squashed in every direction as he got bullied by all the players around him, he had also relayed his orders to get the Mages under his command to throw out their spells wildly, with some even being jostled by the crowd so much that their incantations had been interrupted when their hands moved. Nevertheless, the remaining Mages who managed to get their spell off had managed to blow out some space for themselves, allowing the Mages to snatch a spot as they continued to blanket the area ahead of them with spells to create a path forward before others could squeeze their way in.

All of a sudden, white lights had blossomed in the courtyard everywhere. This was the result of the decisive sacrifices that the strong guilds had taken, positively affecting the city assaulters in just one move. Now that they had gotten control of the courtyard, the large guilds were able to spread out and get into formation once again. The Archer Formation from Traversing Four Seas had rapidly mobilized as arrows that were headed toward the designated spawn point filled the sky once more. The various guild leaders organized their troops and advanced toward the Mage Academy before the players from behind them squeezed their way up front again.

“They are inside!” Now that the city assaulters had the covering fire from both the Mages and Archers, the city defenders had no choice but to retreat though they had managed to stall for quite a bit of time thanks to all that chaos that they had sown. However, the messages from beyond the city still maintained that there was no movement, and this left the city defenders somewhat dejected. Perhaps the quest only helped them to eliminate a portion of the city assaulters’ encampments and not all? It was too unrealistic to expect 200 players to triumph over 200,000 players, right?

“It’s not over yet! Everyone, pull yourselves together!” Gu Fei shouted as he cleared out several of the city assaulters with a single stroke of his sword. However, the reinforcement behind these players quickly stepped up to replace the dead, and Oathless Sword was actually among them. The moment the man saw Gu Fei, he quickly evaded back into the safety of the crowd behind him, before he happily ingratiated himself, “Big bro Miles, I’m afraid we are going to win this time around.”

Before Gu Fei could even respond, a dull yet overwhelming sound that shook the very land and heavens abruptly thundered, coming right from beyond the city walls. In that very second, it was as if everybody could feel the ground beneath their feet sink.

The message prompts for all the guild leaders began to ping off crazily. By the time they managed to open and checked them, they saw that the messages were all the same: Their encampments were all gone.