The Great Thief

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

At the beginning, the deaths were very high.

However, overall, the players only needed to adjust to the way the insects fought and then they’d be able to hold the battle lines very easily.

“These bugs are really weak. We’ll also go on up.”

The dispersed players watching on the side saw the bugs keep falling in front of the attacks of the three clubs, and the battle scene was filled with the joyous cries erupting from those who had picked up equipment. In the end, the players couldn’t help it.

With the hole in the wall growing larger, the dispersed players chose to stay at the side of the opening to fight with the insects.

Ruling Sword implicitly consented to this behavior. It was like they didn’t even feel like these people were here to take their monsters.

Actually, a lot of commanders had asked Lu Li for a battle assignment. They thought that the equipment and materials these bugs dropped was great, and they weren’t too difficult to kill either. However, it cost them so much, so why should they let others gain the advantage?

Lu Li didn’t care about these people, and he continued to not let others interfere with them.

“Can you not be so petty? Others are just getting some points on the side. How many of our monsters can they steal away? Are there still not enough for you to kill?”

“Damn, how come Shameless Lu’s so generous all of a sudden?” Azure Sea Breeze asked, not really believing his own ears. Normally, Lu Li wouldn’t be so selfless, not bothering with others unless they were infringing on his benefits, in which case they would really suffer.

“Hehe, if even a person as stupid as you thinks it can’t happen, then of course it can’t happen,” Wandering laughed coldly.

“What are you on about?” Azure Sea Breeze questioned, genuinely confused.

The answer to his question came quickly, otherwise, it would really make him exercise the few brain cells he had.

Trapped in the wave of bugs, giant human-shaped monsters with the head of a wolf appeared in everyone’s vision. Each of them was a few stories high, and their muscles were all knotted together. At the very least, the players had a bad feeling when they saw them.

They were definitely not going to be pleasant to deal with. The players at the very front were simply swept away by them.

Although the damage couldn’t one-shot them, it certainly disrupted their line-up temporarily.

What made the players feel strange was that these monsters were heading towards the opening. This meant that those who needed to face them weren’t Ruling Sword players, but the dispersed players and players from the smaller guilds who were picking up loot at the opening.

“As expected. Shameless as expected,” Wandering sighed, looking deeply at Lu Li and suddenly understanding what he meant.

The wave of bugs was made up of a lot of ordinary monsters, but someone who was smart could do a bit of thinking and realise that it wasn’t possible that they were all ordinary. Otherwise, this so-called sea of monsters would be too easy to deal with. Some stronger monsters would have to come out.

These wolf-headed, human-bodied monsters took this role.

When an elite monster had a health bar of over 1 million, no one would dare say they could beat them easily.

“They can’t hold them off. We have to do a little something,” Wandering said unnervingly. Lu Li had used a disadvantage for themselves to be someone else’s disadvantage, sending these monsters to the players on the side. However, they couldn’t hold them off all at once, so the ones who incurred the attack would still be them.

“Not necessarily. Someone’s coming,” Lu Li said calmly.

He looked beyond the destroyed camps and saw that in the far distance, new troops were arriving. It was a major club who finally couldn’t hold it any longer and came to get a share of the reward.

It was a shame they didn’t know the battle had a new variable.

“How come those monsters are only at those two sides, not coming towards us?” Azure Sea Breeze asked in confusion.

“These monsters, apart from being extremely powerful, are also good at demolishing and relocating,” Lu Li explained. “They’re called Anubisaths, and were once very extraordinary in the War of the Shifting Sands a thousand years ago.”

Anubisath!

Anubis, an ancient Egyptian god, was in charge of the art of preserving corpses and also in charge of preserving the spirit of the dead. He was also the god of guaranteeing the resurrection of the dead. He had the head of a jackal. Dawn had drawn from some traditional legends, and turned them into one of the main forces of the Ahn’Qiraj force.

The trolls were the first race to raise up weapons of war to resist the ancient Aqir insect empire. After experiencing a thousand years of war, the trolls finally prevailed, and the Aqir empire was split into two halves. The survivors of the insect race escaped to the north and south border of Kalimdor.

Time passed, and the mighty troll empire burst and fell apart, but the Aqir empire gradually expanded their strength in Silithus, turning a new, frightening race – the Qiraj insect people.

Allegedly, after the war ended, the Twin Emperors Vek’lor and Vek’linash consistently agreed that the empire needed some strong, powerful, loyal soldiers. Apparently, the two emperors created the first Anubisath army in the flame that never falters underneath Ahn’Qiraj. Even though it was during peacetime, the Qiraj empire never stopped building an army.

