The Great Thief

The boss still had 200 HP, while he was left with only half of his health bar. If the Boss wasn’t defeated instantly, he would certainly be dead.

Furthermore, Serpentis could also heal himself.

Grasping the chance that Sesame Rice Ball had created with his death, Lu Li appeared beside the Boss, side stepped, raised his arms, spun sideways, gathered all the strength that he could muster from half of his body and stabbed Serpentis in the back.

This strike, which was dealt with a fluidity that Lu Li had never felt before, dealt 216 damage to Serpentis.

Lu Li saw the numbers that floated into the air and felt a cold hand grip his heart.

Serpentis still had 241 hit points left! He wasn’t dead?

If Serpentis hadn’t died, then the one who died would definitely be him. After all, Serpentis had an incredibly fast attack speed; there was no chance left for him to land another attack.

However, Lu Li’s anticipated death never arrived. He made a subconscious swing before Serpentis turned around which happened to land.

-45!

This was from a Shadowstrike with a Skill Completion of less than 80%. Lu Li should’ve just found a tree and hung himself.

However, it was this subconscious attack that finally took down the Boss.

Serpentis took two staggered step as he held his grudging gaze on Lu Li, then fell face-flat on the floor and turned into a pile of smoldering ashes.

System: Serpentis has been successfully slain, Experience has been rewarded, Reputation has been rewarded.

Serpentis was a high-level boss and Lu Li was the only one who had received the EXP. This pushed his EXP bar forward by a huge chunk.

On Level Rankings, he was number 32nd .

Azure Sea Breeze and Lonesome Flower were 12th and 19th, respectively.

Yesterday, Azure Sea Breeze and Lonesome Flower were still within the top ten.

However, this couldn’t be helped – they had spent half a day in the Dungeon, only to gain about 10% EXP.

Players who focused on leveling never entered Dungeons in the game’s starting stages. They would always be in the wild, training with a bunch of other people.

There would be elite teams from guilds who would look after their gear.

An entire day spent out in the wild would give them at least half a level’s worth of experience. Even if they were to kill monsters one by one, they would still gain around 20-30% of their EXP bar.

With bombs in his storage, Lu Li wasn’t the least bit concerned about leveling up. Instead, he dragged out the battle record.

System: Backhand Backstab 95% completion, dealt 250% skill damage, target paralyzed for 0.5 seconds.

Paralyzed for 0.5 seconds - that explained what had happened.

Shadowstrike was an average damaging skill. No matter what level of completion was achieved, there was no way it could have crowd-controlled the boss. As such, from the very start to the very end, there was no way that Lu Li could’ve stunned the boss.

However, the finishing move was different. While a high Skill Completion Slit Throat left a bleeding effect, a high Skill Completion Backhand Backstab would stun. This was simple logic.

All this time, Lu Li had always focused on practicing Shadowstrike, Backstab and Slit Throat. Ambush and Backhand Backstab were skills that he didn’t use as much.

This was especially the case for Backhand Backstab, as it had a very strict requirement with regards to the player’s movement. The player was required to position themselves beside the boss and had to spin their body, while their dagger had to be facing backwards. These series of actions had to be completed to have a chance at achieving a high Skill Completion for Backhand Backstab.

Adding in this skill to an attack sequence would waste quite a bit of time. For people like Lu Li, who aimed for a fast tempo, Backhand Backstab would only mess up their rhythm.

Lu Li had never achieved a completion level of 90% or higher for the skill, so it was hard for him to use the paralyze effect on any Bosses.

Strangely, everything about the skill seemed right to him this time. Lu Li reflected upon the battle; it must have been his intense focus that made everything fall into place at the right time.

It seemed like the skill didn’t waste as much time as he had initially imagined – he completed the series of actions required for a Backhand Backstab almost instantly.

“Lu Li, calling on Lu Li. Did the boss drop anything good?” Azure Sea Breeze’s voice cut through Lu Li’s deep thoughts.

Lu Li still didn’t know how to make Goblin Jumper Cables and obviously, Thieves didn’t have any resurrection abilities, so everyone who died had to run to their corpse again.

“I haven’t looked yet. I was waiting for you guys?” Lu Li said as he sat down slowly.

