Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

The melee job classes surrounded War Without Wounds as Brave Surge brought the Mages, Archers, and other ranged job classes to search for Gu Fei. From Brave Surge’s combat experience, he could tell where Gu Fei was situated when he cast Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno. He was sure that Gu Fei was near them, so he and the rest of Water Flower only searched within the nearby area.

Just as they aimed their magic staves and bows toward the treetops, Gu Fei’s loud cry of Descending Wheel of Flames traveled over to their ears. As everyone was once again panicking over Gu Fei’s spell, Brave Surge quickly hollered, “Calm down! Watch for the spell and react accordingly.”

Descending Wheel of Flames was incomparable to Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno, as it would always take some time to come crashing down onto the ground, so any job class with decent speed should be able to somehow dodge it.

And yet, the flame wheel never came to be. Instead, Gu Fei was the one that had come crashing down on them from the tree above after he had yelled out the incantation.

Gu Fei was falling so fast that no one registered it in time, much less attack him. All they saw was Gu Fei diving head-first, his feet pointed toward the sky, toward where War Without Wounds was making his last stand. Gu Fei’s hand suddenly moved to draw out his Moonlit Nightfalls mid-air. Extending the sword past his head with his wrist slightly angled, he yelled grandly, “Unifying Heaven and Earth! Twin Incineration! Incinerate!”

Everyone felt unsure of what sort of spell he had just chanted. Shortly after, they saw a fiery dragon burst forth from Gu Fei’s sword tip and rapidly spiraled downward right before him. He had actually used Twin Incineration to draw out a miniature version of Descending Wheel of Flames by his hand!

Gu Fei descended on the space War Without Wounds was occupying, as the circle of fire he drew blazingly revolved around all the players closing in on War Without Wounds. The Spell Damage of Gu Fei’s Twin Incineration was on another level compared to all his other spells due to his high proficiency of it.

As for the words that came before the incantation, Gu Fei was not talking gibberish. The technique Gu Fei performed as he dove down was Gu’s Family’s sword style, and it was called ‘Unifying Heaven and Earth’.

“SO COOL!” War Without Wounds was extremely moved by Gu Fei’s unexpected assistance. He yelled at the top of his lungs and raised his arms to catch the falling Gu Fei. This was a simple task for a barbaric Warrior like him.

However, Gu Fei instead used his offered arms to twist his body parallel to the ground. With his left hand grabbing a hold of War Without Wounds’ shoulder, he kicked out toward a player standing by the outer circle and hit the target’s face. That kick was not the end of it; Gu Fei began stepping on every player around with War Without Wounds acting as the fulcrum. His kicks resounded and the enemies around War Without Wounds were all given a footprint on their faces. Since his Mage character had low Strength, Gu Fei’s kicks were more like light taps that produced imprints starting from their foreheads down to their chins. “Give me a boost!” he hurriedly requested from War Without Wounds.

War Without Wounds thought Gu Fei had some sort of ultimate move left so he pushed the latter upward. War Without Wounds’ mighty Strength allowed Gu Fei to soar two meters in the air and strike a majestic pose. Mid-air, Gu Fei pointed his finger toward a certain location and chanted, “Translocation, Blink!” With a swish, Gu Fei disappeared from his position.

War Without Wounds’ eyes nearly fell out when he saw this and he angrily shouted, “F*ck! And you dare call yourself a bro?!”

Gu Fei was originally just a meter off the ground, but with War Without Wounds’ help, he floated for two more meters. This allowed Gu Fei to reappear somewhere eight meters off the ground – among the branches and leaves, to be exact. Adding the five-meter radius of his Blink, none managed to see where Gu Fei had teleported himself.

The entire forest became quiet once more.

Gu Fei dove from the sky, insta-killed a whole circle of players with his Twin Incineration, gave everyone around War Without Wounds an imprint each through seemingly shadow-less kicks, and subsequently left the scene without landing his feet on the ground. Everything happened in a brief moment, leaving everyone breathless with his fighting rhythm and flawlessly chained movement.

This was especially true of those whose faces and noses were unceremoniously trod on by Gu Fei. They were currently holding their faces while staring blankly upward.

War Without Wounds was still in a precarious position, but his lack of morals resurfaced once he realized that everyone around him was seemingly petrified. The men of Water Flower awakened from their stupor just as he was about to sneak off. The opposing men halted their contemplation of Gu Fei’s brilliant intervention and collectively struck War Without Wounds with their weapons.

War Without Wounds no longer heroically took the enemies’ attacks like before. Fending off some of the enemies’ attacks, he wailed, “Miles, f*ck*ng hurry up and save me!”

“Bro, just die in peace!” As War Without Wounds received this message from Gu Fei, he caught sight of a spark of fire coming into existence above him and the real flame wheel came crashing toward him.

