Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Honestly speaking, Gu Fei, Royal God Call, and War Without Wounds had no complaint over being penalized with regard to their actions. Royal God Call and War Without Wounds truly performed rather atrociously in their match with Amethyst mercenary group, while Gu Fei really did not show up for today’s match.

Young Master Han harshly dishing out penalties was a given, considering his merciless personality.

What made the three dissatisfied was how Young Master Han had scored himself. To think that they even praised him for being unprejudiced moments ago. It was truly bizarre how he had dared to be transparent with his biased scoring of himself.

Receiving an indignant look from the three, Young Master Han perplexedly took out his booklet once more and looked at what he had scored for himself. He pointed at each page and said, “What’s wrong? Everything is written accurately! Tactics, strategy, command, talent, handsomeness, leadership—okay, fine. I admit that that last bit is something I casually added. I’ll take it out.” He proceeded to cross out ‘tabulation of points’ and gazed back at the three men before him, “Happy now?”

“Shameless: -500 points!” Royal God Call bellowed.

The room occupants continued to quarrel among themselves until Gu Fei finally suggested assigning Sword Demon as their group’s scorer. This suggestion was promptly seconded by Royal God Call and War Without Wounds.

Three among the six-man mercenary group had the same opinion on this matter: remove Young Master Han from his authoritative position to prevent him from exploiting the points system.

In the end, the booklet for scoring was given to Sword Demon. “Are we going to use the points already written in this?” he asked seriously.

“No!” Royal God Call and War Without Wounds refused, even intending to drag Gu Fei to this matter. Unfortunately for the two, Gu Fei was no longer interested in arguing further now that he had successfully ousted the shameless Young Master Han.

Being deducted for 200 points might seem like a lot, but Gu Fei was more in pain with not being able to participate in the match. Following the argument, a series of discussions was held regarding certain details and issues. Gu Fei quietly listened to their exchanges, as he mainly focused on monitoring the time. He was afraid to make the same mistake and missed out on the guild versus guild tournament, especially since he was looking forward to it more than the mercenary PvP tournament. When it was just an hour before the guild match, Gu Fei hurriedly left Ray’s Bar and made his way to the teleportation array outside the Main Hall of Guilds. Entering the ‘changing room’, he once more casually greeted the ladies and sat by a corner.

When July saw that the members were more or less all present, she walked to the front and gave everyone a grim smile, “Today, we’ve managed to draw a big guild once more.”

Actually, every guild member could see the everyday match-up for the PvP tournament by heading over to the game’s official website. Amethyst Rebirth sadly lacked such passionate individuals, so all were currently waiting with bated breath for July’s announcement of today’s opponent.

July took two deep breaths and said, “We are up against Traversing Four Seas today.”

Gu Fei was never one who cared much about which guild they would be facing, yet even he was surprised when July announced their opponents of the day. This would be the third consecutive large guild that they had drawn.

Carouse, Cloud Herder, Traversing Four Seas were Yunduan City’s top guilds. This was especially true of Carouse and Traversing Four Seas. Who would have thought that a certain guild would be unlucky enough to draw these two large guilds back-to-back?

No one had also thought that any small guild would win against one of these two large guilds, so Carouse’s defeat at the hands of Amethyst Rebirth had truly shocked many. If Traversing Four Seas were to meet the same fate as well, Amethyst Rebirth would tacitly become the top guild in everyone’s hearts. Naturally, the ladies who had been casually participating in the guild versus guild tournament had no such aspiration.

Everyone attempted to explain this phenomenon through astrology. They determined that Guild Leader July’s astrological sign was terribly unlucky this week, which resulted into the guild she was leading to consecutively draw the large guilds.

“Stop!” The Priest Grape, whom Royal God Call had fondness for, said, “Since we have drawn Traversing Four Seas, July’s luck this week must be very terrible. Still, as long as we get past this hurdle, whatever guilds we face in the next two days won’t be much of an issue. By next week, July’s luck should be through the roof.”

“Ahhh!” All the ladies were convinced by her assessment and they gathered around Grape to get her to check their weekly, monthly, and even annual luck prospects.

Svelte Dancer also joined them and she repeatedly shouted, “Read my fortune, too! I’m an Aries. ARIES!”

The PvP preparation meeting suddenly digressed into an astrology meeting. Even July did not conduct her usual presentation and just joined the others in discussing their astrological signs.

Feeling helpless at this, Gu Fei attempted to find out information about the enemies by himself. He knew that Royal God Call was still a member of Traversing Four Seas, so he contacted him first, “How many combatants did your guild send out?”

