Virtual World: Close Combat Mage

Gu Fei expressionlessly stared at Eternal Dominion, who was unable to conceal his glee at this point. Grabbing that thick stack of registration forms the Fighter had yet to fit into his dimensional pocket, Gu Fei swept his glance over it a few times before exploding, “2000 applicants, huh?! Tailor-made routines? Do you take me for a robot?!”

Eternal Dominion was momentarily stunned, before saying, “Aren’t we considered as robots in a game?”

“F*ck!” Gu Fei sent a side kick at the man, but Eternal Dominion was also a martial arts practitioner himself; he moved his two arms forward to block, and since Eternal Dominion had more Strength than Gu Fei in-game, he emerged victorious from this exchange. Using both his hands to grip Gu Fei’s ankles, Eternal Dominion gave it a quick twist and threw the Mage away. Unexpectedly, Gu Fei took advantage of the torque from this move and lifted his other leg to sweep it right to Eternal Dominion’s head. Having no choice but to release his grip to duck from this kick, Gu Fei spiraled in the air and was back on his feet when he landed.

“Hold your horses!” Brother Assist reckoned that this was his only chance to stop the two men from fighting further, so he recklessly darted between the two and raised his arms to hold either man back respectively; at the same time, he was mentally preparing himself to bring up his guard at any moment.

Seeing that the two men had halted their movements for now, Brother Assist sighed in relief even as he quickly told Gu Fei. “Actually, this situation isn’t as bad as you’ve imagined.”

Gu Fei turned to regard Brother Assist, indicating for the man to continue what he was about to say.

“Even though there’re 2000 registrants, there’re still only seven job classes in this game. Furthermore, job classes have a set distribution when it comes to stat point allocation for the most part, and with how there’s a limit to the potential variations of monsters, having 2000 registrants doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll need to develop 2000 different routines. A good number of players among these will surely have similar stat point to one another,” Brother Assist reasoned.

Gu Fei thought about this and indeed found it to be a reasonable assessment. With that, he lowered his head and peered through the forms. While the several he had glanced past all had different job classes, stats, and weapons, these players all chose the Campfire Patroller at the very least. Brother Assist took this chance to slide up next to Gu Fei, commenting as he skimmed through the forms in Gu Fei’s hands. “Look; these people are all requesting for a fighting routine to deal with the same monster. Although their weapons are different, what you’ve specified isn’t the sort of weapon used but the length of weapon, yeah? This will let you set a unified standard, so the final differences you get won’t be too much. As for the issue with their stats, just like the requirement you mentioned about having eight levels’ worth of Agility, those that have half or full-Agility builds will have all achieved these criteria, so at this rate, there may not really be that much ‘tailoring’ to do.”

“You’re not mistaken, theoretically speaking, but the monsters that a level 40 player requests are hardly weak by any metric. Plenty of job classes don’t even add a point to Agility, so how am I going to tailor-make a routine for them? D*mn, Fallen Magister. That’s a level 60 monster! Who’s so excessive? Even I find it taxing slaying this monster,” Gu Fei countered.

Brother Assist almost fell to the ground, trembling as he asked, “You can solo-kill a level 60 monster?”

“Of course. Haven’t I mentioned this to you before?” Gu Fei said.

“Not at all!” Brother Assist was convinced that he would have sought to study Gu Fei’s fight with it had he heard him say that.

“Hmm… I haven’t killed too much of it.” Gu Fei only started killing level 60 monsters after he had crossed the level 40 threshold, so he only came across them a handful of times.

“What’s this monster?” Gu Fei saw a name he was unfamiliar with and asked Brother Assist.

“Brother Assist wiped off his sweat. “That’s a level 70 monster…”

“He can tailor make that himself!” Gu Fei spat as he shoved that registration form, which had greedily indicated the level 70 monster, right into Eternal Dominion’s arms. Level 60 was already the limit of his capabilities. While he had indeed taken on level 70 monsters before and was able to defeat them with his life intact, every kill had also result in him sweating all over. Grinding on level 70 monsters was really too much. Moonlit Nightfalls would just be a normal purple-tier weapon when used on level 70 monsters, while the fearsome spell damage Gu Fei could dish out was not even at the standard damage of level 70. He only managed to slay the Werewolves with relative ease due to the ‘Sacred’ trait in his Flames of Baptism, which perfectly countered the most absurd ability of regeneration inherent to Werewolves.

“Level 70’s too much…” It was apparent that Eternal Dominion had also taken up on the challenge before, or he could not have made such a claim with certainty. Scratching his head, he said, “We should be able to take on them if we work together, though.”

