Virtual World: Close Combat Mage - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Where do you think are you going

Gu Fei glared at the girl, and the girl glared back defiantly.

Each had their eyes locked on the other, and each were scheming against the other.

The girl was going to say something seeing that Gu Fei had no response, but Gu Fei suddenly nodded, “Ok, I’ll take you there.”

The girl smiled and raised an arm towards Gu Fei. “I’ll count on you then.”

“It’s my pleasure.” Gu Fei smiled back and pulled the girl quickly onto himself as he caught her arm.

“Hey! What are you…” Just as the girl began to have doubts about Gu Fei’s intentions, he squatted down, propped her waist on his shoulder, and lifted her up as he straightened up.

“Damn! You’re so heavy!” That was the first sentence that came out of Gu Fei’s mouth after he stood up with the girl on his shoulder. She could not have been heavy given her slim figure, so the problem lay with Gu Fei. He was a mage, and all his 16 levels of free points were spent on agility, so his strength was as low as a level 1 mage. It was no wonder that he had a hard time with the task of carrying even a light girl.

Gu Fei sighed. If he had his real-life body, picking up such a girl would be a piece of cake, let alone carrying her on his shoulders.

Gu Fei was grumbling about how heavy the girl was, but the girl felt no better than him. The abdomen area is soft, and it would certainly be a horrible experience to have it support the entire body’s weight. Moreover, the mage carrying her was obviously lacking in strength and staggered as he walked, which was just too dangerous! However, the healer’s place was not too far away, so the girl decided to keep quiet. If she had shown weakness, he would have probably replied to her with “So you want to get down? Hand over Frost Memories first!” which she clearly was reluctant to do, so she was determined to just endure this journey.

The girl was right. Gu Fei had wanted to “torture” her a bit like this, so he had planned to take a longer route since the healer’s place was nearby.

But now, Gu Fei almost gave way to her weight just as he lifted her. He could only regret that he had such little experience in the game leading him to make the wrong decision.  He would be glad to reach the destination as soon as possible.

The priest was the class which was associated with buffs to assist allies in the game.

Healing was only one of the buffing effects. The healer NPC was an NPC which catered to mainly the newbies of the game, who, with little money and low skill level, had no abilities to heal serious injuries on their own. Thus, when one’s wounds proved to be too severe, they would have to return to the city to find the healer, housed at a spot not far off from the Priest Academy.

The so-called “serious injuries” were not referring to the dropping of HP. That would just count as a minor injury.  The wounds and HP would restore after some rest. A serious injury would mean the lowering of your max HP.  This lowering would not return to normal even with rest. And what was more important was that the feeling of pain would also stay, which was the more intolerable part for the players.

This resulted in the situation where wails of agony, blood and tears surrounded the healer NPC, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that there were plenty heart-wrenching cries.

Thus, no one took notice of the duo as they reeled out of the alley. Most of the injured were carried over and it could not be a more common sight in this area.

Gu Fei put the girl down on a spot which he finally found, with much difficulty, in the crowd. It was a more bustling scene than the one of the sale of brooms at the Mage Academy. He turned around and said to the girl, “We’ve reached, and you can queue up and wait here. Return Frost Memories to me now.”

“A lot of people are looking at me!” the girl blinked. Although the people here were all in anguish and were in no mood for any ulterior motives, but since beauties attract attention anywhere, looking at beauties would be a useful method to distract one’s attention from the pain they were experiencing. This was a proven method by Guan Yu during the Three Kingdoms period when he had poison scraped from his bone during treatment¹, and although he played chess instead, which was more graceful, appreciating beautiful women was an art as well.

Gu Fei, however, was not moved. He held out his hand and coldly said, “Hand it over.”

“There’s really someone looking at me! Look there!” the girl raised her voice with anxiety. She shouted and pointed at a spot. No one had taken notice of them previously, but some looked over as their attention was attracted.

The few who looked over suddenly beamed with surprise and hurried over. It was certainly a rare sight here to see people moving around without difficulties.

“It’s really you!” The five people increased their speed as they walked over. Before Gu Fei could make sense of the situation, the five had already stood before them and looked daggers at them.

Gu Fei did not know who they were, nor did they glare at him. However, what the girl did next diverted their attention entirely over to Gu Fei. She grabbed Gu Fei’s arm, shook it violently and screamed, “Ah, we’ve been found! Quick! Run!”

“Don’t you dare try escape!” The five were swift to surround them.

Damn! Tricked once again! Gu Fei had finally realised that these people had also been deceived by the girl, and were just looking to take revenge. He was framed and was now mistaken as an accomplice.

