The Great Thief

Once again, Lu Li entered Onyxia’s Instance Dungeon and slightly adjusted the battle formation based on the previous performance. It was not good practice to run a club where people thought making mistakes was acceptable. If someone on the team was not eligible, then they would be replaced by whoever was capable of accomplishing the mission.

As for any resentment from those who were kicked out, Lu Li didn’t care at all.

“We were defeated hundreds of times but were still able to make it to the end. Why?” Lu Li asked, practicing his eloquence while everyone else was working on the preparation. “I want to say that it is not necessary to have been beaten up thousands of times before we win a victory! We spent so much time because you all didn’t believe that you could beat the Boss! You all believed that it was normal to be beaten down thousands of times before prevailing!”

“The only strategy to kill this Boss is to do what I say!” Lu Li shouted to all of them.

Although the club had lost a lot of equipment, their gold had seen a sudden increase – two Strongholds were up for taking and 16 clubs had bid to attack them. Ruling Sword and the game company both stood to make a sizeable profit out of this.

The money they earned was used to buy materials and potions. With such a huge supply, everyone would be able to get as many potions as they needed.

With tens of thousands of gold in Lu Li’s leather backpack, the club wouldn’t need to borrow gold from others to repair their equipment any longer. Lu Li had never been so wealthy. With this amount, he paid for all the repair and potions costs for his soldiers.

“Does anyone think the Princess of the Black Dragon is weaker?” Azure Sea Breeze suddenly asked. He felt that something was different after playing for a few minutes.

“Her defense has been marginally weakened, the skill damage has been reduced a little, and the aggro is quite stabilized,” Lu Li summarized. As the commander, he had already noticed the changes to Onyxia within the first few minutes. It was quite obvious that the game had slightly decreased the difficulty of the Boss.

Dawn aimed to become a national popular game. While players enjoyed challenging game content, no one would enjoy themselves if a Boss could not be beaten after playing for a few weeks.

It seemed that not only had Onyxia been weakened, but Ragnaros the Firelord had as well, along with the upper and bottom floors of the Blackrock Tower. Now, even a random team could pass the Nightmare difficulty. The requirements for the Wild teams were still relatively high, but there were many other ways for them to gain equipment, and now, more players ventured to the Trial Tower to try their luck.

However, for someone who was as unfortunate as Lu Li, it was better to save time for other activities. Lu Li had never received anything worthwhile from the Trial Tower.

“Guess we are going to put down the black dragon today, hehe…” Azure Sea Breeze laughed. Shortly after, he was slammed to the wall by Princess of the Black Dragon. As Azure Sea Breeze fell, the battle formation was disturbed and the situation descended into chaos.

Onyxia: “No one dare to lay their hands on me!”

Azure Sea Breeze: “Although the black dragon girl has beaten me thousands of times, she is still my first love.”

Even if the difficulty of the Boss had been lowered, it was still impossible to make Nightmare mode easy. The game was supposed to let the players to chase after each other to make it more enjoyable.

After being revived, Lu Li began to deal with the penalty.

“Breezy, I will deduct five points from you. Does anyone have any other opinions?” Lu Li asked.

“No objection…”

“Of course, no objection!”

“Why do we have to object!?”

“Damn you Lu Li! Why don’t you ask for my opinion? They didn’t have any opinions because you didn’t deduct their points. How could you be so cruel to someone who made a mistake for the first time!? Aren’t you afraid that I won’t follow your lead anymore?” Azure Sea Breeze shouted.

“The minority obeys the majority – 39:1. Well, let’s deduct five points from Breezy,” Lu Li went on, ignoring Azure Sea Breeze.

In fact, a mistake like this should have been avoided. If it happened, the outcome could be devastating. The price that had to be paid for one failure was huge. Although some kinds of potions persisted after the player died, others did not. It was a waste of potions to make a mistake like this.

