Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Brother Assist, War Without Wounds and Royal God Call were all nodding their head repeatedly when Sword Demon mentioned that they have an astoundingly huge advantage, while Young Master Han shook his head on the contrary, “Theoretically speaking, yes. Presently, the attitude of all the large guilds are more along the lines of fawning and pleasing Miles, so even if they do have qualms, they are all hidden deep in the recesses of their own hearts. But if Miles continues to refuse to give everyone face, forcing so many people to back into a corner with no leeways available, there would surely be a day when a dog would jump up the walls in its anxiety¹. When that day comes, Miles would really become public enemy no.1, and become a rat crossing the street².”

“Would Miles be afraid?” War Without Wounds was not at all concerned.

“He won’t, but what if the other party uses some rather coercive means?” Young Master Han said.

“What do you mean by that?” War Without Wounds asked.

“Threatening the safety of his loved ones. Have you never watched such plots in films or television shows? Putting into the context of the game, take you or me for example, or even the ladies from Amethyst Rebirth. What if the other party chooses to hunt these people down incessantly, and use that to threaten Miles? Given Miles’ character, what do you guys think he’ll do?” Young Master Han said.

“Uh…..” After everyone spent a moment in deep thought, Sword Demon spoke up, “Miles would most likely request those who cannot protect themselves to first hide together, and then he’ll go out and risk his life to hunt down those predators by himself….”

“That’s right, that is Miles’ style…” War Without Wounds concurred.

“In any case, I feel like he isn’t someone who would be under duress,” Royal God Call stated.

“Especially in this game, it’s actually very easy to avoid this sort of peril. All we have to do is just randomly change our city for some days, who knows who’s going to end up dead when we return…” Brother Assist said.

Everyone nodded in unison, though Royal God Call seemed to look like he still had words left unsaid. After a moment of hesitation, he finally found the courage to voice it out, “More importantly, would there be anyone who would be able to do something as despicable and shameless like this aside from yourself?”

The others were startled when they heard him utter this, all of them getting a slight feeling that they were about to see a hurricane coming. Unexpectedly, Young Master Han simply scornfully replied, “At the end of the day, I still can’t comprehend the wisdom and consciousness of you mortals.”

All the mortals instantly flashed a look of anger, unable to comprehend this man too as they continued to collate the statistics for their two Precincts.

The cities were rather large in size, and the area of these two Precincts in the city was hardly small either, especially when Sword Demon and the guys intend to walk every street and alley. This was hardly an easy task, and in the end, people like Royal God Call and War Without Wounds ended up losing interest in this boring task of strolling about, leaving just Brother Assist and Sword Demon still focused on the job while Young Master Han was merely concentrating on interacting with his liquor. By the time they were done with everything, the five of them returned back to the guild residence that the system had gifted them with their reward. Royal God Call and War Without Wounds were soon sprawling on the ground after the two men entered the building as Sword Demon and Brother Assist began to carefully flip through and sort the data they had just collected.

At the moment, the five of them were not the only players who had come to view the new residence. As the guild leader, Sword Demon had not set up any restrictions on who could enter the place, so players were free to enter as long as they were members of Extremely Heaven Defying. Everyone inside all came crowding around when they saw the true core members of their guild enter.

These players had managed to benefit after joining Extremely Heaven Defying in this City Wars event, but none of them had built up any sort of emotional connection with the guild until now; all of them just seemed like a tour group that had been strung up together at the last minute. Right now, plenty of them had realized the bright future that lay ahead of this guild, so they were each beginning to work hard to integrate themselves into the environment, so of course establishing a good relationship with these core executives was one of the most important aspects to focus on.

“Shall we get Boss Sword Demon to say a few words to us?” Someone inveigled. It was fairly impressive that there were people who were aware that their guild leader was actually Sword Demon. Quite a good number of them had even confusingly believed that Thousand Miles Drunk was the boss for their guild.

Sword Demon had a good attitude to him, but he was serious in his tone and there was no humor in his speech. Frankly speaking, he gave a very boring speech, yet it still earned him applause and cheer from the players present.

Gazing upon this room of unfamiliar faces and the din they were making, Sword Demon felt a lot of emotions well up inside him. Guild. I’ve ultimately still formed one of my own huh? I wonder how all my old comrades are doing now.

Sword Demon naturally had his own posse of comrades when he was playing online games before. There was even quite a good number who had coincidentally spawned in the same city as him, but these people stopped following Sword Demon due to several reasons, including the incident where he lost to Gu Fei, his appearance and other unfavorable factors. They did not bother maintaining any sort of correspondence after they left either, with not even so much as a message to extend their regards.

