The Great Thief

The First Clear news was announced and it was Ruling Sword once again.

Some were angry, while others were cheering and celebrating, but most did not care.

The casual players did not care about the competition between the top guilds. Whether it was Glory Capital or Ruling Sword taking the First Clear, it made no difference for them whatsoever because neither of them would release the dungeon strategy.

Glory Capital’s strategy team did not take this news very well.

After all that they had been through, when the news came out, they completely lost their hopes and became flustered as Gizrul the Slavener who was almost dead completely wiped out the team.

“Sorry, my bad.”

West Whitehill tried his hardest to hide it but the others could easily tell he was disappointed.

“I underestimated Lu Li and Ruling Sword,” Sorrowless sighed. He wasn’t angry, but continued in a peaceful tone, “Smokes, cut off communications with Her Tears. We got played by Lu Li.”

“Why?” Castle Smokes asked.

“You know, people have this innate desire to do whatever benefits them the most. We just assumed Her Tears was unhappy with Ruling Swords because they never let him participate in competitions. What if he never wanted to participate and never betrayed Lu Li? The strategies that they sold to us would all be fake.”

“They scammed our money and our materials!” Blood Dagger was seething.

“But why would he not want to participate in competitions?” West Whitehill was confused. He hadn’t had the smoothest professional career and had to work harder than anyone else to be in his current position.

This was why he was accepted into Glory Capital and managed to kick out Wendelian, becoming one of the most important players in the guild.

“Different people have different ambitions and goals.”

Sorrowless was also a grit and grind person. He’s been around the scene for a while now and when he found out that Her Tears was ranked second on the Arathi Glory Rankings, he knew he had made a mistake. He wouldn’t spend so much time in the Wild if he was trying to make it into the competition team.

In terms of PvP players, there were some that were addicted to killing people, Moonlight the demon was a great example of this. However, the professional players usually wouldn’t bother doing PvP in the Wild because it was completely different from actual competitions.

“What should we do now then?” Castle Smokes felt defeated.

If both strategies that Lu Li sold to them were fake, then as the informant, Castle Smokes would be responsible for all of this.

“Treat Ruling Sword as our biggest threat. I think they’re finally caught up to us,” Sorrowless said seriously.

Lu Li wasn’t aware that he had become Glory Capital’s biggest threat. However, in reality, even if he knew, he wouldn’t have felt pressured. He wanted to succeed in the gaming community, so overthrowing Glory Capital had always been part of his long-term goals. Sorrowless, being such a prideful person, would never allow such a powerful force to continue growing right before his eyes.

Ever since the rise of Glory Capital, there hadn’t been a new powerhouse guild for a while in the gaming scene.

Drizzle Court managed to get a solid footing because of their powerful and rich background in real life. It was impossible for Sorrowless to defeat a powerful and wealthy corporation.

Lu Li just needed to lead a team and win the championship to show that it was possible to defeat Glory Capital. That way, the other Major Guilds will become more confident and there would be less pressure on Ruling Swords to take them down.

Besides being able to appear on TV, the rewards for completing a First Clear were even more important.

Fifteen players participated, which meant that there were fifteen sets of rewards. This was much better than random loot from the Boss’ corpse because the First Clear rewarded equipment for the classes of the players.

Lu Li looked at his own reward, a pair of Legendary Thief Boots. The stats weren’t great and did not compare to the Champion Boots that he was currently wearing. Before learning Shadow Steps, his current boots were basically irreplaceable. They also added +1 to Kick which was useful in both PvP and PvE.

That’s just how the game worked – everything was randomly generated and not all items had godly stats and special effects.

The Thieves in the guild on the other hand would go completely insane for this. They had probably never worn Legendary boots because they were much harder to find than weapons.

Not everyone received something that could replace their current gear. Wandering probably received the best item – a Paladin Chestplate with great stats that increased his Armor by 20%.

Fortunately, it was only for Paladins. Otherwise, Azure Sea Breeze would have taken it.

Azure Sea Breeze received a Dark Gold single-handed sword. He was so mad that he wanted to throw it away. Did the game not seen him get beaten around like a dog?

It was Mu Qiu’s first First Clear and he received something decent which made him ecstatic.

Moonlight’s luck was good as usual; he updated his weapon the most out of all the players in the party. He had received plenty of powerful weapons from killing other players and had multiple weapons for different situations.

This time he received a crafting recipe – Arcanite Reaper.

This Legendary two-handed axe had two Special Effects. Although it wasn’t as good as Wandering’s Legendary Armor, it still had incredible damage stats. It would be difficult to find a Level 55 to 60 weapon that would be as strong as the Arcanite Reaper.

In other words, he could easily burst someone with this axe.

The weapon was the hallmark of a powerful Warrior between Lv50 to 60 and many players still had nightmares about it.

The drop rate for this axe was incredibly low, so the materials needed to craft it were all more than 1000 gold. It would cost at least 5000 gold to craft it.

Fortunately, Lu Li was a Master Blacksmith and Wandering only needed to pay for the cost of the materials. If he were to find a Master Blacksmith on the markets, it would probably cost all of his savings. Therefore, as a Warrior, few players would not even keep it for themselves because they wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Moonlight received the recipe and immediately gave it to Lu Li.

When Lu Li told him that it would cost at least 5000 gold, his expression didn’t even change because he had earned a considerable amount of money in competitions. Taking out a portion of that to make such an overpowered weapon was nothing to him.