Virtual World: Close Combat Mage Chapter 23
Advertisement
Virtual World: Close Combat Mage Chapter 23
Translated by: Effyis
Edited by: Stbunbun
Chapter 23: A Good Deed
Gu Fei walked briskly towards the safe area to log off.
He passed by the Guild Building on the way and it sure seemed like a busy place. As most players had reached level 30, guilds were springing up like mushrooms in the game. Fireball, for example, was among the people excited about the newly formed guilds. He had enthusiastically asked Gu Fei what guild he was going to join a few days ago. He had eventually stopped pestering Gu Fei, and went on to search for a suitable guild, after seeing that he showed little interest in guilds.
“Has Fireball found a guild?” wondered Gu Fei. He looked at his friends panel and Fireball wasn’t online. The time periods that Fireball was online was fairly irregular, so Gu Fei couldn’t guess what he did in real life. As he was engaged in thought, he accidentally bumped into somebody.
Gu Fei staggered. It was a sad fact that he had such a weak body in the game. If not for the “Eddy’s Coat of Arms” that he had just put on which gave him an extra 6 Strength and Vitality points, he probably would have been knocked over.
“It’s you!” Gu Fei raised his head and discovered that the person he ran into was Xi Xiaotian.
“Shhh!” Xi Xiaotian gestured for him to keep down his voice. “Help me!” she rushed to hide behind Gu Fei as she said that. It was easy for Gu Fei to hide a slender girl completely with his body that had been built up by so many years of Kung Fu training.
Gu Fei was just going to ask what was going on when a little girl appeared before his eyes. The little girl had rushed here and since Gu Fei was the only person she saw, she glared at him and shouted, “Hey! Did you see a very pretty girl run pass?”
Gu Fei frowned. Where are the manners of kids nowadays? As the Gu family was an ancient Wushu family, they had kept many old practices. Take etiquette for example, they were much more particular on manners than normal families. There weren’t many overly elaborate formalities, but the young had to show extra respect towards their elders, like greeting their elders first thing in the morning after they washed up.
“Hey! Reply me!” the girl shouted again when she saw that Gu Fei was lost in thought.
Though Gu Fei didn’t like the girl, he could empathise with her. She was definitely the victim of yet another fraud. So he nodded and said, “I did.”
Advertisement
“Which way did she go?” the girl looked anxious.
Gu Fei stepped aside and pointed behind himself, “Here she is!”
“Ah!” Xi Xiaotian staggered forward. She had been slightly leaning onto Gu Fei’s back to minimize her exposure area, so she had immediately lost her balance when Gu Fei suddenly moved.
Gu Fei looked at her coldly. Unexpectedly, the little girl rushed forward and gave her a hand, “Sis Xiaotian, are you ok?”
Gu Fei realized that he might have mistaken her just by listening to how she addressed Xi Xiaotian.
Xi Xiaotian scowled at Gu Fei and then smiled at the little girl, “I’m alright.”
The little girl looked at Gu Fei. She could guess what had happened and protested to Xi Xiaotian, “Sis Xiaotian, why are you avoiding me?”
“Cat Cat, I’m sorry, I really can’t say yes to that matter,” Xi Xiaotian replied.
“But we really can’t find anybody else!” the little girl said.
“Then you can just wait a bit more! There will definitely be someone,” Xi Xiaotian said.
“Please~ Consider it a favour!” the girl shook Xi Xiaotian’s hand and begged piteously.
Xi Xiaotian simply kept quiet and just shook her head. Gu Fei felt sorry for the little girl, so he cut in and said, “Um, why don’t you just help her?”
Xi Xiaotian rolled her eyes at him, “Don’t talk if you don’t know anything about this. Go on with what you were doing!”
Gu Fei shrugged at the little girl, showing that he couldn’t be of any help, and then left for the safe area.
He had barely walked ten metres when he heard someone shouting “Wait!” behind him. Gu Fei turned around and saw Xi Xiaotian chasing after him.
“What?” asked Gu Fei.
“Well, I know that you like to help others, so why don’t you help them?” said Xi Xiaotian.
“What’s the matter?” inquired Gu Fei.
“You just need to be a stopgap for their guild which is lacking one last person to form,” said Xi Xiaotian
“Just like that? Then why don’t you help?” Gu Fei retorted.
“Me? Haha… You know what I do, so it would be troublesome for them to have ties with me,” replied Xi Xiaotian.
“That’s true! So I’m actually doing a good deed and preventing innocent players from being dragged into trouble,” Gu Fei said.
“Yep! You need to join for such a meaningful cause!”
“I’m not going to,” said Gu Fei.
“Why not?” Xi Xiaotian was puzzled.
“You only need twenty people to respond to form a guild. How can you not have enough people with Parallel World’s population? Stop kidding,” Gu Fei jeered.
