Sun, sand, sea… This scenery was made lively by people running about like dogs.
Gu Fei was one of these men.
Now that they were aware that Southern Lone Blade’s seven-squad had left the city, locating the boat was no longer their priority, and they instead resolved to directly look for the group itself. The land outside Linshui City was not as wide as those of other cities as it was mostly surrounded by water. Largely comprised of the flat beach, the terrain was simple. This place had no particularly outstanding feature besides the bit of flora and fauna. However, these were at most small copses of woodland and could not be deemed as a forest.
As such, they were able to have a rather wide line of sight. Gu Fei ran along the shore while looking around; they were essentially circling around Linshui City. After covering a distance, he finally spotted a group of players.
This group had more than seven players, though, so they were obviously not Southern Lone Blade's squad. However, these men, who were holding their weapons out while exuding a very telling killing intent, looked to be in a hurry as well. Catching sight of him as he saw them, four among them split off and came running toward him.
"What are you doing here?” the four asked in a hostile manner the moment they got near him.
“Nothing much; I'm just jogging,” he replied nonchalantly.
“Jogging?” These men were stunned.
“Life is all about exercising!” He jogged on the spot as he said this, acting the part. He was a P.E. teacher in real life, after all!
Gu Fei was beaming even as these men looked at him as if they had just met an idiot. They regarded him with unblinking eyes and seemed to hesitate over something.
“D’you guys have business with me? If there’s nothing else, I'm gonna continue with my jog,” he said.
The four did not respond as they were still pondering on what they should do. He smiled brightly once more and said “Goodbye” before jogging past them.
It was at that point when the four came to a decision and shouted, “Stop right there!” before pouncing on him...
The rest of their group were still on the advance when the leader received a message: “G*dd*mm*t! We got killed!”
“What?!” The leader was nonplussed.
“That guy killed us!” the player repeated.
Startled, the leader faced the direction where the four had been and spotted the Mage in a black robe resuming his jog along the beach; his four men were nowhere to be seen.
The leader could hardly believe his eyes. Because they were in a rush, he had randomly sent the four over to check things out when they spotted someone suspicious. Judging the man’s answer to be sketchy and erring on the side of caution, he gave the order for the four to kill the Mage.
The four players were no slouches, so he was certain that they would have no problem dealing with a lone Mage and did not even watch the ensuing scuffle, opting to continue leading his men on their way, instead.
However, in no less than five seconds that he had given the order, he received the message from the four about their deaths.
This was entirely unbelievable. Even if the Mage was an expert, it should still take him some time to kill four players, right? Just how was the man able to take down those four in merely five seconds?
With a grim expression, the leader asked: “How did you guys die?”
“We got insta-killed!”
“Insta-killed? You got insta-killed by a Mage?” The leader was even more shocked. He was currently talking to a Warrior. The term ‘insta-kill’ was usually not applicable to Warriors, unless they happened to encounter a BOSS many levels above theirs.
“That's right,” was the Warrior’s confident answer.
The leader glanced at that side of the beach again. “F*CK! That Mage runs so fast.” He sighed again as he exchanged a few more messages with the four. The Mage had already run past their group and left them eating dust. Before, he did not pay further attention to the matter aside from spotting the appearance of an unknown player on what should be a deserted beach. It was only upon further consideration did he realized that almost everything about the Mage was suspicious.
We don’t know where he has come from or if he's related to what we are doing. Should we continue to entangle with him? The leader could not come to decision. Had the Mage just been any average player, the four would have long disposed of him, and the situation would have been resolved, but this interloper just had to be an expert, which only complicated this whole situation even further.
Gu Fei had been waiting for the group to act after taking down the four men, but when they failed to take any sort of action after all this while, he quickened his pace and left the area, as well as the group, behind him.
This was when Fireball, who had left for the beachside bar, sent over a message to him. The kid had gone to the player-made safe zone in hopes of securing his safety but stumbled upon the gathering of the leaders of Linshui City’s various large guilds.
Prickling his ears, Fireball managed to overhear about that incident of the magic staff dropping by the west gate. Right now, the staff was in the possession of a guild called Ordnance Works, and the person who had picked up the item already logged out. It was this incident that had left all these guild leaders feeling peeved.
“It already got looted?” This news stunned him. He subconsciously glanced in the direction of that group of men he had left behind.
The people he could think of that would gather men outside the city right now were those related to Southern Lone Blade and his comrades. The problem was, besides him, every other participant was clearly after the staff that could resurrect players, but since it had been looted, why were there still people tracking it down out here?
“Help me find out what the emblem of this Ordnance Works Guild looks like,” he requested to Fireball before running back toward that group again.