“Everyone! Don’t panic, I don’t know her at all. We’re totally strangers,” explained Gu Fei in a hurry.

“Strangers? Then why are you holding my dagger?” yelled one.

Dagger? Gu Fei had a shock and only took notice of what he held in his hand then.

The dagger he held was the one the girl threw at him and what he threw back into her. After it was removed from her leg, he had carried it in his hand all this time.

Gu Fei knew that the dagger was definitely not Frost Memories, but he had not had the time to take a close look at it until now. Howls of Rage was the dagger’s name, and it could cause higher damage than Frost Memories. Other than that, it gave +5% damage and +5% attack speed. Overall, it was not as fine as Frost Memories, but it was still certainly a highly-regarded weapon in the early stages of the game. It was now clear to Gu Fei that this dagger was somehow stolen by the girl and, the most pressing issue at hand was that, the dagger had landed in his hands.

She had shaken Gu Fei’s arm violently just now so that the five would notice the dagger. Although the dagger was not as prominent as Frost Memories in terms of looks, it was easy to recognise with a closer inspection, not to mention the fact that one of them was the original owner of the dagger.

“Quick, let’s fight our way out!” cried the girl as she pulled Gu Fei along to attack the player before her.

The situation had changed to two versus one, but one of their opponent’s friends quickly rushed to help since they had more people on their side, forming a glaring hole in their circle of containment. The girl flung Gu Fei’s hand away and immediately escaped through the newly formed gap to the right in an instant. At the same she shouted “Female goes right, male goes left², meet at the usual spot later!” and ran off without looking back.

Gu Fei smiled wryly. If she had told him her plan, he could have escaped just like her. But now, obviously, she intended to make him her scapegoat. What she just said as she left was all to convince those five that he was really her accomplice. It was evident that her leg had already healed judging from how swiftly she was moving.  She had used the injury as an excuse to trick him into going to the healer’s so that she could use her enemies against him.

The girl finally shook off the two who came after her after fleeing through several alleys. She sank to the ground, as if all her strength had drained out of her. She tore off the bandage and found that the bandages had already been soaked with blood. Cursing the damned mage under her breath, the girl was extremely unpleased about everything that had happened today. Why did the game have to be so realistic in some aspects, and so far-fetched in others? He had the nerve to say that she was heavy!

The girl re-wrapped her wound with a new bandage. If she remained still, the bandage would eventually do its job in healing the wound, but since it was the most elementary stage bandage, it would need quite a bit of time. At the healer’s, her wound was far from recovered. However, it was definitely worth it to endure the pain for Frost Memories. The dagger was way too good in quality for anyone to expect that it would be obtained in the early stages of the game, and it was much better than that Howls of Rage she used to escape. But she would have to sell it quickly as an elementary-stage weapon would sell for less the more time that goes by.

The girl contemplated this as she stood up with the help of the wall, and limped towards her destination.

Trading House.

Like the Auction House, the Trading house was also a place for sale of items, but there were many differences between them as well.

For the Auction House, the system will help sell the item after the player has paid a sum and given his item a starting bid. The buyer with the highest bid within the designated time period would get it. As for the Trading House, the most important feature was that real-world currencies could be used in the trade.

With the development of online games, it is not uncommon to have virtual items sold for astonishingly high prices. Yet, due to the variety of trading avenues, the security of such transactions remained low. Thus, the company behind Parallel World had provided a transaction avenue directly within the game by setting up computers in the Trading House which could connect to external sites and in turn connect with online banking systems.

The seller would need to put his item on display, set a price and provide his bank account number. After all was done, his information would be placed online.

The buyer would be able to check out the information online or the item on display in the gallery. After a successful transaction, the buyer would be able to retrieve the item from the gallery and the system would transfer the money into the seller’s account.

It was the same flow of process as some other external websites, but it was naturally much more secure and reliable with the game company attending to the matter instead.

The girl submitted Frost Memories for display and her bank account. Next up was setting a price.

As it was really too early into the game and there was almost no market yet, the girl had to estimate a price from her experience. Frost Memories certainly was one of the top weapons in game currently, and a price of 50,000 yuan³ would be acceptable for many cashers. The girl took a deep breath and was going to click on the confirmation button, but it was then that someone caught her hand and pressed the esc button, cancelling all the operations she made before.

The girl was taken completely by surprise and turned around to discover Gu Fei smirking at her.

“So you’re going to sell this thing for 50000?” asked Gu Fei with concern.

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It blacked out again last night… The electricity recently is inconsistent just like my updates last time. What memories…