Chapter 230: The Old Geezer Cheats Again!
Chapter 230: The Old Geezer Cheats Again!
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Just like that, under Baiyi's care, the girls headed to the closest city atop the back of a slow griffin, whose owner was unknown. On their way, they met some of the patrolling mages, who halted them and questioned them 1 . They let pass them through when they learned of Baiyi's title.
After an unimportant but eventful journey, Baiyi brought the sleeping girls out of the Mage Tower in Arfin city, then returned to the Aegis Mansion with a hired carriage.
The place was clean because they had hired someone to clean the house before they left.
The girl themselves could not care less about hygiene, though. They were so tired that they skipped bathtime and went to their own rooms. After a slip and a fall, they fell asleep — literally.
It could not be helped; Baiyi had to sit at the side of their bed with a warm towel and scrub off the dirt from their face, hands, and legs. He spent more time on their face because he was poking their cheeks and playing around with their faces. When he was done, he covered them with their blanket.
Then he went to the yard, and from his stomach, he took out his potted plants and placed them back in their own place.
After all of these important chores, he crossed the mansion and went to his lab, where dust had mercilessly accumulated because he had banned every servant from going there.
He melted the ice chunks on his body, then he washed the lab.
However, as soon as he melted the ice, the parts of his body that it was holding together immediately clanged down onto the floor like a metallic shower. He had to clean the lab while picking up his own mask, gauntlets, tassets, and such that had fallen onto the floor.
The scene did look a bit like something straight out from a horror movie.
In the end, the almost-all-parts-missing Fifth Walker had to sit on a chair and repair his body. He placed the scattered metals back into place as though they were puzzle pieces — but somehow, for whatever reason, it seemed like there were far more bolts and nails than he had expected, and he had no idea where they had fallen off from. It was awkward just to place all of them there.
Of course, in his storage pouch there was another set of armor — the obsidian one, and honestly, the worth of that set was much more valuable than the set of mithril armor that Baiyi had been wearing. For example, it was so much sturdier.
The thing was that Baiyi had very little interest in changing into a body made of that material. He was so placid about it that he had procrastinated fixing it for a long period of time, and it was still not completed.
He was certain that he would always be a sorcerer, so obsidian — with their stellar magic-absorbing property—would affect his spell or magic. He really had no desire to put that on, so he began to consider just selling off the set.
'Uh, I remember that it is hard to sell it, too. Let's just keep it for any Walker I release in the future.'
"Alright, alright! Quit being such a bore, Sir Hope! We just saved 100s of millions of people! It is our time to kick back and have fun, right? Come on, let's celebrate!" the Blacksmith said. " Time for another MMORPG, right 2 ?"
'Well, he's not wrong. Time to relax a little.'
Baiyi reclined on the chair, placing his legs on top of the lab table — assuming the universal pose attributed to "relax". In the Void, he had started building the world where their next game was gonna be hosted in…
Since that they had just gone through an exciting and nerve-edging real life exodus, most of the Voidwalkers were looking to recreate that sense of tension and unrest over one's own life, so they decided on a battle royale game. More specifically, Baiyi created a game similar to Playerunknown's Battlegrounds; the Voidwalkers were tossed out of a plane and into an empty ghost city. To survive, they had to collect all sorts of weapons, bullets, and supplements in order to fight other Walkers.
To restrict the participants choice of movement and survival strategies, Baiyi even created an endemic lethal gas attack that spread every once in a while, so there were less safe zones in the game, forcing the Walkers to fight each other even more frequently.
About 20 or so Walkers had joined in the game — except those who were sleeping and those who never had any interest in playing, almost everyone had joined in. It seemed that everyone was really enjoying themselves.
Of course, as the game was designed to be a sandbox, the number of players were too few for the game to be more exciting. So Baiyi had created some NPC to join in the fray as well.
The game had not gone on for long when the system sent out a notification that the Archmage had been crushed to death under a truck driven by an NPC. Behold, the first to be kicked out of the game!
This is one embarrassing teacher I have here.
After a while, Baiyi saw that the Caveman had a gigantic saber in his arm as he courageously leaped onto the Scholar, who in turn was holding a shotgun. This battle should have had a foregone conclusion, but after a few seconds — the Scholar had died.
'Hey Scholar, were you holding a fire poker that just happened to look like a gun?'
Later on, a few more Voidwalkers were eliminated. Some Voidwalkers were like the Caveman; they had no liking towards guns and similar machinery, and from this group, some were just, well, idiots who had no idea how guns work.
For instance, the Shadow and the Cleric, who both eventually met each other. These two Church-based Walkers immediately prepped to launch into a gunfight to the death; however, neither had any ammo in their guns, so after they had pointed their guns at each other's chest and pulled the trigger, firing off literally nothing, the Paladin, who wore the most durable bulletproof vest and helmet, zipped into the scene, riding on a heavy motorbike, and —
He killed two birds with one vehicle.
