The Great Thief

Every piece of equipment that Wings of Dawn had was painstakingly acquired, and each one was better than what Lu Li owned.

Since they weren’t able to easily acquire Skill Points or Enhanced Skills, they invested heavily into the equipment of their players. They had done so by fighting Bosses or buying it for exorbitant prices. Lu Li didn’t dare to imagine the lengths to which they had gone.

After all, Ruling Sword was just too poor for something like that.

Although they had an income from each Stronghold war, there were also great costs involved with a time like this.

The Elite Group, particularly the core one, required a lot of money to maintain. These professional gamers took their work seriously, like it was a job. Not only were they paid salaries, but insurance policies had been taken out for them.

As an official guild, they also had a pay a portion of their profits in taxes.

When considering that the current equipment was merely transitory and that the real game wouldn’t start until they were all at level 70, Lu Li didn’t pay too much attention to acquiring exquisite items.

There were no strong professions, only strong players.

However, among strong players, if there was a difference in equipment, then there would be a difference in strength.

Moonlight had died and Elevenless seemed like he was basically invulnerable. Although the Alfred’s Ingot-Handler Set had its flaws, it was one of the best level 65 equipment.

Ruling Sword had only scored one point in this round, which was considered a complete defeat.

“Don’t worry about it. We made it through regardless,” Square Root 3 comforted everyone after the match finished. He continued to explain, “Wings of Dawn paid a huge price to prepare for this game. The Transmog Set was prepared by grinding a private Instance Dungeon. They bought the Instance Dungeon scrolls from the market for tens of millions of dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money to spend on a single match,” Lu Li commented. He couldn’t understand the thought process behind these guilds.

“It’s not just that. They demanded equipment from their entire guild. Anyone who had equipment that was useful for competitions had to give it up. It obviously made the players unhappy, but Dream 13 paid out a large sum of money to placate them.”

Square Root 3 almost sounded like he was gloating.

“But they beat us in the end,” Lu Li said, feeling unsatisfied.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with how we’re going. We are developing in a stable way,” Square Root 3 said. He didn’t seem to mind that they had lost a game.

Lu Li patted Square Root 3 on the shoulder but didn’t say anything.

With this kind of encouragement, anymore and it would have started to seem like arrogance.

Of course, he couldn’t just throw money at the problem like Wings of Dawn. At most, he could use the knowledge he had from his previous life to complete some quests and defeat some Bosses that would drop equipment. Everyone also had to get as strong as they could so they could at least fight back against Wings of Dawn.

Once Ruling Sword was defeated, discussion immediately exploded on the World Channel.

It was especially liberating for the teams that had been previously defeated by Ruling Sword in this competition. It was quite rare to see Ruling Sword defeated. From the creation of Ruling Sword until now, they had not even lost three games yet.

How did this happen?

Glory Capital was a century-old guild, so there was a chance that they would lose every now and again. When they were in a slump, they even lost multiple games in a row and would even lose to medium sized guilds.

Even when Sorrowless was in charge of Glory Capital, they were a long way from being considered invincible.

Wings of Dawn had defeated the undefeatable and had become heroes in many players’ eyes. Everyone in the guild instantly felt that all the money they had spent was worth it. In fact, they had spent more money that everyone thought.

The amount invested was more than 100 million. If they still didn’t win, their funding was going to be taken away.

Dream 13 had almost peed himself in fear during the match.

Wings of Dawn’s expenses were so high that they were barely able to make any money. They had already accepted capital injections from seven or eight large corporations many years ago. In exchange, Wings of Dawn used their popularity to advertise their investors’ products.

A few weeks ago, Wings of Dawn’s Stronghold in the Thousand Needles was stolen away by Unforgettable Maple. The dissatisfaction of the board had reached an extreme at that point.

As such, Wings of Dawn had to do something.

It turned out that the results this time were excellent. Their guild had defeated the almost-invincible Ruling Sword. This inevitably made the board even happier, so they threw even more money at them.

The next Stronghold War was about to begin.

This was the 16th Stronghold war, which seemed to have been inspired by Wings of Dawn. Many small and medium guilds were spending more on level 60 equipment to gain an advantage in the Stronghold War.

Most players thought that this was a crazy movement that would soon be over.

In addition to throwing money at equipment, there were other business tactics being employed. After acquiring the Stronghold, the guild that got it would immediately invest a large sum of moneyh into it.

At the beginning of the year, there were some changes to the stock exchange rules that relaxed the auditing of entertainment and sports companies. This also meant that it was a golden opportunity for the gaming industry to explode, and there were many companies watching very closely.

Several of Ruling Sword’s strongholds came under attack, but Lu Li wasn’t afraid.

A few days ago, another Fel Reaver blueprint was dropped, so another six Fel Reavers had joined Ruling Sword’s army. This meant that each Stronghold could be protected by at least one Fel Reaver.

The only thing that Lu Li was unsatisfied about was that the method by which these blueprints were acquired had been leaked.

On a day when Ruling Sword was farming Mo’arg Engineers, a blueprint appeared in front of an ordinary team without warning. This team couldn’t contain themselves and were crying out in excitement.

Naturally, there were other people that heard them.

Now, the location where Mo’arg Engineers were farmed was very popular, and Lu Li had instructed the Ruling Sword players to temporarily vacate the area.

As long as there were Ruling Sword players farming something on a large scale, the masses would rush towards the same thing. However, they never stopped to think about how Ruling Sword had only managed to find two Blueprints, so the chances of them getting one was very low.

Ruling Sword, who had just lost a match, seemed to have been plunged back into the mortal world.

It turned out that Ruling Sword’s equipment level was low, which was the reason they lost. Unforgettable Maple’s commentary had such an influence on the population that they started to overrate the value of equipment. Many players now thought that the player with the best equipment would be the best.

A further conclusion was that Ruling Sword was coming to an end, and their Strongholds were destined to be divided up among the survivors.

Those who acted first would have the advantage, and might even be the ones to wrestle control of Ruling Sword’s Strongholds. So, when the bidding phase came, many guilds attempted to acquire the chance to attack Ruling Sword’s Strongholds.