The Great Thief

To say that there were some undiscovered top-tiered players was not a lie.

There were two ways to increase a player’s strength. The first one was to receive training from another professional. This was the method that was most commonly employed by major clubs in their training camps, which gathered all potential professional players and trained them. The other way was to train by themselves.

For the strong players who were trained within an organisation, they would be contributing towards the organisation and receiving benefits that way. They would typically be an elite player or a core elite player. However, they most likely wouldn’t progress any further.

Compared to an individual who slowly accumulated their strength, it was much harder for them to acquire resources.

Therefore, lots of effort was needed to grow, which formed many proficient players within the player base.

However, these strong but ordinary players wouldn’t continuously grow in numbers. This was because there would be a few of them who were recruited into different clubs after attracting their attention. The only question was when.

This way, some of them were hired, while some of them were trained to be the next professional players.

This was like a never-ending cycle.

Crippled Black Ant was one of these people. In real life, he was a security guard for a small area. However, because he heroically intervened when a crime was happening, his leg was broken in the event, and the assailant was not caught. The person who he saved only gave him a few words of gratitude, then he left too.

It was as if nothing had happened, besides the leg that never healed properly, which caused him to have problems when he walked.

Since there was no need for humans to be working his job, he was released and given a

small compensation while they replaced him with a new model of security robot.

In the movies, when someone was begging for mercy, one of the most popular sayings was, “I have an eighty-year-old mother and a three-year-old child!”

These words would often elicit feelings of disgust from the audience. However, for Black Ant, he wasn’t disgusted at all. This was because he actually had eighty-year-old parents and a daughter who wasn’t even three years old to care for.

Since he could no longer work, his wife was the only one working in the house.

Black Ant felt upset and couldn’t stand it any longer. He thought about begging for food to put on the table for his family.

Unfortunately for him, this was an era where robots and AI were ubiquitous.

In order for a family like this to survive, they needed to ask for more welfare money from the government. However, doing this would only get them kicked out of the civilian area, since it wasn’t for the poor. Only the poverty area would be willing to take them in.

This downward spiral continued until one day, he was exposed to Dawn.

It was his wife who decided to buy the gaming helmet. This was to give her husband something to do. She also heard that real life skills were transferrable into the game. For someone like Black Ant, who was crippled in real life, he was able to move normally in game.

He called himself Crippled Black Ant, as that was his nickname anyway.

It wasn’t all smooth riding after joining the game. After all, he hadn’t played games much in his life and he was without external funds. Sometimes, he even struggled to buy potions and repair his own equipment. He doubted whether he would be able to eat at all.

This was the case until he knew of Lu Li’s existence. At that time, Lu Li led his team to become the champions of the Shadow Cup and swiftly built Ruling Sword.

Lu Li was someone who was from the poverty district as well and was not much better off than he was.

He often kept tabs on Lu Li’s news. He saw Lu Li take First Clear after First Clear and victory after victory in the competitions. Ruling Sword then emerged as a force to be reckoned with.

A success story like Lu Li’s motivated Crippled Black Ant. Every time he was close to giving up, he would tell himself that he was the same as Lu Li, so he had no reason to not be able to reach even a sliver of Lu Li’s success. It was through this determined mindset that he was able to pass obstacle after obstacle.

His days became much better. He even remembered the very first time that he used gold coins to exchange for real money.

That was when he took a quest that was of quite a high value and just by the skin of his teeth, managed to complete it. The quest giver not only gave him the promised 130 gold coins, but he also gave him an extra 20 gold coins.

At that time, the exchange rate was still around 1:100. Even after deducting all the additional fees of withdrawing money, it was still tens of thousands of dollars.

This family was already on the verge of starvation. However, after this first withdrawal, they began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As for Black Ant himself, he felt that he was once again the pillar of this family. From then onwards, his dealings and growth within the game became smoother and smoother.

He had also built a reputation for himself, so there were more and more quests being given to him.

However, Dawn wasn’t a single player game. No matter how powerful an individual was, they would always be limited in the game.

Crippled Black Ant had built a mercenary group before, but unfortunately, that didn’t last long. However, because there wasn’t that much investment into the group, there weren’t any substantial losses. After this, he felt that he didn’t have the gift of leadership.

Therefore, he looked to join a large and reliable mercenary group or a club.

However, mercenary groups were too loose and the job wasn’t secure, while clubs were usually quite rigid and limited. This was why he couldn’t decide to stay in either one.

The Stronghold battles were becoming more and more popular, so mercenary groups also had a chance at joining now. Therefore, he wasn’t as desperate to join an organization anymore.

He liked these types of battles, since it gave him a feeling of fighting in the olden days.

However, he didn’t think that he would see Ruling Sword’s request to hire on the board in the mercenary hall. This request to hire 10 men was placed at the most obvious spot on the board.

Ruling Sword was hiring?

Was that a joke? How could they possibly be lacking in numbers to defend? Their Stronghold was defended so well that even Glory Capital couldn’t take it down.

However, this request was confirmed by the System. There was no way that it was fake.

At that time, there were quite a few guilds and clubs that were hiring mercenaries to fight in the Stronghold battles. However, most of them were unknown ones with no reputation or ones who just received new investors’ money.

Only the Gangnam Royals could be counted as a large club.

Everyone knew the situation that the Gangnam Royals was in. They had lost all their pro players, so they could only rely on their finances to defend themselves. Some people would be attracted by the money, but there were also many who didn’t join them.

Crippled Black Ant was one of them. The Gangnam Royals had heard of Crippled Black Ant from other mercenaries and promised to treat him well. However, the Crippled Black Ant of those days was already capable enough to feed and grow his family. He regained his integrity and pride and didn’t bother with a shallow guild like Gangnam Royals.

Ruling Sword was different.

Ruling Sword was a legend in the world of mercenaries.