Advertisement
“You can ask her if you don’t believe me,” Xi Xiaotian shrugged.
Gu Fei eyed her warily and proceeded to walk to the little girl, “Is… your guild short of people to form?”
The little girl nodded, “We tried for really long, and we only need one more person.”
“Is it so difficult to find twenty people?” Gu Fei couldn’t understand.
“Yeah, so we really need Sis Xiaotian to help us!” replied the little girl.
“It’s all resolved! Cat Cat!” Xi Xiaotian smiled, “We will go there now.”
“Really?” the girl was elated and gave Gu Fei a grateful look, “Thank you so much!”
“It’s ok, nothing much!” said Gu Fei.
“Let’s go!” the little girl joyfully raced towards the Guild Building.
“Go!” Xi Xiaotian pushed Gu Fei and followed the girl.
The Guild Building was filled with people and it was so noisy that even talking was difficult. Countless people were recruiting members for their guilds.
“Guild Stone! We’ll help you complete your tasks! Come respond!”
“Hey beauty, come to Guild Guest! We’ll give you an allowance every week!”
“Warriors’ Home! Our guild leader is a level 30 warrior! Those who love being warriors, come join us!”
Gu Fei finally believed that it was indeed tricky to find twenty people that are willing to respond despite the huge population. Fireball, for one, was still figuring out which was the best guild for him.
“There are too many people. Cat Cat, you go to your guild leader and we’ll go to the responding area. We’ll message when we’re there and then you guys can accept the response,” said Xi Xiaotian to the little girl.
The little girl agreed and squeezed through the crowd heading towards a certain direction. Xi Xiaotian dragged Gu Fei towards the opposite direction.
It was all the more crowded at the responding area. Everyone who was at the area was treated as prey to those who were looking for Guild members. As soon as Gu Fei arrived, he was immediately stopped by a player, “Bro, what’s your level? Come to our guild!”
“No, come to ours instead!” someone sprung out from the side.
“Don’t fight! He’s mine!” Xi Xiaotian roared as she pulled Gu Fei towards the window for responding.
There was a touch-screen at the responding area, which looked out of place in a game that had its setting less futuristic and more western-based, but it had to be there to better serve the players.
The two moved with the queue and eventually, they reached the screen. After Xi Xiaotian sent out a message, she nodded to Gu Fei, “You can respond to the guild now.”
“What’s the name of the guild?” Gu Fei had the search bar ready.
“Amethyst Reborn,” said Xi Xiaotian.
Gu Fei took a look at the details of the guild and they did have only 19 people and needed one last person to form the guild, so he immediately pressed “Respond”.
The twinkling sounds of system notifications started resonating in Gu Fei’s ear as he received a bunch of them.
System Notification: Guild [Amethyst Reborn] has successfully formed.
System Notification: Player [Thousand Miles Drunk] has joined guild [Amethyst Reborn].
System Notification: Please refer to the guild panel for more information about your guild.
…
“All done!” Gu Fei said and turned around to see Xi Xiaotian squeezing her way through and out of the crowd.
“Oh no you don’t!” Gu Fei shouted for her to stop and also tried to squeeze through the crowd as a faint premonition welled up.
Unfortunately, pushing your way through a crowd was a matter of strength. Gu Fei had a lot of Agility points, but they were useless when people were packed together so thoroughly to make a sea of people. He could only helplessly watch Xi Xiaotian disappear before his eyes into the crowd.
“What the hell are you trying at!” Gu Fei messaged Xi Xiaotian.
“Nothing much! It’s a good thing for you!” said Xi Xiaotian.
“You had better explain it well to me!” Gu Fei said.
“You will know after looking at your guild panel!” replied Xi Xiaotian.
Gu Fei brought up his guild panel as he continued to squeeze through the crowd.
The members’ levels and classes were all clearly stated on the panel. They were a mix of all kinds of classes and levels, and the levels overall were all not very high. There were only two other people who were level 30, and Gu Fei was apparently the top in EXP as his name appeared at the top of the list. Yet, at that instant, Gu Fei’s attention was drawn to something else.
Other than next to his own name, Thousand Miles Drunk, which had a “Male” written in the gender bar, the whole gender column only had the words “Female”. From the second name to the twentieth, it was a neat nineteen “Female”s.
Why… is this guild all female?
It was then that a bunch of “xxx sent you a friend request” notifications rang continuously. Gu Fei glanced through the names and accepted a few. They were all names that were in the guild.
The first message to immediately arrive was, “Who are you? How did you get into our guild?”
Sent by: July.
[tl: Just saying, there isn’t going to be any harem, in case anyone’s thinking about that…]
[pr: Let the readers dream! Lol.]
