Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Since this boy who had slipped and fallen to the ground did not know what had happened, he checked himself in a daze, only to see that his HP had dropped by a miniscule amount. With his fighting spirit surging once more, he climbed up to his feet and began slashing away at Gu Fei.

Gu Fei, who was happily preparing to say some choice words to promote kung fu, could not get a word in edgeways as the boy’s longsword was hacking at him in every direction. Gu Fei swiftly let his attack sail past, expressing his surprise. “What are you doing?”

The boy came to a halt and quickly sheathed his sword. “Are we done fighting?”

“Are you looking to kill me?” Gu Fei was angered.

The boy scratched his head. “But I’ve still got plenty of HP!”

Gu Fei was vexed. “Isn’t falling to the ground enough for you?”

“That’s me being careless.” The boy criticized himself. Finding that half slice of an apple he had slipped on, he gruffly kicked it away and cursed, “Who’s the deplorable person who tossed out rubbish here?!”

Gu Fei was pissed. It seemed that the skill he had demonstrated was too profound. Was this brat foolish enough not to realize that it was Gu Fei who had thrown that apple which made him fall? Still, the crowd should have seen this with their eyes! Gu Fei turned to regard the rest of his students, yet all they did was stare right back at him. Indeed, they had witnessed Gu Fei throw that apple, but none of them thought that he had done so after precise calculation. Everybody quietly looked at him until one of them finally found the courage to call out. “Sir, even though this is a game, littering like that isn’t good…”

I’ll… bear this! Gu Fei could only grit his teeth and shove the discontent down his belly. After all, at the end of the day, they were his students. Did he really have to end up beating them up black and blue, just like mere ruffians, to demonstrate his kung fu? Gu Fei did not think that it was wise to be so ruthless, which was why he had devised such a move to demonstrate his skills and dexterity, but his students ultimately viewed it as him littering. Truly, it was a good deed that had no returns!

“Teacher, are we still continuing?” that Warrior asked.

“All right. Teacher isn’t gonna be polite anymore. Don’t blame me for being too harsh on you!” Gu Fei had to prove his kung fu. Beating people up did not really hurt in-game, anyway. Rolling up his Midnight Spirit Robe’s sleeves, Gu Fei got ready to show his students the real deal.

“Ha ha! Don’t go easy on me, sir!” The boy looked to be far more confident than Gu Fei. “Ahh!” After he uttered that line, this student already found his head looking up at the sky. Feeling a slight jolt of pain in his nose bridge, he looked around in shock and saw in time Gu Fei’s fist retracting after appearing right before him mere moments ago. His teacher looked right at him. “You’d better concentrate!”

“Ahh…” The boy was unable to react at all, absolutely clueless on how he had ended up eating that punch. Thus, when he saw Gu Fei’s second punch come flying toward him, the boy wielded his longsword to meet the blow straight on instead of dodging it.

Gu Fei had already expected his student, based on the latter’s current standard, to go for such a crude fighting style, which aimed to devastate an enemy at the substantial expense of his own. Of course, Gu Fei was not about to let him succeed. That punch of his was a feint in the first place, so he took a step back after he drew that slash out, ducking past the sword to connect another punch right onto the boy’s shoulder. Gu Fei was still considerate; he did not wish to end up bruising his student’s face.

A Warrior would not actually feel pain or even a tickle from the two punches from the Mage. The youngster’s sword stabbed nothing but air, so he overturned his hand to continue his attack. He did not expect Gu Fei to be standing in an extremely tricky position, though. The moment the Warrior’s sword swung by half an arc, the boy realized that his arm could not twist any further. Meanwhile, Gu Fei seemed to have already known what would happen as he flashed this student a slight smile when the latter’s sword swing could no longer continue. In that moment, Gu Fei reached a finger out and flicked the boy’s forehead, causing it to bounce back crisply.

Everything else that had happened after this display finally convinced these non-practicing students just how terrifying Gu Fei really was. That longsword that boy was waving could not even touch Gu Fei in any sense of the word. It would be understandable If anyone were to say that Gu Fei had been running about, forcing the boy to chase right after him, but it just so happened that Gu Fei was always near him – sometimes on the left and others on the right but never apart. He tracked and followed the direction the boy’s sword would swing and dodged it every time even as he retaliated at every opportunity he got.