When the Well of Eternity was destroyed in an ancient battle, the various rumours abut the Aqir empire stopped floating around. However, the Qiraj insect people still kept creating units as before, waiting for the right time to launch a surprise attack on the world.

A thousand years ago, the twin emperors sent for a war again, wanting to conquer all of Kalimdor.

This time, they had prepared the latest weapons. Although the Night Elves had the advantage in terms of numbers, in front of the powerful Qiraj insect people, they looked like they couldn’t withstand a single blow. One single Anubisath could get rid of a whole small team of Night Elves.

Anubisaths weren’t very intelligent, but these enormous warriors were very effective with their slaughtering weapons. General Rajaxx had chosen the strongest Anubisaths to create an elite surprise attack team, and most of them had been sent to the frontlines. The general evidently knew that these monstrosities would be able to awe the Elf forces.

After the Elves retreated, suffering defeat after defeat, the archdruid Fandral Staghelm persuaded the bronze dragons to join in the war. So outside Ahn’Qiraj’s gates, the dragons and Anubisaths fought in close, bitter combat.

The few Anubisaths who could cast spells weren’t fighting on the frontline. Because of this, the dragons could concentrate their fire attack without having to worry about meeting a counterattack. When they first crossed each other, the Anubisaths were almost completely vanquished, but there seemed to be one Anubisath who was much more intelligent than the others.

The Anubisath named Ossirian had eyes set on the target of the dragon leader, Grakkarond. He threw an obsidian sword which cut of the giant dragon’s wings.

The injured dragon fell from the sky, and fell into the Qiraj forces with a rumble. Although Ossirian was almost killed, the Anubisaths and Qiraj insect people realized a solution. They very quickly defeated the noble dragons, like a hot knife slicing easily through butter.

Although the elite Anubisaths outside the Instance Dungeon were not considered true bosses, they were still more powerful than most bosses, and were completely on par with normal bosses.

The dispersed players kept being defeated. Over a 1000 had died under the attacks of the Anubisaths.

Players from clubs made up for this loss and at least were able to slow down their advances.

There were a lot of monsters over at Lu Li’s side, but not too many Anubisaths. When taken into comparison, it obviously looked a lot easier.

“Killed it. Don’t know what it’ll drop,” Wandering said. With blinded eyes, before seeing Blood Red War Flag’s phalanx, the first Anubisath had tumbled down, rising up a whole cloud of dust. He felt that what Lu Li had done, although it smoothed the pressure on the front line, would also certainly mean that they missed whatever items were dropped.

“We’ll know very soon. We’ve got a black dog coming on our side,” Lu Li said.

They had wolf heads and human bodies, and wolf and dog heads really weren’t all that different. As such, players hatefully called the Anubisaths black dogs. Such hate was simply because this sort of monster was particularly hard to kill, and they didn’t really drop anything much.

Otherwise, why would Lu Li so generously let others take care of them?

Although the black dogs were focused around the hole in the beetle wall, the insects also began to group together in threes and twos. Ruling Sword couldn’t fight hand to hand like this.

“Change weapon!” Lu Li ordered.

The Main Tank fighting Anubisaths had left the scene to change weapons ages ago, switching all of the balanced defense equipment to physical defense equipment.

The other players cleared away to give them room to fight.

The Anubisaths outside the Instance Dungeon were purely physical attack monsters. The Main Tank only needed to reach a certain level of physical defense. Then, not only would they be able to resist the Anubisath’s attacks, but they could also avoid damage from most of the Anubisath’s residual attack effects.

This was the importance of information.

Lu Li certainly didn’t avoid using this information. Actually, within the old wooden house in the main Night Elf city, players only needed to have the dedication and they would find some books and scrolls left behind from fighters of the past.

In there, there was some information describing about how to fight against Ahn’Qiraj bugs.

The clubs who didn’t know the facts really suffered.

After allowing them to die a few times, Lu Li immediately but insincerely sent people over there to let them know their experience. They told them that they just needed to have high physical defense players to go up and aggro the monster.

Why go and tell them? Why not just let these clubs who didn’t like Ruling Sword keep suffering?

Discovering that the Anubisaths were a physical attack unit wasn’t anything difficult. Why not be nice and let them know when they didn’t yet know, since they would find out sooner or later?

Furthermore, Lu Li was still hoping that they would share the pressure.

Jade Flower Lover thought that if there wasn’t any outside help and they were only relying on the alliance of Ruling Sword, Peerless City and Drizzle Court, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the bugs inside the beetle wall.

He really had good foresight in war strategy.

Ruling Sword definitely couldn’t resist the monsters flooding out of the beetle wall. Even with the players on the side, they couldn’t make it. Reality confirmed the fact that these ordinary players couldn’t even deal with the Anubisath monsters, so they just dealt with the ordinary bugs.