Advertisement
- In Serial193 Chapters
The Arcane Emperor
Rainer, an amateur arcanist and college student, sought to create a new spell far surpassing the magic of the few he inherited from his grandfather. Yet the interference of an unknown event during the casting of his spell led him to be thrown through space and time. Where status screens were accepted as normal and class distinctions were quite clear. Leveling and achieving a class beyond a simple farmer or peddler was an affair of life and death combined with years of hard training. Goblins were not the fodder that they should be, orcs filled bedtime stories in order to scare children into behaving, and a dragon? You might as well pack up and move to another country.He, however, enters this world with the rare and powerful class of the Arcanist. How will the recently ardent seeker of magic find greater heights, or will he land in deeper depths?Additional Tags: Game elements, Another World, Mature Themes Cover Art: by NGT http://forum.royalroadl.com/showthread.php?tid=83944Current Word Count: 413,193Weekly Schedule: Long Chapter(s) Every Saturday Night EST
8 458 - In Serial11 Chapters
NOVA INTERIT.US
It's 2063, and the town along with much of the nation are in disarray. The decay started years before the Great Event. Our town still had hope thanks to the five families, who'd created a blockchain based water distribution system for the locals, a valuable secret hidden from the Global Water Commission and their network of mercenaries. Earlier in the mid-2040's, right after the state secessions of Idaho, Montana, and Texas, the Global Council of Water Commissioners made their deals and moved into towns throughout the country. They called it "the integration." The Commission and their contractors integrated with municipal water departments, using their organized network to invade like parasites on local services. It all coincided with the 29th Amendment to the United States Constitution, later referred to as the Regional Trident Plan. Nova is a story about survival, power structures, the turning of relationships, and the networking between people and the systems to which they belong. It’s about A.I. blockchain possibility, and its potential for human betterment versus our detriment. It’s about the question of whether or not we need to be saved from ourselves, and by who or what? The Great Event at the end of the first chapter might just be what actually saves us. The epilogue will take place in 2517. This scene is fully sketched and the full arc of the novel is set. I expect to finish Nova Interitus by summer of 2023. This is realist hard-sci-fi dystopian fiction. I hope you find Nova to be a challenging and consuming story. This is not something I planned to write. It all came to me in a dream and I haven't been able to stop writing it. This Royal Road posting is basically a beta test with chapters and drafts to get some feedback and see if there's any readership for this narrative. For the full experience read Nova on Substack. I will be narrating a podcast version later this year there. https://novainteritus.substack.com/
8 143 - In Serial24 Chapters
The Duke's Adopted Daughter
There's a rumor surrounding the Duke's Household.One day, the Duke brought a girl, but aside from him, no one saw her face.They said that she was living in an isolated palace and no one aside from the Duke can visit and talk to her.Thus, she became a mysterious entity that everyone wanted to discover. She was the Duke's adopted daughter
8 195 - In Serial16 Chapters
Moonlit Beginning
Our protagonist died in his previous life. With fragmented memories he reincarnated as Lex Permarre the prince of demon kingdom in the world of sword and magic Alteria where strong decides the future of weak, where ferocious beast run rampart on the land, where the tension between the races runs high. Join his adventure to how he assimilates into his new world with an unknown level system and where the civilization is below his previous life. Average Chapter length: around 1200 words This is my first novel ever, and English isn’t my native language, so go easy on me. Any feedback is more than welcome, of course. So comment on anything you want to.
8 68 - In Serial73 Chapters
Camille Lupin the Unicorn
Now I am sure you have heard of the Marauders and Remus Lupin. But have you heard of his twin sister, who is a normal witch? This is her story through Hogwarts, the first war and the second war. Camille has light brown hair and green eyes. What is her animagus form? Does she ever become a werewolf? Who is her best friend? What house is she in? Does she have a crush on one of the Marauders? Does she become a Marauder herself? Picture of Camille in her first year on cover. Hope you enjoy the story.
8 217 - In Serial16 Chapters
InstaFamous
Every click counts. Remember that. Everything you post on the internet may be deleted, but once someone sees it, there's no turning back. Take Gigi Vloski, your typical weird teenager, aka me, for example. Everything is normal, or as normal as it could ever be. There's the annoying 'ex best friend turned to mortal enemy'. There's my freakiest brother who calls pranking a type of affection. And then there's the stepmother who loves my brother so much she never listens to me. But my life takes a turn with just an unexpected click. A click that changed me and my whole world forever. • • • •"Your video got a million hits!" He yelled, making my eardrums burst. I gave him a puzzled look. He facepalmed. "You got a million hits on YouTube!" he said with a hopeful look, hoping I would know the thing I really don't know. "Not ringing any bells." I muttered and shook my head.• • • •all rights reserved 2013-2014.
8 182