126 Chapter 126 - Blossoming Crimson Lotus (1/2)
The high-spirited Mage, Drifting, began to take charge of the grinding party. After observing the surroundings and the respawn rate of the monsters in this map, he quickly commanded Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool to start luring the monsters and designated the ladies to stand in certain positions.
Fortunately, the ladies were well aware of their strength and thoroughly followed this expert's instructions to them without a complaint, question, or outright disobedience. Each of them was in fact very meek.
Luo Luo was still busying her hands with showering Heal upon Heal on to Gu Fei while all of these things were happening around them.
Gu Fei stared at Luo Luo expressionlessly. Luo Luo stared back at Gu Fei with eyes that withheld all sorts of meaning.
Oh, how deceptively blue the sky was, as a flock of birds' monotonous cawing mockingly echoed in the air on their way to the south—”Get into your positions, everyone!” Drifting shouted, incidentally disrupting this 'complicated' scene.
Gu Fei suddenly felt flustered. Drifting actually places dates before his mates! Drifting only arranged the ladies' positions and actually left out Gu Fei's. Gu Fei quickly ran all the way to Drifting and stood right beside him, ”Drifting bro, what about me? Where should I stand?” Although Gu Fei liked to engage with the monsters head on, he could not just do as he pleased in a Mage-based grinding party. Since that was the case, he could only copy the ladies' action and cast Descending Wheel of Flames whenever possible.
Drifting glanced at Gu Fei, ”Is there a need for you to stand still with your high movement speed, Miles? It's not as if the monsters can catch up to you….”
”Oh….”
”Why don't you help lure some monsters, too? With more people doing the monster luring, the respawn of the monsters will be much faster!” Drifting flashed him a bright smile.
”Got it,” Gu Fei readily agreed as he was not the sort of person to avoid difficult tasks. In fact, he found it more interesting to lure the monsters than to stand still and numbly cast spells. Although Gu Fei had been trying his hardest to treat spell-casting as another form of kung fu training for hidden weapons, hidden weapons that dealt wide-range of damage were honestly impossible to find in reality. Thus, Gu Fei was actually not much interested in AOE spells – a way of thinking that vastly differed from the usual Mages.
Finally, everything was set up as per Drifting's instructions. Gu Fei and Will-low were in charge of luring the monsters from the east, Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool were in charge of luring the monsters from the south, and the majority of the ladies, who were standing in two neat rows, were in charge of attacking the lured monsters at the northwest corner. Drifting, meanwhile, would be responsible for overseeing everything at the very corner of their grinding formation.
”Let's begin!” Drifting commanded.
The four players in charge of luring the monsters headed toward their allocated regions, each with a different style of doing the job.
Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool's monster luring techniques were superb and their coordination was awe-inspiring. It was clear that they were born to do this sort of job, swiftly and easily causing a train of monsters to trail behind them from the south.
Gu Fei and Will-low were a sharp contrast to the two's level of expertise. There was hardly any coordination between the pair and Will-low clearly had never experienced joining a grinding party of Mages before based on her rudimentary monster-luring skill. Adding the fact that the monsters were ten levels above hers, Will-low could not help but run too fast in panic. This resulted into three out of the four monsters she had lured to lose track of her in the process and into her getting trapped by the monsters instead when she turned back to gather them anew.
Gu Fei was left speechless when he saw that this person who was supposed to be luring the monsters got lured by the monsters, instead. He hurriedly brought his train of monsters by Will-low's side, rescuing Will-low from the encirclement by throwing a few balls of fire to pull the monsters off of her.
When the two finally brought the monsters back to the party, Gu Fei had more or less maintained his train of monsters while Will-low only had one monster trailing behind her, appearing no better than a one-man tractor.
Everyone felt awkward to mention this fact; even Will-low blushed crimson as she stuck her tongue out to Gu Fei in embarrassment.
”Get ready, ladies! The trains are arriving into the station,” Drifting called out. The ladies nodded their heads as each raised their staves and called upon a mess of Descending Wheel of Flames.
Drifting raised his head to look and cried out in shock, ”Oh, my god!” Gu Fei, who had already completed his task of pulling the monsters, was leisurely watching the scene unfold before him by the side when he happened to take in Drifting's bitter look. Gu Fei's heart leaped in happiness as he muttered to himself, ”Kid, now you know what 'true power' is!”
Up in the sky, the scattered, fiery circles appeared like a sequence of Olympic rings as they danced with the wind.
If the ladies knew where to cast their spells, they would direct the spells to the same place with 100% accuracy. Right now, without a specific place to target, their flame wheels hovered in the air in a disorganized way that somewhat overlapped with one another. Drifting of course did not expect the ladies to cast Descending Wheel of Flames with great accuracy, but for them to form such a unique shape with the combined flame wheels was definitely a sight to behold.
