Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

Ye Xiaowu… Gu Fei thought of that man"s name; the incident with the Prophetic Emperor seemed to be targeting Silver Moon and No Smile, and it did not seem to bear any threat to Gu Fei at all. This man had spoken of his intention to rectify Gu Fei, but there was no further movement then those two previous clashes; Gu Fei had not physically b.u.mp into that man ever since then. But that only made Gu Fei even more convinced that he must have something setup. There was hardly a peep out from Fleeting Smile when he had nothing planned, but everything would strike as quick and impactful like a bolt of lightning when he acted.

This looked to be another show of perseverance, Gu Fei thought to himself as he connected into the game. At the moment, it was 3 am on the 3rd of March, and the first session for imparting the efficient monster grinding routine for White Mill was just an hour away. According to the regulation of temporary workers needing to a.s.sist each batch all the way through, it was evident he would have to take part in the tutoring of the clients before this could be considered complete.

A quick glance of his Friends" list when he logged in, the names that ought to be online were all there, and some who were supposed to be offline were also there. Gu Fei grabbed the two students that were still up and chided them accordingly. Under the threat of running 8 km, the two students bitterly logged out of the game several minutes later.

After that, he received a message from Dommu; the man had stayed up waiting for Gu Fei the whole day, finally catching him come online, all just to speak of their intention to follow him and do up an article of Gu Fei and the others teaching at the White Mill.

Dommumudou"s objective report, as well as his praise and respect towards kung fu had given Gu Fei a good impression of the two reporters. So after consulting with the other members of the Elite for their opinion, he agreed to Dommu"s request.

“See you at the east gate,” Gu Fei replied to Dommu. Sword Demon, Southern Lone Blade, and the others were already heading over right now. Even though their students had already been sorted into four different sets, each set numbered up to 10,000 players. It was quite difficult organizing such numbers. Moreover, they were not all a part of a guild or mercenary group; 10,000 players meant 10,000 separate voices, so it was quite a challenge to unify such numbers.

Under the east gate, Gu Fei saw both Dommu and Mudou. The two were pretty much jumping for joy that they had this chance to do the interview this time around, at the same time reminding Gu Fei that the two of them had also registered for the lessons as well. Gu Fei was stunned, for it had slipped his mind that the two had registered to Gu Fei in person, and they had even paid the fees upfront.

Gu Fei was walking toward the east gate at the moment, and he could already see the ma.s.s of players gathered there. It was 3:34 am now, yet it was apparent that there were plenty of players who figured it was better to be early than late, arriving at the rendezvous point before the stipulated time.

Gu Fei walked in this direction together with Dommumudou, and the scene was equally as novel for him as for the two reporters. He figured the others might very well have done plenty of preparation beforehand, but the point was that he had simply sat back with his leg up the whole day and done nothing. However, there was no burden in Gu Fei"s heart as he had only took 40,000 gold coins, so who would poke and prod him?

Getting closer, Gu Fei saw that all the players were gathered together, and there seemed to be a raised platform within, where Young Master Han and Brother a.s.sist were both standing on. They seemed to be saying something, but Gu Fei was unable to hear them considering how far away he was from them. Thus, Gu Fei sent a question over the mercenary channel, “What are you guys saying?” In the end, no one replied.

The three of them were standing by the outermost ring, and Gu Fei had no idea how long it would take for him to squeeze his way in. Young Master Han and Brother a.s.sist remained the only two on the raised platform inside, and the others had mentioned they had arrived, though he had no idea where they were in this thronging crowd.

He was feeling helpless when Brother a.s.sist suddenly sent out a message over the mercenary channel, “D*mn, we should have added serial numbers on the letters. That would definitely make things a lot easier.”

“Yeah, we"ll do it next time,” Sword Demon replied.

“What"s happening!” Gu Fei quickly seized this chance to ask the two men.

“It"s more or less under control now. You don"t have to be bothered by this, just head straight to the White Mill and make preparations there!” Brother a.s.sist said.

