The Great Thief

System: Congratulations to Ruling Sword who have managed to achieve the First Clear on Demon Mage Allistarj under the leadership of Lu Li!

The Boss let out one last unwilling cry before his body disappeared with a flash of arcane light. A black treasure chest flew out into the air and landed on the ground. It was surrounded by a number of the players’ corpses. Even though they had defeated the Boss, the final Berserk had killed resulted in quite a few deaths.

Those who had died didn’t gain any EXP and there were quite a few players from Ruling Sword in that situation.

However, those losses were nothing compared the success of defeating the Boss.

Lu Li hadn’t considered it, but his biggest achievement was not from what the Bosses had dropped, but the fact that he had defeated three Bosses.

In half a day, they had killed three level 60 Wild Bosses as a single guild. The regular players were definitely envious about how many Epic items were dropped and the leaders of the other guilds would have been confused as to how this was done.

The difficulty of a Boss in the Wild was generally higher than that of an Instance Dungeon Boss. Not only were these Bosses stronger, but you also had to deal with external influences.

It didn’t matter how strong the Boss was, because you could always bring more players. With enough players, you could defeat any Boss. The secret was in preventing your competitors and the random players from stealing the last hit. Even if they couldn’t get at the Boss, they could also grab the equipment that the major guild’s elite players dropped after dying.

This was why it was not easy for a major guild to clear a Wild Boss, and it was even more outrageous to defeat three in a row.

Currently, every guild thought that every other guild must have been doing very well, because they appeared to be comfortable with allowing Ruling Sword to defeat three powerful level 60 Bosses.

However, there were some guilds that thought that Ruling Sword was so powerful now that they were untouchable.

Square Root 3 later analysed the statistics to find that after the event, at least ten thousand players flocked to join Ruling Sword. These players included some solo players and small Mercenary Groups. Ruling Sword took advantage of this opportunity to select a few hundred powerful players. Although the number that joined Ruling Sword was ultimately small, their strength was increased significantly.

Lu Li was one of the players that didn’t die, so he gained a plentiful amount of EXP, but unfortunately, he still didn’t receive a Skill Point.

Although these three Bosses were not demons, they all had demon blood because they had pledged allegiance to a demon. This allowed Lu Li to give his Supreme Ring a minor upgrade, but the proper upgrade was still a long way away.

He was a little worried that he still had to find the right rare materials and altar in order to complete the next upgrade.

Because of how difficult this upgrade was to acquire, Lu Li had reason to believe that the next upgrade of this Supreme Ring would make it a Legendary item.

Common, Bronze, Steel, Silver, Gold, Dark Gold, Epic Legendary… perhaps there were even higher grade items like Semi-Artifact or Artifact, but he didn’t know for sure. After all, even though he had experienced rebirth, he had never seen even a Semi-Artifact.

He placed his hope of upgrading the ring in the Outlands, where everything was level 60 or above.

There were four players in the Elite Group that were rewarded with a Skill Point. Naturally, they were happy as these points were quite hard to come by. It wasn’t just the top players that were eligible for these Skill Points – there were more than 400 players, but only four of them got one.

“Healers revive the players. Dreamy, go and loot the equipment. Everyone else return to the city,” Lu Li directed upon seeing the secret area beginning to warp.

If the secret area collapsed, there were two possibilities. The first was that the players would get spat out. There were probably many players outside the Mage Tower waiting for them who would target them in frustration.

The second option was that they would be torn into pieces as the space collapsed.

Neither option was something he wanted to see, so it was best that they quickly retreated to prevent these outcomes.

Remnant Dream saw Lu Li’s serious face, so she didn’t dawdle. She quickly looted the equipment and immediately stood up to start channelling her Hearthstone. Those quick actions stunned Lu Li; it almost seemed like she was trying to run away with the equipment.

After most of the players left, only Lu Li and Water Fairy remained. Water Fairy was curiously watching Lu Li as he stayed behind.

“Generally speaking, there will be something in the centre of the secret area. I’m going to have a look,” Lu Li said.

The last time he found the centre of a secret area, there was a World Tree. There, he had received a sapling. He didn’t know what to expect from it in the future, but he was continually investing gold coins and his efforts into cultivating this sapling.

