VRMMO: Passing of the Sword

Blue Maple went over his quest as he strolled toward the Teleportation Portal.

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[Desolate Graveyard] (SS-Rank Quest) (Autonomous Team Quest): Gong Liang City’s old mass grave has many new graves today. Yin gradually accumulated over the years in this mass grave, and has given birth to Jiangshi, Skeleton Soldiers, and other evil beings. There are too many evil beings and they are too powerful, so Gong Liang City had no choice but to release a bounty for a quest to exterminate these evil beings. Please head down to Gong Liang City’s Mercenary Union to collect the necessary quest items before embarking on the quest. The players shall sustain losses at their own risk upon failure to collect quest items…

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Gong Liang City? Why does this name feel a little different? It sounds like… the Yamato? That doesn’t sound right… yes, that’s the name of the flooded Japanese city. The entire country shifted and moved. They had no choice because every coastal city or island faces the same situation. Rising sea levels will undoubtedly flood and drown the entire place.

I don’t really know much Japanese… forget it. The system’s translating capabilities should prove adequate…

Blue Maple appeared like an Asian and spoke fluent Mandarin, and nobody would mistake him for anything else but a Chinese, while Japan and China had long been in conflict over territory. Blue Maple didn’t consider himself a citizen of any country, and could speak more than ten different languages.

Could he speak Korean? Forget that, because Blue Maple could only greet people in Korean, and the Japan-Korea relationship wasn’t very friendly.

Forget it. I shall just be a Japanese for now. I’m from the Chaotic Region anyway, and I don’t belong to any country. I can get away with being a citizen of any country as long as I can speak their language. I am most familiar with Mandarin and English… I remember a country called Singapore, which was one of the first countries to drown in history, and they fit the coexistence of Mandarin and English…

But Blue Maple had spent the most time in China, after all, and he couldn’t even remember the last time he was in Japanese territory…

Random thoughts flooded Blue Maple’s head as he sauntered towards the Teleportation Portal. He waved his hand and created a spark of Heavenly Fire as he burned the empty cup from his finished drink into dust…

Blue Maple stepped onto the Teleportation Portal calmly. This portal could only teleport players out, and wasn’t like the other one that could teleport players both in and out. Otherwise, Blue Maple would probably have been squeezed out by incoming players from Novice Villages. Even though there weren’t that many people anymore, there were still players streaming in occasionally. Blue Maple felt squeezy even when there were only a few people around him.

“Where are you headed?” the NPC responsible for this portal asked emotionlessly.

“Gong Liang City.” Blue Maple’s response was equally plain.

“That’s a little far. Two hundred gold coins, please.” The NPC’s tone was still very level.

Blue Maple wasted no more words as he handed two hundred gold coins over. Travelling between cities typically required one hundred gold coins, but Gong Liang City seemed a little far. Nobody knew how the city even managed to post their quest in this place.

Blue Maple didn’t care about all that as he waited for the Teleportation Portal to activate. The portal glowed, but the light wasn’t very visible under the sunlight. The portal was taking a long time to activate, and quite some time passed before Blue Maple vanished from the portal, probably because his destination was a little far away.

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At Gong Liang City’s Teleportation Portal...

“Ah? Kukude…” Japanese could be heard.

A Japanese player said, “Eh? Why is this portal glowing? This must be from a one-way Teleportation Portal from another city.”

“An inter-city portal? That must be some powerful individual, then! Let’s go, and see if we can invite him into our guild.”

“Warblade Master, I’m not trying to put you down, but your guild is so trash. Do you think you can invite someone like that? Let us do it.”

“Who are you calling trash?”...

The portal was just lighting up, Blue Maple hadn’t even arrived, and they were about to fight.

The light on the portal finally dissipated, and a figure in strange clothes appeared in the center of the portal.

This person didn’t have any armor or whatnot, and he didn’t have any weapons. Nobody could see any information about him. A long fringe covered a single eye as it draped over his handsome face, and a dark blue robe swayed in the wind and snow. He surveyed his surroundings with cold and emotionless eyes. His entrance was graceful and elegant, and a female player would probably be infatuated like Little Wen if one had been here.

Can he be an NPC? No, an NPC would have a display. He must be a player! He looks like an extremely powerful player. All the guild recruiters around the portal shared the same thought.

A player quickly came forward and asked, “May I ask if you wish to join our guild?” Several other players followed with the same question.

Blue Maple was always one of the earliest to arrive at any location, to the point where there was almost nobody around, so he naturally didn’t run into situations where guild recruiters swarmed him. Furthermore, the old man teleported him occasionally too, so there was a much lower chance that he would encounter similar situations.

Every game would have players sticking around at Teleportation Portals with the aim of recruiting new players, or strong players who appeared to have good items. Blue Maple didn’t know that because he was a rookie, and he never strolled around Teleportation Portals to take a look whenever he arrived at a different place. He didn’t know such situations existed, until now.

Blue Maple almost couldn’t react to what was happening. After all, many players surrounded him to ask him the same question, and he would feel like something was amiss if he didn’t know what was going on.

“Oleiwa? Yiye.” It was Japanese.

“Me? No.” Blue Maple’s Japanese wasn’t any good, and he didn’t know how to speak certain words which were less common. However, his pronunciation was relatively accurate.

“Why don’t you consider joining our guild? We treat our members very well, and you can make a lot of friends,” one of the players immediately followed up upon hearing Blue Maple’s answer. He didn’t seem to know if Blue Maple was even Japanese because Blue Maple’s pronunciation was indeed accurate.

“Sir, Yamato hopes to be friends with someone like you.” Another Japanese tried to sound as sincere as possible to try and gain Blue Maple’s trust, and was even bowing like a traditional Japanese.

