Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Chapter 124 - The Yew Staff

The answer to whether ‘Bounty Mission’ was currently the hot thing to do in Yunduan City or not was of course ‘no’. In fact, Gu Fei had yet to see anyone else do ‘Bounty Mission’ enthusiastically like him – or at least that was the case in Yunduan City.

When Gu Fei answered Drifting’s question with a “No”, the latter curiously asked, “Then, why do you keep on doing it?”

“How did you find that out?” Gu Fei asked, stumped.

Drifting swept his gaze all over the tavern before answering, “Heard it from the others....”

“Oh...” Gu Fei understood now. In Parallel World, there were three places players would frequent: grinding maps, Peddlers’ Streets, and taverns. In that one month Gu Fei busied himself with the ‘Bounty Mission’, he oftentimes visited taverns to slay his targets. Places like taverns would usually have regular patrons; for instance, Young Master Han was a regular of Ray’s Bar. It was these regular tavern patrons that had spread to others about a certain individual who was obsessed with doing ‘Bounty Mission’.

Drifting, who was sitting beside Gu Fei, continued to speak, “I really wanted to meet that famous Close Combat Mage 27149, but I learned that all traces of him had long disappeared when I arrived here in Yunduan City. But it was also right after this that I heard the tavern patrons talking about another person who is really passionate with bounty hunting. I sure didn’t expect to get to meet him this soon.”

“He he...” Gu Fei laughed dryly. His action of doing ‘Bounty Mission’ every day for a month indeed earned him a bit of fame, but it was unlike the one enjoyed by his other identity. Most players were truly baffled by his action and some even went as far as to make fun of him. While some admired and feared his PvP capability, those people still could not help but wonder, Bounty hunting every single day... Is there something wrong in that guy’s head?

“So why is brother Miles so passionate about ‘Bounty Mission’?” Drifting asked the question that was on his mind.

Because it’s my hobby? Nah... These people might get the wrong idea; they probably won’t believe that reason, anyway. Knowing of this fact, Gu Fei chose to approach the issue from the perspective of a MMO gamer. He proceeded to take off his boots and put them on the table, “See this? This is the reward I got from doing ‘Bounty Mission’.”

The tavern patrons began to use the Appraisal skill on the Windchaser’s Boots, and the sound of people gulping down their saliva could be heard moments later. Right Hand of Cool, the Archer sitting closest to the pair of boots, was so amazed by it that his eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Completing ‘Bounty Mission’ for one hundred times in a row will get anyone a pair of Windchaser’s Boots,” Gu Fei put the boots on again while saying this.

Drifting slightly furrowed his brows. The pair of boots was indeed a rare, top-grade footwear, but the condition for getting it was simply too harsh. He finally understood why Gu Fei’s ranking on the experience leaderboard suffered a huge drop. To him, Gu Fei’s action was a plain example of penny wise and pound foolish. Drifting could still understand why Gu Fei was focusing so hard on the ‘Bounty Mission’ if the latter were an Archer, but he was a Mage! As a fellow Mage, Drifting felt that Gu Fei sacrificing all the potential experience points gain just to get this pair of boots was not worth it, even though the boots would indeed make the latter more formidable. Drifting himself would rather buy such pair of boots for an expensive price than to acquire it through hard work like Gu Fei. The game officials had specifically stated before: no Parallel World equipment was ‘limited or restricted from trading’ to just one player. This pair of boots was no exception.

As he thought of this, Drifting posed another question to Gu Fei, “Do you have plans to sell this pair of boots?”

“Sell? Never thought of that before...” Gu Fei was somewhat taken aback when heard the word ‘sell’, as he did not possess the awareness to do in-game trading at all. The miscellaneous items he had looted from monsters every time he level grinded already filled up his entire Warehouse, yet he did not even bother to find time to sell them all off. So far, the only trading experience he had was consigning the system to sell some items in his stead over at the Auction House.

It was a must for players to study the workings of the in-game market for them to do well in the trading of items. Gu Fei did no such thing, though. He merely copied the prices that the others had set for the same items he wanted to sell. It was unknown whether those items he copied his pricing from belonged to dishonest merchants, but the one thing certain was that none of the items Gu Fei consigned for selling was bought by other players. In the end, he paid quite the hefty consignment fees due to his items remaining unsold for days, causing him to waste a fair amount of gold coins instead of earning such a sum. The fees were charged by the system, so they would directly be deducted from the players’ dimensional pockets with no rooms for negotiations at all. Gu Fei wept without tears when this happened to him and he gave up any idea of selling items again ever since then.

Right now, Drifting was suddenly discussing business with Gu Fei, causing the latter to be at a loss of how he should react. You slashing me will be a more straightforward way of making me feel that kind of pain again! Why are we even talking business!?

Seeing that Gu Fei did not intend to sell the pair of boots, Drifting thought of using a different approach. Searching inside his dimensional pocket, he eventually pulled out a magic staff. “Look at this, Miles,” Drifting said as he put the magic staff on the table for Gu Fei to appraise.

“Not bad!” Gu Fei exclaimed. Yew Staff; its name was displayed in golden letters. The required Spell Aptitude for it was 110%. It had Magic Enhancement +35%, Spell Damage +15%, Intelligence +10 points, and Spirit +10 points.

Yew Staff was a level 40 magic staff and was currently the highest grade magic stave for Mages. The ‘Aptitude’ trait that could not be found on common-grade items would only start appearing on higher-grade ones, such as the Yew Staff. This particular Yew Staff even had the trait of ‘Magic Enhancement+35%’.

