Fatal Shot

“What’s up, Brother Wu? Did you come all the way to Silvermoon to see me?” Feng Luo looked at the smiling Mu Wu, who was fully dressed in silver armor. “But you’ve changed a lot! Brother Wu, I never knew you were so good-looking. Have you had some surgeries done?”

Mu Wu was the manager of Nightless Club in real life—one of the few real friends that Feng Luo had in this world. In real life, he was a soft-spoken gentleman and wore a pair of gold-framed glasses. But his overall vibe wasn’t much like the manager of a nightclub at all.

In the game, Mu Wu was dressed lavishly in silver armor and exuded a handsome aura. He seemed like a new man, his eyes shining with sharp confidence. If the grade of equipment was used to describe one’s appearance, then Feng Luo would only be considered Fine. At most, he might be Excellent, if someone was really into his style. But Mu Wu’s current appearance was at the least Excellent. In fact, he could even pass as Rare. The shining silver armor matched his six-foot frame. He looked like the typical Mr. Perfect.

You could change your appearance in War,—long as you were willing to spend the money. The big belly you had in real life could be edited into an ultra-ripped body, or love handles into an hourglass figure. It was all easily achievable. Players called this “facial surgery,” and it was one of the main features that attracted so many players.

When Feng Luo took a closer look, he realized that Mu Wu hadn’t changed his facial features at all. He had merely taken off his gold-framed glasses, which was enough to change his whole persona.

Strange, thought Feng Luo. Why does he always wear them? He looks so much better without them!

With the technologies available in this world, nearsightedness wasn’t a problem. Glasses were more like accessories. Most people would only wear a pair to look fashionable. Feng Luo had never seen Mu Wu without glasses, and he now realized that the gold-framed glasses didn’t make him look better. Instead, they were like a veil obscuring his outstanding looks. Was there a reason behind it? As Feng Luo was pondering this, the red-dressed Fire Manipulator called out to him with a smile, pulling him back to his senses.

“Brother Feng!”

Hmm… This stunning lady was definitely a Rare. Not much complain about in regards to her figure or personality, that was for sure. Feng Luo was stunned for a few seconds, suddenly realizing that he recognized her.

“You’re… Flaming Red Lips!”

She had been the host of the equipment auction for War the at Nightless City club—the one dressed as a bunny. She wasn’t wearing as much makeup as before. Although “Flaming Red Lips” was maintaining a red theme, she barely had any makeup on this time. She looked so different barefaced that Feng Luo hadn’t recognized her at first.

She may have been barefaced, but she wasn’t like some girls, who turned ugly as soon as they took their makeup off. To be honest, a 175-centimeter-tall Manipulator walking around in the game in her fiery red dress would attract the attention of most players even if she didn’t have any makeup on.

“Brother Feng, I’m Little Witch!”

Flaming Red Lips—no, actually, Little Witch—smiled sweetly at Feng Luo. She hadn’t been working at Nightless City very long, but she’d always been smitten with her mysterious vice manager.

Feng Luo had always played the game of War alone. He’d never come across any staff from Nightless City, so this was the first time they were officially meeting in-game.

What had just happened reassured Little Witch of what the vice manager had said: that this person was no ordinary man!

******

The three of them walked into the ammunition shop and sat in a small tea room. After the NPC staff served them their drinks, Mu Wu spoke to Feng Luo.

“Brother Feng, it looks like you got yourself into some trouble,” he said. “Those people who were just here. I’m pretty sure they were members of the almighty Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group, right?”

Even as he spoke, he tried to push his glasses up his nose out of force of habit, only to realize he wasn’t wearing glasses.

“This is all because you sold that Rare gun!” Feng Luo replied jokingly. “If I hadn’t killed their men while testing the Desert Eagle, things wouldn’t have gone so far. So, Brother Wu, this is all your fault!”

Little Witch felt a little awkward upon hearing that, since she was the one who had hosted the auction for the Desert Eagle.

Mu Wu revealed a faint smile, clearly trying to help ease the situation. “He’s just joking! Don’t listen to him. A guy like him wouldn’t care for these trivial matters!”

His reaction made Feng Luo glance at Little Witch from the side. There’s a situation here, he realized.