“Master Tepid, you can’t do that. Everyone goes to Yamato. You have to let us invite some friends too!” other people quickly interrupted, worried that Yamato would snatch their target away. The Yamato Guild was always so sincere, and the others couldn’t do it as well even if they followed suit. The Yamato Guild enjoyed a great reputation in the Japanese game region, and were suffocating the other players.

Japan is still the same. They still like to address each other as friend, master, and whatnot. Oh, and ‘sir’, but ‘sir’ is a little too polite and flattering. Forget it. I should follow their traditions since I’m here. Blue Maple made up his mind, even though he wasn’t very pleased with Japan invading other lands because their own original homeland had been flooded and drowned.

“Gomeine, watashi…”

“I’m sorry, I’m here to complete a quest, and I’m not joining any guild. Thank you, and goodbye.” Blue Maple didn’t like all these Japanese formalities, where they had to insert words of gratitude in every sentence. It was cumbersome because he had to speak a lot, but he wanted to make his impersonation more believable. Furthermore, giving a clear explanation with a better attitude made it easier for him to escape.

Blue Maple quickly walked away after he spoke. He couldn’t stay too long to chat with these Japanese players, as he would be spending half of the entire day speaking all kinds of polite words and phrases for formality’s sake. Blue Maple didn’t know if he could continue acting if that happened, and he wasn’t very good with talking or conversation.

Blue Maple departed swiftly, leaving the Japanese recruiters staring at each other.

So cold and emotionless, the other players were thinking. If Blue Maple hadn’t added those words like ‘thank you’, the players would probably consider him someone who was just rude and arrogant.

Japanese etiquette and decorum was great, but could be a little excessive sometimes. However, their decorum was limited to insiders and their own people, and they weren’t polite at all when they were invading other countries. Blue Maple didn’t care about all that, because that was none of his business. He had no country, no home, and no family, and he didn’t care about what happened between sovereignties.

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Inside Gong Liang City’s Mercenary Union...

Blue Maple had quickly arrived outside the Mercenary Union’s entrance. Gong Liang City was snowing incredibly heavily today, and Blue Maple wasn’t used to winter, as he had spent almost a month in springtime.

“Lady White Cherry belongs to our party. Are you going to force her over?” Blue Maple had just stepped through the Mercenary Union’s gate when he heard some violent arguments. He could feel his mood plummet; he hated arguments and fights, which were really annoying to him.

“Tch. Kill everyone except for White Cherry!” Blue Maple had already seen what was happening as one party’s leader gave an order.

The players from the same team moved decisively, seven well-equipped players swarming forward. They were all physical close-combat classes, and it took but a second before only a beautiful female Priest remained in the other five-man party. They appeared to be very skilled fighters.

Blue Maple glanced once before he started looking for the reception desk. It was really hard to find the desk with so many people around.

Should I care? Blue Maple could interfere once, but he couldn’t interfere forever. He wasn’t about to take a strange woman around with him. Furthermore, the Priestess wouldn’t be in any true danger, as the game had very impressive protocols against sexual predators. Most importantly, it was none of Blue Maple’s business.

“You, you…” The girl was so frightened that her words were stuck in her mouth. The party that she had just joined was massacred in an instant, and the fact that she wasn’t terrified so much she fell to the ground was impressive.

The player in the lead looked like he was the bringer of death and the apocalypse. He spoke as he walked over to the corpses on the ground, “Hmph. A bunch of trash! I don’t even blink when I kill people in real life. How dare you try to fight with me over somebody?” He sounded like he was trying to intimidate other players.

Kill people? In real life? Blue Maple heard something that he was sensitive to.

“Lady White Cherry, can you come with us? I’d like to make friends with you.” The leader immediately put on a cultured and scholarly look as he extended his invitation to the girl.

A pillar of blue fire suddenly flew toward the leader.

Bam!

The player raised his hand and blocked the attack, suffering some minor damage.

“Who?!” The leader was infuriated. Who dared to attack him at such a time?

“You kill people in real life?” Blue Maple spoke as he walked slowly towards that player.

What? Every player had the same doubt.

“What do you mean?” Blue Maple’s sudden question also stunned him.

Blue Maple stepped directly into the middle of all seven players who had just slaughtered the other team, and suddenly unleashed attacks upon all of them!

Heavenly Fire! Lightning Chain Strike!

Blue Maple immediately locked onto four targets, aiming at their necks!

Lightning Chain Strike’s damage was at 140%. Attacking a player’s neck granted bonus damage, and Heavenly Fire’s Fire Explosion also boosted his damage.

Hidden Attack!

Blue Maple’s next target suffered the same attack, and couldn’t even see Blue Maple. Blue Maple used Airborne Somersault to reach his next target, and struck that player before he could react with a kick to his neck!

Blue Maple used Airborne Somersault once more, and his next target was already reacting. But did that matter?

Instant Chain Strike!

However, he didn’t kill any one of them instantly. They were all hanging on a single thread of HP as Blue Maple was too suppressed, and he didn’t have sufficient attacking power.

But that didn’t matter, either. Blue Maple used Airborne Somersault and landed in the center once more as he released an explosion of Heavenly Fire from his body in all directions.

-401! -412! …

A series of damage points flashed by as Blue Maple annihilated all seven damaged players!

All seven players perished in the blink of an eye!

“You… Why did you kill my men?!” Blue Maple’s sudden assault astonished the leading player. He had no idea why Blue Maple had murdered seven of his teammates and subordinates.

Furthermore, Blue Maple did all that for almost no reason at all. Blue Maple had seen everything when he first entered, and he would have already acted a long time ago if he just wanted to be a hero. Lashing out in this moment was almost unexplainable.

Blue Maple had become incredibly cold and emotionless in this moment. His response was plain and simple, “Do I need a reason to kill?”