Gu Fei ignored the man. Brother Assist, who was quick on the uptake, said with a twinkle in his eyes, “Those guys that proposed such high-level monsters are clearly just up to tomfoolery and are taking the mickey out of you two. The players will definitely understand if you tell them that you can’t kill them. Besides, the fact that you two can kill it by working together is a success in itself! Think about it; there’s more experience to be had killing overlevel monsters, so there’s no need for that high level of efficiency you guys touted; as long as they can see a rate of efficiency beyond their usual grind, you have done your jobs. They want to learn a level 70 monster? Call them out to learn. You’ll still be paid either way; whether they can master it or not is entirely up to them.”

“But this guy said he can guarantee that anyone will grasp it upon learning!” Gu Fei pointed to Eternal Dominion as he said this.

“He really shouldn’t have said that.” Brother Assist chose to stand with Gu Fei on this point.

Eternal Dominion thought about it and saw the logic behind this. If a player did not have the level, stats, or equipment necessary to kill a level 70 monster, the more kung fu techniques they had to impart into the routine only meant that it would be all the more difficult for the average person to learn. This was especially true when it came to the sort of reflex that required years of training; there was really no way for him to ‘guarantee that anyone would grasp it upon learning.’

Thinking of all these issues, which had risen from such specific details, Eternal Dominion slowly felt that he had indeed not put in enough thought into the matter and that he had truly been blinded by his potential earnings.

“So what should we do?” Eternal Dominion was still holding that form Gu Fei had shoved into his hands, reluctant to let go.

“It’s not a huge problem!” Brother Assist was still the one with the most ideas. “Since the average gamers don’t have the ability to grasp how to kill these level 60 and level 70 monsters, just directly tell them that there’s temporarily no business here, and no one will mind. It is those players who lack Agility that you must consider how to help. You should prioritize your customers’ needs, right? You ought to use your kung fu to serve your customers and not make the customers become accustomed to your kung fu.”

“What this brother says makes a lot of sense.” Eternal Dominion shook hands with Brother Assist.

“Is it possible to come up with a fighting routine that doesn’t require Agility?” Brother Assist asked Gu Fei.

“Of course, it’s possible.” Eternal Dominion helped Gu Fei answer.

Gu Fei helplessly let out a sigh. “It is possible, but without the speed that comes with dexterity, players will have to depend on their individual reaction time to increase their rhythm, and learning that can be all the more difficult, and it may not even reach a satisfying rate of efficiency.”

“Still, it would at least be more efficient than the efficiency the average players have with their current methods, right?” Brother Assist pressed on.

“But, of course.” Gu Fei nodded.

“Then, that’s enough.” Brother Assist confidently nodded.

“Does that mean we’re still in business?” Eternal Dominion was excited once more. All the issues Gu Fei had raised made him feel as if their business had run into roadblocks before it even took off.

“Those are more or less all the issues I could think of at the moment…” Brother Assist would never give such a certain conclusion. “In any case, there’s definitely a market for such a venture. Even if you can’t cater to every player, you’ll still be in the green just from helping those that use Agility. The sum of 99 gold coins is truly too much of a steal if anyone can grasp this sort of efficient grinding.”

“Is that so…” Eternal Dominion was very remorseful when he heard this.

“Actually, you have quite the experiential opportunity here. First, take this bunch of players registered to test and find out what’s the effect. If it works, you can expand enrollment, and you could proceed to establish a more reasonable and developed groundwork.” Brother Assist nodded his head meaningfully.

“What do you mean ‘groundwork’?” the two other men asked.

“This thing here isn’t that simple! Take these forms you have now as an example; there are a thousand or so forms that you need to sort through, and there’s probably more in either of your mailboxes awaiting retrieval and sorting. After that’s done, you must make your way to the various grinding maps and spend even more time teaching those players…”

Sure enough, that was a lot of work. Gu Fei glared at Eternal Dominion, but he could also tell that this was indeed a pretty good method to earn money, far better than being a mercenary group leader like what Eternal Dominion was doing.

Brother Assist’s mind was occupied with details regarding this business right now, and he was getting more and more excited as he thought more about it. Gu Fei could tell from how the man looked that he had a lot to contribute to this venture. It worked perfectly in their favor as well since Gu Fei and Eternal Dominion would both be busy developing and teaching routines. There was no way the two of them could cope with everything, so leaving Brother Assist to sort through all the information and other such administrative works would be a perfect match given his expertise and interest in such stuff.

“Let’s return to the city and find somewhere to sit down and discuss this further!” Gu Fei suggested. Today had really been a tiring day for him.