While Sword Demon continued to spend time in Parallel World, he would occasionally hear a bit about IGNs he was once familiar with from the lips of other players. They did not continue to gather either, as everyone had each left to make their own marks in the game after being disappointed by Sword Demon. They had each found a guild to develop, and until now, he had not heard anyone of his old friends’ popularity growing in Yunduan City, or that any of them had become a core member of some other guild either.

Looking at this whole bunch of new guild members right now, Sword Demon was suddenly reminded of those old friends of his. He was experiencing a rather emotional reminisce when he faintly heard people asking.

“Guild leader, what time will there be guild activities every day?”

“Guild leader, which day is it when you would lead us to quest?”

“Guild leader, what time will the daily missions be refreshed?”

“Guild leader, where will our guild be going to farm gold?”

Sword Demon was quite taken aback by this. These questions were giving him a sense of deja vu, and it was like he had really found himself back in square one again. Brother Assist presumed that Sword Demon was a little bit stunned at the moment, so he leaped out to help Sword Demon answer them, “Everyone, don’t panic. This is just the first step for our guild, and I’m sure everyone is aware that we have yet to merge with Amethyst Rebirth as well. When the players over there join us, we’ll proceed to set out the activity plans and finer details altogether.”

Everyone was quiet as they listened, but what got Brother Assist so excited right now was not actually what they asked. He was still preoccupied with the tour that he got of both the city Precincts under their guild’s supervision, and when he saw there were so many people hearing him speak, he could not hide it any further as he changed the topic of conversation, “Gentlemen, are you guys aware? Now that we possess city Precincts, they would prove to be a huge advantage over all the guilds that do not have any Precincts of their own. As long as we do a good job managing the real estate business in these areas, a daily income of gold coins would not be a dream any longer!”

“WHAT?!” The players were of course very happy to learn they could earn coins.

“Come on, gather around. I’ll give you guys a general overview of our Precincts,” Brother Assist had his book open, diving into it with great enthusiasm. Thirty minutes instantly passed, and half of his listeners were already yawning, while the other half were having a quiet conversation by the side.

“This is Brother Assist? He’s really someone who can g*dd*mn speak!”

“I heard all he does is hang around in the forums who would keep bumping his post! Why is he also someone who would talk non-stop in person as well!?”

“Holy sh*t, all this information about how many properties are there in a precinct, the number of which are empty, how many are owned by guilds and how many are privately owned… The man’s truly talented.”

“He has my fullest admiration.”

The players continued to exclaim while they painfully withstood listening to Brother Assist continue to rattle on without caring for the people around him. Sword Demon and the others did not go up to interrupt him either, as it had been a long time since Brother Assist had so thrillingly given an audience a detailed informational rundown.

This day passed by really quickly. Gu Fei had returned from beyond the walls, but was afraid that he would be spotted by the people again, so he very quickly rushed to a spawn point and logged out. Sword Demon and the rest spent the entire day planning out just how their guild would develop and what sort of activities they would engage in in the future. This discussion was not just between Sword Demon and the others from the Young Master’s Elite mercenary group; Drifting, Cirrus and Southern Lone Blade with the other experts… All these more unfamiliar yet also vaguely chummy players had joined in as well.

First, everyone organized every guild member’s level, equipment, and other details, before Southern Lone Blade and the other experts personally pointed out a few players who left a deeper impression based upon their performance during actual combat from before. Next, they grouped these hundred or so players up into level grinding, questing, farming, profession skill grinding and other such parties. Attempting to coordinate such a large sum of people and making the necessary arrangements was hardly an easy task, and all of them ended up burning the midnight oil as they noisily worked at this. This had proven to be a far more troublesome affair than when they were dealing with the letters for the efficient monster grinding routines the last time.

Furthermore, the conflicting ideas that each of them held began to emerge as well. Take people like Drifting who were more used to being more free and undisciplined; he was not at all onboard with planning some activities that were happening on fixed schedules. Then there were Southern Lone Blade and his squad. As professional players who depended on the game to earn a living, they had no problem being in a guild, but that depended specifically on just how much profit could the guild bring in, which translated into how much real-world currency they could bring in every month. If it was all about constantly leveling, strengthening themselves to become number 1 in Yunduan City, then the whole of Parallel World… These men were completely uninterested in guilds that were caught up with these sort of aspirational ideals.

As such, every one of them each has differing opinions, and the argument that they had was endless, only leaving them all with a headache after the night had ended. As the guild leader, Sword Demon discovered that there was actually still a very long road ahead.

——————————————————————

Logging on the next day, members of both Extremely Heaven Defying and Amethyst Rebirth had all finished retrieving their rewards from the Logistics department, but on the matter of merging the two guilds, they would need to all the members of both guilds to be present when submitting the merger application to the Hall of Guild Creations, the current guild leader of Amethyst Rebirth, Thousand Miles Drunk, happened to have very irresponsibly been offline, which caused everyone to go through the trouble of waiting for him to turn up.