In reality, Lu Li had showed his mercy to Azure Sea Breeze by only deducting five points from him. Azure Sea Breeze didn’t lack Guild Points anyway, and Lu Li had done him a favour saving his face. Lu Li would have harshly scolded any other player who had made the same mistake.

Azure Sea Breeze was upset, but he went back to fight and this time, was more focused.

For the first time, Lu Li brought Water Fairy with him to the dungeon. No one would care whether Lu Li included one more Thief in the team because the team already had enough damage output in phase 2.

As Wandering said, everyone knew of the relationship between Lu Li and Water Fairy, so it was no longer appropriate to still have Water Fairy always standing by. Lu Li also had to take care of the feelings of Drizzle Court. Otherwise, he would have been branded as a ‘bad man’, which he didn’t want all. As such, this time, he brought Water Fairy together with him to the dungeon. No one objected on having Water Fairy in the team because Lu Li would hold his bad temper in her presence and even his voice was softened.

The team had progressed through the previous two stages very smoothly. After all, they had been trying to kill the Boss for a week, and everyone was very clear about what they should pay attention to.

“Breezy and Under the Sky, you two keep accumulating aggro. Don’t kill that dragon now,” Lu Li commanded. The purpose of doing so was to wait for Onyxia’s landing, so the Main Tank would accumulate enough aggro to pull the Boss immediately.

“Hey, DPS, stop! Can’t you see that Breezy is having a hard time dealing with the Boss?” Lu Li shouted to the ranged damage players. Seeing that both taunts he had cast on the Princess of the Black Dragon were resisted, Azure Sea Breeze looked very helpless. Lu Li quickly the commanded others to stop any further damage output.

“Hey! Under the Sky, Taunt the Black Dragon. Whatever skills you know, use them! The team will definitely be destroyed without enough Taunts1” Lu Li shouted.

According to the command of Lu Li, everyone stopped their attacks. However, before Onyxia landed, the players standing far away had been constantly attacking her, which greatly increased the aggro. Now, the whole team was depending on Main Tank’s taunt skills to change the game.

Onyxia finally landed and her attention was held by World’s Best Friend temporarily.

“Breezy, stop there! Under the Sky! Go and kill the Boss. Everyone else, stop whatever you are doing for ten seconds to let Under the Sky accumulate aggro,” Lu Li commanded. Lu Li was anxious about Azure Sea Breeze as his skills had been resisted by the Boss multiple times.

Bosses of this level were not easy to kill. While the level of Onyxia was invisible, Lu Li had a strong feeling that she was at least level 65. According to the game mechanics, damaging skills would not be resisted, but Taunt was more of a control skill. As such, the probability of Taunt being resisted by the boss was greater.

After a while, the team finally made it to phase 3 smoothly. Before reaching this stage, they had only failed once, so everyone was quite confident.

Phase 3 almost just a copy of Phase 1. The only difference was that a special lava could erupt from the cracks in the ground, which would cause massive damage to the players. Under normal circumstances, as long as the player did not step near the cracks, there would be no major problems.

However, at this time, Onyxia began to cast Fear.

The players that were Feared naturally had no way to control themselves. They would be running around mindlessly, so being damaged by the lava was hard to avoid.

The Fear couldn’t be dispelled, and the Fear-protection enchantment did not work.

This became a headache for Lu Li, so he simply asked everyone to stay away from the cracks.

Care had to be taken not to take aggro from the Main Tanks, as this would lead to the demise of the team.

After all, there were not many places that they could stand in to avoid the cracks on the ground. To keep everyone safe, it was necessary to stay together.

After this, the team was destroyed twice, but they had at least made it to phase 3 in every attempt.

Phase 3 was actually simpler than phase 2, but it was more dependent on luck. In one instance, Azure Sea Breeze was in the process of pulling Onyxia, but was Feared halfway. Onyxia went straight for Lonesome Flower, who had accumulated the second-most aggro. The area where Lonesome Flower was standing was burned into nothing.