The three men headed back to Baishi City, making a beeline for a tavern. However, they had pretty much covered everything they needed to talk about on their way over, so by the time they got seated in the tavern, Brother Assist was already talking about their glorious future. “Job class, stat point allocation, equipment, and monsters! These things are actually all set in stone, so once we establish ourselves after a certain point of time, there may not be a need for us to do any developmental work. It’ll be wonderful once we get to that point information and resources we’ve used can all be recycled.”

Gu Fei, however, laughed when he heard this. “That’s a little too idealistic. This sort of thing, if I can teach it to someone, then someone can teach it to another person as well. Take that fighting routine for the Campfire Patroller I’ve taught you. If someone goes out to set up a bootleg copy of my class for 50-gold coins, will anyone even care to be taught by us?”

Brother Assist was stunned. Sure enough, he had forgotten to consider this very factor, and it turned out that this venture of theirs was not a monopoly. It was highly likely for this business venture to create a scenario where the student ended up starving the teacher upon further propagation.

“Can you guys utilize a teaching method that others will have no way of copying?” Brother Assist asked.

The two stared at him to express how ridiculous this idea was.

“In that case, we’ll just make a quick turnover from this. We’ll earn as much as we can while we still hold the market advantage. 99 gold coins is far too little,” Brother Assist said.

“Then, how much do you reckon is reasonable?” Eternal Dominion asked.

“999 gold coins!” Brother Assist was actually very shrewd as well.

“But we’ve already said that it is priced at 99 gold coins,” Eternal Dominion reasoned.

“Indeed, we can’t change that for this batch of registrants, but we can tell them that because they are the first batch of clients, they get to enjoy a huge discount. Subsequent clients will be charged the normal 999 gold coins,”

“That’s pretty brutal…” Gu Fei sucked in cold air even as Eternal Dominion did his best to calculate how much 999 multiplied by 2000 would be.

Eventually, both parties ironed out the details and included Brother Assist into this venture. He was in charge of sorting through the information they were given as well as promotional and all the other backend work. At the moment, Brother Assist already held all the registration forms, including those letters about this matter that they retrieved from the mailbox earlier. Sifting through the stack of papers, he suddenly wrinkled his brows. “999 gold coins isn’t too good of a price, either. Even though this is truly worth that much from a marketing perspective, the price elasticity of this is simply too large; the price depreciation, which will happen from this secondhand market, can be very unfortunate for us—no, that price won’t do. I was being far too shortsighted earlier. 99 gold coins is still the best.”

Just like that, Brother Assist overturned his suggestion. While it was said to be a three-man discussion, Brother Assist had, all this while, been discussing this to himself from the very start. Neither Gu Fei nor Eternal Dominion had said a word, as was their habit, and had simply been waiting for Brother Assist to come to a conclusion by himself.

“99 gold coins… 99 gold coins is still the call!” Brother Assist finally decided. “This price can currently be considered as not too high of a cost; there won’t be a high appreciation in cost at this point, while there will be a limit to how much it can depreciate. We should take this chance while our business is still ahead of the pack to get a firm grasp of the market, broaden our influence fast, and establish ourselves as a brand name.”

“It doesn’t matter who’s teaching these things; what sort of brand is there to have!” Gu Fei laughed.

“Of course, there’s a brand. Since anybody can teach this, everyone will compete in terms of popularity, influence, and reputation!” Brother Assist explained.

“Alright. You guys can discuss what to do. I’m tired, so I’ll log out and get some rest. If it’s possible, organize all the information tonight, and I’ll begin the development tomorrow morning. Just do whatever you guys want with everything else.” Gu Fei spoke as he got up, leaving sans a care for the two other men’s answer.

Brother Assist was stunned for quite some time before he asked Eternal Dominion. “This is a great business venture! Why does it seem that Miles isn’t so enthused about it?”

“His family’s very rich; there’s no way he’ll be enthusiastic over something like money,” Eternal Dominion explained.

“Is that so…” Brother Assist had no knowledge of Gu Fei’s background and was wondering how a teacher could be rich to the point where he was uninterested in such a huge profit-making venture. If this business were to succeed, he would not simply become a rich man in-game; he could very well earn enough to support his real-world living expenses.

“Ignore that man. Please continue with what you’re talking about.” Eternal Dominion was raptly listening to Brother Assist’s every word. The more he listened to the man, the more his admiration for the man tended toward reverence.

“Let’s just leave the price as it is for now! Putting it too high will make us seem like we’re doing a smash and grab; we can’t possibly do something so shortsighted, can we?”

“Of course not.” Eternal Dominion was already considering quitting his bodyguard instructor job if this business really took off. After all, there were far more players than there were students in that school, so using Brother Assist’s words, if they wished to expand their influence in this to the point where the first thing all the new players would do was seek out Eternal Dominion and learn the fastest routine to approach monster grinding, they must invest time and effort in this. Just thinking of this delighted Eternal Dominion to no end.

