The Great Thief

An audience was permitted for official matches and many players bought entry tickets; the location had a concert-like setup with a widescreen that live-streamed the entire match.

Analysts were even assigned for the popular teams.

The tickets were sold at ten silver coins each, which was cheaper than the price of a movie ticket, but of course, the time span of a match was much shorter than a movie.

If ten thousand people paid for tickets, that would be 1000 gold coins.

Players could receive a 10% profit from this, which was equivalent to $10,000 in real money. This was no small sum; many contestants were aiming for this money.

Lu Li had also entered the competition in his previous life, but unfortunately, his team members weren’t the best and they didn’t manage to get promoted.

As each individual stood on different levels from one another, it was only natural that they each received a different amount of income.

Famous professional contestants such as Jade Flower Lover and Blood Dagger had no problem selling out all 100,000 tickets.

That would be $100,000 of real money earned from a match.

For teams who weren’t as famous, if would be fortunate if they had a few hundred people show up to their match. Some teams didn’t even have a single person show up to their match.

Shadow Cup Gaming Competition: Team Lu Li’s 14th match.

“This is the last match; we’ll be promoted if we win this,” Moonlight said as he waved his axe with excitement.

“There’s no doubt that we’ll be promoted. After all, this is only the preliminaries; it’s nothing to be proud of,” Lu Li replied.

His words were also aimed towards Wandering and Azure Sea Breeze. The two teams that they led had already been successfully promoted an hour ago.

Both of them had been very pleased with themselves after they heard that Lu Li hadn’t passed the preliminaries yet.

While they spoke, their opponents had already entered the match.

The first to enter was a Paladin, the second to enter was also a Paladin and the third…… was still a Paladin.

“An entire team of Paladins…” Moonlight wasn’t impressed.

Warriors and Thieves were damage-output classes, so Moonlight and Lu Li didn’t like plate-armor classes. They didn’t expect to match up against a team consisting of three plate-armor players.

The Paladin class was capable of dealing damage and healing at the same time. It wasn’t an easy class to deal with.

It would also be naive to think of these three Paladins as noobs, as they were able to win their previous matches.

“I’ll whip them.” March Rain was keen to give it a try.

Paladins were March Rain’s favorite – of all the classes that she could burn mana from, Paladins had the least amount of mana. Besides, the Paladins at this stage all had short legs and they didn’t run any faster than Priests.

“Great, we’ll be relying on you for this match,” Lu Li and Moonlight laughed.

The team of Paladins was only a bit harder to kill than their previous opponents.

Lu Li made some observations before he sneaked up on a Paladin which he believed to be the designated healer.

As soon as Lu Li went into Stealth, one of the Paladins casted Consecration, which caused the ground around them to become heated.

Any Stealtheh units that stood on the area would take damage and consequently be revealed.

Because they had three Paladins, they could constantly cast this skill without any delay between the skill cooldown.

As well as this, Consecration was a skill with little mana cost, so they weren’t afraid about running out of mana.

They truly had the battle-style of a porcupine.

Lu Li circled around them for a bit before he gave up his attempt to charge at them.

The three Paladins held their grounds as they slowly approached March Rain, casting Consecration the entire time.

Their existence was truly a headache.

Moonlight kept a certain distance from them, not in a rush to force a fight.

March Rain waited for them to enter her spell zone before she casted a Mana Burn on the Paladin who charged in front.

The Paladin, who specialized in defense, had very little mana to begin with and after her spell was casted, one fifth of his mana bar disappeared.

Unsurprisingly, the three Paladins sped up their pace and were no longer as synchronized as they were from the start. They immediately saw through March Rain’s plan; this girl had no mercy at all and was trying to burn all of their mana.

At this point in time, Priests were truly the most impressive class!

Given that there was no great difference in gears, level or gaming skills, trying to kill a Priest would be a hopeless attempt.

It would even take a huge amount of effort for Lu Li to kill a top-tier Priest like Stellar Union Silver Radiant. In their previous matches, Moonlight and Lu Li had snuck up together on the healer from the opposing team and used all of their skills to kill them.

March Rain continued backing away at a steady pace as she casted Mana Burn.

She casted Mana Burn as soon as the skill went off cooldown.

If the three Paladins tried to pick up their chasing speed, Moonlight would close in to pressure them.

Paladin A: “Damn, if she keeps burning, I’m going to run out of mana. What do we do?”

So far, they had not run into a Priest who enjoyed burning mana so much, not to mention a Priest who casted the skill with such accuracy.

Mana Burn was a skill that fell from above, so a player with good game awareness and a fast movement speed would be able to dodge it.

However, the three Paladins were afraid of ruining their formation and this lowered their mobility. It was no wonder why they were unable to dodge the Mana Burns.

Paladin B: “We can’t continue like this; we’re getting played by a single Priest.”

Paladin C: “Fight them head on – we’re on the edge of passing the preliminaries. If we lose this match, I’m going to find a balcony to jump off.”

Paladin A: “I have this strong feeling, he’s going to have to jump off a balcony this time.”

Paladin C: “After I die, I’ll come to find you every night.”

Paladin B: “Big bro, for the safety of your butt, get on with it. We’ll cover you from the back!”

Paladin A used a skill to speed up his pace and charged at March Rain.

Lu Li instantly appeared behind Paladin C, who was the healer, following a flash from his cloak.

Paladin B was tossed into a dilemma – he couldn’t decide if he should continue ahead and kill the opposing healer with his leader, or if he should turn around to save their own healer.

However, among the healing classes, Paladins had the best defensive attributes. After all, they wore plate armor and held a shield in their hands.

As such, he chose to continue forward. After he finished off the healer from the opposing team, he would then turn around and rescue the healer on his own team.

Two Paladins went ahead to attack March Rain while Lu Li controlled the one that was left.

It was true that Lu Li couldn’t kill a Paladin healer within a short time-span, but he had the help of Moonlight. Moonlight immediately charged over and the two violent damage dealers quickly killed the healing Paladin.

After they had killed their target, March Rain still had half of her health bar left.

It was now three against two and the results of the match had already been decided.

System: Congratulations, your team has passed the trials of the preliminaries and has successfully become the 6688th team to be promoted.

According to incomplete statistics, over ten million teams had signed up for the competition in China. Those who were able to win a dozen matches were either elite teams from guilds, or some other very skilled random players.

Around six thousand teams had already completed their matches, but Lu Li and Moonlight dragged on the competition because they wanted to give March Rain some opportunities to practice.

Low rankings meant low audience numbers.

The fifteenth match!

Lu Li and his team ran into fairly decent opponents.

When the match began, a Thief sneaked over to attack March Rain while the Mage also focused on her. It seemed like they wanted to kill her in one go.

Lu Li and Moonlight didn’t dare to let them attack March Rain so freely.

Lu Li used poison on the Thief to reduce his speed and proceeded to stun the Mage with the special effects from his cloak. Moonlight used Whirlwind and happened to deal damage to both enemy players.

The Mage took a huge amount of damage from the Whirlwind and with Lu Li’s constant attacks, he quickly fell.

As soon as the Thief left Whirlwind’s area of effect, Moonlight instantly cancelled it, stunned the Thief with a Charge and broke his armor with a slice from his axe.

The special effect from Execute activated and wiped out 20% of the Thief’s health bar, which was all the health that he had left.

After Lu Li assassinated the Mage, he casted Sprint to chase down the Priest from the opposing team.

The Priest wasn’t even able to protect himself, let alone spare the energy to save their Thief.

Following the Mage, the Thief died to Moonlight as well, while the Priest was taken of shortly thereafter.

Their first match in the regular season had only taken them 35 seconds.