“Okay!” Gu Fei no longer cared to find out what was happening and prepared to leave. However, the two reporters Dommu and Mudou wanted to do an in-depth coverage of this, so they decided to stay and interview a few more players and find out what was happening, before leaving with the majority to the White Mill after.

The three of them parted ways there and then. At the same time Gu Fei departed, he glanced at the raised platform right in the center of the mob and saw Brother a.s.sist suddenly raising a large sign, with a large, single word: SILENCE! The man then proceeded to flash this in every direction as he walked about the platform, letting all the players have a good look like he was a ring girl in a boxing ring.

Gu Fei made a beeline toward the White Mill after he left that rendezvous point.

Compared to the hype from the first day, the White Mill was far quieter. Adding to the fact that it was still in the wee hours of the morning, there was hardly a scene with the sort of crowd that was seen the day before. However, the players that were still grinding here continued to look around, as if they were hoping for something to happen.

The moment Gu Fei reached the location, he could see Eternal Dominion, Southern Lone Blade, and the others in the distance, standing by a mill having a discussion. After Gu Fei sent a message over to Eternal Dominion, the whole lot of them turned and spotted Gu Fei making his way over to them.

“You"re finally here,” These men shouted. As Gu Fei got closer, he could see that every one of them was sweating profusely. Gu Fei had no idea what they were doing.

“What happened?” Gu Fei asked.

“Nothing. We"re just tired. Handling people is far more tiring than handling things! At least with things, getting them to do something would not result in them doing something else entirely different; even if there is a mistake, it would all be your fault! But the handling of people would often see them doing something entirely different from what you initially instructed. You could literally die from anger when that happens often enough,” Southern Lone Blade said in a huff.

“It took us more than half an hour just to get a hold of the situation,” Southern Lone Blade explained.

“Oh? Why was that?”

“It"s nothing, actually. It"s just a lot of people, and their chatter was endless, making it difficult to pa.s.s around instructions, making it near impossible to coordinate with everyone,” Southern Lone Blade said.

“So how did you guys manage it in the end?”

“What else can we do other than inform them one by one and make arrangements individually, before we finally got everyone organized. That was when Young Master Han gave a suggestion and had the people surrounding him all around. From there, he would utter a single sentence which would be repeated and orally pa.s.sed down to the people on the outside. Thus, people who understood would squat down, while those who had not heard the message would ask those squatting down, so all we had to do was just wait till everyone squatted down, right? The next sentence would then be pa.s.sed down, and for those who heard it would stand up, while those who failed to catch it would ask those who stood up. Everyone would be standing once everyone heard that sentence, and everything was clearly pa.s.sed down by proceeding in that fas.h.i.+on,” Southern Lone Blade said.

“I didn"t see that when I went over moments ago!” Gu Fei found it strange.

“It"s not time yet, right?” Southern Lone Blade glanced at the time. “3:56 am. We"re still four minutes off. He"ll probably begin once everyone"s there.”

Gu Fei felt a little regret. What a tremendous sight it would have been to witness 10,000 players squatting and standing like that! Of course, such an effective and secretly hurtful idea would be Young Master Han"s brainchild.

“So what are you all doing here?” Gu Fei asked the others present.

“We"re dividing up the land! With 10,000 players coming, split into 10 separate groups, the nine of us will take one each, while Brother a.s.sist said he would take the last one. Look, here are the sites all labeled up,” Southern Lone Blade took out a piece of the map and showed it to Gu Fei. There were circles written on it, representing the Mills in the White Mill grinding map. Ten of them were labeled from one to ten, and the corresponding coordinates were written next to each of them.

“Which one will mine be?” Gu Fei asked.

“The eight of us have already chosen our spots; these here are the two remaining sites,” Southern Lone Blade pointed to two of the ten circles.

“I"ll take that one!” Gu Fei randomly picked one.

Southern Lone Blade nodded his head before saying, “With 1,000 players in each group, these will all be job cla.s.s specific: Two groups of Mages, two of Priests, two of Knights. There"s one for Warriors, one for Archers, one for Thieves, and one for Fighters. You shall match your job cla.s.s and take one of the Mages!”

