Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

The Hunter felt maligned but could not refute their claim. In retrospect, he had really made a tactical error by making the others wait for Gu Fei to initiate the attack, which had allowed the latter to effortlessly insta-kill the four of them.

While these four men continued to bemoan their fate, the rest of The Black Hand rushed over to the west gate. How would they make it in time, though, when Gu Fei and his two students promptly sprinted toward the NPC prison upon entering Yunduan City? With all the winding streets and intersections, the routes Gu Fei and company could take were as plentiful as the hair off the back of a cow. How would The Black Hand’s mercenaries find them when they did not even know where the three’s destination was?

Although quite a few guild quests were obtained from common locations, such as taverns, many similar quests and missions ended in places like the prison, Bounty Assignment Hall, and so on. The Black Hand’s players only numbered to a hundred, so they dared not split up their force too much upon knowing how strong Gu Fei was. The only option left for them was to comb through the entire city, yet they soon received bad news from the small guild: The system announced that the quest had ended!

“Ohhh!” Ultimate Class 3 Guild’s players over by the north gate also received a similar system notification. Receiving the huge experience points from the successfully completed guild quest, quite a few of them leveled up on the spot. White light flashed continuously for a time. Meanwhile, some players of the opposing small guild that were nearby looked on with envious eyes.

Besides experience points, the students also gained a few item rewards which were randomly allocated. Most of the items they received were average blue- or white-tier equipment, yet these students still considered them as rather valuable.

Since the equipment ignored job class when it was randomly allocated, these students once more displayed their outstanding unity by exchanging the item rewards with one another according to their job classes. The din they made left those players of the small guild salivating once more.

Monologue under the Moon was extremely incensed right now. His face was blackened with anger as he stalked over to the north gate. Their client’s competitive quest failed, so their mercenary mission also failed as a corollary. Since they had picked up this mission through the system, their mercenary group’s name over by the rankings in the Hall of Mercenaries had regrettably been given a ‘1’ digit for their failure. Moreover, there was still the indemnity clause that their group had established to worry about. Not only did Monologue under the Moon have to return the small guild’s deposit, he also had to compensate the small guild by shouldering its quest completion fee.

The students completed their guild quest and earned experience points and equipment. The small guild might have failed the competitive quest, but it at least earned quite a sum from The Black Hand mercenary group, so the loss was not that big.

Overall, the one that got the shortest stick in this whole business was The Black Hand. A few of its members lost a level, the group was obligated to pay the client a tidy sum for failing the mission, and The Black Hand even lost its flawless record. There was a big commotion on the mercenary channel as the group leader, Black Index Finger, expressed his dissatisfaction at how the matter had unfolded.

Monologue under the Moon, who was in charge of overseeing this particular mission, failed to complete it and also caused a substantial loss to the mercenary group... This made it quite difficult to free him from blame.

“Thousand Miles Drunk!” Monologue under the Moon grinded his teeth when Gu Fei coincidentally bumped into him on his way back to the north gate with the students. He was about to hand out equipment to his students once more.

“Oh. You’re here, too!” Gu Fei spotted Monologue under the Moon and the small guild’s players squatting by the north gate and felt quite surprised. The quest has ended, so why are they loitering here for? Are these people intending to do something? Gu Fei internally prepared himself to fight at any moment.

“Sir! Sir!” The students surrounded Gu Fei upon his return and showed off their newly acquired equipment.

“Mhm. You’ve all done quite well for yourselves! Follow me; I still have some with me!” Gu Fei brought his students to the warehouse, feeling quite disappointed that Monologue under the Moon did not make a move in the end.

The warehouse contained all of the equipment Gu Fei had farmed from level 0 to level 40. There were low level and high level – the good and the bad – among the items he had brought out and threw on the ground.

The students cried out in jubilation and crowded around the equipment on the ground to snatch what they could. It was like Chinese New Year1 had arrived earlier for these students, causing the other players who had come to the warehouse to gawk at them. Some of them even thought that this was robbery in progress, so they dared not approach the students.

“Don’t snatch. Line yourselves up first!” Gu Fei yelled for the students to stop their ill-disciplined ways.

The students promptly lined themselves up as Gu Fei tasked a few of them to arrange the items according to job class. Ah Fa’s suggestion to let the ones who did not receive any item rewards from the completed quest pick first was received with approval from everyone. The students came forward one by one and picked out equipment. Although not all of them would end up being satisfied, they were just glad that this was even happening.

Some of the students were above level 30, while the others were low level, with three being newbies. Gu Fei felt very gratified to see the pile of equipment before him being put to good use.

“Teacher is really cool!” The students praised their teacher sincerely. As a gesture of appreciation for what Gu Fei had done for them, Ah Fa told his fellow classmates, “Take out the mage equipment we’ve got and let teacher have a look; maybe, there’s something teacher can use.”

The Mages among the students willingly stepped forward to show Gu Fei the equipment that the system had rewarded them for the completed quest.

Gu Fei did not even look at them and merely waved his hand, “No need; keep the items for yourselves!”

“Teacher has reached level 40, so these items aren’t up to his standard anymore!” The students enviously expressed their awe, unaware that the equipment Gu Fei had was even more polarizing than what they thought.

