Virtual World: Close Combat Mage - Chapter 23

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.”

“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.

“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 with all her might.

“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.]