The Great Thief

The two teams reached the dungeon almost simultaneously and entered at the same time.

“We chose Nightmare mode, but what if they chose Elite mode? Wouldn’t we be at a disadvantage?” Azure Sea Breeze asked worriedly.

“Do you really think they would be as shameless as you?” Wandering sneered, “Sorrowless is such a prideful person. Even if he wanted to win, he wouldn’t win in such a despicable way. He’s at least three times more prideful than Lu Li.”

“Go tank the monsters,” Lu Li laughed as he gestured towards the two monsters.

These monsters were called Reanimated Guards and wielded both a sword and shield with serious expressions on their faces. Their sharp eyes made it seem like they were the Bosses of this dungeon.

“Sorry, I won’t speak again,” Wandering said.

“Azure, initiate the fight while the others attack the monsters.”

Lu Li couldn’t be bothered dealing with his jokes. Since they had a team of the top players from the guild, there was no need for complicated strategies.

If the team members were weaker, they probably would have only attempted to fight one at a time.

After they dealt with the small mobs, they reached a steel gate. If they didn’t have a Thief with them, they would have to complete a quest to obtain the key. Lu Li forgot what the quest required the players to do, but he remembered having to pay 15 gold to complete it, which was more than what he had made in a week back then.

They could completely bypass this quest with Lu Li’s lockpicking skills.

After they opened the gate, they entered the actual dungeon of Scholomance. Rather than an institution, it was more like an underground torture dungeon straight from the set of a horror movie. There were body parts strewn across the ground and a number of horrifying Undead walking around.

After walking down the corridor, there was a set of stairs with various monsters climbing it.

Most people would want to skip this area by jumping down the stairs so that they could save time and avoid these monsters.

Teams that attempted to do this would experience their first wipe because after jumping down, not only would all the monsters on the stairs follow them, but they would also land in a crowd of monsters.

There was no way Lu Li would make the same mistake.

Sorrowless also chose to clear the monsters on the stairs rather than risking it and jumping down. He had always been a cautious type of player and would rarely take shortcuts. It wouldn’t make too much of a difference if they cleared the monsters anyway.

Both teams avoided the first possibility of getting wiped.

“Sorrowless is livestreaming. What the hell; how dare he!” Wandering was furious.

“What’s wrong?

“They’re live-streaming their dungeon run on a streaming website with millions of viewers. Why didn’t we think of that? It would be such a great opportunity to advertise our guild,” Wandering explained, feeling like they had missed out.

“Why don’t we just set it up now? I bet there are heaps of streaming websites that want to collaborate with us,” Her Tears suggested. He didn’t think it was such a big problem.

“Nah, if we do it now, people will think we’re just copying them.” Lu Li didn’t want others to watch their strategy and dungeons runs anyways since some of his strategies were from his past life.

If he continuously came up with new and efficient ideas to complete the dungeon run, it would arouse suspicion from the gaming community.

He wasn’t worried about the gaming company finding out his secret because there was no way they could do that.

All they could do was to monitor a player’s statistics and see whether they were hacking or not.

“Should we just give them this opportunity for free advertisement?” Her Tears was annoyed.

There was nothing much they could do since they were in the dungeon anyway. If they wanted to do something, they would have to wait until they finished.

“The higher you climb, the more it’ll hurt when you fall. Just leave them and we’ll see how they deal with the shame of losing in front of millions of people,” Lu Li said coldly. It was obvious from his tone that he was displeased as well.

After they climbed down the stairs, they reached a more spacious hall.

“Sorrowless got wiped,” Wandering laughed with glee, then continued to explain, “They came across a scouting monster, but got swarmed by almost 30 monsters and got wiped in a matter of minutes. The entire chatroom is spamming 666.”

This was the disadvantage of live-streaming, because if they were to get wiped, the entire chat would be sent into a frenzy.

“Azure, go pull the scout monsters here one by one,” Lu Li instructed as he pointed at the room. He pinned the position on the map in case he couldn’t find it.

“Wow, they’re hiding so well. So these two are the scout monsters…” Fat Monkey said in surprise.

The two scout monsters were different from the normal variants. They walked much slower, but it was very difficult to tell the difference between them.

Azure Sea Breeze didn’t need Lu Li’s instructions and found a suitable place on the monster’s path, then waited with a ranged weapon.

If Ruling Swords were live-streaming right now, the audience would be impressed with his positioning. This was definitely the perfect spot for him to wait at.

Lu Li had contributed a lot to Ruling Sword’s success.

However, something that others might not have realized was that each and every one of the members on Ruling Sword were extremely capable. For example, Azure Sea Breeze had improved his skills as the main tank to an elite level. At first, Lu Li needed to remind him of his positioning and give tips on tanking, but now, all he had to do was to tell him which monster to pull.

The newcomers to the party had finally witnessed how the number one Main Tank in Dawn performed.

He could pull whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He remained calm when they were ambushed by a monster; it seemed as if he was totally in control of the entire fight.

After the second scout went down, the only remaining task was to clear the monsters in the center of the room.

“Play it safe.”

Lu Li scanned across the room and sighed in his mind. The Scholomance dungeon that he had attempted in his past life had been changed twice in different patches.

Dawn updated the dungeons in the earlier game in order to help the new players catch up.

As such, the version that they faced now was much harder than Lu Li’s past life. There were many more Scholomance Acolytes that casted Fear to drive their enemies away.

If they were Feared and ran around the room full of monsters, they would be wiped instantly.