Even the boy had lost count how many punches he had taken. If Gu Fei had wielded a weapon with even the slightest physical damage, that boy would have long since been dead. The only reason he had managed to survive for so long was entirely because Gu Fei was fighting with him barehanded, but after all those fists flying his way, even a blockhead could tell that there was no way he could beat his teacher. It was only that the audience was no longer just the students around; plenty of players passing by had also stopped to watch this spectacular fight. This caused the boy to feel a little unsure on what to do, and the only option he had left was to continue and mechanically slash his sword at Gu Fei despite knowing that every slash he made would be useless.

Gu Fei saw that blank and silly face of his and could not help but laugh. With a quick punch right at that boy’s forehead once, he disengaged from the melee and beamed. “Will that do?”

That boy rubbed his forehead, completely in shock to the point that he could not reply.

The other students were also dumbfounded for the longest while before surging around the two all of a sudden and making a huge racket as they cried out, “Teach me, sir!”

Having finally achieved his desired effect, Gu Fei was utterly contented. He immediately put on airs and kept his students in suspense. “So, if you’ve got skills like this, would any of you still need levels?”

“No need!” All the students fought to answer his question.

“He he!” Gu Fei chuckled before he corrected himself. “Actually, levels are still necessary. Without the stats your level provides, there’s no way anybody can dish out moves so quickly.”

“So, what exactly should we do?” His students were all confused.

“Levels are your foundation, and kung fu is your technique.” Gu Fei had thought about this himself before and considered such a summary would be the most sensible.

“So, should we be grinding our levels or be learning kung fu?” His students still could not make sense of things.

“Learn kung fu? That’s too much for you guys. Do you really think that it will be like grinding levels in games – something that can be achieved in three to five months?” Gu Fei asked.

“It’s gonna take that long?” His students were astounded.

Gu Fei’s expression turned cold. If three to five months is a long time to these twerps, what will they think once they learn that I’ve been training since young, yet even now, I am still working tirelessly to better myself?

“There’s only one month of holidays!” His students sighed with great disappointment.

Gu Fei sighed as well. That’s right. Even if the average person likes to learn kung fu, not only do they not have the time, it is also not optimal for them to do it. If he had been inundated with both the nine years of compulsory education and the college entrances exams since he was young, there was no way he would have any kung fu to speak of.

“You guys truly don’t have the prerequisite to practice and learn kung fu, but I can definitely teach you all some combat techniques, so that you at least can deal with monsters and PK in this game,” Gu Fei said.

“YAY! Let’s get started, then!” the students all yelled.

“Let’s go out into the wilds.” Gu Fei waved his hand and led the class of students out.

——————————————-

Out in the wilds, Gu Fei pulled a monster and began giving them an on-site lesson. Skill. This was real skill. Using his perspicacious kung-fu eyes to find out these NPCs’ attack patterns was what he had learned in the process of fighting monsters. His number-two spot back then on the experience efficiency leaderboards was not just merely for show. Using his talent, the monster grinding method that he had discovered was certainly well beyond that of many players. Even Sword Demon and the other veteran MMO gamers were not on par with him.

Furthermore, a monster was an excellent learning model as it would immediately respawn when eliminated in a meticulous fashion. At the moment, all the students were seated neatly in two rows, as if attending a P.E. class, and were watching Gu Fei break down the monster’s attack patterns.

“Against this sort of attack, the first sequence is to turn to the side, take a step to the right, and distance yourself. Take note of this distance; everyone, please memorize it.” Gu Fei flicked his sword and insta-killed the monster before repeating the same sequence of actions of turning to the side and taking a step to the right twice.

“All right. Everybody, get up and follow me to do this once,” Gu Fei said, clapping his hands to instruct his students to stand up.

“Turn to the side!”

“Step to the right while taking note of the distance.”

After he finished his step, Gu Fei turned to check if the students were making the same step, correcting several of their mistakes in the process.

“Yup… Just like that… One more time. Turn to the side and take a step to your right. Hmm… not bad.” Gu Fei was completely engrossed in the lesson.

“Okay. The second sequence here is the counterattack. The counterattack will be a little different as it’ll depend on what sort of weapon everyone uses, and that requires targeted exercises; everyone should split up according to their job classes. Uh… Priests can be together with Mages, Archers; Archers, if you wanna keep to your ranged attacks, please go and practice CS ¹ . All right. Everybody should first practice that first step I’ve shown you before. I’ll personally take each group and instruct them individually on how to counterattack.”

Gu Fei went about each step as he taught these students how to retaliate, according to the length of the weapon used, and the method of attack.

