Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Chapter 710 – Waiting for you to get Online

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

When Gu Fei had very carefreely logged out, his actions impacted everything in Yunduan City, leaving everyone, from the smallest player to the biggest guilds, at a loss over what they should be doing. Young Master Han had thrown out a few lines of derision in the mercenary channel, and no one dared to respond. The tragedy of Royal God Call’s departure was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Young Master Han pointedly asked Sword Demon regarding the situation with their quest, but Sword Demon pretended to be deaf and mute. The man had slinked his way to the northeast encampment, but if even Gu Fei had been unable to find an opportunity to occupy the place, Sword Demon was naturally unable to find a chance to strike after walking two rounds around the place.

However, Sword Demon was not one such person who would stay idle for long. Changing over to a different encampment, he tried to see if he could attempt the previous method they used to instigate the players into fighting with the NPCs again. However, because the players from Yunduan City had already lost an encampment as a result of that infighting debacle, nobody was foolish enough to fall for this trick any longer. The players had very quickly seen through his actions when Sword Demon attempted his charade, and because he was just giving it a try while he had nothing else to do, he did not really harbor much hope for it to succeed. Having already laid out a plan for escape before he even initiated the plan this time, he took the chance before the opposing forces could surround him to cut out a path with his Shadowmist Assault and leave.

Sword Demon returned to the League of Assassin’s hideout inside Yunduan City and received another assassination quest. In the end, he got another random no-name guild leader of a guild so small that even Brother Assist had no idea that they existed, which left the man feeling so embarrassed that he actually lacked the information. Ultimately, it was Sword Demon who was consoling Brother Assist, decisively abandoning the quest there and then. Having consecutively abandoned two quests like that, the League of Assassin gave a very stern critique to Sword Demon, and severely warned him that this sort of work ethic where he avoided hard work was entirely intolerable, which left Sword Demon uncertain if he should laugh or cry.

In order to punish Sword Demon for his actions, the League of Assassin refused to give him any more quests. Sword Demon loitered all around Yunduan City and discovered there was nothing else to do. He was both lonely and bored! After going up to the city battlements and playing around with the trebuchets there for a bit, he spent some of his time on the battlefield killing other players in the chaos. Sword Demon was alone playing the game, and although there were so many people out there to kill, he did not have a friend or companion by his side. This persisted on till the morning, and all the players had gotten very tired of everything. The City Wars event was nothing like the tournament last time, so there was no set time schedule to follow. After the official announcement that the event had started last night, there had not been another word about when it would end.

A majority of players who stayed online through the entire night and gave up on sleep until now were mostly veteran gamers like Sword Demon and the others who were used to gaming overnight. Meanwhile, among the players who had specifically intended to play the whole night through the event, a good number of them had also failed to stay up the whole night and gave up after midnight. Compared to the scenes of chaos and bloodshed present at all four gates last night when the City Wars event was going at full swing, there was hardly anyone left near any of the four gates.

But it was not as if these players who were madly fighting throughout the night had not gained anything from the constant clashes.

The players who kept dying had already exhumed the game feature regarding the set limit of deaths everyone had for this event. This had first happened over by the south gate, where the fighting had never once ceased since the start of the event. Due to what happened between the large guilds over by the north gate, many guilds had made their way all the way down to the south gate as they had wanted nothing to do with the large guilds, choosing the one gate furthest away from the accursed north. Even The Black Hand Syndicate had ultimately chosen the south gate to set themselves up after having moved around so much. Nobody suggested any sort of collaboration in the south, nor did anyone cared to act like a god and step up to lead the masses. Everyone did what they could, as best as they could, throwing themselves into the attack against the city. This constant fighting and clashes finally resulted in a player discovering that the system had promptly informed him about his inability to die any further and was now kicked out from the City Wars event entirely.

