Chapter 128 - Discontented
Luo Luo and the ladies began to call for them, so Gu Fei and Royal God Call unhurriedly made their way to the location.
Gu Fei was truly doing Royal God Call a big favor this time. The latter did not know how to express the feeling of gratitude welling up inside him, so their conversation along the way was somewhat awkward.
“Relax, Royal,” Gu Fei assured Royal God Call and the latter nodded his head.
They chatted until they arrived at the tavern by the east gate. Standing right by its entrance, Luo Luo, Drifting, and the rest waved to Gu Fei.
Luo Luo expressed her surprise, “It’s not like you to be so proactive, Miles! Arriving so early!” With that, she bestowed Heal on to him.
“Can you change things up a little?” Gu Fei asked dryly.
“Other skills will waste my mana,” Luo Luo smilingly replied. Turning her gaze on to Royal God Call, she exclaimed, “Lil’ bro Royal is here, too!” She then bestowed Heal on to him as well.
Royal God Call’s reaction was a far cry from Gu Fei’s, as he said with a face showing bliss, “Mhm-mhm. I’m here also, Big Sis Luo Luo.”
Gu Fei was on the verge of vomiting. This kid was far too degenerate; everyone in the mercenary group was older than him, yet he had always been blatantly ignoring the age issues and acting like he was on equal footing with everyone. Yet here he was, acting his real age and submitting himself as the youngster of the group. The m*th*rf*ck*r even had the nerve to say ‘big sis’ so naturally.
“Royal?” Drifting asked. He froze in place upon hearing the name.
Gu Fei affirmed by saying to Drifting, “This is Royal God Call.” Addressing Royal God Call next, he said, “They are Drifting, Left Hand of Love, and Right Hand of Cool.”
The two’s eyes met.
Under normal circumstances, the two parties that were introduced would say, “How do you do?”, or at least smile at each other; instead, Drifting and Royal God Call checked each other out from head to toe. Their expressions changed unpredictably, vacillating between love and hate.
Gu Fei was about to ask if the two knew each other when Royal God Call pulled out his bow and said straight away, “Drifting, let’s have a deathmatch!”
Gu Fei and Luo Luo gawked at the two men. Meanwhile, Drifting rubbed his temple and laughed despite the situation, “You’re indeed a child!” He then turned to face the others and said, “Come, there’s still time. Let me treat everyone to a drink or two.”
“What’s going on?” Gu Fei asked Luo Luo as they followed Drifting’s three-man party into the tavern.
A slight breeze wafted through the street, causing a tumbleweed to roll past Royal God Call’s pants. “F*ck me!” The ignored Royal God Call cursed as he barged inside the tavern after them. When he got inside the tavern with his bow in hand, the five were already seated. Royal God Call’s face turned ashen.
“Do you two know each other?” Gu Fei and Luo Luo stood on the same side this one time as they were curious about the issue at hand.
Drifting nodded his head, “We’ve played together before, many games ago…” The way he said this had a tinge of longing in it! Seeing the tension between two when they met just then and Royal God Call’s immediate reaction of reaching for his weapon to demand a deathmatch, it seemed that they had quite the unpleasant experience playing together. Gu Fei thought that this made sense. Drifting was a Mage Expert, while Royal God Call was a Mage before Parallel World. Players in the online gaming sphere were always competing with each other to be first or for fame in their respective job classes. There was a good chance that the relationship of these two men was of the similar vein.
Royal God Call reached their table at the moment when Drifting was ordering from the NPC bartender, “Get me five glasses of liquor.” Drifting then looked at Royal God Call with an arched eyebrow, asking, “Shall I get you a cup of juice?”
He was evidently mocking Royal God Call’s age; Gu Fei and Luo Luo looked at each other and smiled.
“I’ll kill you!” Royal God Call was incensed by the question.
“Sigh… I was just kidding. Don’t be so immature and sit down,” Drifting thought nothing of his threat.
Royal God Call did not give up his original intention and made a huge ruckus right in the tavern about wanting to fight Drifting to the death.
“Calm down, calm down…” In the end, it was Gu Fei who persuaded him to stay cool. If this happened before, Gu Fei’s words would not do any good. Now that Royal God Call felt indebted to Gu Fei and had no way of repaying him, why would he not give face to Gu Fei and heed his words? Only then did Royal God Call step down.
Drifting did not expect this. Having played with Royal God Call in various MMOs, even though he never got to meet him in person before, he could easily tell what sort of temper Royal God Call had.
Drifting knew that Royal God Call was not a person who would calm down after a few words from just anyone. Just who was this Thousand Miles Drunk? Drifting paid more attention to Gu Fei, incidentally ignoring Royal God Call’s existence once more.
Royal God Call became enraged again… Gu Fei barely contained Royal God Call due to the latter giving him face. Gu Fei knew they could only redirect Royal God Call’s attention away from the matter through the ladies.
Luo Luo seemed to also think so as she ruffled Royal God Call’s head like a big sister and asked, “What games did you guys play before?”
Royal God Call named a few games that were once popular on the gaming market.
“You guys must have fought a lot, yeah?” Luo Luo smilingly asked.
“Hmph.” Royal God Call turned his nose up the air, saying, “I fought. Some people just got beat up.” His tone showed his disdain for Drifting.
Drifting actually went along with what he said, “Yeah. I got beaten up every day and abused so badly....”
