Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Chapter 284 - The Mountain Bandit Leader’s Item Drops

Amid the surrounding players fuming at what had just happened, Gu Fei uncaringly rushed forward to pick up the monster loots as he kept on shouting, “Excuse me! Excuse me, please!” And yet, all the players remained in their position as they stared fixedly at the circle within.

While the Boss’s underlings were at level 30, Sotto himself was beyond that level. Why else would they be struggling to complete the ‘Seizing the Mountain Bandit Leader Sooto’ quest when they were at level 30 if Sooto were a level 30 Boss?

Following this logic, Sooto’s drops should also be on par with his current level. Sooto had dropped a money pouch and two pieces of equipment on the ground upon his death, yet the players could only stare longingly at those items since the system was preventing them from picking the loots up. As such, they were possibly experiencing the most excruciating pain any gamer could ever feel.

“Hey! Can you two help me?” Gu Fei asked Oathless Sword and Youthful Reflection, the people in charge of the expedition, for help.

While the two looked serious on the surface, they were actually celebrating Gu Fei’s misfortune inside. Still, they could no longer feign ignorance about Gu Fei’s plight since he was directly asking them for help. Youthful Reflection showed him a troubled look. “That is... As you can see, it’s a little difficult to talk them off....”

Youthful Reflection was actually stalling for time. The system would only prevent items from being picked up by others for a short period of time. Once this time lapsed, anyone could pick the items up. Expecting people to hand over the drops to their owner was just pipe dream in a MMO.

Gu Fei was a straightforward person, though. Upon hearing Youthful Reflection’s evasive response, he merely shook his head with a sigh, “Guess it can’t be helped.”

The two felt delighted when they heard this. This was when a thought flashed through Youthful Reflection’s mind, This guy can’t possibly be thinking of killing all these people, right? Although they were comrades, that was just for this expedition. In fact, he was holding himself back from moving against Gu Fei whom he considered to be capable of killing others without batting an eye. He would not even be surprised if Gu Fei really did kill the bunch of people before them. Just as he was about to say something, Youthful Reflection saw Gu Fei leap vertically from his current position while pointing toward the crowd, “Translocation! Blink!”

Gu Fei disappeared.

Meanwhile, a bunch of players began to excitedly jostle with one another once they heard that the items’ owner was barricaded from penetrating their ranks; all of them salivated at Sooto’s corpse as they looked forward to snatching the Boss’s item drops. Online games were probably the only places where it was acceptable for people to salivate over a grotesque corpse.

As these men eagerly counted down the seconds that they would be prevented from getting near the item drops and prepared themselves for the fight that was about to occur for the items, a figure blurred into existence before their eyes and instantly stepped onto Sooto’s corpse triumphantly.

Many lost their composure in their shock, yet Gu Fei remained uncaring of all this. Laughing at everyone around him, he asked, “What are you guys looking at?” Gu Fei then picked up the coin pouch and two pieces of equipment beside Sooto’s corpse under the crowd’s agonized gazes.

Sometimes, an in-game item would promptly drop once a monster was defeated; at other times, it would remain inside the monster’s clothes for a player to search himself or herself. The Bosses’ corpses would thus often meet quite the terrible fate of being undressed, flipped around, and closely inspected, turning every Boss players defeated into a highly X-rated scene. The players actually wished they could just rip the bodies apart in search of the loot, but the game designs regretfully did not allow such level of gore.

Gu Fei was fortunately not that extreme. Checking Sooto’s pockets, he quickly got up after. He did not intend to conduct a thorough search of Sooto’s corpse under the crowd’s intense scrutiny. He felt the players would end up drowning him in their displeasure if he were to unceremoniously strip the Boss down until nothing was left for even the vultures to scrape at.

“Please let me through!” Gu Fei’s smile was still affixed on his face.

The players had no interest in blocking his path this time around. Listlessly clearing a path for him, Gu Fei humbly made his way through the crowd. Halfway out, the system-designated time limit for looting Sooto’s corpse expired and it instantly suffered inhumane treatment from the surrounding players. By the time the crowd scattered, the once fearsome Mountain Bandit Leader Sooto had been left sprawling on the ground dressed only in his undergarments with his face on the ground. Suffering such a fate, it was as if the corpse could not wait for the system’s white light to collect it.

“What dropped?” many familiar faces immediately asked Gu Fei once he returned to his mercenary group.

Gu Fei tossed the coin pouch to Royal God Call, saying, “Count the content.” He then took out the two pieces of equipment he had looted from the Boss.

[Bandit Leader’s Ring (Purple Tier)

+ 12 Strength

+ 12 Agility]

From its name alone, the item could be said to not be meant for Mages. Royal God Call, Svelte Dancer, Sword Demon and even War Without Wounds salivated over this item, yet Gu Fei excitedly replaced the Ring of Flames – which increased additional fire attack proc rate by 7% – for it. He then dangled Ring of Flames to the crowd, “Anyone interested in this?” When no one said a word, Gu Fei took out a similar-looking ring and raised both to them, “They’re a pair!”

“Go to hell!” everyone berated.

The other item he got was not equipment but a permanent skill scroll.

Since Mountain Bandit Leader Sooto was the one that dropped it, it was obviously a thief-related skill. Gu Fei regretfully showed it to everyone.

[Shadow Walk

Effect: Puts the user in an uninterruptible Stealth state that consumes 7% mana every second.

Skill cooldown: 2 minutes and 30 seconds

Job class requirement: Rogue]

“This...” All were in a daze when they saw it.

“Any Rogue around here?” Gu Fei cried out, already looking for a buyer.

“Give it to me!” Svelte Dancer pounced on Gu Fei.

