The Great Thief

A Pinch of Love and Hate stopped messing around, and quickly jumped from the pillar.

When he saw the two Thieves, he paused for a moment before picking Lu Li as his target. Ordinarily, this was what most players would do. If there was a man and a woman in the arena, then it was the man who had brought the woman in to fight in the arena with them.

The skill that he used was the Druid’s crowd-control skill, Tornado. This skill summoned a Tornado at the target’s feet, blowing the player off the ground and preventing them from taking any further actions.

Lu Li didn’t need to spend much to remove this crowd-control. The Druid’s skills were Nature based, but they were still Magic skills. The Shadow Cloak could easily remove this kind of crowd-control.

Water Fairy continued attacking the Mage with her daggers, as instructed by Lu Li.

She was making use of human instinct. If someone was coming at your head with a knife, you would tilt your head back as far as possible to avoid the knife. At the very least, you would try to turn your head away to break line of sight with the knife.

Water Fairy’s dagger didn’t come down at a straight angle. Instead, she adjusted her dagger mid-swing.

This time, she managed to achieve a Skill Completion that was greater than 90%. This produced an effect that was definitely stronger than what could achieved on Automatic Mode. Water Fairy had never done this before, but luck was probably the most likely reason it had happened this time.

When Lu Li got out of the Tornado, he ran up and quickly got rid of the Druid.

Druid players, regardless of whether they were Beastmasters or Healers, usually liked to jump and move around like a flea. It was very annoying and Lu Li had long awaited the moment he could kill this jumpy Druid.

However, what surprised him was when the Mage, who was actually a decent player, saw that his Druid friend had been killed and actually quit the match.

“Hmm, I could have let you kill him. That might have worked better,” Lu Li said after hesitating for a moment, but this made it sound like he was addicted to killing. Water Fairy wasn’t sure if he had killed someone in real life.

“Oh. Why didn’t I think of that?” Water Fairy mumbled.

Lu Li suddenly felt depressed. Recently, there had been people telling him about pursuing a girl and the considerations that one should take into account.

One of these considerations was that you should never PVP against a girl you were interested in!

If you won, then the girl would be upset because she would think that you didn’t value her enough to let her win. Conversely, if you lost, then she would think you were useless.

Lu Li was completely clueless when it came to feelings – he was a complete idiot.

When other people gave him advice, he would take it all seriously, but the result was that he was instilled with a mess of differing opinions. Sometimes, an old virgin like Azure Sea Breeze would even try to give his own advice, so you could already imagine the outcome.

“What about this team?” Lu Li asked.

Water Fairy was confused and didn’t know how to respond.

“What do you mean? Do you still want to fight 2v2s together?”

Lu Li shook his head before saying, “I haven’t changed it yet, but I’m wondering if you want to keep going. If we just fight each other, then we can go to the single arena.”

“I think we can keep going, unless you don’t want to?” Water Fairy said.

This expression was a little dangerous. It could be interpreted as a threat to break up the relationship that they had if Lu Li decided not to continue.

“In any case, we’ll have more free time after hitting level 60, but playing 2v2s is also not bad. There are very few other teams playing double Thief. If we can make it up to the top of the rankings, it would be quite an achievement.”

Lu Li was too arrogant right now to say it, but playing 2v2s was exactly what he wanted.

Not to mention, he had very great ambitions for Water Fairy.

Most men wouldn’t decline doing something with a beautiful woman, but this woman was also greatly skilled. There were currently not many people that could catch Lu Li’s attention.

If he had to play 2v2s with Fat Monkey for example, he wouldn’t be as excited, even though Thief-Mage was currently the most popular combination for 2v2s.

In the end, they switched to a single arena where there was more flexibility for what they wanted to do. Lu Li created a room and set the password. Water Fairy then directly entered the room after entering the password.

Lu Li could then set the room so that their special effects, Attributes and skills were the same level.

