The Great Thief

“Pfft.”

Wandering held back his laughter. He wanted to go and make fun of Azure Sea Breeze, but he quickly reacted and grabbed the aggro of the Boss.

“Happy, happy little frog, actually a Prince in disguise. The curse can only be broken with a kiss from the princess,” Kitty Likes Meat began to sing.

“Happy happy little frog….” Hachi Chan also started singing.

“Happy happy little frog…” Remnant Dreams stopped trying to tame it and joined in as well.

Azure Sea Breeze was still jumping around on the ground and probably wanted to die on the inside. Fortunately, March Rain was nice enough to cleanse the debuff.

Transform – Transform an enemy player into a random animal, causing them to lose all abilities and skills.

This was the Shadow Hunter’s Transformation skill and it was very powerful. Enemies affected by the spell lost all defensive stats and could not be cleansed nor dispelled by an active. It could only be dispelled by other players. Otherwise, the target would stay as an animal for a whole two minutes.

As soon as Azure Sea Breeze transformed back, Wandering became a cute little bunny.

“Is this a competition to be cute? Jaweika joked.

“Haha, I’d rather be a frog than bunny. Move aside and don’t get in my way,” Azure Sea Breeze said. He did not realize how stupid he looked before.

Azure Sea Breeze ran towards March Rain with tears in his eyes.

March Rain had to keep the entire party alive because of the chain lightning and had no time to save Wandering.

“Don’t save him. I think if we turn him back, the Boss might turn someone else into an animal,” Lu Li instructed, not realizing how much his words hurt Wandering.

In reality, Lu Li was wrong about his hypothesis.

Jaweika was transformed while Wandering was still a bunny. This time, Lu Li instructed March Rain to turn Jaweika back.

“****, screw you!” Wandering thought to himself.

“I thought you were happy to sacrifice yourself for the team.”

Lu Li knew Wandering would act that way.

Transformation mechanics was very complicated and there was a lot of research put into it. In his past life, Lu Li read about relevant strategies which were written by players who gathered information through interviews and personal experiences.

The Main Tank, as the player closest to the Boss, had the highest chance to get transformed. The rest of the party had a random chance of being transformed.

Three players could be simultaneously affected at once, meaning that if Wandering was transformed then there could only be two other players that could be targeted. As a relatively useless secondary tank, it was be more useful for him to be one of the three that were targeted.

Insectoids were also summoned in Stage 2 and this time, they were even more powerful.

However, with their previous experiences, the Mages no longer needed Lu Li to give them the signal for freezing the insects. Lonesome Flower’s Water Elemental was very useful too because he could use Frost Nova as well.

Fat Monkey and Nuo Yu didn’t have Water Elemental pets because learning Ice skills would decrease their Fire damage. They wanted to maximize their DPS as much as possible and didn’t want to sacrifice their damage for a Water Elemental pet, even if it could use Frost Nova.

Stage 2 would be quite simple as well, as long as everyone remained calm when they were transformed.

Lu Li and his teammates were quite powerful and even if they lost a few players, they were still able to deal with the monsters that Vosh’Gaijin summoned.

The hardest stage was stage 3.

“You crazy imbeciles, which one of you want to die first?” Vosh’Gaijin screamed in a high-pitched voice.

As she waved her hands, lava erupted and a fiery monster appeared from the grounds beneath them. This was Shadow Hunter’s Serpent Guard.

The Trolls were an ancient race with a rich history. They worshipped different totems that represented animals and Snakes were one of the most important ones. The Shadow Hunters’ ability to summon Serpent Guards was a demonstration of their ability to connect and converse with the spirits.

Vosh’Gaijin was able to summon it because of the four Trolls that were helping her.

This sudden change of events caused some panic in the Ruling Sword party. By the time they realized that Magic attack was useless against the Serpent, there were only a few players left in the party.

The Serpent Guard only had 300 HP and could easily be killed with Physical attacks.

Lu Li saw that everyone’s spirits were low and encouraged them.

“Don’t worry – we’ve only wiped twice.”

Vosh’Gaijin was actually quite easy to defeat, as long as you figured out all the tricks up her sleeve. Otherwise, there was no reason for Lu Li to skip the first boss and go straight for Vosh’Gaijin.

Everyone responded but not many believed in what Lu Li said.

This was a Level 56 dungeon; there was no such thing as a Boss that was easy to defeat. They were wiped as soon as they reached stage 3 and it seemed as if Vosh’Gaijin had more tricks up her sleeve.

She had summoned Insectoids and Serpents; who knew what she was going to do next?

However, on their third try, the quickly realized that they had overestimated the Boss. The first and second stages were like a piece of cake. In stage three, the physical attackers focused the serpents while the other classes activated their defensives.