He had already suffered Gu Fei’s Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno as well the Water Flower’s men’s attacks, so War Without Wounds would surely not survive Gu Fei’s recently cast Descending Wheel of Flames. Just as he waited for his impending death, a pure white light enveloped him. This light’s appearance was not due to him dying but was due to a Priest bestowing Heal on him.

War Without Wounds once more survived Gu Fei’s spell with this Heal. However, his HP reached a point where even a light tap would send him out of the PvP arena. Fortunately for him, a series of Heal landed on him after the first and his HP began to recover in no time.

“Aye. You’re willing to lend him a hand?” Gu Fei asked, shocked.

“Mhm. War Without Wounds’ equipment isn’t bad, and he has done well to survive this far, so I’m letting him be the bait for much longer,” Young Master Han replied.

On the opposing team, Brave Surge recognized the quick and efficient Heal of the all-Spirit build Priest Young Master Han.

There were two qualities to a Priest’s Heal: first was its speed and second was its effect. Speed included the casting time as well as the entire bestowing process of the skill. Naturally, the shorter the casting time and bestowing process were, the more efficient the Heal would be. As for effectiveness, this obviously referred to the amount of HP recovered from each cast of Heal. The stats that affected the skill’s efficacy were the character’s Intelligence followed by Endurance, while the stats that affected speed were mainly Spirit followed by Intelligence.

The natural stat growth of Priests prioritized Endurance. Thus, most Priests in Parallel World focused their point allocation on Endurance. Not only would doing this increase their HP and improve their survivability, it would also increase the effectiveness of their Heal, essentially killing two birds with one stone. Splitting the 5 stat points by putting 4 points to Endurance and 1 point to Intelligence, 3 points to Endurance and 1 point each to Intelligence and Spirit, or 3 points to Endurance and 2 points to Intelligence... were how most Priests built their characters. Not one of them considered Endurance to be the least important stat. In fact, nine out of ten Priests in Parallel World would allocate their stats in this manner.

For many players to use such distributions, it could be assumed that such builds were definitely not wrong and were surely the most essential builds for survival. However, such builds could not bring out the highest efficacy of the Priest’s Heal. Naturally, there were few who discarded Endurance to focus on pure Intelligence and Spirit build. The purpose of these sorts of builds was to fully use the abilities of a Priest.

To reach such an extreme level, the speed and effectiveness would have to be perfectly balanced and Priests called this pairing that ignored Endurance as the ‘Golden Ratio’. From the game’s official release until now, Priests with Golden Ratio were only rumored existences. Eventually, it transformed into a sort of joke, as every Priest believed that his or her build was the Golden Ratio. Some Priests who did not have a heavy Endurance build even called their stat point allocation as the true Golden Ratio.

Plenty of contrasting opinions existed for this and they were open to endless debates and discussions.

Previously, when players of Carouse were forming parties to grind levels, Brave Surge and Young Master Han happened to be part of the same party that talked about the Golden Ratio of Priests.

All the party members had different opinions regarding this, with some non-Priest players expressing their views on the matter. In the end, the taciturn Young Master Han chillingly said, “What’s there to argue about? Whoever is the best Priest will naturally have a build that is closest to this Golden Ratio!”

This statement caused Brave Surge to take note of the Priest Young Master Han, and that was when he realized that the latter was not just an average ‘skilled expert’. In terms of skill and awareness, he was top-notch. Brave Surge had never seen a more exceptional Priest throughout Parallel World than him.

By Young Master Han’s reasoning, Brave Surge recognized him as the Priest closest to having the Golden Ratio. Just take the incident before him as an example; one Heal from Young Master Han had saved this Warrior’s life from Gu Fei’s Descending Wheel of Flames and the successive Heal that followed quickly filled the Warrior’s HP to full. Out of all the Priests Brave Surge knew, only Young Master Han could do this. To better illustrate this point, Water Flower had Priests as well and they were also experts. However, not one of them could timely save someone’s life from the flame wheel. Even those with fast reaction speed were unable to react accordingly.

War Without Wounds’ fighting spirit surged forth once his HP was filled up, and he sent several players near him flying outward with a swing of his claymore. Some of these players, especially the low HP Thieves, that had already taken Gu Fei’s Descending Wheel of Flames, were killed off by his assault. As for those high HP Warriors, they were beaten black and blue by War Without Wounds’ reinvigorated assault.

Brave Surge was not looking at this scene, though. Instead, he was signaling several of the Priests with him to assist the others accordingly.

Water Flower mercenary group brought in seventy-two men for this match. Although Gu Fei’s spells and kicks and War Without Wounds’ explosive assault killed off seventeen of his men, the remaining fifty-five men were enough to deal with a Warrior like War Without Wounds. Nonetheless, what they needed to be on guard against were the untraceable attacks coming from above and from the surrounding area.