Virtual World: Close Combat Mage - Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Misunderstanding caused by a Sack

Ye Xiaowu remained occupied even after he logged off . He was still deep in thought about the problems concerning Gu Fei while he sat silently in his office . After pondering for a while, Ye Xiaowu suddenly sprang up and made a dash for the Operations Department of the game company . He belonged to the Software Development Department, whereas the Operations Department was the department in actual charge of all daily game maintenance and operations .

There was a specific team in the Operations Department which was responsible for inspecting all data in the game . If anything unusual was noted, the target would be locked and the issue would be investigated into so as to make sure nothing is off balance . To put it plainly, it was a team that aimed to eliminate any cheating in the game which made use of game bots or hacking .

“While the priest climbs a post, the devil climbs ten . ” This proverb is a perfect illustration of the relationship between games and cheats . Even for high-tech games like “Parallel World”, cheating AI was unavoidable . Getting rid of them was the most important and beneficial matter in all online games, and though Parallel World had made teams with some of the most skilled technicians in the world, they couldn’t afford to relax their efforts on this .

Ye Xiaowu barged into the monitoring team’s office causing the few working there to jump in shock . They relaxed when they saw that it was Ye Xiaowu . “So it’s manager Ye! More bugs to catch again?” they joked .

As one of the core members of the Development Department, Ye Xiaowu was a regular visitor of the monitoring team’s office, for he would discover bugs and rush over to their team to verify the situation, so this was how his nickname came about .

“Check the game data of the account ‘Thousand Miles Drunk’,” said Ye Xiaowu .

“Umm…” the team members looked at each other and one spoke up hesitantly, “That’s against the rules…”

In normal situations, it was already far out of Ye Xiaowu, a developer, scope of duties to look at data and information regarding players .

“There’s something odd about this player,” replied Ye Xiaowu .

The few immediately became alert at these words . This, was something within the scope of their duties, so they immediately directed their attention and inspection systems to Gu Fei, who was innocently grinding mobs .

“There shouldn’t be anything wrong…” somebody muttered . If there was really a problematic account and they actually needed Ye Xiaowu to find that out, it would look like a severe case of negligence, which caused them all to look on anxiously .

Ye Xiaowu was too busy staring at the screens to be bothered about their feelings . He needed a final confirmation and all results on screen seemed to prove his hypothesis to be true .

The other few employees who also had their eyes glued to the screens all breathed a sigh of relief after a while, as all results showed that Gu Fei’s account did not have any relations to a third-party bot so there was no negligence on their part .

Yet, Ye Xiaowu kept his gaze on one screen . The others glanced at each other in puzzlement and followed his gaze as well . And looks of astonishment started to appear on their faces after observing .

“Who is this?” asked an employee .

Ye Xiaowu remained silent, for his boss had closed one eye to his activities in the game though employees were banned from playing the game . So he had his secrets .

The team members took closer looks and someone mumbled under his breath, “Wow, this guy’s attacks all achieve the highest damage he can cause… Is he really not using bots?” Gu Fei’s extraordinary performance had made even professional game designers doubt their own judgement .

Another round of inspection confirmed that there were no bots involved .

“How is this even humanly possible… Where did ya find him, Manager Ye?” one gasped in awe .

“Heard of him from someone,” Ye Xiaowu gave a random answer and changed the subject immediately . “There aren’t any problems with this account, am I right?”

“No!” everyone answered with certainty .

“So he can’t be considered to be cheating, can he?”

“Of course not,” laughed one of the guys . “Don’t you feel gratified, manager Ye? The greatest damage caused by the most accurate hits . He has achieved your ideals!”

“Very so,” nodded Ye Xiaowu .

“If you put it in normal gaming terms, this guy would be an operational master in our Parallel World,” one employee said .

Ye Xiaowu smiled and stood up . “Everything’s alright if there’s nothing wrong with the account . I’ll be leaving now, see y’all around . ”

On the way back to his office, Ye Xiaowu was still mulling over the question of whether Gu Fei could be counted as a “balance-destroyer” .

Meanwhile the so-called “balance-destroyer” Gu Fei was engrossed with kicking monsters’ butts with his Kung Fu when he received a message from Fireball, asking him out for a drink .