"Ahahaha! My awesome presence has me reminiscing my old, glorious days!" Biker Paladin bellowed as he visualized the bulletproof vest and the helmet as his old armor set, and the bike as his old faithful horse. He was jubilant as he plowed through the plains with his bike, remembering his good old days.
Then his bike suddenly hit a bump, flew into the air and flipped 360 degrees, causing the Paladin to fall off from the bike — to his death.
The winners of the game were, without a doubt, the NPCs. The Voidwalkers were terrible in their performance. Only a few of them performed slightly better: the Blacksmith and the Engineer, who both already had interests and knowledge in human inventions, and the Assassin herself, who had an advantage because of her skill in ambush and hiding. At least these three had actually managed to defeat a few NPCs before dying, unlike the others who had all been massacred.
Faced with their pathetic report card, the Voidwalkers refused the result, stating that they were just testing the water. They were gonna show their true power in the second round!
And still, the first to get booted off in the next round was the person who the world had recognized as the Most Powerful Emperor in History, Sir "Sage-Emperor of the Magi"; he did not die because of a car crash this time, but something even less dignifying…
As the Archmage was searching for items, he did not notice the Hitman who had approached him. The Hitman had no weapon to kill his prey with, so he… well — he hit his target with his bare fist, many, many times.
All the Archmage did at that time was ask, "Hey! Is my character bleeding or something? Am I being attacked?"
Then, he died. He became the first and only person that the Hitman had killed in an attempt that almost resembled an actual assassination rather than direct confrontation.
To be killed by the Hitman who had never even succeeded in killing anyone covertly was one of the least dignifying things anyone could think of.
After finally completing his first ever kill without anyone realizing it was him, the Hitman laughed hard into the sky, "I did it, Ma! Did you see? Hahahahhahah!"
Fueled by the fact that the one he had just killed was none other than the Sage-Emperor of the Magi, he procured a lot of weapons and hid in one of the tall bushes, waiting for his second prey.
Very soon, the Soul Armature Practitioner, who wore a stuffed backpack and had an auto rifle in hand, appeared in proximity.
He suddenly fired off a barrage of bullets into the bushes in front of him and ran away. As he fled, the Soul Armature Practitioner was muttering to himself, "Why the hell did I even do that? I just… I just felt like someone was hiding in the bushes…?"
With a dozen bullets lodged in his body, the Hitman died bitterly with regrets.
Aside from little mishaps like these, the Voidwalkers did show much more promise this time around. At least, they now knew how to avoid and retaliate against the low-level AIs of NPCs. Even the book smart-and-not-street smart representative, the Scholar, managed to retaliate against an NPC for a while.
Very soon, it was obvious that a few Walkers were meant to play games like these—such as the Blacksmith and the Assassin. In the end, the Assassin beat the Engineer with a very slight margin.
The Archmage was restless as he watched. He poked Baiyi secretly and whispered, "My beloved student! Are you really contented with seeing your beloved master get destroyed like this?"
'Who would have thought you're such a noob?' Baiyi thought.
"I'm just bad at single combats, okay! Why, as you know, back when I—"
'I know I know, okay? Gods, let's just continue,' Baiyi replied in his mind helplessly.
He did understand that the Archmage was never used to fighting alone. He had never had a Mano A Mano with anyone in his life. The Archmage had always been surrounded by all kinds of powerhouses, so if anything went south, the Archmage and his powerhouse allies would just gang-banged the shit out of the opponents.
Baiyi didn't consider that a problem or anything; it was just something that would be more advantageous in real life. Why would anyone even consider a one-on-one duel of honor or whatever? Plus, he was an emperor. What kind of people would want to fight the emperor?
With that, Baiyi decided to help his teacher. He secretly rigged the NPCs' actions so that they would secretly protect the Archmage, and allow him to obtain as much resources as possible. Hence, with the help of the NPCs, the Archmage was finally faring much better in the game…
'What else can I do? He's my teacher.'
And then the Archmage and the NPCs met the Warrior.
'Now what am I gonna do — ?!' Baiyi was thrown into a dilemma. 'Who do I help?'
All it took was that one second of hesitation, wherein the NPCs stood idle, for the Warrior to fire off one lone, far-ranged shot at the Archmage. Boom, headshot, Archmage died, and she left.
'Dude? Can you play this game in a stealthier way? Must you prance about on the streets?'
Then, the Archmage, who was fresh out of the game — again, bitterly complained to Baiyi, "No! This woman is a no!"
'What no?! I was even helping you in secret, yet you still sucked. Now it's someone else's fault because they're good?'
"You! Are! My! Heir to the throne! But this woman—she's too wicked; she's too sly, and she cannot be the empress!"
'W-what empress? Is this old geezer finally having dementia or something? His sentences don't even make sense! First, what heir? You don't even your country anymore!'
'And also, how was the Warrior wicked and sly? You're not being fair here, old man!'
Baiyi was obviously messed up by the Archmage's rant, which made him remember the Warrior's previous exchange with him. With these thoughts in his head, he did not even pay attention to the winner of the third round.