This phenomenon was like a disease, and after it happened to the first victim, the floodgates opened and there was soon a second, third and so on. The system was fair and viewed everyone as equal, so there was no way the NPC guards would solely direct their attacks onto a particular guild and massacre them. More and more players from every possible guild passed this threshold to the point that the increasing amount of players in the encampment finally deduced what caused this to happen, and they soon stumbled upon the number of deaths each player was allowed before they would be kicked from the event.

25 times. After a player died 25 times, the system would announce their ultimate death and eject them from the City Wars event.

This news no doubt panicked the players when they learned about it. No matter what the number was, as long as there was a limit involved, players would surely have trouble accepting it. Almost instantly, there was a visible decrease of unscrupulous players who recklessly threw themselves at the city defenders. A lot of them began to be a lot more careful, even going so far as to restrict themselves from approaching for fear of dying. The situation was already unfavorable for the assaulting players, so the number of players still continuing with the attack took another dip when this particular feature had been uncovered, and these players who were laying siege to the city could very well have been said to suffer from a heavy setback from this.

“Log out and rest. Those who are able, get online earlier. This City Wars event would most likely span over several days, so we will have to work a little harder for the next few days.” Every guild leader essentially gave the same instructions to their guilds right before they called it a night, with everyone returning to a nearby encampment and logging off after.

Of course, the City Wars did not stop just like that. When the players who spent the whole night playing the game had left, those players who had logged out last night as per normal, or those who could not last through the night and turned in early, were all logging on around this time after having replenished on their sleep. These people were all hung up on the City Wars event, so many from this morning shift had hurried to get back into Parallel World.

The City Wars continued, except the battlefield was never as packed and chaotic like the evening and night before.

Presently, there were plenty of discussions of the City Wars event online now that it had been underway for quite some time throughout every city in the Parallel World. After Brother Assist got offline in the morning, it was his habit to take a gander around the forums. The official forums had specially opened an entire section just dedicated to the event, and the most popular thread in it was of course where the players from all the various cities reporting and discussing the progress the respective cities have made toward the City War.

Brother Assist loved collating information, and he originally had the intention of making a summary of everything he had discovered on the first day of the City Wars and post it online, only to discover that someone else had already gathered all the bits and pieces of information and features discovered about this event and compiled them into a single post. This thread had even been stickied by the moderator so it stood out quite prominently, with new information being continuously updated.

Brother Assist clicked to take a look inside, and issues like how there was only a maximum of 25 deaths per player had already been posted. Everyone had helped get involved with the thread, and what little information Brother Assist had learned was already in it. There was nothing more that he could add to the list, and he even managed to learn quite a lot from the thread in turn.

In the end, there is much strength in numbers! Brother Assist sighed in awe to himself. However, upon closer inspection, Brother Assist realized that the rules and features differed from city to city, and not everything applied to every city. This was especially true for cities with very unique terrain like Linshui City, so their City War was completely different from what Yunduan City experienced. Their city assault forces were scattered all over the islands nearby, and they needed to sailboats along the waterways to attack the city, while the system had designated their own ships on the water to receive the enemy. While this sounded very interesting, the players from Linshui City did not share the same sentiment about this.

Aside from this stickied thread, Brother Assist had also seen plenty of players complaining about the story of blood and tears that befell them throughout this event. Every city engaged in battle differently, though the end results were very similar: Everybody had been completely beaten and routed by the city defenses. None of the cities seemed to have any hope of winning the fight, and the one that had made the biggest progress on this aspect was Luori City.

The players from Luori City utilized the terrain of the land and followed that dried up riverbed to get close to the city, attempting to make their way directly into the city in this fashion. All the players in this city had gathered for this single operation, opting to attack via this river instead of the gates. They forcefully divided the city guards into flanking the riverbed from both sides, bracing against the system’s attack, along with the rocks from the trebuchets, laying down their lives as they forged their way inward.