As far as he could remember, Mu Wu had lived his life strictly. Even as the manager of a large nightclub, he had never had a woman by his side and would never misuse his power to do something against the law. This displeased women who sought to sleep their way to the top. They secretly thought that he was gay.

As a result, Feng Luo had received some furtive glances because of the special treatment given to him by Mu Wu. He was, after all, a male! Even Feng Luo had been starting to wonder. But now, he could finally set his worries aside.

“I can’t say that this matter hasn’t been a pain for me,” Feng Luo said in his usual calm manner, “but the Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group isn’t in charge of all of Silvermoon City. Plus, if it keeps happening, I could just move to another city. They can’t keep chasing me around wherever I go. However, according to the developing trends of War, competition between players in the system city is getting more intense. Solo players will find it harder to survive. So moving to another city wouldn’t make much of a difference…”

Feng Luo frowned slightly as he spoke these words.

“Anyway, don’t you worry about me,” he concluded. “Instead, I’m curious as to why you’re here. Don’t tell me you’re just visiting.” He brought the topic back to Mu Wu’s arrival.

“If you say so,” Mu Wu said. “I won’t ask any more questions. We did come here for an important matter. Remember that important mission I told you about?”

“Not bad.” Feng Luo nodded. “I seem to recall that the commission fee was 30,000 bucks. Are we doing it?”

“Oh, you still need to wait for a few more days!” Mu Wu lifted his coffee cup and blew off the steam.

Feng Luo stared into his eyes and wanted to strangle him.

Mu Wu didn’t seem to notice Feng Luo’s malicious glare and replied calmly, “Once the final stages of the city-building mission have been activated, it needs to be completed within a certain time frame. But before that, we need to conduct the site selection first. So you have to wait a bit longer.”

“City building?” Feng Luo blurted, truly surprised to hear that.

In War, players could build cities. In fact, they could build fortresses, battle bunkers, shipping ports, airports… There wasn’t enough staff in the Federal Government Army, and they were constantly faced with anti-government forces trying to impose their influence. So they were actually quite happy to let risk-takers invest their money in building a city.

However, even if the government had no objections against it, building a city in War was still not an easy task.

Setting aside the complicated process of a city-building mission, what made this game different from others was that a player would need to come up with comprehensive facilities for every aspect out of thin air, including all sorts of NPCs and systems for the buildings. To be honest, city building in War was literally what it meant: building a city! Every single brick, tile, blade of grass, or tree, up to basic facilities such as streets—either the players or their hired NPCs had to design and work on them from the ground up.

At the same time, there wouldn’t be any NPCs or building refresh systems in the newly built city. One had to go into the system’s business district to look for ultra-high-AI NPC merchants who were just as intelligent as the players. It was just like finding entrepreneurs for joint ventures when creating a new industry.

The involvement of different types of NPCs was required for this process as well. Hence, city building in War not only required a large sum of investments, but also a whole lot of time and effort. Which was why, up till now, no more than 100 cities had been built by players. The population count in the most developed ones was not over 100,000 people and fewer than 50,000 NPCs. None of them were comparable to any of the system’s cities.

Naturally, the most important limitation was always the initial investment. Whether it was manpower, materials, or logistics, everything required credits. How much material and manpower was needed to build an entire city?

The credits used in War had a currency exchange rate of 10 to 1 with star coins. So building a city in the game would probably require one-tenth the investment of building a similar-scale city in real life. Of course, in reality, it would probably have been less than one-tenth; manpower could be greatly reduced by offering various privileges to attract players and to build the city together.

A lot of players wouldn’t mind volunteering because they could train their skills and upgrade their profession level during the city-building process. Moreover, technology was quite advanced. A lot of high-tech machinery could be utilized to reduce cost and time.

Feng Luo quickly returned to his usual calm self and voiced his curiosity.

“I have a question,” he said. “Building a city requires a very large investment. Plus, the game has only been around for half a year. In reality, it’s still under observation by many financial groups. Why is the company so eager to start early?”

The amount of resources needed to build a city was immense. But, according to the development of the game, as the game started to progress at a faster rate, the increase of technology could greatly reduce the resources required. Naturally, they couldn’t wait forever, but it seemed to Feng Luo that the best time to build a city was after the update.

“Because…” Mu Wu spooned some sugar into his coffee, then met Feng Luo’s eyes as he spoke. “Soon, there’s going to be a war. And the results could change everything!”