The Great Thief

The monsters were quickly cleared out and they soon reached where Theka was.

It was an open space among the rubble, but there were scarabs packed tightly everywhere. Those who were afraid of enclosed spaces could now rejoice, but those who were afraid of bugs would be terrified.

Among the scarabs, there were also a couple of Sandfury monsters, but Theka was sitting by a slate.

This was Theka’s Slate, and was required in a Horde Quest. The quest had decent rewards, but it was inaccessible by Alliance players.

”Kill the Sandfury Mobs, but don’t use area-of-effect skills. Turn off anything that can damage in an area.” Lu Li had been silent while they cleared out the other monsters, but now that they were before the Boss, he started to exercise his responsibility as a commander.

If this was on Elite Difficulty, the scarabs would be easy to kill, even if the Sandfury mobs were mixed among them. They could just use area-of-effect skills to solve the problem.

However, they had to be extremely careful on Nightmare Difficulty. If anything went wrong, their entire team would be instantly wiped.

There was a monster called the Sandfury Soul Eater that had a unique ability called Exploding Corpse. It waited for a pile of dead Scarabs to collect before raising its hand and exploding them. This ability was fully capable of wiping an entire team.

As per Lu Li’s requirements, they led the mobs over one at a time.

The three Sandfury Soul Eaters were specially taken care of by Lu Li to make sure that they were dead.

As this was on Nightmare Difficulty, the Sandfury Soul Eaters, which were elite monsters, actually dropped some exquisite Silver equipment. The properties were very good, and at level 35, it was stronger than level 30 Gold equipment. Sesame Rice Ball was happy to take the equipment.

A special effect on the equipment was the legendary Exploding Corpse.

This was a one-use that allowed the player to explode up to ten monster corpses, dealing 300% of their damage. This effect alone would double the value of this Silver equipment, and made it better than most Gold equipment at the same level.

The only problem was that this was more suitable for players who levelled often. PVP players would never have so many bodies to explode.

Moreover, it could only detonate up to ten monsters. Compared to the Sandfury Soul Eater’s skill, this was obviously a weakened version – the monster had no such limitation.

After the few monsters had been dealt with, they prepared to kill the scarabs.

”Flower, use Arcane Explosion and run all the way down and back. Be careful not to pull the Boss,” Lu Li indicated at Lonesome Flower after everyone had rested for a moment.

In fact, the Scarabs had a chained-aggro mechanism, which meant that as long as one of them were attacked, they would all flock towards the attacker.

Lu Li told Lonesome Flower to run because the Scarabs needed to be hit by a few Arcane Explosions before they were killed and he would be attacked by too many scarabs if he stayed in one place.

Lonesome Flower didn’t say anything, and just raised his hand to release an Arcane Explosion.

The scarabs were rather weak and immediately dropped to a third of their HP when hit by one Arcane Explosion. This meant that Lonesome Flower could deal with a group of scarabs in three to four seconds.

However, what they thought was a perfect plan turned out to have a few flaws.

Lu Li noticed that Lonesome Flower wasn’t running fast enough and that he also needed to stop every time he wanted to cast a skill. As such, he was slowly being surrounded by more and more scarabs.

His HP was obviously dropping quite quickly, but what was more troublesome was the Scarab Plague that was being stacked onto him.

The Scarab Plague didn’t deal high damage; it was just 4-5 damage for one stack, but they stacked up quickly. This, in addition to the Scarab bites, meant that Lonesome Flower couldn’t last for more than 3 seconds.

Lonesome Flower died!

March Rain struggled to break free from Lu Li’s hand.

He had stopped her from healing, and made her helplessly watch as her brother died within the swarm.

”You don’t lose EXP in an Instance Dungeon,” Lu Li said quietly. ”You can Resurrect him now. You died to a couple of bugs. Are you sure you’re not messing around Flower?”

Lonesome Flower was silently revived before he sat down to eat some bread to recover his HP and Mana. He wasn’t angry at Lu Li at all, and instead calmly responded, ”I just got the skill yesterday and haven’t had the chance to use it yet. When I use it, it feels a little clunky, but that might be because of the Skill level.”

”It’s not because of the Skill level; it’s an Instant Cast skill. Next time, try casting the skill like this,” Lu Li had learned a bit about Mages and how to walk while asking Arcane Explosion.

Of course, he couldn’t cast Arcane Explosion, but he could imitate the action. When Lonesome Flower saw him, his eyes lit up.

Lu Li knew how to use Mage skills too!

What Lu Li was trying to show was simple. He wanted Lonesome Flower to lift his Magic Staff a bit before he cast the skill, so that when he did cast it, he wouldn’t have to do it again. After casting a skill, the Magic Staff would automatically be pressed onto the ground, but at this point, he would immediately cast it again.

This was actually a trick for Half-Manual Mode for Mages. Lu Li had studied a few of these skills in his previous life.

Instant Cast Skills didn’t technically exist for Mages or Thieves, as the release of a Skill required an action. These actions were assisted or forced by the System.

However, if you completed the action before the System forced you to, it would greatly reduce the time to complete it.

All true Mage experts were always exploring the actions that were required for their skills.

”You can go and find a space to practice. We can wait for you.” Lu Li saw that Lonesome Flower already understood and decided to give him some time.

If they didn’t wait, they might just fail again, so why not wait and let him get better at it?

Lonesome Flower practiced for a few minutes and was ready to go again. He once again started attacking the swarm and performed much better this time. He didn’t pause for as long as wasn’t being surrounded.

The Scarab Plague was released at close range, so as long as they were killed before they got close, he wouldn’t need to worry too much about them.

After successfully dealing with the Scarabs, Lu Li and the others went to pick up what the monsters had dropped.

The Scarab Shell was a quest item that paid out a lot of EXP. In fact, this quest could be completed multiple times as the NPC was always willing to accept the players’ scarabs.

It was around this time that a new phenomenon began to emerge – the sale of Scarab Shells.

Those who didn’t have money would fight these Scarabs for their shells to sell for gold. They would then convert that into real money for rent and food…

Those who were rich bought Scarab Shells for the quest which helped them continually gain EXP. They could only hand in 20 a day, but they could usually only gain half a level each day anyway. As such, this greatly accelerated the levelling of the rich.

Lu Li didn’t mind this industry and had made a small fortune with it in his previous life.

Everyone started in this game with nothing and was placed in a relatively fair environment, but naturally, the game could never be completely fair.

The world was never really fair to begin with – those who were rich had the resources to make it easier for them to succeed. But did that mean that the average person should just give up?

Lu Li never gave up on himself, and was sure that he would become rich sooner or later.

As the saying goes, ”I am not part of the rich second generation, but I hope to be a father of the rich third generation.”