“Sure!” Gu Fei readily agreed. Job cla.s.s specific groupings were only possible thanks to the efforts of Brother a.s.sist and the others when they were organizing the groups yesterday. Those letters that had the fees enclosed had all been sorted according to their job cla.s.s and stats, and the final sacks of letters Brother a.s.sist had a.s.signed to them to reply to had not been casually packed; the number of players, job cla.s.s, and even the time slots were all coordinated accordingly.

Because these players were now divided in accordance with their job cla.s.ses, the stats were no longer that important. After all, finding a Mage who had thrown so many points into Agility like Gu Fei was few and far between, so naturally none of the Mages would be learning the Agility intensive variant of the routine.

Of course, given how vast the world was, there were obviously going to be players out there who persisted in their own pursuits, so All-Agility Warriors, Strength focused Thieves, and all these other oddball builds existed. They had also made careful plans for such differences, except they had made sure they were not placed in this first set of students.

“It"s 4 am. Everyone, to your respective sites!” Southern Lone Blade announced this at this very moment, as those comrades of his immediately ran to find their own mills. Eternal Dominion leapt up to the mill right before Gu Fei, making it apparent that this was the location he had chosen. Southern Lone Blade then turned to ask Gu Fei, “Can you locate your mill?”

“Of course!” Gu Fei suspiciously looked at Southern Lone Blade, uncertain why he had asked such a question. Southern Lone Blade did not explain either, as he swiftly made his way over to his own mill. Gu Fei had no idea, but they had all been online when he had been resting, so it was more convenient for them to discuss what was about to happen later, and they ended up coming together for matters like monster grinding and such. Thus, it was unavoidable for them to begin casually chatting about anything, and one such topic they touched on was Gu Fei.

People who did not personally know Gu Fei would take him to be a peerless expert, but the members of Young Master"s Elite knew what he really was. The man might be an expert, but he was an absolute noob when it came to gaming. Adding to the fact that unscrupulous people like Royal G.o.d Call and War Without Wounds were around for these conversations, all the shameful anecdotes that they had experienced suddenly turned into stories about Gu Fei, like the time when Gu Fei was hanging over the cliff when they were crossing the bridge in Oolong Mountain Pa.s.s! Or getting lost in Xiawu City that he ended up needing the help of a kind uncle pa.s.sing by to lead him around… All these stories made it such that Southern Lone Blade had thought Gu Fei would be unable to find the coordinates on the map.

“Are you in position?” Soon, Gu Fei received a message of concern from Southern Lone Blade.

“Yup,” Gu Fei replied.

“Then everyone"s in place. I"ll inform the other side.” Gold would always s.h.i.+ne, so even though Southern Lone Blade had been an enemy in the past, but he was capable no matter whose side he was on. Now that he was working together with Young Master"s Elite, he was still able to demonstrate his abilities as a competent leader and had stepped up to take on the responsibility as the person in charge here in the White Mill.

At about 4:07 am, Gu Fei witnessed an impressively huge crowd appear in the horizon. It was a throng that neared 10,000 players, and that was far more grandiose than the numbers of Yunduan City"s Expedition or Yueye City"s Ten Guild Alliance combined. Taking another look when they got even closer, Gu Fei saw there was actually someone leading at the front bearing a huge pennant. Gu Fei wiped his sweat, as the proof was right before his eyes. Pennants might only be a symbolic expression in the wars of modern society, but in the days of old when methods of communication had not been developed, a pennant like that worked like a guiding light for the ma.s.ses, taking up the role of leading an inestimable amount of people in a given direction. Take this 10,000 players here, for example. It was impossible for them to add everyone as friends, nor did the system possess any sort of general channel to address such a large gathering of players. A pennant standing tall at the forefront was indeed the most convenient way to get everyone to follow together!

As they got even closer, the mob suddenly split up, and they were each arranged into groups, each with their own pennant. Gu Fei could clearly see there were currently a total of ten pennants flying in the breeze, and one of these groups was headed right in his direction.