They ended up waiting for an entire day, as it just so happened that Gu Fei only calmly logged into the game after he had finished his dinner. The time he spent in the game during the last few days when the City Wars event was going on had been exceptionally long. The man had been taking note of his own physical fitness during this period, and had originally intended to not log on into Parallel World for several days. But after the players in the game had truly got tired of waiting, it was fortunate that Brother Assist had gotten a hold of Gu Fei’s contact number the last time they were handling the efficient monster grinding routines, so he was able to directly log out and get on the phone to hurry the man. When Gu Fei heard that everyone had actually been waiting to do everything, he had been rather embarrassed and very quickly logged in.

“We’re all waiting for you at the Hall of Guild Creation,” Sword Demon messaged.

“Can’t I just transfer the role of guild leader to someone else?” Gu Fei asked.

“Take a look and see who you can pass it to,” Sword Demon said.

Gu Fei pulled open the members’ list for the guild and glanced through it once. Each and every name there was foreign to him; the names that he recognized like July and the other ladies had all disappeared.

“Where’s July and the others?” Gu Fei was surprised.

“They’ve already left the guild,” Sword Demon said. The ladies of Amethyst Rebirth had successively left the guild after they had all gotten their rewards from their participation in the City Wars, and they had mentioned this matter to the members of the guild too. These ladies had once been used to advertise and recruit new members, so a good number of players had the feeling like they had been duped by false advertisement now that these ladies had announced they were going to leave. This situation left Sword Demon in quite the awkward spot as well, but he had to respect the ladies’ choice and had no choice but to thicken his skin and bear this.

Even all the players found this to be very unfortunate and truly regrettable, and this matter did not cause too much of a trouble in the end. There were some who were determined to follow suit and follow the ladies, and Fireball stepped out to suggest that they leave for Forever In Flowers instead, and it turned out to be a perfect match. It was but a brief encounter, but Forever in Flowers found their ranks bolstered with several unyieldingly reprehensible men.

While they were no longer in the same guild, those who were in his friends’ list still remained. Gu Fei saw July, Luo Luo and the others were all online, so he sent a message to express his condolence.

“We’re here in the Hall of Guild Creations too!” July replied. “When the two guilds merge, you’ll be using Extremely Heaven Defying as your guild name, so I’ll snatch the guild name ‘Amethyst Rebirth once again. How is it, do you still want to come back and join us?”

“I… I think I’ll pass!” Gu Fei laughed dryly.

“However, the ladies and I all agree that we will confer you as an honorary member,” July said.

“Is that so? I guess I’ve made some rather substantial contributions then!” Gu Fei remarked amusingly.

“I guess you can say that indeed!” July said.

Gu Fei continued to chat as he made his way to the Hall of Guild Creations. The location was even more crowded than he had expected, and with a quick glance, the approximately hundred or so people here were all from the two guilds. The first one to spot Gu Fei’s arrival was Fireball, who immediately came running over, telling Gu Fei that in order to celebrate this momentous occasion of the two guilds merging, everyone would head out to the wilderness to host a bonfire party, and that the invitation to the ladies of Amethyst Rebirth as well.

“How very fun…” Gu Fei coughed a hollow laughter. He was thinking of immediately logging out and heading back to rest after the merger was over, but it was apparent that his plans might not go through that easily. Would Sword Demon and those guys let him go? There was no way Gu Fei would not reciprocate accordingly when such kindness was extended to him. He could not possibly just slay all these players who would refuse to let him log out of the game, could he?

Sure enough, it was exactly as he had expected. When he reached the building, Sword Demon and the others were already there, and they immediately came over to inform him about the activity that would be happening later that night. It was basically their way of telling Gu Fei to participate, and it was not up for discussion. Seeing everyone so interested in this, Gu Fei was also infected by their shared excitement and nodded in agreement. Afterward, he went together with Sword Demon to find the NPC in charge of mergers, and with how efficient the system did things, all it took was the time for the two men to each go through the steps to officialize the merger and all the members of both guilds received a system prompt: [The guild Amethyst Rebirth and Extremely Heaven Defying have merged together. The new guild will be called Extremely Heaven Defying, level 4. The guild leader is Sword Demon, with a total count of 134 members.]

“YEAH!!!” The over hundred players all cheered loudly, providing the system prompt with a very robust sound effect. Meanwhile, Sword Demon had also sent out a single message in the guild channel, “Extremely Heaven Defying has officially been established!!”

“Let’s set out for the wilderness!” Sword Demon gave out the order in the next moment. This bonfire night party activity was the conclusion that they came to after a night of discussion. Considering how abrupt these two guilds had been established, their manpower had also been gathered through extraordinary means. Everyone hardly knew each other, so Sword Demon was hoping that through this one bonding activity, the guild members would be able to build up their relationship with one another first.