Lu Li needed other clubs to come and share the burden.

Furthermore, the most important thing was that the war had to continue for a long time. At the beginning, Lu Li estimated that it would take six hours.

Supplies, exhaustion, moral and all these other elements could impact Ruling Sword falling out of the battle halfway.

The Anubisaths weren’t the end.

Very soon, a new monster arrived – the Obsidian Destroyer.

In terms of appearance, the Obsidian Destroyer’s head and lower half of its body was like that of a feline animal, while they had a human’s torso and giant wings on their back.

Torvill were rock giants originally created by the Titans to protect Uldum’s secrets.

When the ancient man-eating Lich empire defeated the Aqir insect people and divided them into two countries, the Aqir insect people in the north discovered and even overthrew the Torvill civilization. These Aqir insect people eventually became the Nerub Spider People. The Torvill they swallowed up became a part of them.

In the same way, the Aqir insect people in the south occupied a Titan research station near Uldum, who called themselves Aqir insect people too. These new people were called the Ahn’Qiraj.

Although the Wrath of Heaven troops in the north finally extinguished the Azjol-Nerub empire, and even enslaved the remaining Torvill and put them on the frontlines, but may have continued to be more Torvills hidden in the city of the Titans in Uldum, or in the depths of the ruins of the Azjol-Nerub.

For the Qiraj insect people, in the War of the Shifting Sands, it was the bronze dragons who first gave them the feeling of fright.

The dragons in front of them destroyed wave after wave of troops while incurring little damage themselves. The twin emperors realized that their forces were not equipped well enough to resist these dragons.

In order to make up for the lack of equipment, Emperor Vek’lor racked his brain, thinking of some sort of mechanical equipment that could handle battle with ancient dragons. However, everything he came up with had failed.

Finally, under the instruction of his master, he made a breakthrough in progress, creating this completely new form of life. Although he was satisfied with it, even the Qiraj emperor had no idea of how much dark power was contained inside this mechanical lifeform.

No one knew how the first Obsidian Destroyer was created, but according to legend, Vek’lor dug out some minerals from the molten stove underneath the ruins of Ahn’Qiraj and used that to create one. What surprised Vek’lor was that his master put into this dim-witted creation a limited capacity for emotions and a mysterious magical force. The Obsidian Destroyer was able to absorb and store up magic from enemies before fiercely erupting, giving off frightening power.

This made the Obsidian Destroyer the final and most fatal creation of Vek’lor.

The Destroyer was the victor in the first war. Dragons weren’t used to fighting with those who were adept at ranged attacks, and they couldn’t find a solution to their magic-absorbing power. Nozdormu’s son, Anachronos, sought help from other dragons. Apparently, after that, the Qiraj insect people were sealed up behind the insect wall.

The survivors from that war still dreaded those monsters who had the power to absorb magic.

After the Obsidian Destroyer entered into the players’ camp, the magic players fearfully realized that their mana level had decreased at an abnormal rate.

Fortunately, Lu Li had prepared for this.

“Magic roles, clear out. Let the close-range units fill in.”

The exact roles Lu Li was referring to were Warriors and Thieves. Neither used magic, so it didn’t matter how much the enemy sucked from them.

However, like before, there were still quite a few Obsidian Destroyers who threatened the magic players.

In this war, no matter if it was a Ruling Sword player at the end of the battle, or one of the supporting forces from one of the two other clubs, they all paid a high price.

More and more players died, before running back to where they died to fight again.

After the battle had gone for four hours, some players began to grow disheartened, although everyone had received valuable things from the war.

However, exhaustion was a heavy burden. What they could get from battle wasn’t enough to motivate them to action.

“I am Majin Temple’s Unforgettable Maple, and I want to say a couple words.”

A mage ran up to a wooden frame, and using his hands to make his voice louder he shouted, I see people leaving, I see some people being cowards, I see some people hiding their heads like turtles…”

“Many years later, you will look back on today’s war, and won’t you feel regret in your heart?”

“This is a great event in the game. Everyone is participating in this battle with their own teammates, their own friends, and even girlfriends. Don’t you feel ashamed running from war?”

“The worst it can be is death. Don’t you think that even if you die today, it will be glorious?”

…

…

Combining the use of two Profession skills, along with Alchemy and Engineering, his amplified voice could be heard through almost all of SIlithus.

“What is this? Why is Maple sis being so emotional?” Elevenless blinked, a little stupidly.

“Why is Maple sis so kind all of a sudden? I remember he was still scheming about us before.”

Even those on Ruling Sword’s side didn’t know what this guy was actually on about. Azure Sea Breeze thought it was more than unusual.

“Very easy – he’s been bribed,” Jade Flower Lover said with a sigh.