The players that had been grinding here in the White Mill were all awed by the sight when they saw so many people descend upon the map like that. With the organization and the numbers, it inadvertently became imposing to behold. The nearby players all privately messaged each other, momentarily unable to figure out that these people were the students for the much antic.i.p.ated lessons from Thousand Miles Drunk"s workshop.

Everyone had all come to the White Mill after visiting the Wilderness Camp, but it was a total mess there; there were guilds, but even if every member of those three major guilds there were online, there was only so many of them added up, and each of them were all there just to solo grind. Considering how messy that was, none of them had ever seen such an imposing display, so it was no wonder they hardly made the link.

The pennant idea must have been something that they came up with at the last minute, as it was pretty obvious from the quality of the pennant. It was just a large wooden stick, and there was some junk equipment that someone had tossed out tied on it. But upon closer inspection, the equipment was representative of the respective job cla.s.ses! Take the group that was making its way to Gu Fei; their pennant had a Mage"s novice robe tied to it, and the pennant of the group heading to Southern Lone Blade hoisted a battered Warrior"s armor.

Over on the side with Young Master Han and the others, it was apparent they had already instructed the people who are coming over which mill they should be looking for, and it was all the more implicitly understood when they saw who were the instructors stationed at the various mills. Those scattered players that had been grinding would not dare to be in the way of the mob, and they could not be any faster getting out of their way, helplessly watching as they saw these groups of people each homing in on a different mill and surrounding it.

“Do you know the communication method?” Young Master Han sent this message to Gu Fei.

“Squat down, stand up?” Gu Fei answered after a pause, he gazed out and could already see players over by the other mills already begun squatting and standing, showing they were already beginning to communicate with each other.

“Uh, avoid questions, and stick to just imparting instructions,” Young Master Han said. “Once you"re good to go, begin as soon as possible. We"re heading back, and there should already be the next set of students there, the sooner we get them organized…”

It was very apparent that this was the first time everyone was doing something like this. Due to their lack of experience, just careful consideration might not be enough to contend with the unexpected emergencies that might crop up that even Young Master Han saw the need to devote his attention to, not treating this matter with insouciance as he usually would.

Thus, Gu Fei got serious as well. Seeing these players slowly get into position, a lady furiously waved her hand in the air as she shouted loudly, “Miles, MILES!”

With a glimpse, Gu Fei saw that this lady was Mudou. She was a Mage, so she might have specifically asked to be taught by Gu Fei, so he smiled in her general direction and waved. When everyone heard how loudly she called out, they knew that the Mage before them was the legendary Thousand Miles Drunk. A wave of bliss washed over them, as none of them would have expected that they would be able to receive the personal guidance by the man and the myth himself.

Seeing everyone standing at the ready, Gu Fei did not see a point in wasting any more time, so he began, “Let"s not waste everyone"s time and begin immediately. Make way everyone, let me pull a monster over.” Ever since Gu Fei became a teacher, his voice would naturally become sonorous, and adding to the fact that all the 1,000 or so players present were nothing compared to the 10,000 players from before, everybody could more or less hear his voice as they crowded in close, so there was no need for them to squat or stand. Nevertheless, everyone had become used to it by now, so the moment they heard Gu Fei"s words, the players in the inner circle reflexively turned back and pa.s.sed the message and squatted down.

After the message had been conveyed, and everyone squatted down, all of them began to waddle to the side and made a path for Gu Fei.

Gu Fei leapt down from the mill and dashed out of the crowd. He reached out his unarmed hand and blasted a monster with a Lightning Bolt, and as the monster came rus.h.i.+ng over to him, Gu Fei had turned around and sprinted back to the mill. Blinking up the mill, he pulled out a magic staff from his dimensional pocket.

He was formally teaching these players the efficient monster grinding routine for Mages, so he naturally had to use a staff and not a sword. Gu Fei had gotten ready the Eighteen Arms of Wushu when instructing Southern Lone Blade and his team the various fighting routines, even bringing along two broad axes in his dimensional pocket.

