The Great Thief

“First, we have to clear the aristocrats on the sides. No need to rush – we can pull a few of them at a time,” Lu Li said.

These aristocrats were usually accompanied by a maid, an aide and a waiter. This meant that each of them would come in a group of four monsters. The maid was a Mage, the aide was a Warrior and the waiter was a Healer. The Profession of the aristocrat was uncertain.

Regardless of whether they were noblemen or parliamentarians, they were not ordinary monsters.

Generally, the noblemen and parliamentarians were quasi-Bosses, and the three monsters that followed them were Elites. If they came alone, it wouldn’t be too difficult to defeat them.

If you didn’t clear these monsters and went straight for Emperor Dragan Thaurissan, it would only be a matter of time before you were overwhelmed by the aristocrats. You probably wouldn’t even be able to cast more than a single skill.

This was a rookie mistake, and most experienced teams would not leave those mobs uncleared.

It was actually good that they had three other followers as these were all reasonable strong monsters that dropped good EXP and items. They were capable of dropping some rare items that were normally only dropped by Bosses, so the team didn’t mind fighting them.

Quite some time was spent on clearing out the noblemen and parliamentarians. In this process, they acquired seven rare materials, three Dark Gold equipment and a few Gold equipment. These were distributed among the team by rolling, while the rest were either given to the player with the highest damage, greatest healing or to the Main Tank to compensate for his cost of potions and equipment repair.

Now, it was time for everyone to face Emperor Dragan Thaurissan. Moira Bronzebeard, who was standing nearby, was the person they needed to rescue for their quest.

They had accepted the king’s commission to rescue the kidnapped princess, but Lu Li didn’t receive that quest.

He hadn’t explored much of Ironforge, which meant that he hadn’t gained much Prestige there. In addition, his Charisma values were not that high, so he eventually gave up after a few attempts.

The general story of the quest was that Magni Bronzebeard thought that his daughter had been kidnapped by Thaurissan’s magic. He asked the players to kill the Emperor and save his heir. This was the quest line for the Alliance and was similar for the Horde. They had a quest to pass some information to Saar and rescue the princess. The aim was to unite against the Burning Legion, which was about to make a comeback.

Whether it was the Alliance or Horde version of the quest, the goal was essentially the same – kill Emperor Thaurissan and make sure the princess stays alive.

However, the reality was quite different.

It wasn’t clear how this had happened, but when Thaurissan met Princess Moira, they fell in love with each other.

Moira was a stubborn and independent princess. She knew that her father wouldn’t approve of her love, so she left home and moved to Blackrock Abyss to become Thaurissan’s queen. There was not much recorded about their life together, but it seemed like they actually had quite a good relationship.

Magni Bronzebeard must have thought that the Iron Dwarf charmed his daughter with dark magic. Otherwise, how could his daughter have fallen in love with the King of a hostile tribe?

And so, this was how the quest to save the princess came to be.

The players who thought they were saving the princess were filled with a great sense of justice when fighting Emperor Thaurissan. The only thing that surprised them was that Princess Moira was actually a Priest, and she stood firmly by the side of Thaurissan.

“Dammit, we are here to save you!” Elevenless shouted at her.

The other players felt similarly, since they were all fighting to save her. It wouldn’t have mattered if she didn’t do anything, but why did she have to help the man that kidnapped her?

It was as though Moira didn’t hear them – she continued to cast Healing spells on Thaurissan as he took damage from the players. Their only conclusion was that the influence of the dark magic was too strong.

In fact, there was no way for the players to interfere with how this battle worked. The System had been built around the lore and so the battle had to be fought according to the established rules.

They could either give up the Instance Dungeon or kill the princess.

The former was simply impossible. They were all professional players here and tended not to be swayed by their emotions. Even if Lu Li told them the truth, they would likely just laugh at the lore of the game. Lu Li himself wasn’t that emotional anyway.

They could indeed kill the princess, but this would mean that they would have failed the quest.

The quest’s reward was quite valuable – there was at least a Dark Gold ring involved.

However, this was not the most crucial aspect, as these top players could live with missing out on such a reward. Their Prestige with the Ironforge was already quite low and this was one of the hardest things to farm, especially after doing something like this.

In addition, if you killed Princess Moira first, Thaurissan’s difficulty would be reduced by at least 10 times. The depressed Emperor Thaurissan wouldn’t put up much of a fight as the players killed him.

Dawn’s equipment dropped based on the difficulty of the Boss. Lu Li remembered reading an article in his previous life which mentioned that reducing the difficulty of the Boss by killing the Princess first made the drops almost worthless. In the end, they didn’t even get any Gold equipment.

This was a level 55 15-person Instance Dungeon, and the final Boss on Nightmare Difficulty dropped some Steel items…

If this happened to an all-star team like this, they would become the biggest jokes of the year and their guilds would likely be affected.

As such, Lu Li could only continually interrupt Princess Moira’s major healing skills. As to why he didn’t ask Water Fairy to do this, it was because he was considering her feelings.

Lu Li thought that this would let her feel less guilty afterwards.

Thaurissan the great was actually a very powerful Boss. The tricks he used in the first stage came from his weapon – Ironfoe. His melee attacks had a chance to launch three additional attacks which had 20% increased critical hit for the next 10 seconds.

After this came into play, Emperor Thaurissan would effectively be hitting a player four times with each attack.

With Azure Sea Breeze’s current equipment, Emperor Thaurissan could deal 800-1000 damage in each attack. The four attacks would deal 3200 to 4800 damage with each swing. Azure Sea Breeze only had a little more than 5000 HP.

What was even more troublesome was that he had 20% increased critical hit over the next 10 seconds. If no one healed Azure Sea Breeze, then he would definitely go down. As such, the three Healers couldn’t much other than keep healing him.

Fortunately, the Boss had no area of effect skills at this stage – otherwise, they would definitely start losing players.