When Gu Fei got further and further away from their group, the leader did not bother to pursue the matter and was fine with letting the matter go. However, they did not expect the man to suddenly turn round and come running toward them of his volition.
“Archers!” the leader blustered out an order.
The Archers quickly detached themselves from the group and released a hail of arrows toward the Mage. Gu Fei came to a screeching stop and swatted off these arrows. The enemies’ mouths all hung open at this, and he used this opportunity to shout, “Hold your fire! I just wish to ask you something!”
“Who on Earth are you?!” the leader yelled back.
“It's not convenient to talk at this distance. Mind if I get closer?” He actually just wanted to see their guild emblem; The thought of catching a glimpse of their guild emblem did not cross his mind when he was insta-killing those four men before.
The leader wanted to reject Gu Fei’s request, but he had over a dozen men with him right now. It would make for an awkward conversation if he showed fear for just one man, so he nodded. “You may approach!”
To show he had no ill will, Gu Fei stowed away his sword into his dimensional pocket. The leader sighed in relief at this. However, if he were privy to Gu Fei’s sword drawing speed, which was no different from it being in his hand, he would surely not have felt relieved.
Gu Fei was before them fast and hurriedly scanned through the men. F*ck! he cursed to himself when he saw that not one of them was wearing their guild emblem.
Fireball’s message arrived at this point. “I heard that Ordnance Works’ guild emblem looks like a little tank; it’s hard to miss.” He had also learned that all the guild leaders were thinking of collaborating to exterminate them, effective immediately.
Gu Fei was not surprised by this nugget of information. Scrutinizing the group before him once more, he saw that all of them had no emblem adorning any part of their body. This lot must have decided to coordinate like this beforehand, he thought to himself.
The opposing party watched him walk up to them without speaking a word. Seeing his eyes furtively sweep through them, they finally could not stand it. “Just who in the world are you? What business do you have with us?”
“Nothing at all. Carry on with your business, everyone!” He suddenly turned and bolted.
“F*CK!” Everybody was dumbfounded and exchanged glances.
“Leader, do we kill him?” someone came forward to ask.
“Forget it!” The leader watched Gu Fei’s figure shrink in the distance. “The less trouble we get into, the better it is for us. Let’s just be on our way fast.”
They then continued their advance, with Gu Fei slowly growing further away from them. He suddenly realized that no matter what that group was doing, at least he knew which direction they were heading. After all, this beach made up the terrain that ran around Lingshui City in a full circle, so no matter which way he headed, he would likely bump into them along the way. It was with such a thought that he no longer bothered to ask them where they were from and just took off.
At this moment, those participating in this Southern-Lone-Blade business became busy once more, but their target this time was one of their own: Ordnance Works.
It had been quite a long time since Linshui City witnessed any sort of large-scale battles after the dust had settled over the scramble for a beachfront property by the harbor. Each guild had already come to a concord, and everyone was maintaining a state of peace by tending to their respective businesses. However, the appearance of that top-grade equipment once more disrupted this equilibrium. The guilds’ greed culminated into the leaders gathering by a beachside bar and declaring war on Ordnance Works while drunk.
This was the largest coalition of guilds in Linshui City, with up to eleven different guilds collaborating to target Ordnance Works.
Ordnance Works was not so heaven-defying that it could fight off the combined might of eleven guilds. Its guild leader was still in the clouds over the cleverness of his ploy when disaster struck. He was bringing his reinforcement through the streets in search for traces of Southern Lone Blade and his crew when waves of men descended on them from every avenue; even he had not seen such an imposing scene before. They barely had time to react when they were summarily wiped out.
At the same time, those members that were wearing the small-tank emblem on their chests found themselves surrounded. Even the ones out grinding and did not participate in that incident were not exempted. Groups that were not in conflict in various grinding maps suddenly converged toward Ordnance Works’ members, as if they were some sort of BOSS, and shredded them into pieces.
Many Ordnance Works members were still clueless on what had instigated this assault on them when they respawned. Their guild leader was currently squatting in the spawn point under a pack of angry wolves’ piercing glares.
What pained him even more was the fact that the group he had sent out to search for Southern Lone Blade’s squad had not fallen prey to this sudden attack. They were still moving according to his instructions and were even keeping him updated on their progress: “No, we haven’t spotted them yet.” “Not at all. We haven’t located them…”
Ordnance Works’ guild leader finally understood the moral behind the saying, ‘Innocent civilians may be implicated for harboring a fugitive king.’ Ironically, he was currently in an exceptionally awkward situation as he was not really harboring a ‘fugitive king’ and was only pretending that the staff was in his possession to begin with...