Brother Assist was very conscientious when it came to work, so after spending enough time over their prospects, he understood that the 2000 registration forms before his eyes could very well serve as herald to the success of their new venture.

———————————————-

Gu Fei did not see Brother Assist when he got online early the next morning. Meanwhile, his students had long been waiting for his arrival. He brought his students to their grinding spot as per normal, and after completing that day’s lecture, his students needed to level to continue learning. Even though they learned Gu Fei’s super quick monster grinding routine, leveling up to the next stage was not something they could accomplish over a few days. Right now, Gu Fei was mainly focusing on doing a one-to-one guidance with those more problematic students.

Meanwhile, there were no more new questions today after yesterday’s six questions. There were only so many students, and more than half of them had already asked their questions, so there was no reason for them to seek for more information about other monsters so soon, while the other half of the students had faithfully stuck to the monsters Gu Fei had arranged for them, giving him quite a peace of mind. This way, some students concentrated on grinding monsters, while others searched for those monsters they had requested after grasping the fighting routine Gu Fei had imparted to them. Gu Fei took a few rounds to guide them and realized that they were now all very adept with it. They had originally all stuck drearily to the fighting routine against the AIs, so how hard could it get? There was no doubt that their experience soared fast, but when this sort of action turned into routine, it eventually became a matter of endurance and boredom, becoming more and more monotonous as they kept repeating it. Gu Fei would have to wait and see just how much perseverance these students had.

After spending more than an hour with his students, Brother Assist’s name flashed online, and the man immediately sent a message to Gu Fei.

“Oh, you’re pretty early!” Usually, Brother Assist would not be online at this time, as they would usually only start their gaming session in the afternoon.

“There’re plenty of things to do!” Brother Assist replied.

“Is that so… How’s it going?”

“This is my current plan: we can’t possibly do 1 on 1 for this business with our clients as that’ll just end up burning you guys out? I intend to accumulate similar requests until it reaches a certain number, maybe 500 or 1000 players, before we officially begin our lessons. If we don’t do it like that, won’t either of you go crazy trying to teach each of your clients?”

“Hmm… Out of everything you’ve said from yesterday till now, this is my favorite. So what’s the initial number you’re going with? 500 or 1000?” Gu Fei asked.

“We’ll have to see how the actual situation pans out on the ground. The key is the location to do this sort of lecture. Take the Wilderness Camp as an example. Because of the 9527 outcrop’s existence, it’s the perfect place to conduct such large-scale lectures, allowing you to teach 2000 players all at once. However, changing the location means that we need to adjust the number in accordance to the terrain we’re working with,” Brother Assist said.

“Yes, you’re right,” Gu Fei said.

“The real tragedy is Xiawu City and Linyin City. I’m afraid that there’s no way to do this sort of large-scale lectures in either of those cities thanks to the region’s terrain, so we’ll have to think of another solution,” Brother Assist added.

“Ahem. Brother Assist, you’ve really got your sight set far into the future, huh. Are you already prepared to promote the brand globally? Why don’t we first concentrate on making sure that we can accomplish what we’ve got at hand before we worry about those?” Gu Fei asked.

“What we’ve got at hand? We’ve already completed some of it already!” Brother Assist exclaimed.

“What?”

“Last night, a large quantity of the registration was from the Wilderness Camp, and the final tally for those players who chose the Wilderness Patroller was 1841. Furthermore, the situation was a lot more optimistic than our previous assumption. We managed to sort these 1841 players into two types. The first wields long weapons with little to no Agility. The second holds short weapons with high Agility. You already taught those with long weapons and high Agility what to do yesterday, so Eternal Dominion focused on these two types, developing the routine and completely training those players. We’ve already earned our first bucket of gold!”

“Is that so?” Gu Fei wiped off his sweat. Never would have thought that these two would be so capable.

“Yeah, but Eternal Dominion mentioned that he’s not particularly good when it comes to short weapons, and that you can still develop a more brilliant routine, saying that we’ll have to get you to research it further. I think that this is a good thing. If you really can refine the routine further, it will be perfect to demonstrate just how powerful our ability to develop such routines is. The moment competitors of the routine we’ve taught appear, we can push out the new version and dominate the market again,” Brother Assist said.

“You’re just full of ideas.” Gu Fei was impressed. Ignoring actual combat, Brother Assist was truly a formidable existence.

“Thank you, but I also have some bad news,” Brother Assist added.

“What’s that?” Gu Fei asked.

“That night, not long after we’ve finished imparting our routine, there were already players in the Wilderness Camp undercutting our business by offering lessons for 50 gold coins, and it’s not just one person. The players out there are really quick-witted.” Brother Assist mused.