The Great Thief

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

As soon as the battle started, Azure Sea Breeze knew that he had been duped again.

Jin’do’s attack and defense was on a completely different level to the Bosses before.

“Stay put, and let the healers heal,” Lu Li said as he also observed the situation.

Jin’do was currently extremely powerful. He had many shadows and limitless totems, which made the players exhausted from running around so much. When Lu Li entered this Instance Dungeon in his past life, Jin’do had already become a supplier of oppressive equipment to players.

To begin with, there were the totems.

One type was a yellow totem which was able to control players to be used by Jin’do. He seemed to be adept at using others to reach his own goals, like using the identity of Yeh’Kinya to dupe Lu Li and Hachi Chan into helping him. Controlling players to attack themselves here was a similar sort of thing.

Another type was a green totem, which was even more annoying.

“Dammit, this is healing HP! Kill it, kill it!” Azure Sea Breeze shouted loudly. He was pulling the Boss and couldn’t go and attack the totems. Moreover, he simply didn’t have the energy.

A dagger first stabbed right into the green totem, then someone followed up with an Ice Lance until they finally managed to destroy it.

This was different to how Lu Li remembered it. In Lu Li’s memory, the totems were extremely weak. Anyone could attack them with any skill and singlehandedly finish them off.

But in actuality, the totem here required two attacks.

“Monkey bro, you and I can deal with the healing totem. Deadly Green Orange, if someone’s being controlled, you’re in charge of changing them into sheep. Snowy, you and Remnant Dream can kill the player-controlling totem, Wandering, if those of us who are killing totems get controlled, you’re to give them a hand. If Azure Sea Breeze gets controlled, you deal with the Boss first,” Lu Li said, beginning to assign the duties.

He never thought that it would be impossible to finish off Jin’do in just one attempt.

The main thing was still to let everyone better understand this Boss’ mechanisms. Only then would they be able to defeat him.

Afterwards, everyone finally realised what the pit of Toothgnasher Skeletons was accomplishing.

On the side of the arena, there was a little hollowed-out depression with a group of Toothgnasher Skeletons dancing inside. The scene really looked like something out of a horror movie.

When Azure Sea Breeze was cleaning up the smaller monsters, he went over to deal with them for a moment. However, just as he exited the hollow, a whole group of Toothgnasher Skeletons had been respawned again inside. At this, everyone judged that the monsters inside couldn’t be killed for now.

Not long after the monsters had respawned, their use became apparent.

Kitty Likes Meat was sent directly into the middle of the Toothgnasher Skeleton heap and was killed instantly. Although the Toothgnasher Skeletons’ attack wasn’t high, there were a lot of them, and when they were attacking the player all at once, it really was fatal.

Because of this, Lu Li arranged for a Mage to stand next to the hollow. Any Toothgnasher Skeletons that were spawned inside could be immediately killed with a Blizzard.

They were constantly solving problems that were coming up.

The next time someone was transported inside, they could simply jump out and re-join the battle.

The problem had just been solved, but before they could even take a breath, Azure Sea Breeze had been turned into a sheep. Wandering didn’t accumulate enough Aggro in time, so they quickly lost a number of players. Not long after, Lu Li declared that this battle was over.

At least they now knew a few points to this Boss’ strategy.

One was the totems. Jin’do would release two totems – a healing totem and a player-controlling totem. In the battle, they definitely needed to make destroying the totems a priority. A group of people would specifically be sent out to destroy the totems.

Lu Li handed this quite well, having already dealt with the totem problem after the first time.

The second thing they had to strategize for was the event that a player being teleported into the hollow coincided with the Toothgnasher Skeletons respawning. The best they could do was to use their Damage Reduction, then let the Mage waiting outside the hollow deal with the Skeletons. Then they could return to their original position.

The third thing was the Boss randomly changing players into sheep.

The worst scenario was the Main Tank being affected by this spell.

Being transformed into a sheep and being Feared weren’t the same thing.

If the Main Tank was Feared, the Boss could still continue to attack him. But as soon as the Main Tank was transformed into a sheep, then the Boss would immediately attack other targets.

Jin’do was an old, experienced controller of magic. There was no way he didn’t understand such a basic principle.

The second time the team died, they finally lured out a unique skill of his.

This was a curse, and those affected by it would have their own shadows shown next to them. These shadows could only be seen by those who were cursed, and only they could attack these shadows.

These curses were released frequently, so the number of these shadows grew rapidly in the second stage.

Initially, the damage was barely noticeable. However, the longer the battle was drawn out, the more shadows there were. As soon as the healers had shadows gazing on them, then what followed was a very troublesome situation.

This was why Lu Li painstakingly emphasised to everyone to increase their Shadow Defense, which would reduce the damage these shadows dealt to players.

After those who had been cursed were cursed a second time, not only could their see their own shadow, but they could also see the others’ shadows.

Therefore, after they had killed their own shadow, it was best for them to help the others.

The curse would only last for about 15 seconds, but the shadows only had about 1500 HP. Therefore, for an average DPS player, in the time they were cursed, they could probably kill two shadows. It was a shame that the shadows were immune from any sort of AoE damage.

In the process of exploring this, the team again died a few times.

Lu Li felt that they were discussing this problem for the whole morning. It wasn’t until noon that everyone executed the strategy perfectly and entered the third stage safely.

Jin’do had three stages, which was different to those previous Bosses with only two.

In the third stage, it seemed that his abilities became even more extraordinary.

His attacks now brought with them Lightning, not to mention the massive rise in his attack power. It was pretty clear that Jin’do’s original role was a Shaman.

At this stage, after a set period of time, he would cast out an ‘Overlooked Zone. He would wait inside the cover and the magic damage that he received would decrease greatly. Half the magic players were basically rendered useless.

“This should be very easy!” Lu Li shouted. “You can’t pull him out from under the cover; we have to stand inside the cover. This is such an easy tactic! How come you need me to remind you?”

Actually, he was a little full of himself, just standing and speaking. If he hadn’t encountered this tactic in his past life, he probably wouldn’t have thought up of such a simple solution.

The rest of the team knew nothing about this.

Therefore, when Azure Sea Breeze pulled the Boss out, everyone stood inside the cover. In that moment, they treated Lu Li with the utmost admiration.

The reduction of damage, which was originally only meant for the Boss, was now being enjoyed by the players.

The Boss’ damage to the players was lessened, but their attack was now much higher compared to when they were outside the zone.

No matter how hard the Boss worked, this was still the easiest stage for the players.

“Looks like we’ve fought this Boss to the third stage, and we’ve pretty much passed the level,” Wandering said.

He saw that Lu Li’s gaze wasn’t quite right. Whenever he thought that the gap between Lu Li and him wasn’t that far, he would use what looked like a very simple expression to shatter his pride and self-confidence.