The Great Thief

After entering the Instance Dungeon, they didn’t immediately see Chromaggus.

Since the Instance Dungeon had been refreshed, they had to clear out the newly-spawned monsters. While they were doing that, Lu Li used this opportunity to introduce the team to Innocent Child.

“Actually, you’ll probably know most of them. Some are from Peerless City and Drizzle Court,” Lu Li said.

“I understand.”

Innocent Child nodded his head, then greeted the other people.

Old veterans like Moonlight and Mu Qiu already knew Innocent Child well, and vice versa. They had eaten and drank together before. Now that they were all under one club, it was expected for them to have celebrated already. All three of them just needed to exchange a look and they would understand each other.

The main ones were those who hadn’t been on the competitive stage.

This included Azure Sea Breeze. Innocent Child and Azure Sea Breeze seemingly got on well together, as they immediately planned to hang out after.

As for Wandering, Innocent Child looked at him for a good ten seconds. The usually calm Wandering was beginning to feel nervous. Everyone in the game, no matter their age or gender, all called him ‘Brother Innocent’. It was strangely natural for everyone to call him that, but he couldn’t be gay, right?

Wandering thought that he was quite good looking himself, so it wouldn’t be surprising. He was actually a little mad.

“Ah! These two must be Hachi Chan and Remnant Dream! They’re so adorable. Are you sure they’re in high school already? They don’t even feel like they’re twelve yet!” Innocent Child exclaimed as he looked at those two with a surprised look on his face. The outside world had already heard so many rumours about them.

“Hachi Chan! Kick him!” Remnant Dream was angry. How dare he say that they didn’t even look like they were twelve? Did he mean that they were extremely young?

Being young wasn’t a bad thing, however.

Azure Sea Breeze immediately clenched his thighs together. His balls had been kicked by them before, so he wanted to avoid it.

“Dreamy, didn’t you say that kicking people was bad?” Hachi Chan scolded.

“He’s a Druid! He’s going to be stealing your items,” Remnant Dream whispered in Hachi Chan’s ear and encouraged her to go show Innocent Child what they were made of. Remnant Dream had decided that she was never going to loot any more Druid items.

“Ah! It’s Darkness!” Innocent Child began chuckling when he saw Darkness, not knowing that he had just offended these two girls.

On the outside, he was laughing, but on the inside, he was full of admiration for Lu Li. In the whole Alliance, not even Blood Red War Flag, who was the nemesis of Glory Capital, dared to take in Darkness. Lu Li was fearless in his eyes.

It was said that the greatest enmity rose from killing one’s parents or trying to steal their wealth.

However, what about stealing someone’s wife?

Perhaps, in Glory Capital and Sorrowless’ eyes, Ruling Sword was actually their greatest opponent.

Glory Capital had been through many battles with Ruling Sword. It wasn’t only for Darkness’ sake, but it was also because Lu Li had been extremely obvious when showing his ambitions. The Lu Li now was different to the past Lu Li who only wanted to earn money to heal his sister.

However, Innocent Child didn’t worry about this.

Not even Lu Li worried about it, so what use would it be for him to worry? Furthermore, Lu Li’s ambition was a major part as to why he ultimately chose Ruling Sword.

Innocent Child wasn’t in need of money. After being in the eSports circle for many years and being one of the top players, he already had a lot of money.

The thing he wanted was the glory from being at the pinnacle of Dawn.

Looking at the other clubs, they didn’t even dare to oppose Sorrowless. How could they dream of the pinnacle?

Therefore, he didn’t simply choose Ruling Sword on a whim. It also wasn’t because Lu Li simply called him over, or because of his happiness while playing with him. Although, playing games with Lu Li was actually quite fun.

Chromaggus’ den looked like a laboratory.

Laboratories usually had an enclosed and dark feel, but this place was frighteningly large. There were many humungous corpses lined around the corners of the room with bones protruding from them. The rotten flesh and skin allowed the players to see that each corpse had different skin colour.

There was a crimson red pool of blood in the middle of the room along with other strange tools. The whole laboratory gave off a horrifying feeling, making everyone extremely uncomfortable.

It was a large Dragon – a large, dead Dragon.

Nefarian had made Chromaggus and this was his laboratory. Chromaggus was lying in the pool of blood.

It had the appearance of a twin-headed dog, but of course, it also had draconic features.

Perhaps it was the lack of difficulty from the previous four Bosses that made everyone think that this would be simple too. Therefore, everyone was quite relaxed, as if Chromaggus was already in their grasp.

“You guys have all looted the hourglasses, right?” Lu Li sighed. He couldn’t help but think that they were in for a rude awakening when the fight began.

He had already asked everyone to loot all the hourglasses that dropped from the monsters from before.