Ever since the defeat of prominent guilds and mercenary groups at the hands of smaller groups, the entire Yunduan City had started paying more attention to the ‘Grand Kiting’ strategy, where the smaller groups of people would try to win by avoiding confrontations and just keep on running until the time ran out whenever they obtained the higher kill points in the PvP matches.

As the PvP event went on, Amethyst Rebirth and Young Master’s Elite emerged as the two smaller groups, the two dark horses, that had managed to cause a huge upset against the bigger guilds and mercenary groups by depending on this kiting tactic. According to Young Master Han, his motive for coming up with such a strategy from the start was to frighten the bigger groups into reducing their participating members for the upcoming matches, and his long-term plan had worked out well so far.

Right now, Gu Fei was hoping that Traversing Four Seas would have misgivings and consequently reduce their number in the PvP tournament. Asking Royal God Call the amount of enemy participants was his way of finding out if Traversing Four Seas had been affected by Young Master Han’s strategy.

“It should be about seven hundred or so,” Royal God Call replied.

“They did not fall for it...” Gu Fei sucked in a cold breath. He then proceeded to ask Young Master Han for his take on this, only receiving a lackadaisical response, “My strategy is originally planned for our mercenary group’s matches with less than one hundred participants. For the guild versus guild tournament that has hundreds of combatants, even I won’t mind about anyone attempting to kite.”

“Why’s that?” Gu Fei asked.

“Because the strength of a team increases with the number of people in it,” Young Master Han answered.

“Does this mean that Traversing Four Seas has already realized that your kiting strategy is not as scary as imagined?” Gu Fei pressed on.

“It isn’t intended to be scary to begin with; otherwise, we can simply use this one strategy for the whole event. No one is like you who look forward to the enemies having fewer participating players,” Young Master Han remarked dryly.

“I’m not looking forward to that. The more the merrier, I say,” Gu Fei denied.

“Oh? What sort of tactic did you guys prepare for this match, then?” Young Master Han asked.

“Well... Nothing but nonsense if you really want to know ” Gu Fei glumly replied. The Amethyst Rebirth’s PvP preparation meeting had somehow diverged into a discussion about the compatibility between the different astrological signs, and they had even managed to come to an agreement: Scorpio and Cancer had the most efficient and harmonious relationship.

The ladies only snapped back to their senses when the system announced that the match was about to begin in ten seconds. Hurriedly checking the opposing guild’s headcount, the ladies exclaimed “Wow! There are seven hundred three of them!” Their PvP preparation meeting had reached its end in such an casual manner. At least, the ladies gave the remaining ten seconds to Traversing Four Seas and did not totally disregard the opposing guild.

In flashes of white light, everyone was teleported into the PvP arena. Given the number of participants for this match, the map this time was quite similar to the large arena that they were in when facing Carouse Guild.

“How are we going to fight this guild match?” The ladies asked the two experts in the guild: Gu Fei and Svelte Dancer.

The girls had unknowingly become reliant on them. This was a natural instinct most women had, and the ladies of Amethyst Rebirth were no exception. This included Svelte Dancer. When the other ladies asked the two, she also asked Gu Fei, “How are we going to fight in this match?”

Amethyst Rebirth would hardly pose a challenge to Traversing Four Seas if it fought as one group. This was because the more concentrated they were, the faster they would get eliminated. Gu Fei gave it a thought before waving his hand, “Everyone should disperse! Find a hiding spot each and try not to engage the enemies. Self-preservation is your number one priority in this match.”

Svelte Dancer nodded her head vigorously, “Disperse! Disperse!”

“What about you two?” a lady asked.

Svelte Dancer and Gu Fei looked at each other. Having worked together many times before, they more or less had an idea with regard to each other’s intention.

Svelte Dancer knew that Gu Fei intended for the two of them to do the fighting alone when he told the other ladies to hide. Their method was still the same: drag the time out. “Find yourself a good spot for performing ambushes. I’ll protect you while you cast your spells,” Svelte Dancer said.

Gu Fei nodded his head and the two departed straight toward the enemies’ direction.

“Grape read my fortune and said that I need to find myself a lucky partner this year,” Svelte Dancer wanted to continue talking about astrological signs and attempted to pull Gu Fei into the conversation.

“A lucky partner?” Gu Fei was even less knowledgeable about astrology than online gaming. He could recite the twelve zodiac signs and his own, but that was it.

“Mhm... Help me take note of anyone that may bring me luck,” Svelte Dancer requested.

“Okay...” Gu Fei casually answered. He was not so bored to actually do it, though.

Svelte Dancer actually noticed his half-hearted response, so she irately declared, “Forget it. I’ll just think of you as my lucky partner.”

“Me? Bringing good luck to you?” Gu Fei snorted.

“Only time will tell,” Svelte Dancer replied.