This ensured that it was a pure test of technique. The level difference in their equipment was closed and the number of Skill Points they had was irrelevant.

“For the first try, I’ll just stand still for you,” Lu Li said contently.

Water Fairy rushed at Lu Li and didn’t hesitate to start attacking. She didn’t have a soft expression on her face – in fact, she actually had a sly smile.

The System prompted her that she had achieved a 94% Skill Completion.

This was actually quite a good level of Skill Completion. Most Thieves had difficulty achieving this level, and most could only get above 90% by sheer luck.

After Lu Li waited for the stun to finish, he selected the arena option which refreshed their stats.

This was a unique feature of the single arena. Once you refreshed the arena, everyone’s HP, skills and status effects would all be reset. This also meant that Water Fairy didn’t have to wait for Gouge’s cooldown.

“Alright, now try again while I’m moving.”

Water Fairy nodded and once again rushed to Lu Li. This time, Lu Li didn’t stand around for be hit; he ducked to the left and leaned his head back as the dagger closed in. This was the way that most people would try to avoid the Gouge skill.

The System prompted that he had achieved an 88% Skill Completion.

Water Fairy felt like she could do better. She felt like she had relented a little bit because the look on Lu Li’s face was exceptionally intense this time when compared to him standing still.

“If you practice more, you should be able to get above 90% easily,” Lu Li said calmly.

“What if I want to get it even better?” Water Fairy asked with a sigh.

“Then you need to practice even more, but the main problem you need to address is of a different kind. You have seen low-level dodges, but you haven’t seen the higher-level dodges,” Lu Li explained patiently. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with wolves, but when they try to avoid an attack, they tend to launch a counterattack at almost the same time. This is so that the other beasts won’t be able to change their movements. As such, the wolf is easily injured, but they are rarely seriously injured…”

Water Fairy wasn’t a newbie, and immediately understood what he was saying.

Lu Li was once again a test subject, but he was going to employ a higher-level dodge. This technique was somewhat known by the Thieves, but the professional circle wouldn’t come to a consensus on this theory for at least another year.

If this woman abandoned him in the future, then Lu Li would really have nothing left.

After refreshing the arena, Lu Li twisted his body very strangely as Water Fairy attacked him. As a result, Water Fairy didn’t even achieve an 80% Skill Completion.

Even if you didn’t achieve 80% Skill Completion, the skill was still cast, and the crowd-control would be in effect. It was just a matter of how long the crowd-control would be.

“This seems to be quite powerful! Teach me how to do it,” Water Fairy said excitedly. She felt like worshipping Lu Li. Even though they were at the same level, she felt like she didn’t know nearly as much.

Lu Li was like a treasure cove. Whenever Water Fairy thought that she had finally understood something, there was almost always something new to learn from him.

“The process of attacking someone with a dagger involves an acceleration of your swing. If you are careful enough, you can judge the strength of the attack by its angle, location and speed. Professional Thieves generally don’t accelerate linearly as this would make the attack too easy to dodge. However, in order to save time and maintain control of the fight, you can’t make the swing too tricky. Normally, there would be a two-stage acceleration, and I believe you already do this…” Lu Li explained.

“I think so. I’ve never really thought about the acceleration before – it’s just a habit I slowly picked up.”

“When using the two-stage acceleration, the first is just to confuse the target while the second is the one that actually lands the attack,” Lu Li continued.

“I’ve also never thought about it in terms of confusing the opponent before…”

Water Fairy’s head was about to fall off.

Her pride had been completely torn apart, and she realized that her status as a top star player was slightly overstated. Most of these top players were just using their strong equipment and skills to crush others.

“Don’t worry about it; just pay attention next time. You still have time to get it. Most Thief players haven’t realized it yet, but most people are already doing it. This technique prevents the opponents from avoiding Gouge’s primary effect,” Lu Li encouraged.

Fighting Water Fairy wasn’t something that Lu Li wanted to do, but he also felt like her arrogance was part of what made her attractive.