Everyone could hear the sarcasm in his voice. These two men actually disdained each other, except that they attacked each other differently. Royal God Call directly goaded Drifting into a fight, while Drifting indirectly fought back by using Royal God Call’s words against him. In fact, with just a few words, he succeeded in making Royal God Call more incensed. He seemed to have a deep understanding of Royal God Call’s temper.
Gu Fei could not tell what had happened between the two just from their snide remarks and odd tones. He reckoned that if he wanted to find out more about this particular matter, he would have to ask Brother Assist to get the full story.
The rest of the ladies trickled into the tavern as Drifting and Royal God Call continued to drink their glasses while expressing their mutual discontentment with each other. Royal God Call seemed to have a rather close relationship with many of the ladies as they had much to chat about after not having met for two days.
Since Drifting only grinded with their party yesterday, the ladies merely exchanged a few words with him.
Royal God Call felt pissed with Drifting without a way of releasing it; realizing that he held the upper hand in this particular area, his face began to show enjoyment of the situation.
“Everyone’s here, let’s go!” Although many experts were in their party now, Luo Luo was still its leader. She barely had any use as the party’s Priest these two days besides her periodical use of Heal to tease Gu Fei.
“Hmm. I found a grinding area that is far more suitable for us to grind than the one yesterday,” Drifting began to speak as the party stepped out of the city limits.
“Oh, is that so? Let’s go take a look!” Luo Luo said excitedly. The ladies cheered in agreement as well.
Gu Fei felt that something was off with this. Why did Royal God Call not butt in a few lines to this suggestion? That was hardly like him, considering the personality he had shown thus far.
Looking around for Royal God Call’s figure, the sight that he saw gave him a fright. The kid purposely lagged behind the party to arch his bow and was about to take aim! Naturally, there was no need to mention who he was aiming at here. Gu Fei boldly stepped in and blocked the path of his arrow.
Royal God Call hurriedly waved at him, indicating for him to move aside. Gu Fei was amused and peeved at the same time. Darting right in front of Royal God Call’s bow, he pushed it down and exclaimed, “What are you doing?!”
“I’m taking him out!” Royal God Call answered indignantly.
“Stop this craziness. He’s now a member of our grinding party,” Gu Fei said.
“Kill him. We need to kill him. Haven’t you heard of the saying: ‘Fear not a god-like opponent but a pig-like teammate’? This sort of teammate must be killed off,” Royal God Call strongly insisted.
Hearing that, Gu Fei looked toward the lot of the Amethyst Rebirth’s ladies and a small part of him wished to cast Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno upon all their feet. This was not just one pig-like teammate; it was a whole group of them. “Alright. Stop messing around. You’re an expert. This bunch of ladies is watching you, so you should act the part,” Gu Fei evidently also had a pretty good grasp of Royal God Call’s personality, as his speech visibly moved the latter.
A lady realized that their party was lacking the two members of Young Master’s Elite mercenary group, so she turned her head back and shouted, “What are you two doing? Hurry up!”
Royal God Call deftly put his bow back into his dimensional pocket as he waved toward that lady, “Coming!” He then said to Gu Fei, “Let’s go, let’s go! I’ll find another opportunity to finish him off.”
Gu Fei had no words left for Royal God Call.
Chatting merrily, the party arrived at the grinding spot Drifting had located. Everyone looked at the monsters around them and did not notice any big difference between them and the monsters that they grinded on yesterday. They were clearly still at level 50.
“You are all grinding on higher level monsters?!” It was Royal God Call that reacted. When he was leading the ladies to grind, he had only brought them to the level 40 grinding maps. He felt he was a top-class expert whenever he beat other opponents into submission once their party was challenged for their grinding spot. But now that Drifting had joined the party, the first thing they did was move to a level 50 grinding map to grind on high level monsters. It was clear who had the upper hand in their rivalry.
While Royal God Call’s ego was feeling wounded at this revelation, Drifting was addressing everyone, “Yesterday, I pulled an all-nighter and tried out all the level 50 grinding areas in this map. The monsters in this area have the lowest fire resistance, so it should make our grinding much easier.”
“We were able to kill those monsters from before, so why do we need to fight these monsters that have lower fire resistance?” The ladies each expressed their uncertainty. They might have average gaming skills, but they were not idiots.
Drifting answered, “It’s better to be safe than sorry! Over where we were, if anyone accidentally missed their cast, it could result in a failure to kill the pack. Here, it would be easier and safer!”
All the ladies were still somewhat doubtful. On his end, Drifting thought that this reaction was odd, With their poor control of all the casted Descending Wheel of Flames, shouldn’t they understand how legitimate my worry is? Why are they still in doubt?
Drifting naturally did not know that even though the ladies had poor technique and accuracy, they had been using that same method with Royal God Call for close to a month already. If they were still unable to aim well like that, then they were not just pig-like teammates; they were just pigs.
Whatever the case might be, this matter was not worth thinking about too much. After all, it did not matter where they grinded as long as they could still kill the monsters. The ladies carried on with their plan and prepared to begin their daily grind even though they still had doubts on why Drifting did that.
“Miles, I’ll leave the monster luring over at this side to you today,” Drifting said. Will-low must have been very exhausted from yesterday’s session since she did not come online today.
Gu Fei nodded his head. Will-low was only able to lure one monster at one pull anyway, so losing her was not very debilitating to the process.
“Same as the last time, everyone. Ready yourselves!” Drifting smiled slightly as he issued this final instruction.
“Wait!” Royal God Call suddenly jumped. “Luring the monsters is it? Miles, take a rest. Let me do this…” He finally found a way to repay the favor.