Now that the tutoring had officially begun, Gu Fei deftly explained and demonstrated the moves. When he saw the students below still squatting and standing, he had no idea if he should be laughing or crying as he hollered, “If the people on the outside ring can hear me, there"s no need for you to squat and stand like that anymore.”

Despite this, the players on the outside were still worried that what they heard might not be as clear as what those in the inner ring could hear, afraid that they might miss anything, so they continued to act in accordance to the human messenger method they learnt. As a result, everyone continued to squat and stand like before. They had plenty of body strength in the game anyway, so they would not feel in the least bit tired doing all these deep squats repeatedly. Gu Fei could not be bothered with it either and allowed them to carry on their actions as they saw fit.

Now the tutoring had officially begun, those players that had retreated to the distance finally understood what was happening. It was the Thousand Miles Drunk"s workshop cla.s.ses they had heard so much about! Everybody exclaimed as they came from every direction and returned to the ground, all of them getting closer to have a look for themselves. Thus, aside from the 1,000 players in each group, there were also others who added layer upon layer of bodies upon each of these crowds.

It was blatantly obvious to anyone that these people were here to freeload. Even though these players who had gone through the proper channels and paid the fee for the cla.s.ses were feeling dissatisfied, about this, they were all currently focused on the lesson they were attending and could hardly care to be bothered with these freeloaders. These students would only end up not learning anything if they wasted time to entangle themselves with these people, and they would evidently be the ones that lose out in the end. Those people who realized this knew that this was absolutely a seller"s market in favor of Thousand Miles Drunk"s workshop, and what made this most telling was the addition of the phrase “We will not be waiting for latecomers”. 3 am in the morning was such an illogical timeslot! But no matter if there was work the next day or they happen to be working the night s.h.i.+ft that very night, who would not find the time to get online promptly? The earliest post had already stated that the workshop would be the ones making all the arrangements, while the fees for the lessons were also paid in full, upfront. If anyone was unwilling to make the effort, they have no right to make any qualms, since no one was forced to do this anyway.

Even though everyone was angry and annoyed by this, none of them had any alternatives either. This was exactly what it meant to have a monopoly, so all they could do swallow it all even if they had grounded their teeth till the point it broke.

Gu Fei already had plenty of experience when it came to teaching, so in that 45 minutes of his lessons, almost every single one of his students were able to remember the routine they were shown. For these more veteran players with a decent measure of expertise, the time they had was sufficient to achieve this, unless they had spent their coin to fall asleep during the lesson.

Gu Fei followed his process to the letter. First, he gave a complete demonstration of the efficient monster grinding routine for Mages, before providing a theoretical explanation and a.n.a.lysis of the routine, breaking it down in the process. Next came the clarification of the key points, areas of focus, and difficulties for its execution, before finally giving an overall review of what had been taught. Those who received Gu Fei"s tutelage were considered fortunate, because while the other tutors for the different routines were more practiced than Gu Fei when it came to these routines, none of them had the deep kung fu foundation that Gu Fei possessed, much less the professional background of being a P.E. teacher. At the moment, 20 minutes had pa.s.sed in Gu Fei"s lesson, and it was about the time when he was talking about the focus and difficulties people might face. However, these things he was going on about were things that anyone with a good head on their shoulders could tell or experience for themselves. The step that came next would just be further polish, so a good portion of the players had already completely grasped the routine by this time, with several eager to head out and give it a try for themselves.

Meanwhile, those freeloading players were having a bit of a rougher time. The 1,000 player capacity to each group was also something Southern Lone Blade and his team had suggested based upon their own research, and going past this 1,000 player threshold meant there was no guarantee for the quality of teaching for the remaining players. They would barely be able to see what was happening, much less hear what the instructors would be imparting. It was already kind enough of these students to not have kicked these freeloaders out, so who would be willing to pa.s.s on what they had heard to them? The method of squatting and standing as a form of communication was completely useless to these people.

So how was anyone able to differentiate between the people who paid and those who did not? Why, through the letter of reply those students had all been sent, of course!