There weren’t a lot of physical AoE attacks, but they still had a few options in the party.

Lu Li’s Fan of Knives was quite weak, but Remnant Dream’s Volley and Multi-Shot, and Moonlight’s Whirldwind were very powerful physical damaging AOE skills.

Hunters were nerfed in the recent patch.

Not only did the damage of the pets decrease, but Remnant Dream’s buffs were nerfed and could now only be useful for Physical attacking classes. Remnant Dream was depressed for a couple of days until Hachi Chan took her to a NPC to learn this new AOE skill.

Now, she was as good as a Mage at mobbing.

Of course, with the rise and fall of classes with different updates, Hunters would eventually become one of the best classes in the game. Lu Li remembered very clearly that he was very tempted to play Hunter because of how powerful they were at the time.

During that time, Hunters were able to solo less-mobile Wild Bosses as well as low-level dungeons.

The most important change was that they gained a new equipment in their gear slot called a Quiver which held their arrows. They were the only class in the game with an additional item slot and the benefit was that it came with stats and special effects.

After a while, the game developers realized that Hunters were too overpowered and nerfed them again.

All classes had times when they were very powerful as well as times when they were useless, including Mages and Warriors.

Besides the Serpents, Vosh’Gaijin didn’t really do anything else that was too difficult to deal with. She managed to take out five members before her HP bar was depleted.

Vosh’Gaijin wasn’t the final Boss of the dungeon and defeat was not broadcasted on world chat or announced on the news. Therefore, the players outside the guild had no idea that they had already defeated the second Boss in the dungeon. However, this doesn’t mean the other guilds weren’t keeping an eye on them.

“Did you find it?” Sorrowless asked as he rubbed his eyebrows, not expecting an answer to his question.

“We only know that someone sold the strategy to Blood Red War Flag. Our undercover members in the guild did not hear about this until the very last minute,” the informant Castle Smokes said nervously.

“Smokes, why do you have that expression? I’m not going to eat you or anything.”

Sorrowless was even more pissed off now.

“Boss… I… I..” Castle Smokes scratched his head.

“You’re one of the first that was with me since the start. Why are you so distant from me now?” Sorrowless sighed.

“No Boss, I just feel bad for letting you down. I’m not reporting the information in time,” Castle Smokes mumbled, almost in tears. “Boss, do you know how easily-irritated you’ve been for the past two days? Even big brother Blood Dagger was yelled at by you.

“Even without any progress, at least now we know that Blood Red War Flag isn’t behind all of this,” Sorrowless said, trying to calm himself down a bit.

“I think someone is selling the information to them. We’ve been at it for over a week and it’s not impossible that someone discovered what we were doing. The most important thing is how that secret passage came about,” Castle Smokes said.

“Yeah, if it wasn’t for the secret passage, we wouldn’t have lost over 2000 Elite players. Most of them were the core of the guild as well.”

Sorrowless was beginning to become furious again. They had lost around 1000 to 2000 players and even more after they tried to reinforce them. Glory Capital had more than a hundred thousand players, and losing 3000 was something that had never happened before.

“Let’s just keep on a lookout and see who has the guts to trick two major guilds at once.”

Sorrowless’ voice was becoming lower and lower. He was very frustrated because he had lost so many players because of nothing.

“I’ve already organized some men. As soon as we receive information, we’ll act accordingly,” Castle Smokes said.

“What are you going to do if you came across the person who’s been selling them information?” Sorrowless asked.

“Depends on who. If he’s not affiliated with a guild, then I guess I’ll try to get on his good side,” Castle Smokes answered after some careful thinking.

“Okay, sounds good.” Sorrowless nodded in agreement.

“Also, Boss, Ruling Sword’s clearing team has entered the dungeon.”

Before Castle Smokes left, he also updated Sorrowless about Ruling Swords. He had sent out the orders to keep an eye out on Ruling Sword, Drizzle Court and Blood Red War Flag as these three guilds were the top threats for them.

“How long have them been in there for and have they come back out?” Sorrowless asked.

“It’s been almost an hour. Do you think they hearthstoned back to town inside the dungeon?” Castle Smokes speculated.

“That’s a possibility, but Castle Smokes, as an informant, don’t always think positively about events that are happening. Sometimes we need to think of the worst case possible so that we’ll take more action,” Sorrowless responded.

“Okay boss, I’ll contact the person who sold us Dungeon strategies last time and see if I can gather more information.”

Castle Smokes saw that Sorrowless nodded and immediately ran away. He knew that Boss was in a bad mood and he had been stressed out because of this recently. Was it possible that Ruling Sword had defeated the first Boss?!