“All done,” Remnant Dream reported. She was the specialised looter in the team. While she didn’t really have a part to play when they were all clearing monsters, her lucky little hand was not only applicable to Bosses. If other players could loot one roll of cloth from the monsters, she would be able to loot two.

From the First Clear on the Nightmare difficulty of an Instance Dungeon of this calibre, she would be able loot Dark Gold items from the smaller monsters. A considerable number of the Dark Gold items in the guild’s storage had been dropped from smaller monsters.

“Wow! There’s quite a lot!” Lu Li exclaimed as he looked at the trade window and saw that there were around 300 hourglasses. He was a little surprised. Fortunately, the hourglasses were in stacks of 100, otherwise, he wouldn’t have enough storage slots.

The words on the hourglasses were fairly simple: “Use: Heals user from Brood Affliction: Bronze.”

There were five debuffs that Chromaggus could inflict on the whole team.

Firstly, there was Brood Affliction: Bronze, which immobilised the target for 4 seconds. This debuff wasn’t like a Sickness or Curse, so they had to use the hourglasses to dispel the effect.

Lu Li gave ten hourglasses per Main Tank, five hourglasses per Priest, then distributed two or three hourglasses to the rest of the players.

Only 30 to 50 hourglasses in total were needed, but this meant that they only had five or six attempts at this Boss. As soon as they run out of hourglasses, they wouldn’t be able to continue fighting.

Although the monsters were being refreshed, the refresh speed was slow. Even continuous grinding for a few days might not even let them acquire this many hourglasses.

Brood Affliction: Black. Target receives 100% more damage when hit by a fire-based attack.

This was a Curse, so Mages and Druids could dispel it.

Brood Affliction: Red. Causes 50 fire damage every 3 seconds. Stackable.

This was a non-lethal skill and was a Sickness, so Paladins and Priests could dispel it.

Brood Affliction: Blue. Decreases target movement speed to 70%. Decreases casting speed to 50%. Decreases 50 mana per second.

This was the debuff that was the most annoying, especially for Hunters. The Blue Affliction needed to be dispelled immediately by either a Priest or Paladin and was useless against melee classes.

Brood Affliction: Green. Deals 250 poison damage every 5 seconds. After being afflicted with this debuff, the victim’s HP would quickly drop, so they needed to immediately dispel it.

These five debuffs posed the biggest problem.

Besides these debuffs, the Boss also had five AoE skills. These were Time Lapse, Frost Burn, Ignite Flesh, Corrosive Acid and Incinerate. It would choose two skills out of these five every battle. Each skill had a 1-minute cooldown.

These AoE skills dealt fairly high damage, so the other classes had to escape besides the Main Tank.

The one that required the most attention was Time Lapse. This skill would immobilise the target and reset the aggro in that time. When the Main Tank was hit with this skill, it was likely for the Boss to run towards the long-ranged DPS players or healers.

This was why they needed more Main Tanks if the Boss had Time Lapse.

No one knew the skills that the Boss would have, so more Main Tanks were placed in the team just in case. In Lu Li’s previous life, Chromaggus had already been nerfed multiple times, so they only needed two Main Tanks.

Lu Li had read that four Main Tanks were required in the earlier versions of the Instance Dungeon, but the current team didn’t need that many. They already had Azure Sea Breeze, Wandering and World’s Best Friend – three top-tier MTs with exquisite items and good mechanics. These three Main Tanks would outmatch any four Main Tanks in any other guild.

Lu Li needed to protect the Priests, Paladins and Druids, since they were responsible of dispelling the debuffs.

Chromaggus’ damage from his AoE skills was terrifyingly lethal. The healers were required to heal while also keeping an eye on the debuffs, so there was immense pressure on them.

As for the DPS classes, they were not as powerful as yesterday. After all, they had the Dragon Slayer’s Roar yesterday and also didn’t have as many Thieves and Berserkers this time. They only had two Berserkers, and as for Thieves, excluding Lu Li, there was only Water Fairy, Scarlet Red Moon and Cain’s Left Hand.

One other class that was worth mentioning would be the Hunters. If they didn’t have Hunters to use Tranquilising Shot, then this run would have been impossible.

Lu Li had given the team six chances in total. The first three times would be to test out the Boss’ skills, then the next two attempts would be to try and work together the best they could. Then, they would try to clear the Boss in the final attempt. If they couldn’t clear it in these six times, then they couldn’t do anything else.

Prior to this, Lu Li had asked the teams that were running through the Lower Blackrock Instance

Dungeons to collect Spider Web Glands, which could dispel a poison effect.

The Spider Web Gland was not only used to deal with Brood Affliction: Bronze, but it was also effective against Brood Affliction: Green.

However, the drop rate of this was simply too low. It wasn’t like the hourglasses, which dropped in bunches. Ruling Sword had so many teams clearing Lower Blackrock, but they only had around 100 in the guild storage. It would be generous to say that these could last them two runs of this Instance Dungeon.