Gu Fei sidestepped her pouncing figure and lifted the scroll up to her, “Cancel my debt to you in exchange for this scroll, then!”

“AHEM!” Brother Assist cleared his throat audibly, but Svelte Dancer unhesitatingly took the skill scroll from Gu Fei’s hand as she rolled her eyes, “Oh, stop with that. I know this Shadow Walk skill is more valuable than the Blink skill I’ve given him.”

Brother Assist felt slightly embarrassed. He had cleared his throat to signal Gu Fei that he had sent him a message, but it turned out that Svelte Dancer was sincere about the transaction as she did not even attempt to rip Gu Fei off.

The scroll disappeared from Svelte Dancer’s hand once she got a hold of it. She then fished out two coin pouches from her dimensional pocket, counted the amount inside, and tossed them over to Gu Fei, “Here are 1500 gold coins. Adding the 1500 gold coins you still owe me, I’ve essentially bought this skill scroll for 3000 gold coins. You won’t be making a loss at this rate, yeah?” She was not looking at Gu Fei when she said this, though; instead, her gaze was on Brother Assist. Brother Assist once more felt sheepish inside and bowed his head in embarrassment.

“I guess so,” Gu Fei offhandedly replied as he dropped the coin pouches into his dimensional pocket.

“‘Guess so’?! This lady here has actually bought the skill scroll for such a high price, yet that’s how you view it?!” Svelte Dancer indignantly yelled and she made it seem as if she would pounce on him once more.

“HIGH PRICE! I mean you paid for it rather generously!” Gu Fei quickly rephrased his statement, not wanting to quarrel with her over it. No one was exactly capable of telling the skill’s true worth, yet even he could judge that it was highly valuable. Stealth could be considered as the weakest thief skill; Stealth could easily be interrupted with the slightest touch, but with Shadow Walk that seemed capable of raising the skill’s level to near invincibility, Stealth would not be interrupted even if a Thief was under attack or attacking.

Royal God Call and War Without Wounds were green with envy at the sight of Gu Fei pocketing the gold coins and sourly commented, “To think you would accept money from a babe! Scum!”

“That’s right, you beast!” the second man chimed in.

“Shall we split the gold coins, then?” Gu Fei asked.

The two immediately became elated, “That’s a great idea!”

“Scram! You two are the real scum and beast!” Gu Fei countered.

The brigade’s trek through the Oolong Mountain Range was not yet over. Building bridges on the mountain path as well as overcoming that large-scale surprise attack, Gu Fei had truly made substantial contributions in this portion of the mission. While Drifting was the one that had managed to penetrate the Mountain Bandits’ blockade, Gu Fei’s effort of soloing Sooto was undeniably what had allowed Drifting to escape the fate of being diced into pieces by the Mountain Bandit Leader.

The players were of course aware of this, but Gu Fei’s act of pocketing almost all of Sooto’s dropped items made all their feelings of gratitude toward him disappear altogether. Each of them was even fervently praying that he would meet a tragic end.

As they exited the mountain pass and stepped on to the rolling plains ahead, the large group of players could vaguely make out the outline of Yueye City in the horizon. Everyone sighed in relief; this expedition’s first part was finally over. As for what sort of benefit they gained from this... All the players could only send another round of curses toward Gu Fei.

Yueye City! Emotions welled up within Gu Fei, yet June’s Rain was actually more excited than him. Having stayed longer in Yueye City than Gu Fei, she was more familiar with this region’s customs and terrain than him. Spotting a few players ahead, June’s Rain immediately covered her face with a piece of cloth from her dimensional pocket.

“Xiaoyu, what are you doing?” a lady asked her out of curiosity.

“Everyone around here does this,” June’s Rain replied generally.

The others were still puzzled by her answer, so they requested for her to explain further, yet June’s Rain was unable to give a clear reason for this action and could only say that this was what the locals did.

Gu Fei remembered the last time he had been here; indeed, men wearing face covers had attempted to rob him, yet saying that ‘everyone’ did this would be a little far-fetched.

Everyone could still not make sense of this and merely continued forward. Soon, they entered the grinding map before them. Looking around, they saw that all the players in the area were indeed covering their faces just like June’s Rain.

“Just what is going on?” Everyone found this comical. When the masked players saw the large group of men appear from somewhere, they all stopped what they were doing. Several of them even began retreating while others anxiously whispered to one another.

“What’s happening? Why are there suddenly so many people here?”

“F*ck! Does that trash have such a strong backer? We’re in deep sh*t now.”

“To mobilize such a behemoth army, is that kid someone from the Ten Guild Alliance?”

“I don’t remember seeing that kid wear an emblem or anything!”

“F*ck! Did he act weak to make us lose our guard? We’re dead meat!”

“But these guys don’t seem to be wearing the Ten Guild Alliance’s emblem, either!”

“M*th*rf*ck*r! Who else could muster such a huge army besides the Ten Guild Alliance?! Let’s just make ourselves scarce!”

In a short while, plenty of players vanished from the grinding map. Seeing the plains before them suddenly become empty, the players from Yunduan City were immediately taken aback. This was in stark contrast with the fevered competition going on in many of Yunduan City’s grinding maps.

Each of them was simply dumbfounded by this. Finally, Traversing Four Seas’ three core members spoke up, “Gentlemen, it’s getting pretty late. Let’s not tarry here and quickly enter the city! For the mercenaries, please remember to record your character data over by Yueye City. As for the remuneration for this quest’s portion, we’ll discuss it first thing tomorrow morning!”

“Oathless big bro...” a mercenary spoke up, “Just what sort of item are you guys escorting for this quest? After traveling so far, I’ve yet to spot any item that fits the criterion of being the object escorted by us....”