“All right. Now that everyone has gotten a good grasp of the counterattack, let’s link these two parts and do it once over. There’s a detail here everyone needs to take note, and that’s joining the first and second parts like this is only done to make it easier for everyone to practice. In truth, these two parts should be done all at one go, so perhaps we should not be calling them two sequences if we want to be very technical about it. It will be terrible if everyone is still counting the sequences during actual combat. For subsequent practices, everyone should give up the habit of compartmentalizing it like this. Both sets of actions must be treated as a whole when executed. Is everyone clear?”

“Got it.” The students dragged out every syllable when they replied.

“Okay. Stick to your separate groups. I’ll be taking the Warriors once more; the other groups may try things out on their own,” Gu Fei said as he went to join the Warrior group to help them practice.

After going through the sequence of actions with the Warriors several times, he instructed them to continue their practice on their own and ran over to the Thieves group, followed by the Knight students and then went down the line right after.

“All right. Now that everyone knows how to use their respective methods, we can all practice as one.” Gu Fei stood right in front of all the various groups and gave this directive, occasionally correcting the mistakes his students made.

“Sir, we’re very familiar with the moves already. Can we train with actual monsters now?” Gradually, some of the students who had become more proficient with what they had been taught began to look forward to the actual combat.

“Are all of you familiar with it?” Gu Fei asked.

“Yes.” It was yet another dragged out reply.

“Well, if that’s the case…” Gu Fei thought about this for a while before he pointed to Ah Fa. “Take some of your classmates over to pull four monsters over. Every group gets one each and will send forth a representative to engage the monster for practice. The others, pay close attention to see if the said person is doing it correctly. If it becomes dangerous, everyone should quickly take down the monster together.”

The students followed Gu Fei’s directive and began to train with monsters. At first, accidents occurred often, but through thorough practice, each of them was able to grasp this fighting style slowly. Once Gu Fei saw that they were all doing sufficiently well, he suddenly moved to clean up the four monsters himself before he clapped his hands to gather everyone anew for a fresh batch of lessons. “I believe most of you have also realized that this method of fighting style will only be the most common attack patterns that these monsters use. In reality, the monsters will sometimes use different attack patterns. I saw that a lot of you guys merely chose to bear with the brunt of the ensuing attack when it happened, waiting for the monster to return to the attack pattern you’ve learned, but,” Gu Fei pointed to three students as he continued, “the three students, Wang Shuangshuang, Zhang Fan, and Hu Yong have done rather well. They noticed that this method of dodging and counterattacking can also be used on the different attack patterns of the other monsters and just requires some minor changes. So, I shall demonstrate these for you.”

A whole two hours passed, and Gu Fei finally ended his lecture on the entire set of fighting routines for these level 30 monsters. Every student had different levels of understanding and athleticism, each grasping at varying degrees, but no matter how much theoretical knowledge contained, everything depended on whether the students themselves would work hard and practice after.

“All right. That’s it for today’s lesson! You guys can use this style to grind your levels, and tomorrow’s lesson will be on how to fight against the level 35 One-eyed Hunter. The One-eyed Hunter has high Agility. There’s no need for players that don’t have over 20 Agility to turn up since you won’t be able to use this style. These students can join me to learn how to take on the level 35 Lumberjack monster the day after. That monster won’t require players to have much Agility using this style.” Gu Fei concluded what they had done for the day and a preview of the next lesson’s content.

“Ahhhh, sir!” A student, who did not have over 20 Agility, immediately voiced out his opinion. “Doesn’t that mean we’ll fall behind by a whole day?!”

“Yeah. They can take on level 35 monsters tomorrow after class, but we gotta spend that day with level 30 monsters, instead.”

“That’s right, sir. Since there’s already a method to take on level 35 monsters, why don’t we learn that to start with? What’s the point of learning the level 30 monsters?”

“Already thinking about running before you even learn how to walk, don’t you understand what ‘step by step’ means? Didn’t you see that plenty of your classmates were struggling dealing with level 30 monsters?” Gu Fei asked back.

“Of course, they’d be struggling; they’re not even level 10,” a student muttered.

Actually, not only were they struggling, those students did not even engage the monsters. Had it not been for the others helping to take care of them, they would have probably died countless times during this practice session. Gu Fei gathered all these students before him and earnestly addressed them. “Look; the handful of you are representatives of being too low level, which is equivalent to lacking a solid foundation. There’s no other solution to this; all you can do is work even harder and level up as fast as you can in these two days before joining everyone with their grind. Otherwise, all you can do is watch everybody train while all of you mooch off EXP on the side. Sounds really boring, don’t you think?”

“Nope. I think that’s pretty good,” one student mischievously answered.

“Without being self-motivated, there’s no way you can make anything out of yourself.” Gu Fei regarded him with derision.

