The Great Thief

“They accepted, but I did my own thing and made it 1500 gold,” Square Root Three replied back to Lu Li.

After seeing this message, Lu Li lost count of how many times they had wiped.

This Boss was actually quite strong.

The reason behind their wipes was the crowd control. Furthermore, it was cast at the beginning of the battle. As soon as the melee classes were hit, the aggro was completely lost.

After testing out Magmadar and wiping countless times in the process, Lu Li tried not letting the melee classes DPS attack at the start. He wanted them to wait until the first AoE Fear was over before they began attacking. Everyone stood 35 metres away from the Boss because this was the range of the skill.

Melee classes would try their best to dodge the Fear or use whatever they had at their disposal to dispel the Fear.

It was harder for the Main Tank though. Azure Sea Breeze had to build up enough aggro, so he couldn’t dodge.

The Main Tank would be inflicted by Fear, then the Priests would have to run to him and it, despite being the furthest away. Then, the Priests and other healers would also be inflicted with Fear. Because of this, no one was able to heal the Main Tank, so he would die. After this happened, the rest of the team would follow.

As soon as the king of the hounds made his way into the middle of the cloth-armor players, it was over.

There was another way that they were being wiped other the healers being Feared. When the Main Tank was Feared, the aggro levels would drop. Then, the Boss would instantly run towards the long-ranged classes, which resulted in an absolute massacre.

Main Tanks were extremely important in the fight against Magmadar. They needed to pull him towards them straight away and needed to be alert for the first Fear, because no one knew when it would come. The Priests were also extremely important because they needed to dispel the Fear on the Main Tank as soon as possible.

There was another difficult – pulling the monsters.

Under normal circumstances, the Main Tank would always pull the Boss in a certain direction so that its rear was facing towards the rest of the team. This would reduce the effectiveness of AoE skills to a certain degree. However, this didn’t work here, since the Priests would be even further away from the Main Tank with the Boss in the middle.

A Priest’s heal range was around 40 metres and the Boss already took up 5 metres. Therefore, using this strategy wouldn’t work, because the remaining distance was 35 metres, which was in the range of Fear.

If the healers were inflicted with Fear, then who could heal the Main Tank?

These were all problems that naturally came with Fear. They managed to use these squad wipes and practiced their reaction times and positioning. As a result, they quickly entered phase two. In this phase of the battle, there was another flame-based skill that they had to deal with.

Players hated this as it looked like the Boss was spitting his phlegm on the ground.

The phlegm that Magmadar spat out would ignite into little bonfires. These dealt damage to their surroundings within a certain range. The closer the player got, the more damage it dealt. The damage was so high that no one would be able to hold their own against it.

Obviously, the sense would dictate to not get close to the fire.

However, if a player was Feared, they would lose control of their movements.

There were many times when players were Feared, then ran into the fire. It was fortunate that this game wasn’t that realistic, or else the whole instance dungeon would be filled with the aroma of cooked meat.

The pressure was much heavier on Healers. DPS classes didn’t hope for Healers to heal them while healing the Main Tank as well. Lu Li for example was prepared with elixirs, potions and bandages to restore his HP.

The hardest part about phase two was Enrage. This skill gave the Boss a 100% boost in Attack, while increasing attack speed by 50%. This also gave him a chance at one-shotting a target.

They had entered phase two a few times but had wiped every time.

As soon as they entered phase two, the Enrage effect was renewed consecutively. Remnant Dream alone was not enough to deal with it.

Tranquilising Shot had the effect of dispelling the Enraged status. Enrage was different to Berserk, which couldn’t be dispelled. Furthermore, Tranquilising Shot lowered the defense of the target a little, so it was better to use in PVP situations.

To spend 1500 gold on this…Lu Li’s heart hurt.

However, when comparing this cost to the extremely small possibility of them defeating Magmadar with one Hunter with the skill, the 1500 gold was able to be forgotten.

Square Root Three didn’t reveal his own identity, so the squad leader didn’t know that it was Ruling Sword’s Lu Li who wanted the book.

Of course, if this squad leader knew who the buyer was, then he might have lowered the price much further. After all, there weren’t many chances of building connections with major players like Lu Li. He might have even been one of Lu Li’s fans. If he had revealed his identity, then it would have been easier for Square Root Three.

However, Lu Li and Square Root Three weren’t that interested in building relationships in general. They didn’t feel that everyone should be giving him what he wanted just because of his identity.

Actually, it was more likely that the squad leader didn’t give up on a high price not because Lu Li was the buyer, but maybe because he wanted to test the buyer out. After all, if it was a normal player who was the buyer instead of the leader of a major guild, then the amount that the buyer was willing to pay would differ greatly.

Take a basket of apples that were grown from the same tree for example. Perhaps those people in poverty couldn’t even afford a dollar for a kilogram. However, for those in the richer areas, if the packaging was nicer, then even they wouldn’t complain about ten dollars for a kilogram.

After getting wiped again, Lu Li exited the dungeon and received the book that he just bought.

This book became one of the greatest investments into the Molten Core. After giving it to Bearded Zaza, Lu Li didn’t hesitate to deduct 50 points from him.

Bearded Zaza wasn’t even angry. He felt like he benefitted greatly from this.

This was because he already knew the jaw-dropping price of the book. It was much more expensive than the legendary equipment.

As soon as they began, Lu Li already told them about the value of this skill book.

He wasn’t the type of person to contribute silently. If he didn’t say, then how would the others know the magnitude of their benefits? Otherwise, Bearded Zaza might have argued for 25 points. After all, that was the price that he put in for the book that Remnant Dream ended up taking.

One book wasn’t enough. Before the cooldown reset, the Boss already entered another Enraged state. Now that they had two Tranquillity Shots, Enrage was no longer a problem.

It took Bearded Zaza a couple of tries to get used to casting the skill, so they wiped two to three times. After this, they finally entered phase three.

Phase three wasn’t that different to phase two; it was simply another copy. The only difference was that it was a little more difficult to dispel the Enrage.

The difficulty didn’t increase to the point where Hunters couldn’t deal with it. Theoretically, it was still possible for two Hunters to completely dispel the status, that was, if they listened to Lu Li’s instructions.

Simply put, Magmadar would be a piece of cake if they listened to Lu Li. If not, then this King of the Hounds would be terrifying.