“Be aware of your damage output and location. Don’t accidentally aggro the smaller dragons. Healers, keep your eyes on the Main Tank! Everyone else, take care of yourselves, especially the healers. Only when Main Tank is in danger should you go to save him. There is no need to worry about anyone else.”

Although Lu Li had instructed them with these words thousands of times, the team was wiped again and again.

It was a pity to be wiped when they had made it to phase 3. Everyone’s enthusiasm slowly waned as time went by.

In the afternoon, the situation remained the same. Lu Li did not expect that the Boss could be beaten by the end of today anymore, as everyone was now exhausted,

However, the details of phase 3 had been thoroughly studied now, and victory was eminent as long as everyone did not make any further mistakes.

It was difficult to not make mistakes. Otherwise, they would have taken down the Boss this time. Their equipment was not lacking and the potions they had were sufficient. They had collected nearly every type of potion on the market.

“Okay, let’s do it tomorrow! You are dismissed!” Lu Li announced to everyone. Although it was still early, he was not willing to waste time with these exhausted players.

Everyone used to enjoy killing Bosses to collect the First Clear equipment, but repetitive failures ruined this enthusiasm. Once they were dismissed, all of them disappeared in the blink of an eye.

After players reached 60-level, which was maximum level, their pace slightly slowed down. Playing 16 hours per day was not necessary anymore. Their week would be limited to repetitive tasks, collecting equipment from Instance Dungeons, obtaining gold and materials by taking down monsters in the Wild, practicing their Trade Skill, or spending some time on entertainment.

This was the healthy gaming lifestyle. Playing games for 16 hours a day was internet addiction. Before Dawn, there were some games that didn’t limit gaming time and there were several cases of death due to prolonged gaming sessions. Later, new policies were introduced, and gaming time was limited to 20 hours, despite current technology that allowed the players to rest while playing.

“What are you going to do?” Water Fairy asked Lu Li.

“Maybe have a meeting to discuss the Donghua Cup,” Lu Li answered. “Cat Dad organised the event. He has a lot of experience, so it doesn’t matter if I won’t show up.”

The implication was that if Water Fairy had other plans, Lu Li would definitely go with her.

“Do you want to compete in the Donghua Cup?” Water Fairy asked.

“I will apply, but I will probably not participate. Cat Dad said that the Donghua Cup is like novice training,” Lu Li said.

For some time, the Donghua Cup had become a competition for different clubs to train their rookies. Although there were also senior players led lead the team in the competition, the main players were newcomers. Some of them had even not graduated from their training camp. However, many players started from the Donghua Cup, with Water Fairy being the most famous one among them.

After playing the game for a few months, Water Fairy entered the competition.

She was rich and wealthy and recruited a few experts from other clubs. She also deliberately inspected the skilled newcomers of these clubs, bringing all of them to her team. At that time, the major clubs were shocked upon hearing her name.

The first competition they participated in was the Donghua Cup.

Although they did not win the championship, being a runner-up as someone who had participated in an event like this for the first time was impressive enough to make her name spread throughout the gaming circle.

“I won’t participate either,” Water Fairy said. “I have another competition coming up. Are you interested?”

“Another competition? I haven’t heard of any competitions recently besides the Donghua Cup,” Lu Li said. He was very curious.

“Hey…you,” Water Fairy began, feeling a little annoyed, then continued, “Shouldn’t you say yes to me immediately? Your girlfriend wants to play games with you. Why do you have so many questions? I won’t sell you to another person, no matter what.”

Originally, Water Fairy invited Star Baby to play with her, but she was completely uninterested in this competition. Although Water Fairy enjoyed the game, the two girls were beaten up again and again. Star Baby refused to play with her on the grounds that Water Fairy was not single anymore. It was also her idea for Water Fairy to suggest that Lu Li play with her, saying it was the obligation of the boyfriend to play with his girlfriend.

Lu Li was supposed to say yes immediately if Water Fairy asked him to do anything for her. However, Lu Li didn’t follow the rules.