Magic Enhancement worked like this: Assuming that an average magic staff had ’80-100’ for its Magic Attack Power attribute, then the points would increase from ’80-100’ to ‘108-135’ if the item had the ‘Magic Enhancement +35%’ trait. Similarly, other equipment would also have traits, such as Swordsmanship Enhancement, Marksmanship Enhancement, Defense Enhancement, and so on, depending on its job class affinity.

Simply put, this particular Yew Staff of Drifting offered a 35% higher Magic Attack Power than the other yew staves. With its additional traits of Spell Damage +15%, Intelligence +10 points, and Spirit +10 points, it was a top-grade magic staff that had a relatively high damage output.

“What do you think of trading your Windchaser’s Boots for my Yew Staff?” Drifting asked. He was of course attentive of Gu Fei’s Moonlit Nightfalls, but he could not appraise it despite his numerous attempts. Since it is being used by a Mage, can it actually be a magic sword?

Regular players were unaware of the existence of magic swords, but Drifting had come across a NPC owning one during a quest. That magic sword possessed Magic Attack Power and Physical Attack Power. Although it appeared very OP, such equipment with dual traits actually had low value for either trait. In fact, that NPC’s magic sword possessed a Physical Attack Power that was lower than one-handed swords of the same tier, and its Magic Attack Power was also inferior to magic staves of the same tier. Besides a cooler design, Drifting failed to see the practicability of magic swords.

As for Gu Fei’s sword, its design was even more stylish than the NPC’s. If Drifting’s guess was correct, then the features of Gu Fei’s sword would probably be unimpressive as well.

This was why Drifting had taken out the Yew Staff to trade with Gu Fei, as he knew that players always preferred weapons the most. Based on Drifting’s acumen, the Yew Staff should be a more valuable item for Gu Fei than the Windchaser’s Boots. Thus, he was almost certain that Gu Fei would not reject this trade.

Unfortunately for Drifting, the suggestion only stunned Gu Fei for a bit before the latter quickly replied, “No need for that.” Drifting’s Yew Staff was undoubtedly an attractive offer, yet it was regrettably up against Moonlit Nightfalls and Gu Fei.

If they were to see things from the weapons’ perspective, Moonlit Nightfalls’ traits were actually a match to Drifting’s assumption of how weapons with dual traits had weaker traits compared to weapons of the same tier. Moonlit Nightfalls was a level 70 weapon, however. Therefore, the level 40 Yew Staff was still no match for Moonlit Nightfalls even with its weaker traits.

Another factor why Gu Fei would not trade his boots for the staff was because he preferred sword fighting techniques over staff fighting techniques. In fact, in Gu Fei’s eyes, the Yew Staff was just a regular mage weapon that almost had non-existent physical damage. This staff is nothing but trash! was Gu Fei’s honest opinion about the Yew Staff; this opinion alone was enough to break Drifting’s heart so thoroughly.

Nevertheless, Drifting seemed to have also taken into consideration the possibility of Gu Fei refusing the trade, as he did not act too surprised when Gu Fei indeed rejected his offer and merely took the staff back after uttering, “A pity.”

They continued to chat casually after that, with Right Hand of Cool periodically asking Gu Fei details on how to go about doing the ‘Bounty Mission’. Obviously, Archers like him and Royal God Call were very interested in Windchaser’s Boots.

Just then, Gu Fei received a message. He initially thought that the message was from Royal God Call with his signature “HELP!” typed in English, but it turned out to be from Luo Luo: “Oh, great hero, come and join us in leveling!”

“So early?” Gu Fei asked, surprised. It was an hour earlier than yesterday.

“The girls are very much looking forward to witnessing your magnificence,” Luo Luo answered.

“Coming,” Gu Fei replied. He then stood up and bade Drifting and the rest farewell.

“Are you going to grind levels?” Drifting asked with raised eyebrows, adding, “Why don’t we accompany you?”

“Ah? But I have my own party already!” Gu Fei automatically rejected.

“It shan’t be a big deal to include us three, right?” Drifting asked.

And so, Gu Fei sent another message over to Luo Luo.

“Are they good-looking?” Luo Luo asked.

“Uh... Passable,” Gu Fei said while inspecting Drifting’s overall appearance. Clothes made the man, after all. Drifting indeed looked very dashing especially if others judged him based on his outward appearance. And with that magic staff in his hand that resembled a burning flame with its reddish glow, he truly looked very cool.

“There are two more...” As Gu Fei was about to describe Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool to the girls, he saw the two whispering very closely with each other. With goosebumps on his skin, he shared his speculation to the girls, “I’m getting the Brokeback Mountain vibe from them!”

“Ah? Really?!” Luo Luo asked.

“Looks the part to me...” Gu Fei replied, trailing off weakly.

“Come over! Tell them to come over immediately,” Luo Luo’s message carried a sense of urgency.

Gu Fei was dazed for a second before inviting the three.

Drifting walked abreast with Gu Fei on their way to the grinding map. Since they shared the same job class, it was inevitable for them to exchange their thoughts regarding it. Drifting asked, “The way you clashed with those guys at the tavern just then... You seem to have added a lot of points to Agility?”

Gu Fei nodded his head, “Yeah. I have an all-Agility build.”

“What?” Drifting thought he heard wrongly.

“All-Agility.”

Drifting was spitting blood inside. He paused for a long while before finally saying, “You must be a die-hard fan of attacking styles like ‘kiting’,” Drifting could not think of another reason that a Mage would add all his points toward Agility.

Gu Fei said, “I allocated stat points thoughtlessly since I didn’t know how to play the game before.”

Drifting spat blood within himself again; he then consoled Gu Fei just like how the Amethyst Rebirth’s ladies had done before, “Everything is gonna be okay once you hit level 40. You can reallocate your points by then.”

Gu Fei could only smile at that, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him.