But as they continued on like this, they discovered that the shameless system had actually already blocked the riverway off. However, the players from Luori City did not give up just because of this. Believing that this was a method by which they could attain victory, all of them were prepared to dig out the path all over again. According to the person who made the post about this, at the time of posting, they had already dug out a large hole and everyone believed it was a matter of time before they make it through. The spirit of engaging in this sort of activity while holding off the attacks from the system received a lot of praise from the players replying to the post, with many from other cities claiming they needed to learn from this and head back to go dig their way past the walls as well.

Regarding what was happening in these other cities, Brother Assist had only treated it as a joke and read through them leisurely. After sifting through the sea of threads made in the section, he finally found one that was about Yunduan City. The post that had the most replies left Brother Assist in awe. Miles, oh Miles. You truly are someone who would always be refreshing and outstanding no matter what you’re doing.

The most discussed topic among players from Yunduan City was precisely about the presence of players who were designated to be city defenders.

Players who had gotten a role as part of the city defense was not unique to Yunduan City alone. Aside from Gu Fei and Sword Demon, other people whom they currently knew were in a Faction included Cool Apple, Broken Water Arrow, Ray and so on. Thus, it could be seen that something like the Faction function already existed, and in a situation where the system had not explicitly hinted anything, there were sure to be quite a few others out there who were lucky enough to get themselves into a Faction.

But the problem was that there was no doubt that such people were absolutely in the minority after all. Just take Ray as an example; he was designated to be a city defender, but what sort of impact had he made from it? All he did was listlessly sweep the streets, pick up rocks and push his cart moving provisions. He hardly did anything worth noticing.

It was only Gu Fei who had been able to cause plenty of bloodshed and violence all by himself. Traversing Four Seas and Carouse were two of the largest guilds in Yunduan City, yet they had been soaked through in this hurricane of blood. It was unknown who this player was who had posted about Yunduan City, but the point was that this post had been written from the perspective of these two guilds, rashly complaining about Thousand Miles Drunk’s poor behavior. Why did the more he read the post, the more he felt as if the man was trying to smear the two guilds?.

Since the system had already designated Thousand Miles Drunk to be a defender on the side of the city, there was no amount of attacking he could do toward the players assaulting the city that would be seen as too overboard, so what was there to be complaining about? Just his ability to fend off two guilds had indeed demonstrated that he was a little too outrageously strong, but how did becoming powerful and strong turn into some sort of fault? Brother Assist carefully examined the players that replied to this post, and he realized that the players did not view Thousand Miles Drunk’s action with any hatred; nor did they express any sort of sympathy toward the misfortune of either Traversing Four Seas or Carouse. The only thing everyone noted was statements like: Was Thousand Miles Drunk really that strong? Is he a man capable of beating a thousand? How could the other players still survive at that rate?

“Could this actually be an attempt to smear Miles?” Brother Assist pondered to himself, jumping to the end of this reply train and saw that everyone ended up talking about how overly powerful Thousand Miles Drunk, and thus felt great injustice about it.

“Using the players to turn public opinion against Miles, did those rascals do this?” Brother Assist suddenly recalled Ye Xiaowu and those ex-soldiers he worked with...

————————————————————-

Back in the game, the veterans of the large guilds had all stayed up the whole night, and most of them had already gone offline to rest by this time. However, there was a group of men in Carouse, along with their guild leader Brave Surge, who were still online. Not only were these men not in the least bit tired, but they were also actually full of energy.

They had not spent the whole night gaming. During the hours overnight, these men took turns in a rotating shift to log off and rest. There were those who had managed to get plenty of rest and some did not get too much time resting, but no matter the case, the energy that these people had was much better than those players who were still forcing themselves to stay awake gaming.

Facing the north gate, Brave Surge had gathered 212 men from his guild here by the encampment ground that had been dismantled. These were all players who were key members of the guild whom he trusted deeply. Brave Surge knew all of their names, all 212 of them. These men could be viewed as the backbone of the guild. While these 212 players did not have an absolutely balanced job class composition, they were definitely loyal to Carouse. Brave Surge believed that none of these 212 men were half-hearted, simply going with the flow.