Gu Fei felt a real sense of accomplishment when he saw these students use the routines he had taught them to slay monsters, but he did not forget who he was. Looking at the time, he called all the students. “All right, practice everything you’ve learned in the next hour, and you can all log off to rest once it’s over.”

“AH! Sir, there’s no need for that. We’re having holidays now!” All the students wailed.

“You can’t go overboard during the holidays as well. Log off and rest; read a book and eat dinner. You can come back online and play once you’re done with dinner. Don’t play too late; don’t game the entire night. Sleeping early and waking up early keeps your mind alert. Tomorrow’s class will be in the morning. Those who fail to turn up will be considered as playing truant and will be reflected in next semester’s P.E. class attendance.”

“AHHHH! Sir, that’s too much!” The students were in tears.

“Sir, can I not turn up if I have matters to attend tomorrow morning?” Some students began making mental calculations as they came forward and asked.

“Sure. There’s no need to come online that day as well. Concentrate on the matter you’re attending. If it is coincidentally something in the morning, pass me a written request for leave with your parents’ signature,” Gu Fei replied. The students’ tears were flowing freely right now.

“Sir, you’re not letting us play, yet you’re going at it so hard yourself!” The students were all protesting.

“I’ll maintain the same schedule as everyone, so everybody can monitor me,” Gu Fei said.

Tears were streaming down their cheeks. What’s the point of monitoring you when we can’t record your attendance and deduct you based on your conduct?

“Alright, enough with your nagging. The time you spend arguing can be better spent grinding on monsters. You guys will soon discover that, with the method I’ve taught you, an hour of grinding is all you need. It will really be too much if you continue grinding through the night,” Gu Fei said.

The students took this claim with a pinch of salt, but they no longer had any other choice regarding this matter. All they could do was search for their monsters to grind under Gu Fei’s watchful gaze. Gu Fei walked around, leeching off the experience points from his students’ efforts even as he corrected their mistakes. When he was in high spirits, he would even personally demonstrate a few techniques that were of higher difficulty, giving the much savvier and quick-witted students even more avenues to improve themselves on.

This hour went by really fast, and at the end of this session, the students were all surprised to find that it was exactly as what Gu Fei had said. The efficiency of this one hour of grinding was exceptional; the experience points they earned was the same as what they would earn from two to three hours of their usual grind.

“It’s so amazing?” They were all astonished.

“What’s so unique about this?” A student skillfully demonstrated what they learned today.

“If we were to grind for a whole day in this fashion…” Another student began imagining such a scenario, but Gu Fei’s gaze fell on him, causing the kid to lower his head and swallow his words.

“Assemble, everyone! Time to head back to the city!” Gu Fei shouted.

The students moved slowly and reluctantly, spending a whole ten minutes just to assemble, even managing to kill some monsters along the way. Gu Fei was not too knotted by it; his eyes were half closed toward this matter as the students gathered and made their way back to the city with Gu Fei taking the lead.

“Heh… Old Sun and the others sure have lost out plenty since they’re not here today.” The students were chattering with one another animatedly on their way back, feeling sorry for all their fellow classmates that were unable to get online today.

“For those students not here, make sure to teach them what they’ve missed when they get online.” Gu Fei reminded the lot.

“Yes!” They obediently nodded.

Reaching the spawn point, Gu Fei escorted all of them to log off. All were in tears again, for if their teacher were the last to go offline, who would know whether he truly logged out or otherwise? Should they all get online again for a surprise spot check? Their teacher would most likely claim that he was the one who had managed to catch them sneaking back online to play the game, instead.

In reality, Gu Fei was not as shameless as what these students had thought. Upon seeing that all his students had logged out, as a man of his word, he went offline soon after. As a result, the ones who had suffered the greatest torment was Southern Lone Blade’s team again.

Given that Southern Lone Blade had Gu Fei in his friends list, seeing the latter come online was akin to the seven’s greatest nemesis coming online. They were all on high alert, watching their surroundings, afraid that a streak of glowing flames might just descend on them from the skies above or a black figure might suddenly appear right in front of them. Everything red or black left the seven men’s hearts beating intensely.

However, what made it all the more excruciating was that, despite all their scares and alarms, from the time Gu Fei came online until he logged out, nothing happened.

“That guy, just what is he up to?” The seven were distressed.

“Yet another day where the buyer of that magic staff has not shown him or herself.” They continued to monitor what was happening down at the Auction House, only this time, Southern Lone Blade and the others had already identified their fellow colleagues that were keeping an eye on the magic staff. Whatever movement or action those colleagues of theirs took, nothing would ever escape their eyes.