It was only until now that he started to feel the sweat and the trembling of his hands and feet.

Dawn designed this aspect of the game to be very close to reality. Mental exhaustion would be reflected in the body, and included symptoms of spasms and sweating.

Some monsters along the way had already respawned, but only in small numbers. They couldn’t possibly stand in the way of nine excited people.

It didn’t take long for Lu Li to see his dead team members again.

“The loot could’ve disappeared, you know.” Wandering glanced at Lu Li, which was truly terrifying when combined with his beauty.

Lu Li was glad that his sexuality is straight.

“It takes half an hour. Remnant Dream, take a look at what the boss dropped.” After countless experiences, it had become a solid truth that what a Boss dropped was dependent on who touched its corpse.

Remnant Dream could barely wait; these had always been her best moments in Xin Xin Mercenary Group.

Not even caring about the wounds on Serpentis and the blood that was spilled all over the floor, the little girl rushed up to the corpse and started searching for their spoils of war.

“What’s this material? Corrupted Demonskin,” Remnant Dream said, pulling out a piece of leather.

“Tailors can use it to make cloth and leather armour. The equipment that is made comes with very high defense attributes and sometimes, it may even come with special damage-absorption effects. It’s a pretty good item,” Lu Li explained.

“Mystic’s Sphere. Wow, never seen this one before. The description says it’s an off-hand equipment,”

This girl was always interested in the best-quality gear. She often looked up relatable threads in the forums, which in return, gave her a better taste in these sorts of things.

Lu Li was struck by a thought and asked Remnant Dream to pass over the gear.

Mystic’s Sphere (Silver): Casting Speed+3%, Spell Effects+5%.

These were two very dull attributes, and there was nothing else included in the description, not even level requirements or durability.

“This item is for spell casting classes, but give it to March first.” Lu Li gave the item to March Rain and nobody objected.

Lu Li didn’t make this decision from a biased perspective. In Dawn, the Mystic’s Sphere was classed as an off-hand gear, which was similar to a Knight’s shield.

With the existence of off-hand gear, it was natural for the game to also have main-hand gear and two-handed gear.

Under normal circumstances, two-handed gear could not be equipped at the same time as off-hand gear. Lonesome Flower and Sesame Rice Ball were both equipped with two-handed staves. Neither of them could equip this off-hand item.

On the other hand, March Rain used a LV15 Silver-grade hammer, but had nothing in her off-hand.

An extra equip meant improvement, and it was clear as day that a good healer was the deciding factor between victory and defeat for the team.

“Is this item not good? Why do you look unhappy?” Azure Sea Breeze asked in an confused manner.

“I’m not unhappy.” Lu Li was not unhappy, but wasn’t excited either. After so much effort, on top of taking the first clear for the boss, it was hard for him to be satisfied with one Silver-grade equip.

Usually, it was very rare for Heroic-difficulty Dungeons to drop two Silver-grade equips at once.

As he thought this, the system decided to defy his expectations.

“Wow, a mold! I finally looted a mold!” Remnant Dream screamed with excitement.

Hachi Chan immediately ran up and hugged her as they screamed and jumped around.

Everyone had put an immense amount of effort into defeating the Boss, so the excitement was clearly visible on their faces when they heard the good news.

“Didn’t the system already reward you with a mold? What’s with all this fuss?” Lu Li was actually very excited too, but he had a steadier personality and was able to pretend as if nothing had happened.

It would be inappropriate if he jumped and screamed like a little girl.

“How can it be the same? The system was so shameless; all the rewards were LV25 molds. We don’t even know when we’ll be hitting level 25,” Remnant Dream reasoned.

The system was generous and gave out thousands of Silver-grade molds during the Meisnera Output Battle.

Millions of people attended the battle and ten thousand molds were given out as rewards, which was a pretty high ratio.

Besides Lu Li, everyone in the Xin Xin Mercenary Group had participated in the event and had received a mold.

Unfortunately, it could only be used at LV25, which left many quite disappointed.

“Stop jumping. Pass it over.” Lu Li finally couldn’t resist the temptation and snatched over the Mold. Based on its appearance, it was a Dagger!