Currently, all of them had gathered at this spot precisely for that vital guild quest they had gotten their hands on last night.

This time, Brave Surge had very prudently executed his plan. He had even not spoken a word over the guild channel about it. The 212 men were all split into three parties, each separately led by Brave Surge, Folding Fan Invader and a Mage by the name of Sea Breeze.

Brave Surge, Folding Fan Invader and Sea Breeze were standing together, and everything that the three had discussed would immediately be transmitted to the respective party channel. If anyone had any opinions they wished to express, they could simply reply accordingly.

“This is the spot? Are you certain?” Brave Surge asked.

“Positive! I’ve found plenty of players to confirm it with me. This is the exact spot,” Sea Breeze said.

The three were huddled in a triangle, standing right in the middle of a patch of empty land, which happened to be part of the land where the no.3 encampment had been. This area that they were now on had still retained its function of allowing players to safely log in and out from here. It was also this space here between the three in that triangle that Thousand Miles Drunk had been standing on when he logged out, which was why Brave Surge was keeping his eye on it so closely.

Facing Thousand Miles Drunk head on? Not only was such an endeavor dangerous, the more important question they had to ask themselves was if they were able to locate Thousand Miles Drunk to face him head on. As such, while Thousand Miles Drunk was offline, Brave Surge had gotten a great chance: Wait at the spot where he had logged out and wait for him to come online so he can immediately spring an ambush on Gu Fei.

Usually, it was impossible to do something like this because, in normal circumstances, the designated log off points would also be a safe zone, where players were unable to even touch each other, much less ambush one another. But now, thanks to the special City Wars event, there was no such safe zone to deal with, and Brave Surge felt that this would be the chance for them to vanquish Thousand Miles Drunk once with the least amount of potential losses, and they simply could not miss it.

Of course, vanquishing Thousand Miles Drunk was not his main goal as Brave Surge was still doing this for his quest. Or to be precise, the quest that Beyond Thirty Miles had on him.

After everyone heard about the quest and discussed on the matter, all of them concurred that the content of the quest required them to kill Thousand Miles Drunk before they could obtain the next step of instructions from Guillermo, or perhaps killing Thousand Miles Drunk would result in the man dropping some sort of quest item. Brave Surge had thought of this particular solution In order to make this plan foolproof. Thousand Miles Drunk had been very conspicuous when he logged out hours ago. Back then, he had indeed been the focus of everyone’s gaze, so Brave Surge had very easily found out where he was standing the moment he logged out. In the spirit of caution and further verified by many other individuals, they had cordoned off an area of space that was big enough for ten Thousand Miles Drunk to log out from.

Brave Surge was convinced there would be no more mistakes, which was why he had led all these players to this particular set of coordinates and completely surrounded the spot with his men.

“Set the Traps down, as much as you can. Align it such that he would step into one the moment he appears.” Folding Fan Invader instructed.

“Could he still Blink after getting snared by a Trap?” someone asked.

“I don’t know...” None of these men had learned the skill Blink.

“The distance for Blink is about 6 meters,” Sea Breeze said. “Let’s form our encirclement up with this bit here at the core. Make sure you form the circle with a 6m radius. Our AoE spells should be enough to cover it entirely and insta-kill Thousand Miles Drunk.”

“Wait a minute. If we were to set the traps down, what are we going to do if other players get on and end up stepping on it?” Someone thought of this while he laid out his Trap.

“Hmmm.... Do we rather make a mistake and kill someone wrongly than let Thousand Miles Drunk have a chance go escape?” Folding Fan Invader asked Brave Surge.

“I’ve got Thousand Miles Drunk on my friends’ list. The system would give me a prompt the moment he gets online. However, if I were to be careless, or be a little slow to give out the order, or if everyone were to react a tad bit slower...” With such a serious matter at hand, Brave Surge ultimately felt it was better to be a little cruel and nodded. “Let’s do it this way; we’ll kill anyone who appears. I doubt it would be so coincidental. How many people could really log out here in this patch of land?”