Allistarj’s secret area was much smaller compared to the last time, but since it was still a secret area, it could still hold something worthwhile.

Because of its small size, Lu Li and Water Fairy didn’t have to look for long. They soon found a book under the floor.

Forbidden Book!

Lu Li was dumbfounded. Were these the notes that Allistarj inherited from his master on the forbidden magic? What could this be used for? Could it be used for magical experiments? Lu Li had never heard of such a thing in Dawn – could Mage players even perform magical experiments?

Unfortunately, Lu Li was overthinking it.

Forbidden Book: Intelligence +80, Constitution +40, Critical Hit +25%, 2 Slots. Special Effect 1: Mana Recovery regeneration increased by 20%. Special Effect 2: Randomly summon a demon to fight for you. Lasts 30 seconds, 2 hour cooldown. Equipment Requirement: Level 60. Durability 420/420.

Inscribed on the bottom of the item were two sentences.

“I suddenly thought of Dalaran and here are some things I remembered. Can be upgraded (1/3). Need to kill a certain number of monsters (the monster’s levels must not be less than the user’s level 0/10)”

This piece of equipment did not contain the notes in the story. However, Lu Li wasn’t disappointed as he didn’t expect to acquire the notes for forbidden magic. They probably wouldn’t have been worth much more than an exquisite item anyway.

Some players thought that this item was also quite ordinary, but since it was upgradeable, it had potential.

Lu Li wasn’t really in the hurry to upgrade this item. He had so many other pieces of exquisite equipment.

The Book of the Dead that March Rain was carrying was one example.

Book of the Dead (Epic): All Attributes+20, Intelligence+10%, 2 slots, Special Effect 1: Ring of Glory, this ring-type ability boosts the mana regeneration speed of the user and their ally within the area of the ring. Special Effect 2: Earthquake, knocks up all enemy units within 8 yards, causing them to fall and stunning them for 3 seconds, cooldown 10 minutes. Special Effect 3: Summon Skeleton. Summon a skeleton that will fight for you for 5 minutes, cooldown 1 minute. Required Level 50, Priest only, Durability 280/280.

This level 50 Epic equipment seemed better than this Forbidden Book.

However, the person who thought this just didn’t understand the Forbidden Book’s second Special Effect.

As someone who had experienced Rebirth, Lu Li had the opportunity to hear some past player anecdotes.Lone Smoker Long from Purple Lunar Paradise was once ambushed by an enemy club. Since it was an Ambush, it was a difficult situation and even a master like him struggled to escape.

What threw his attackers off was that he summoned a magical mech.

A unit from the future of the game had appeared from a dark portal and was slaughtering everyone in sight.

This powerful machine was made by the Mo’arg mechanics. These were machines that used brute force and weren’t particularly intelligent, so they had to be given instructions. In terms of strength, their defense was higher than an Infernal and they could even be said to be a better version, but the cost of manufacturing them was very high. There were only a few of them in all of the Burning legion.

Since the summon was a magical mech, what happened next was obvious.

The incident put Purple Lunar Paradise in the limelight. After all, a magical mech was almost invincible to most players. Even though Lu Li had been reborn, he would still get chased around by this monster. It didn’t matter if you were a regular or a star player – you would be killed with a single hit.

It wasn’t until Lone Smoker Long told everyone the truth that they found out it was just a misunderstanding.

There was a special effect on his magic staff that could ‘summon a random demon unit to fight for you’. Usually, it was just a small monster like a succubus, but if you were lucky, you could summon something like a Doomguard.

That time, he got lucky enough that he summoned the magical mech.

He was shocked too.

There were also many other rumours floating about. For example, some people claimed to have seen Lone Smoker Long summoning an abyss demon. There were even more ridiculous claims like someone saying that they saw him summon Sargeras. Whether it was Sargeras, Kil’Jaeden or Archimonde, Sargeras was a Titan while Kil’Jaeden and Archimonde were from Eredar and were ancestors of the Draenei.

Getting a random summon was quite unpredictable and you never really knew what would be summoned.

In theory, a Dreadlord-category demon like Rakh’likh could also be summoned. If it was summoned, it absolutely had to obey the orders of the user.

Even if it was only for 30 seconds, it was more than enough to overwhelm an elite team of players.