Extremely Heaven Defying had a total of 134 players, and because the ladies from Amethyst Rebirth that had also been invited were also all present in the Hall of Guild Creations, the total number of this contingent was close to 200 players, and it was this large group of players that set off from the city. The newly merged guild had everyone noisily engaged in a guild wide discussion in the guild channel, and they were currently complaining about a very huge problem in the guild: they were all men!

When players who discovered this problem pointed out how that in the beginning, they had all been invited to a guild that claimed to be all ladies, so how did it turn out that there was not even a single lady left? The contrast was simply too great. Of course, those who raised this matter for discussion were not trying to make things awkward, but they had already viewed this to be a joke topic. Thus, the other players swept through the members’ list for Extremely Heaven Defying and, sure enough, there was not even a single lady left in the guild.

Now that this matter was mentioned, Sword Demon had no choice but to admit he was quite helpless to this reality. Originally when Brother Assist and July had gone to recruit new members to either guild, even though there had been many more male players that joined up, there were at least still a handful of female players that joined as well. It was only that these ladies had ended up mixing in with July and the ladies of Amethyst Rebirth, and not a single one remained when they all left. As such, Extremely Heaven Defying had become an all-male guild, and this was too huge a contrast from what they had previously promoted.

Gu Fei was reading the chatter in the guild channel and took a look at the list. Indeed, there was not a single lady at all and was rather astounded. He sent a message out to Svelte Dancer, “You’ve gone back to Amethyst Rebirth as well?” Gu Fei had thought that with Svelte Dancer’s temperament, she would have been more inclined to continue staying in Extremely Heaven Defying since it was a guild that suited her aggressive spirit, allowing her to flash her fangs and claw among them.

“But of course, though I am an honorary member of Extremely Heaven Defying,” Svelte Dancer said.

“What is that, anyway?”

“You’re an honorary member of Amethyst Rebirth, so why can’t I be an honorary member for Extremely Heaven Defying? In any case, make sure you keep me informed if there’s anything fun happening over with you guys,” Svelte Dancer insisted.

Gu Fei chuckled bitterly. This lady always loved pitting herself against him.

“How about that person… Where’s Xi Xiaotian? Has she gone to join your guild as well?” Gu Fei asked once more.

“She’s not here. She left the guild after she retrieved her reward and went off to play on her own!” Svelte Dancer answered.

Gu Fei glanced over to his friends’ list. and saw that Xi Xiaotian was online. He wanted to ask her about it, but he had no idea what he should say, so he ultimately gave up on the idea. He then asked Slyris and her sister about their situation, and sure enough, the two ladies were a little reluctant to leave their old friends in Xiawu City, so they chose to first return home and decide what to do at a later time.

“That’s really regrettable,” Gu Fei said.

“Yeah,” Svelte Dancer sighed as well.

“It won’t be convenient for me to borrow her rings next time,” Gu Fei rued.

“You’re so heartless!” Svelte Dancer had thought that he missed his comrades-in-arms, only for this person to be concerned with just that lady’s pair of mana regeneration rings.

These people were making a racket as they made their way out of the city. Even though this was actually the evening in the real world, the midday sun was actually shining brightly in the game. Saying that they were hosting a bonfire night party was a little comical since the night time in the game would only begin in two hours away, while the night cycle would only last for another two hours in real time after.

And just because of this, none of them cared to be too particular. When they arrived at their destination, Sword Demon delegated the tasks like he was the commander of a PK fight, sending men to collect the firewood needed, others to kill the monsters and retrieve their meat… Gu Fei looked around. What kind of bonfire night party is this? Couldn’t you just call it an outdoor barbecue?

Nobody dared to give directions to the great Gu Fei, so he gladly stayed idle, strolling about everywhere, wandering till he got to Southern Lone Blade and his squad. The seven of them looked like they often engaged in such activities, looking like they were very skilled with every step of the procedure. When they saw Gu Fei, all seven men went up to him and inquired about the reward Gu Fei had redeemed.

“That’s a really good item!” Fire Singed Clothes commented. “You would be able to be hired by others to slay people; bait the target to get some PK points on himself so you can confirm his coordinates when you search his IGN with that Bounty License of yours. You’ll be able to hunt this person down endlessly, dropping two levels with your first kill, four levels with the second kill… Haha, but really, that would be too g*dd*mn cruel. We should just pick up Bounty Missions, and send the rightful criminals to the prison and punish them by wasting their precious time, don’t you think?” Fire Singed Clothes was really enraptured by what he was saying, but he nimbly changed his words halfway the moment he realized that Gu Fei was looking at him with a rather ominous expression.

Instead, it was Southern Lone Blade who heaved a deep sigh, “Actually, what I’m quite interested in figuring out is just how our guild will develop from here.”