Fireball could be considered to be Gu Fei’s first friend in the game . Though they did not grind mobs together, they still met up quite frequently . Gu Fei finished fighting and set off for the city .

Gu Fei’s carry weight was quite low and given his amazing efficiency, he always had more trophies from his victories than he could carry, so he was forced to find a solution for this . He made a sack just to hold all these random stuff he got . The difference between the sack and the “Doraemon’s pocket” was that you will feel the weight of the former, and there was no protection from the system of the former .

So now poor Gu Fei was carrying a sack stuffed with things on his back and moving forward with great difficulty . Thankfully Gu Fei now had the badge from the quest, which gave him extra Strength, so his carrying ability had risen some, but since he decided to increase the number of trophies he returned with after getting this strength increase . His overall movement remained the same as before he got it .

Gu Fei’s steps grew heavier as he was walking past a levelling area . Exhausted, he threw the sack onto the floor and leaned on a tree to catch his breath .

The players in the area all took notice of this strange occurrence . A few players’ eyes suddenly lit up and they raced up to Gu Fei .

“Do you need help? Let me help you carry that!” the few players shouted as they fought to be the first in front of Gu Fei .

“No thanks, actually, I…”

“Oh please don’t be so polite, just let me help you!” one player grabbed Gu Fei’s sack, swung it over his shoulder and look into the distance, “Where are you going to?”

“Cloud City,” answered Gu Fei . “But I…”

“Let’s go!” the player had set off in big strides and left no chance for Gu Fei to explain further . The other players looked on with jealousy .

“But I’m not an NPC, I’m also a player!” Gu Fei finished his sentence as he stood there, stunned . Yet the person was already too far away to hear this . The rest of the players who had gathered around Gu Fei heard what he said, and after a short silence, all started to giggle . They kept their voices low so that the player wouldn’t hear them and they started praising Gu Fei, “Whoa bro, you did that on purpose didn’t you! You’re a genius!”

Many players had dreamt of meeting a hidden quest and becoming an underdog one day as a result of reading too many“close-to-fantasy” MMORPG novels . Since Gu Fei, was an oddly dressed person with a huge sack wandering through the woods, no one would think that he was just another player .

As Gu Fei travelled back to the city with his sack routinely for the past days, such misunderstandings would happen very often . But the crowd would usually disperse after Gu Fei’s explanation and using an Identification spell on him . Today though he met a person who loved quests so much that he didn’t even bother listening to Gu Fei’s opinion or the quests info, and just walked off after he snatched Gu Fei’s sack away .

“Hey! You…” Gu Fei chased after the guy and shouted .

The guy would have none of it . “No one can stop me from helping you carry this sack today,” he turned and shook a finger .

Gu Fei shut up . He wasn’t one who liked to force people . Since the person was so determined to help, then he might as well let him . So Gu Fei strolled behind his new helper and studied him . The guy wore a heavy set of armour and clearly belonged to the strongest class: Warrior . The sack looked like a toy to him .

Though the guy looked pretty thin looking at his figure, a person’s figure meant nothing about his strength in this game . Gu Fei had a body of steel from his twenty-plus years of training, and yet was as weak as a lamb that couldn’t withstand the weight of its own wool in this game world .

It took some time to get back to Cloud City, and the person’s easy steps on the way made Gu Fei look on with jealousy . Ah! Even if he couldn’t be a fighter, being a warrior was also not a bad choice! A mage’s body was just too weak .

The two finally reached Cloud City . The person put down the sack and gazed deeply into Gu Fei’s eyes .

“Thanks!” Gu Fei patted the person’s shoulder and started staggering off with the sack .

The person was shocked for an instant, but quickly rushed up to Gu Fei and passionately offered, “Where else are you going to? Let me help you carry it!”

“That’s ok, the Storehouse is just ahead,” Gu Fei rejected his offer .

“The Storehouse…” the person stood stunned for a moment and looked to Gu Fei, “You are…” Something was off, the Storehouse was right ahead, but that was a place specially for players .

“Nice to meet you, I’m Thousand Miles Drunk,” Gu Fei said .

“You are… you are not an NPC…” the person looked like he was about to faint .

Gu Fei took a deep breath . “I’m not,” he said .