He had trained with some noobs before, but he had never done so with many of them together! Drifting was disheartened by what he saw, calling down his final ”Descend” command with a sob.
”Descend!” the ladies cried out as killing intent radiated from them.
The flame wheels dove straight to the ground and, just as Gu Fei had expected, failed to clear off any of the monsters. Drifting had also expected this wave of attacks to not work after seeing the Olympic rings.
Gu Fei's Spell Damage that was beyond his level and precise control that had been honed by his twenty years of kung fu training with hidden weapons managed to salvage yesterday's situation with his Blazing Tree of a Thousand Inferno spell. As for Drifting, how would his spell salvage the present situation?
Gu Fei realized that Drifting's monster luring strategy was slightly more complicated than his luring strategy yesterday. With four people luring the monsters, the amount of monsters lured increased by a fold compared to that of yesterday. Thus, with that wave of flame wheels, a larger number of monsters headed toward the spell-casters.
Gu Fei was just about to intervene upon seeing that not doing anything would make the situation worse, yet Drifting unexpectedly beat him to a punch as the latter had already stepped right into the midst of the mob of monsters in two large strides.
Gu Fei bewilderedly gulped back the incantation that that was on the tip of his tongue. If Gu Fei released his spell into the mob of mobsters, Drifting would most likely be burned off together with them. Just what was he thinking? Gu Fei became anxious.
The ladies turned into a flustered mess when they realized that the monsters were rushing toward them.
At this moment, Drifting, who was within the mob of monsters, raised his staff and bellowed, ”Blossoming Crimson Lotus! Expand!” A huge boom rang out. This was the sound cue that the game designers had designated for when a raging fire got ignited. A column of flame bloomed from within Drifting and layers of fire rolled off of him in waves. The surrounding monsters were engulfed by this undulating conflagration, burning up each of them until not even ashes remained behind.
Gu Fei was shocked by the scene that that had just unfolded before him despite his disinterest in AOE spells. The spell was just too powerful! However, what was even more amazing was Drifting fearlessly standing in the midst of everything. Parallel World did not grant immunity from friendly fire to players and this included the players' own spells. This meant that if players casted Descending Wheel of Flames upon themselves, the ensuing flame wheels that would land would deal damage to them just like how they would to monsters or to other individuals.
Drifting was right at the heart of the blazing red lotus, so how would he survive it? Did he sacrifice himself in order to save everyone? Gu Fei was still pondering on this when the mass of monsters was burned to a crisp and the floral flame was extinguished. There stood Drifting in his original position, with his robe fluttering in the warm exhaust of the flame residue and his magic staff's incandescence dimming in the wake of the spell.
Everyone was stunned for a good half minute; Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool looked each other in the eye with a prideful expression on their faces.
The ladies finally reacted as they cheered, ”Wow! That was so pretty!”
Drifting was shocked as a crestfallen look flashed over him.
Gu Fei could not help but sigh sympathetically. From time to time, experts would experience this sort of loneliness that came from being around people who were ignorant of their prowess, which was truly the case with this lot of girls. Drifting, my boy, just accept your fate!
”What spell is that?” asked the ladies who had surrounded Drifting.
”It's a spell that comes with my staff,” Drifting absent-mindedly replied. Being revered by a crowd was something he dearly wished, so he was a bit upset when that did not happen before. Now that he was finally getting what he wanted, Drifting actually felt preoccupied as he was squeezed by the ladies. His gaze landed squarely on to Gu Fei who was standing just outside the crowd.
Gu Fei had one hand on the sword planted to the ground, while the other was flashing a thumbs-up to Drifting. Drifting smiled slightly as he nodded his head as a form of reply. They resumed their grinding right after this incident.
The solution Drifting came up with to manage the ladies' Olympic rings of Descending Wheel of Flames was actually the same one Royal God Call had come up with: drew a circle to the ground.
Now that there was a specific place to target their spells, none of the ladies would messily throw them out any longer. Although the problem with the ladies was resolved, the difficulty for the people luring the monsters had risen with such an arrangement. Furthermore, since two groups were in charge of luring the monsters, luring the monsters into the circle together was quite a headache.
Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool were able to display their expertise now. With a considerate tone, they said to Gu Fei and Will-low, ”Just concentrate on luring the monsters on to your side. We'll coordinate with your rhythm on this matter.”
”Thanks,” Gu Fei said in appreciation. When it came to luring monsters, it was more important to have gaming knowledge rather than knowing kung fu. Thus, in this aspect, Gu Fei was just like any average players with no exceptional skill to boast about.
When the level grinding resumed, Gu Fei and Will-low did their best to lure the monsters and Left Hand of Love and Right Hand of Cool carefully observed the pair while skillfully luring the monsters over at their side. Taking a turn and staggering their pacing, they finally matched up to Gu Fei and Will-low's monster luring pace and approached the two with their respective train of monsters.