While his sword, robe, and boots were top grade, his other trinkets and gear were still those that Will-low had picked out for him in Yueye City.

Nonetheless, the three top-grade equipment Gu Fei had could be blamed for raising his expectation regarding the quality of equipment. Currently, he considered any equipment that was not at the level of his three equipment as not worthy of changing into.

As the students hailed Gu Fei with praises, he looked at the time and rained on their parade, “Alright, it’s getting late. Get everything in order and go offline, you lot!”

“But it’s only a bit over 9 P.M. It’s still early!” the students protested.

“A little over 9 P.M. is called ‘early’? Have you done your revision for today’s class? How about preparation for tomorrow’s class? Are you done with your homework, and if so, have you checked it through? Log off; everyone log off. Students like you lot must prioritize their studies,” Gu Fei lectured.

After hearing this, the students felt so dejected! Still, none of them dared to rebel against their teacher’s intention. Although he was just a P.E. teacher, he still had the power to make them run eight laps after class. The student dispiritedly headed back to the designated log-off points. Some tried to sneak off when Gu Fei was no longer in sight by running off elsewhere, but Gu Fei’s message arrived shortly after, “Why are you not offline yet?! Do you wanna run ten laps tomorrow?!”

These students could only sigh in lamentation. Had they known that this would happen, they would not have added their teacher as a friend. Right now, even if they somehow managed to sneak off, their lit up names in Gu Fei’s friends list would still indicate that they were very much online.

And even if they made their names appear offline, various methods, such as refreshing the friends list, existed to check whether they were online or not. A monk might run away, but the temple remained... The students had no choice but to log off in the end.

Gu Fei watched as the names of all his students dimmed one by one. He refreshed his friends list and checked once more, nodding contentedly after. With how things had progressed, it was perhaps not bad for a teacher like him to play a game with his students, as it could help them maintain a healthy level of gaming.

Gu Fei thought up to this point as he ran toward the Bounty Assignment Hall. His PK value was currently over 10 points, so it would be better to erase them all. When he saw that a player had a PK value of 5 points, which was way above the others on the Wanted Players list, Gu Fei could not help but feel very elated. The guild leader of Carouse, Brave Surge, was the last wanted player he had seen with such high PK value.

Although it was a duel between Mages, the ensuing fight proved to be quite a challenge. Preferring a challenging target, Gu Fei unhesitatingly picked this ‘Bounty Mission’. He then ran off toward the indicated coordinates, which appeared to be somewhere beyond the walls of the city.

This usually meant that the target would be grinding; not only would Gu Fei save time searching for his bounty target, he would also perhaps be able to fight with the latter’s friends, essentially killing two birds with one stone. While others doing ‘Bounty Mission’ would feel that such a target was a hassle, Gu Fei only felt elation. He, unlike most people, had the ability to complete such missions, after all.

Gu Fei was instead worried about his target’s buddies being too brotherly, as this would certainly cause Gu Fei’s PK value to rise instead of drop. Such a situation had happened before. He had once come back from doing ‘Bounty Mission’ that was supposed to lower his PK value by 1 point but instead increased it by 3 points. That was because his target’s companions were loyal enough to willingly throw their lives at Gu Fei for targeting their friend.

Anyway, there was no point in dwelling too much in the past. After readying his equipment and making sure that his HP and mana were full, he headed off toward the coordinates.

The set of coordinates changed every minute it refreshed, but the change was very minute, so Gu Fei got assured even more that his target was currently grinding. He headed south once he left the city, closing in on his target with every step. He did a rough estimation of the location based on the coordinates and realized where his target was currently at. It was an area Gu Fei had yet to visit.

Speaking of which, Gu Fei would always grind on monsters twenty levels above his, and doing ‘Bounty Mission’ often led him to Yunduan City’s neighboring grinding maps. This meant that he frequented places others would not go to unless they were planning to grind on them. For an area to be a foreign territory to Gu Fei only meant that it was a grinding map beyond level 60.

Gu Fei felt very excited. It had been such a long time since he met an expert! Most of his bounty targets nowadays had been players below level 30, as the level 40 characters seemed to have completely washed their hands off of PvP.

He did not know who that expert was, but for that person to actually grind on such high-level monsters, only a handful of experts in Yunduan City could do so!

Gu Fei continued to make his way toward the coordinates even as his surroundings became more and more unfamiliar. Following the main road and passing through two hills, the land before his eyes now looked exceptionally cheery. An embankment lay beside a dense forest and a peaceful village. The system prompt stated that this place was called Suoyun Village.

This was the naming convention of Parallel World. Within the region of Yunduan City, yun1 was the main motif, so every mountain, forest, village, or river would have this word in it to form the official name. It was clear-cut and simple, nothing that required plenty of thoughts.

Gu Fei would often check information for any grinding maps in search of the next tier of monsters that he could grind on, and he had unintentionally come across such a place before.

Suoyun Village was very similar to Yeguang Village of Yueye City: It had Werewolves as well. But while the Werewolves in Yeguang Village were coexisting peacefully with humans and were quest NPCs, the ones in Suoyun Village were the complete opposite as they viciously hunted humans and were treated as grinding monsters.

More importantly, this place was a level 70 grinding map.