“For those unlucky saps that appeared, I guess they will make nice practice targets for us,” Sea Breeze was a lot more merciless in his line of thinking.

“Archers and Mages would make the bulk of the attack. The other job classes will stand by and take action in case of emergencies,” Brave Surge gave this final order.

“I believe that there should not be any sudden emergencies. I doubt he would be able to escape seeing all the preparation we’ve made here,” Folding Fan Invader was very confident.

The next step was just to wait. Warriors, Thieves, Knights, and Priests were all rather relaxed as they waited, but the Mages and Archers were completely focused. None of them dared to imagine what the result would be if a moment of negligence on their part would give Thousand Miles Drunk the window to react. A contingency? What sort of contingency could they come up with? There’s a total of 212 players here... The fate of our plan all depended on this one move! Everyone was very clear about this.

“What time did Thousand Miles Drunk log off last night?”

“Around 11, I think?”

“That’s more than 8 hours of sleep, why isn’t he up yet?”

“Maybe he’s eating breakfast first?”

“He ought to be done by now!”

“Maybe that guy doesn’t have a computer, and has to head to an internet cafe?”

“Is that seriously the case?”

“Why isn’t he here yet?”

Soon, it was 10 a.m. in the morning. After passing the 7 and 8 a.m. lull of the morning rush, the game was slowly beginning to bustle from activity. Those with normal sleep patterns would essentially choose this time to get online, so logically speaking, Gu Fei should also appear around this time as well, yet he was still nowhere to be seen. However, no one had appeared online within that center of the encirclement either, though there were flashes fo white light from time to time within that 6m radius. There were people who were a part of the City Wars, and those who were not, but all of them immediately got the fright of their lives when they logged on and saw this formation waiting for them. These men from Carouse did not say much either, casually letting out a path for these people to walk out of. None of the players dared to ask further questions when they saw how these men looked brimming with the murderous look in their eyes.

At around 10.30, half an hour had passed. All of them were grumbling when a flash of white light appeared right in the center.

“Attention!!!” Brave Surge yelled to everyone, alerting them. All of them had been waiting for so long, and they immediately unleashed their firepower onto this light. Homing Projectiles and AoE spells all came blasting the spot. The metallic clank of the Trap springing was heard as well, and none of them even saw who was this player inside the white light because it had come and gone just as quickly. No one even caught a glimpse of the person’s face before he disappeared. That was when Brave Surge gave a quick check on his friends’ list and saw that Thousand Miles Drunk was not actually online.

“That’s not him...” Brave Surge announced with a tinge of regret in his voice, yet he realized that everyone was not in the least bit despondent. Having been languishing in such inactivity for this whole while, being able to randomly kill someone like this allowed them to stretch their limbs! All of them were momentarily thrilled, before all of them got back to their places and got ready once more.

In a blink of an eye, another 30 minutes has passed. A white light appeared once more, and Brave Surge believed he seemed to hear the ring of the system prompt sounding at the same time. He suddenly felt this miraculously wonderful premonition overwhelm him, but he very somberly reminded everyone loudly, “Attention!!”.

Just like the last time, Homing Projectiles and AoE spells blanketed the area, completely enveloping the white light that appeared with their attack. Who was it? None of them could make it out clearly. The player had already disappeared, but Brave Surge had quickly checked his system prompt and excitedly announced to everyone, “That was Thousand Miles Drunk, without a doubt!!”

“F*CK YEAH!!!” Everyone was exhilarated. They had actually successfully killed Thousand Miles Drunk in a single instance, even though they did use an extremely shameless method in doing so.

“Ugh, that’s really ruthless...” Gu Fei was feeling absolutely embarrassed having just experienced what it was like to be sent straight to the spawn point upon logging on. I’ve actually been hated to such an extent where someone would actually lay out an ambush and wait to kill me once I got on... I wonder who they are? Gu Fei had not even managed to sneak a glance at his assailant before he got sent to the spawn point back in the city.