The Great Thief

“Hey, go into the thick grass,” Lu Li said. He didn’t really want to leave this girl behind either.

The players who came by were speaking loudly and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Given all their swearing, they were probably young players who thought they were invincible.

“I want to taste roast bear paw. When my dad was young, he would go hunting with a second-generation bear hunter…”

“I’ve had a good time today. I don’t know if there are any bears in reality, but if there are, we should organize a group to hunt them. I can find us some guns…”

It turned out that they were here for a barbeque.

Lu Li didn’t know how to respond to this, but they were in the Bear Hunting competition after all, and the players here were very strange.

He had no other choice but to begin preparing for battle. If they were here to barbeque, it was obviously because of the wood that was all around them. However, if this group continued to travel deeper into the woods, they probably wouldn’t be able to co-exist peacefully.

The hunting knife was large and had an advantage against the bears, but Lu Li still liked using his dagger.

He decided not to bother with his long bow as he probably wouldn’t be able to get more than one shot off, but still held on to his crossbow.

The only problem was that he didn’t have many arrows left – there were only 12 remaining.

Lu Li had to take the initiative to attack and slowly approached this group of unusual people.

Sure enough, they were definitely quite eccentric. He could smell the irony scent of blood from afar, and as he got closer, it turned out that their faces were smeared with blood.

Lu Li held his dagger in his mouth and aimed his crossbow at the player closest to him.

He hesitated and didn’t immediately pull the trigger. He wasn’t sure that he would hit the guy in the head, but this was definitely attract the attention of the others.

There were a total of 13 players carrying all kinds of weapons, and nearly all of them were holding onto more than one. This group of young players must have killed quite a few other players.

Lu Li slowly retreated back into the woods.

He leaned against a tree and waited patiently. Not An Elementary Student was sitting in the grass not far from him and thought that he had fallen asleep.

Finally, he heard footsteps. The person who had walked into the trees was foul-mouthed and seemed to be dissatisfied with being assigned the task of collecting firewood. He wasn’t even carrying any large weapons with him.

Lu Li estimated his position given where his voice was coming from and slowly walked over to him.

He couldn’t use the Stealth that he would normally use in-game, but he still couldn’t help but perform the Stealth action that he would normally.

The player gathering firewood didn’t realize that someone was standing right behind him.

When he stood up with his dry sticks, he felt a hand on his mouth as he was clutched tightly. He then felt a coldness on his neck and lost consciousness without even feeling any pain.

Lu Li slowly lowered his target and dragged him off to the side before returning to his original position.

Not long after, another player entered the words. He was sent to see where the firewood gatherer had gone, but instead was greeted by a dagger in his neck.

Just like that, Lu Li managed to kill a total of four players.

This was just a group of ordinary players after all. Even though there were 13 of them, they had no idea that there was an expert hiding in the woods, waiting to ambush them.

“We can escape,” Not An Elementary Student whispered quietly.

In fact, they could have quietly run away by now. After all, this group of players hadn’t rushed into the woods yet.

“No, we don’t have horses, so we can’t get far. We need to deal with them,” Lu Li said as he put the body down and pulled his dagger out.

Not An Elementary Student was a little scared.

“That’s no surprise; you’re obviously addicted to killing.”

Lu Li’s approach was too clean; he had killed four players in a matter of minutes which caused her to suspect that he was a murderer in real life.

“You can run along the forest – go, quickly,” Lu Li said he pointed in a direction.

After four players had died, the group quickly realized that something was wrong and decided they would approach it together.

Not An Elementary Student was very obedient this time, and marched her short legs all the way out.

“Over there, over there!” the group shouted upon discovering the little schoolgirl and fired two shots at her. This scared the loli and she began running even faster as the rest also started to follow her.

Lu Li didn’t stand up to fight like a hero so that she had time to escape – that would be too melodramatic. He had no intention of sacrificing himself for her, and was using her as bait. He carefully hid himself behind a bush and waited for this group of players to walk by him before aiming his crossbow.

His targets were moving quickly and were harder to hit.

Lu Li aimed at the last player running along and held his breath.

Ptfew!

The player was hit in the neck and let out a quiet sigh, but his companions were so excited that they didn’t notice him falling.

Lu Li quickly followed them and killed another one in the same way.

In addition to the four, there was now a total of six players that had been killed by him.

When he shot the seventh player, he was slightly off. Instead of silently falling to the ground, he let out a deafening scream which brought his teammates back.

The remaining group members looked at him and couldn’t help but stare at each other in dismay.

“There’s someone! Someone attacked me!” the seventh player cried in tears.

The others felt numb and began to sweat. They had forgotten that this was a game, and that their companions that had been sent out weren’t really dead.

However, the bodies behind them had not disappeared which made it obvious what had happened.

“What do we do? How are we going to catch them?” someone asked.

“How did this happen? The little girl in front was just a bait; the real snake is behind us,” the tallest and ugliest one among them reasoned, then asked, “Did you see who attacked you?”

“No, I was running and suddenly, my knee was hit by an arrow. I don’t even know where he is now,” the wounded player shivered. Standing by the gates of death didn’t feel too good.

“Let’s go back. After we kill this one, we can chase the other one on horseback,” another suggested.

Lu Li didn’t run too far; he was lying in a bush, but his face was covered in blood from all the scratches drawn by the thorns.

This was a game, and any pain that was transmitted to the player was just electrical signals. He didn’t need to worry about disfiguring his face. Lu Li didn’t seem to care much about his facial appearance to begin with anyway.

It was impossible to hunt all together, so the players slowly spread out. Some shot arrows at the bushes, but Lu Li remained calm and waited for his opportunity to come.