The Great Thief

Lu Li didn’t open the chest immediately, he knelt down and touched the wet ground.

It was sticky!

The first thought that flashed through his mind was there were Oozelings around. He had fought so many of them today, and this feeling was very specific to thems.

The Oozelings didn’t have hands and feet, so they left a trail of this slime as they wriggled across the ground.

The cave was very dark, but Lu Li could still see the trail. However, it wasn’t the same the ones outside – it was huge.

Was there a Boss inside here?

Lu Li never knew that there was a Boss in Skulk Rock. This small map had never been properly explored, so no one had ever discovered this hidden stone cave.

However, apart from the trail on the ground, he couldn’t see any traces of the Boss at all. Was the Boss not home?

Lu Li had no other option but to settle on this ridiculous conclusion.

Most of the Bosses in Dawn were not designed by the designers to be stupid monsters that stood around waiting for the players to arrive. They all had distinct behaviors and movement patterns.

Sometimes, it even seemed as though they had their own lives and careers, just like normal people.

It wasn’t clear what this Boss was up to, so Lu Li didn’t delay and quickly cast Unlock on the treasure chest. At the same time, he messaged the players outside, ”Be aware of the situation around me; I suspect there is a Boss here. If you see it, help me stall it for 30 seconds.”

Sure enough, the entire Skulk Rock area began to shake the moment Lu Li began channeling his Unlock Skill.

This wasn’t an attack, so it didn’t interrupt his channel, but it did affect the time. Lu Li forced himself to ignore what was happening and focused on unlocking the treasure chest.

The shaking was growing stronger and stronger.

”Boss, we can feel something coming out of the mud!” the players cried out in terror. It was as though an ancient monster was waking up from a deep sleep.

”The Boss told us to stall it for 30 seconds. Everyone, get your attacks ready; we have to stall for the Boss!” someone shouted, finally taking charge of their task.

The players stood their ground and prepared themselves ready to fight.

”Don’t be stupid – hurry up and run away. You just need to leave two Mages here,” Lu Li couldn’t help but laugh. These players weren’t thinking straight; they weren’t going to kill the Boss, so why would they need all 100 players?

Everyone suddenly realized that Lu Li had a point and began clearing a path to escape. Eventually, they had all left except for the two Mages left behind.

Skulk Rock actually covered a large area. They initially thought they had completely searched, but they quickly realized how naïve they were. One by one, the Oozelings in the ground burst out and were swarming everywhere.

Due to the shaking from below, their movements were becoming more and more frantic.

It was difficult conceive of the Boss that lurked in the depths of the quagmires in Skulk Rock. Or perhaps, Skulk Rock’s mud was part of the Boss.

These mobs were higher than level 50, so the Boss would certainly be an even higher level.

Lu Li felt like the two rocks that formed this cavern would fall apart. It was as though he was in a boat in a storm that could overturn at any time, but he stood firm and pressed on.

His Unlock skill was slow, but he remained resolute.

He was past the halfway mark!

At that moment, time seemed to slow down. Lu Li felt like he had been waiting for his Unlock to finish for several minutes.

Something was already coming through the cracks in the mud…

”Boss, come again next time. We need more people to kill this Boss!” the players outside urged in desperation. This monster was a few dozen yards wide. From what they could see, its appearance was exactly like an Oozeling.

Moreover, there were at least a few thousand Oozelings gathering towards it. Even the Oozelings that had just come out of the quagmires were creeping towards it.

As they wriggled onto the body of the Boss, it continued to increase in size.

Were they merging? Or were they being devoured?

The Boss didn’t simply stay put to continue growing larger. Instead, it began charging forwards towards the boulder at an unnatural speed.

The two Mages desperately cast their skills onto it, but it was unstoppable.

It only had one goal – to attack the Thief who had snuck into the area and was stealing their items.

The treasure that the Troll Elder had hidden here now obviously had a new owner.

Lu Li didn’t look up, and the voices in his ear had vanished.

It wasn’t until he heard a ’bang’ that he returned to the real world – the chest had been unlocked!

Lu Li rushed forwards and opened the chest as the Boss engulfed the boulders. He grabbed whatever was in it and turned back into a leopard to run. Before transforming, he threw two bombs into the gap.

After the Boss engulfed the boulder, it began the force the gap between them shut.

It definitely wasn’t stupid – it knew that as long as these two boulders were firmly pressed together, the Thief inside would have no choice but to give up.

However, two bombs exploded one after the other.

This created a crack that was slightly bigger than the one that existed before.

The bombs thrown out by Lu Li didn’t cause any harm to him, but the pebbles that hit him dealt a string of damage.

This natural damage was based on the level of the map.

The explosion of a level 50 map did tremendous damage to Lu Li, and he lost a significant portion of his HP.

Fortunately, he had thrown the second bomb a little further away, so he wasn’t as affected. Otherwise, he would have died on the spot. In the chaos, he rushed out and onto the muddy plains.

”Retreat!” Lu Li shouted.

The two remaining Mages were slow to react. They were relatively low-ranking and had already prepared themselves to die.

However, the Boss had completely ignored them. Just when they thought that Lu Li was done for, they saw him rush out majestically.

After Lu Li had become a leopard, his size was tiny compared to the huge monster chasing him.