The Great Thief

Water Fairy had to face this Thief Puppet alone. Lu Li couldn’t help her on this one, or else Garona wouldn’t see as highly of her.

Although Garona was nice to Water Fairy, Water Fairy wasn’t her real student. Since they requested a trial, it meant that the trial results would be very important.

You could never be too good in front of an NPC.

Lu Li dealt with three other monsters by himself so that Water Fairy could focus on the one before her. Lu Li didn’t actually need to worry about her at all.

No matter what, she was still a celebrity player and had faced challenges of her own. There was no way that she would become weak just because someone was watching over her. Just by her technique alone, she could make it into the top ten Thieves in the game. With her equipment and skills, she could easily be the top five. Only a few players like Lu Li, Wood Fearing, Blood Dagger and a few others could put up a fight against her.

Water Fairy gave the Thief before her a stab first.

If she had continued to use Gouge after Lu Li had successfully controlled it, the completion level wouldn’t be too low. However, considering that it was a stationary target, her evaluation won’t be as great.

While Lu Li was busy dealing with the three monsters, he was also paying attention to Water Fairy’s battle on the side.

Water Fairy didn’t panic and she wasn’t in a rush to use Gouge either. Instead, she battled back and forth with this Thief puppet. She was waiting for the perfect opportunity to use her skill.

The Thief puppet’s daggers twisted and turned with incredible agility. Its joint movements were silent, and if it wasn’t for the fact that its face was a simple, featureless mask, Lu Li would have found it hard to believe that it was just a puppet.

He hoped that in the future he could take one of these puppets back with him for research.

Of course, it wasn’t reasonable for him to ask for one from Garona now. The game still needed some balance. If Lu Li took a puppet of such high battle standard with him, he would be way too strong. The other players might as well just uninstall.

The Thief puppet dashed in and landed an attack on Water Fairy.

Lu Li didn’t believe that Water Fairy would get controlled so easily, so he stayed put and didn’t try to help. As he had expected, the target that the attack landed on shattered into pieces like glass. The puppet Thief immediately knew that it had hit an illusion.

The real one was possibly behind him!

He turned, but what greeted him was a cold light. Water Fairy decided this time to target the eyes of the puppet Thief. Mechanical units were also weak around the eyes like other units. The System announced that she had a completion level of 96% and had stunned her target for 1.6 seconds.

Her completion level was even higher than Lu Li’s.

Water Fairy did not have more understanding about the skill than Lu Li did, and not to mention, many of the tricks and tips were taught to her by Lu Li. It was just that she had chosen a different timing to him

Lu Li’s Gouge was forceful; there was no waiting. After his Cheap Shot ended, he violently Gouged at the mechanical puppet.

He was also under pressure from a few other monsters.

However, the scenario was different for Water Fairy. She only had to face one Thief puppet and didn’t need to worry about the threat of the other three monsters. She never doubted Lu Li for a single moment.

At the same time, she had also spent a lot of time preparing and picked the best moment to cast her spell.

96% completion level – Garona nodded her head in satisfaction. Water Fairy’s performance relied on a lot of pre-planning and external factors, but to be able to reach such a high completion level still showed that both her and Lu Li didn’t slack off from practicing.

After Garona was satisfied, Lu Li and Water Fairy could finally use their Empowerment: Gouge skill books.

Compared to normal skills, Empowerment skills greatly improved the quality of a spell. A prime example would be the Stealth that Lu Li had already learnt.

Stealth: Instant Cast, Cooldown Time: 8 seconds. Allows Thieves to conceal themselves

until the effects run out.

Empowered Stealth: Instant cast, hides a Thief until Stealth mode disappears. Effect of stealth increases. Under environments with shadow, the stealth effect receives another further improvement. Random special effect – Bat Transformation. After the use of this special effect, the caster will turn into a bat to fly to a designated location within a certain range. Cooldown 2 minutes.

Now, Gouge had also received its own Empowerment.

Empowered Gouge: Gouges the head area of the target, leaving it paralysed for 1.2 seconds. The paralysis effect increases based on the completion level. This skill can only be used when the target is facing you. Damage will interrupt the effect. Random special effect: there is a certain chance to cause damage to a Gouged target without interrupting the paralysis effect. Cooldown 20 seconds.

Compared to the basic Gouge, this was a great improvement. The basic paralysis time had been increased by another 0.2 seconds.

The paralysis effect also improved based on the completion level, which didn’t only translate to a simple improvement on time. There was also a hidden attribute to it. There was a bonus for Gouge towards targets with higher resistance, such as elites and even semi-bosses.

The full 1.2 second duration would probably be effective on regular monsters, but if the target was an elite monster, it would be lucky if it even lasted a second long. Against a semi-boss, the skill probably won’t even stun for half a second. As for Bosses, they were out of the equation. Most Bosses weren’t usually affected by crowd-control.

After this, there was the randomized special effect. The randomized special effect this time for Gouge was quite good.

Probability was a hard thing to rely on, but if you were lucky with your chances, the random special effects were generally very useful. Gouge usually came with two downsides. The first was that it could only be activated when you and the target were facing each other. The second was that any sources of damage would cause the crowd-control effect to be interrupted.

As such, there weren’t a lot of players out there who valued the completion level of Gouge. Everyone used this skill to gain the initiating hand at the start.

Once Gouge was successful, players would obtain the chance to attack first. No one would wait until the paralysis effect was over to attack, and once they attacked, the paralysis effect would end. As such, there was no difference between a 1 second or 2 second paralysis.

But what if the first attack no longer interrupted the paralysis effect?

This would be equivalent to the caster gaining another chance to attack, and was crucial to battles with players at the same level. The Empowered skill that they learned this time was worth the value and Reputation that they had spent.

Speaking of Reputation, Lu Li’s heart was aching.

Since the Empowerment skill was given by his teacher, Garona did the best that she could. However, just because she was Lu Li’s teacher didn’t mean that she was going to give him a Reputation discount. All the Reputation that he had stocked up for so long was almost depleted now.

Even if there was a new Empowerment skill placed before him at this very moment, he wouldn’t have any more Reputation to learn it.

“Teacher, is there anything else I can be of service to?” Lu Li asked shamelessly, then continued, “You now, knives have to be constantly ground to keep their edge. Your disciple is not one to fear challenges.”

He sounded so high and almighty, but at the end of the day, he really just wanted more quests. Water Fairy wanted to laugh while listening on the side.

Lu Li couldn’t help it; his Charm level was too low. It was too difficult for him to receive quests in general, but how could he possibly get Reputation otherwise? All that Lu Li could do was to beg his teacher. After all, his teacher wouldn’t deny him from quests just because he didn’t have enough Charm.

No matter how ugly he was, he was still her child!