The Great Thief

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

Lu Li alone was enough to make them cry, but what about a combination of Lu Li and Water Fairy?

The Mage was selected and controlled by both Lu Li and Water Fairy at turns. They also guarded against the Paladin who was Sapped so that he couldn’t help out his teammate. What surprised them was that the Mage didn’t resist and the Paladin didn’t even try to do anything either.

Everyone had a faction badge these days, so no matter how useless a player was, they could at least debuff their control status once in a fight.

If he could hear the conversation between the Paladin and Mage, he would immediately understand why.

Paladin: How are their skills? Are they good?

Mage: Very good. Let’s not worry about putting up a fight.

Paladin: How good?

Mage: Good alone isn’t even enough to describe them. Their control has never stopped, and their attack damage is even more shocking. I feel as if two bosses are fighting against me.

Paladin: Then do I still need to do something?

Mage: No, I’m about to die. It’ll be your turn next. Don’t worry, just close your eyes. It will all be over real soon.

Lu Li and Water Fairy were disappointed; these two players were punching bags. Using Gouge on the two of them was no different to using it on training targets.

“Keep going – we’ll find some good targets eventually,” Lu Li encouraged.

“Hopefully,” Water Fairy agreed.

Both of them knew that this wasn’t very reliable. If they really wanted to practice Gouge, they could easily find a group of PVP players from their guild to spar with. Even if these players weren’t as skilled as the celebrity players, they were better than the bottom ranks of the arena.

Despite both realizing the situation, strangely enough, neither of them talked about it.

They were enjoying what they were going through together right now – the two of them forming a little 2v2 ranked team. No one knew what they were doing and they could forget about everything – Drizzle Court, Ruling Sword and anything related

“Hopefully the next one will be better, I can try my poison,” Lu Li said ashe wiped his dagger and traded a few poisons that he had made with Water Fairy. The attributes weren’t amazing, but they were all unique.

Water Fairy was just about to look down on the effects of the poison, but she was caught by surprise by the names of these poisons.

“Effect… are these all made by you?”

“My teacher modified my Alchemy skill, so now I can only make poisons. I can’t make them with recipes either; these were all invented by me. My poison skill is quite low right now, but once it gets higher, I’ll definitely be able to make more-useful poison.”

Lu Li didn’t intend on keeping this a secret. In fact, he had an urge to show off about it.

He had no clue that he was behaving like a peacock.

Every year in spring would be the breeding season for peacocks – especially around March and May. The male peacocks would go around displaying their colourful and fancy tails with their elegant dance moves. They did this to show off their beauty to the female peacocks and to attract their attention. Once they succeeded, they would breed together with the female peacock for new young.

If someone told Lu Li about this, he would definitely kill that person.

They played for another four matches, but faced newbies each time. This was a normal situation. After all, Water Fairy and Lu Li were both starting from scratch. It would take a few days for a normal team to rise in rank.

It wasn’t until the fifth match when they ran into a worthy opponent.

The team was called Waves Team, which was quite creative. It included a Priest, Running Waves and a Berserker, Dominating Waves. The Priest was a girl and the Berserker was a boy. Judging by their in-game names, it was obvious that they knew each other before the game and they clearly had some sort of relationship. They were similar to Lu Li and Water Fairy’s combination.

The map this time was Dalaran Arena.

This arena was located in the waterways below the Dalaran city and had been teleported away with Dalaran to Northrend, along with a great piece of land. Under the city of light, an underground society was formed and countless Warriors fought in matches for money.

The game was still far away from releasing Dalaran, but the story had already been visibly clear in Dawn’s background.

An arena was similar to a dungeon, so it wouldn’t be a shock for it to appear in the current stage of the game. The specialty of this Dalaran Waterway map was its amazing waterfall and the risen platform at the centre.

The Waves team was clearly familiar with the arena. As soon as they came out from the preparation zone, they immediately rushed up to the platform to control the spots with the best advantage.

Lu Li and Water Fairy exchanged gazes; they could see the excitement in each other eyes.

It wasn’t fun at all to fight noobs. Not only was it boring, but it also slowed down the levelling of the ranked team. Furthermore, they wouldn’t have a chance at practicing Gouge, so it was totally unnecessary.

They were excited, but their opponents were a little disappointed.

Just from the perspective of class alone, Lu Li and Water Fairy were a poor combination. Even a team that focused on pure damage would want to be formed by a combination of Warriors and Paladins at the very least. That way, they would have burst and good survivability. In 2v2 arenas, it wasn’t easy for Plated classes to die, but the situation was different for Thieves. Once they were controlled, it would take about one Whirlwind to finish them.

Berserkers were always the favourites in the arena, whether it be in a 2v2 or a 5v5 situation.

The only way to take out Berserkers was to tire them out. To make up for this weakness, Berserkers would usually take a Paladin, Priest or Druid with them for healing. At the current stage of the game, healing Shamans weren’t popular and almost no one paired up with them.

The Waves team consisted of a Berserker and Priest, so it was natural that they would underestimate this combination of two Thieves.

In an instant, they controlled the Priest with a Sap and both turned around to pounce on the Berserker. Dominating Waves was shocked; these two Thieves weren’t playing around for participation points.

Dominating Waves had just debuffed his crowd-control, but was rained down by a strong torrent of water.

This had nothing to do with Lu Li and Water Fairy; it was the map itself. In this Dalaran Waterway map, a waterfall would appear from the bars in the sky periodically to block the players’ vision and to stop them from passing through certain areas. This design was to add to the vision-uncertainty aspect of battle and promote players to think of tactics in the arena. If players happened to be below the waterfall when it appeared, they would be knocked away by it.

The Warrior was knocked away by the waterfall and his debuff was naturally removed.

He lightened up and was about to run over to his Priest, but was then controlled by the other Thief. Then, he remembered that there were two Thieves and felt a little worried. It seemed like this map required the healer to be skilled in positioning.

Just as he removed the Sap effect and turned around, he saw that his Priest was in sight near him.

The other Thief didn’t go and control the healer?

Noobs would always be noobs. Anyone with the slightest intelligence would know to turn around and control the healer. That way, the other Thief could easily take down his health, and after the Priest removed the status on themselves, the two Thieves could possibly both turn around to target him. That way, even if they didn’t win, they could at least lose looking better.

Dominating Waves thought of this all proudly to himself.

Lu Li gave the Berserker a slow and nodded at Water Fairy. He didn’t cast Cheap Shot on the Berserker while he was in Stealth mode.

Cheap Shot was total control skill. After Cheap Shot was casted, the Warrior would lose all ability to react and he would be no different to a wooden stump. A slow was enough.

Water Fairy’s waist twisted as she leapt before the Warrior.

Gouge had a high requirement for positioning – you needed to aim at their face, and you needed to be quick, precise and merciless…

Water Fairy successfully Gouged her target, but her completion level was only around 70%. The stun time was even lower than 1 second, which could easily be achieved with AI mode. Lu Li estimated it to be around 0.7 seconds.

With this standard, it was a total waste for Water Fairy to learn her Empowerment skill book right now.