The Great Thief

Translator: Halcyon Translations  Editor: Halcyon Translations

After distributing all the equipment, everyone rested for a while. They had been battling for a few hours already.

A commander needed to refrain from being hasty and impatient, as gaming took a heavy toll on the mental and physical condition of the players. Since the initial release of Dawn, there had already been multiple cases where players had died while playing the game.

However, it was not only gaming that caused people to die in this fashion. People have also passed away suddenly while running or writing.

Realistically speaking, there were people dying every moment in the real world. Therefore, since there were so many players, it was not surprising that some would die in-game.

As for whether gaming was the main culprit or a contributing factor in these occurrences, it was enough to deduce that doing too much of one thing was detrimental to health.

After resting for a while, Lu Li then brought the party to the next Boss.

“Help me look for a dragon called Awbee. I took a quest before we entered,” Hachi Chan pleaded as she pulled on Lu Li’s cape.

“Look for it yourself. There aren’t any monsters here,” Lu Li dismissed.

“No…I’m not great at finding stuff. Also, I’m scared that I’ll get lost.”

Hachi Chan was surprised. She didn’t think that Lu Li would reject her request.

“This bad habit of getting lost can be fixed. You just need to be more confident in yourself. You can only go so far in this area and if you do get lost, just return here using the main path. It can’t be that difficult.”

Lu Xin never got lost. One time, when she was young, she nearly was kidnapped by a few traffickers. Lu Li went crazy trying to find her, but in the end, she managed to escape from them. What was even more impressive was that Lu Xin managed to bring Lu Li back to the traffickers.

After a few days, the traffickers were found disabled.

During those days, Lu Li thought that he might have gone a little too far. After all, those traffickers could have had families of their own. However, Lu Li did not regret it at all.

“Well, if Hachi Chan actually manages to get lost, it’ll be better if I go with her. She does tend to get lost really easily, even if she can only go so far,” Sakura Memories said, then took Hachi Chan with her and went to find Awbee. Lu Li then advanced with the rest of the party and cleared out the monsters.

Perhaps it was karma, or perhaps it was Hachi Chan’s questing skills, but Sakura Memories came back, she had accepted what seemed to be an extremely difficult quest.

If Lu Li recalled correctly, this questline would lead to an extremely powerful and exclusive Legendary Shaman item. No matter what the item, if was labelled ‘Exclusive’, it was guaranteed to be extremely powerful. However, the value of the item would also drop.

After clearing a few waves of small monsters, they advanced up the stairs and found themselves face to face with a few groups of Orc warriors.

Squad wipe!

The feeling of being wiped by ordinary monsters was humiliating, but it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t that they had made mistakes which led to the wipe, but rather, the Orc Warriors that weren’t taunted would go and fight the other players, disrupting everything.

Once they regathered themselves, Azure Sea Breeze pulled the aggro of the monsters.

Lu Li was silent the whole time. After all, some lessons were better learnt without them being said. After this, Azure Sea Breeze would remember this and not half-heartedly pull aggro.

Pull to the corner. Pull to the next corner. Pull outside.

These were common monster-clearing methods. Although time-consuming, it was the safe option to clear monsters without getting wiped.

After clearing, they entered a long and narrow pathway.

The left side of the pathway was an Instance Dungeon that they couldn’t defeat yet. This was Blackwing Lair. The right side of the pathway was the correct direction.

Blackwing Lair was the lair of Deathwing’s eldest son and Onyxia’s brother, Nefarian. This Instance Dungeon could only be attempted with a minimum of 40 players who had cleared a certain number of level 60 Instance Dungeons. Fifteen people were clearly not enough, which was why Lu Li changed his party often to pick out the stronger ones.

When he started this game, his standards were much lower

He didn’t want the best, but he wanted the most suitable. If they had something that was beneficial, then he wanted them on his team, for example, Hachi Chan and Remnant Dream. He needed to train them bit by bit until they themselves were powerful.

However, things were different now. If Lu Li wanted to, he could use the legions of players under his command.

The right side was another stairwell. Since this was a tower, the terrain could not be flat, which meant that the pathways were more often curved than not. If Hachi Chan was alone here, she could go around and round for three months and still not find her way out.

There was a large hall at the bottom of the stairwell. It would be normal for a squad to wipe here. After all, these monsters were the strongest monsters besides the Bosses.

Normal squads could wipe 7 to 8 times and it wouldn’t be a surprise.

However, Ruling Sword was not part of the majority this time. Azure Sea Breeze cautiously snuck around outside the hall, then stuck his head inside to scout. He saw that there was a patrolling squad of monsters around the entrance. The monsters here weren’t set inside the hall, as they were constantly on the move. Then, Azure Sea Breeze fired an arrow towards one of the Orcs.

The Orc that was struck was angered.

A group of them were also angered, which led to seven or eight of them storming out of the hall.

“Mage, Hex.”

Lu Li was satisfied with Azure Sea Breeze’s caution, but he knew that this wasn’t enough. If these monsters were treated as per normal, they would definitely be wiped a few times. Some commanders would tell the party that these were individual Bosses.

Lu Li didn’t want to use the scare tactic, so he employed his own methods to avoid a perilous situation.

After hearing Lu Li’s instructions, Fat Monkey and Lonesome Flower instantly picked out a target and casted Hex. A normally fierce-looking Orc warrior suddenly became sheep.

Eight monsters became six after two were hexed.

Wandering looked at Lu Li, then decided to pull one towards himself. After all, this was only a normal monster. It definitely couldn’t one-shot him, a backup Tank. In Ruling Sword, he was the backup Tank, but with his skill and items, he would be able to play as the Main Tank for many guilds outside of Ruling Sword.

Now, there were five left. Lu Li then went forward and used Cheap Shot to control another, leaving four behind. These weren’t actual Bosses, so they didn’t have immunity to crowd-control skills, or the HP and armor of Bosses. Their skills didn’t matter. If they were controlled, they would eventually become a source of items and experience.