The Great Thief

Truthfully speaking, they were simply not strong enough.

There was a problem – changing the team composition wasn’t enough. Even if they had the ideal composition, they couldn’t improve equipment-wise.

Replacements were only replacements. Besides some whose classes weren’t needed, the majority of them didn’t have good-enough equipment to join the main team, so they were only capable enough to be a replacement.

How painful!

Lu Li understood and realised the flaws of their guild; they could only tackle so many Bosses. From 10 people to 15 people, it was fairly easy to compose a team, but now that it was at 40 people, they began to struggle to fill the slots.

What if they needed 80 people? The Stronghold Battles required 80 people. When that time came, would Ruling Sword still be able to stay ahead?

To take things even further, what if they eventually needed 200 people, or 500 people? They would definitely be lacking then.

The Ruling Sword now was like an egg that from afar seemed flawless. However, upon closer examination, there were tiny cracks, and a magnifying glass would expose its flaws even further.

“Borrow!”

The team composition was fine, so the problem was with the equipment.

The equipment on the market was not strong enough, so the next best option was to borrow equipment from their allied guilds. Drizzle Court and Peerless City wouldn’t mind, since they were both allies. However, they sold the strategies for the dungeons, so that wouldn’t look too good if they decided to sell the strategy despite borrowing their equipment.

They gathered their Legendary items, and Lu Li successfully borrowed them. Then, he distributed them within the team.

After equipping the new items, even if they didn’t have a full set of Legendary items, their strength increased by a tremendous amount. This was the result of the fusion of the three guilds.

Lu Li didn’t know what Boss Glory Capital was up to, but there was something that he was certain of. Glory Capital’s equipment was definitely better than theirs. There were also many replacements, which only added to their strength. The advantage that Ruling Sword had now was limited. After all, he hadn’t fought this Instance Dungeon before in his previous life, so the knowledge he had compiled was from rumours and things that he saw.

However, equipping new and powerful items didn’t mean that they steamrolled the Boss immediately.

The players were instantaneously more powerful, but they needed to adjust to the new equipment accordingly. This meant that they grinded this Boss for the whole day, but were unable to defeat it.

They continued on the second day, because they didn’t have time to waste.

Rumours about the advancement in Instance Dungeons were flying everywhere. Some said that Wings of Dawn was already at Ragnaros, while some said that Seventh Heaven didn’t care about their reputation anymore and decided to tackle the Elite difficulty of the Molten Core. If they couldn’t take the First Clear, they would rather no one have it. There were also rumours that Glory Capital had invested over a few million dollars on this Instance Dungeon alone.

The main attraction was undoubtably the Molten Core.

Ruling Sword’s Stronghold didn’t attract too much attention in the lower ranks of players, since no one knew what the Stronghold was. Furthermore, the Stronghold was more of a reward, instead of a competition like Instance Dungeons were. After all, Instance Dungeons contained numerous exquisite items.

Lu Li didn’t believe that Wings of Dawn was already at Ragnaros.

As for Seventh Heaven, Lu Li couldn’t say if this was true or false. However, even if they were on Elite difficulty, it still wouldn’t be that easy. The dungeon had the same pattern as Nightmare difficulty; only the offensive power and health of the Boss would weaker.

Seventh Heaven was a guild that was fairly average when it came to taking down Instance Dungeons.

If it was Sorrowless who didn’t care about his reputation and decided to take the First Clear at Elite difficulty, then Lu Li would be speechless.

However, as a professional club, reputation was just as important as benefits. If reputation was destroyed, then the confidence and loyalty of the members would naturally fade and dissipate, which would make it extremely difficult to lead a team.

On the other hand, if it was the Gangnam Royals who decided to tackle the Elite difficulty, then Lu Li would absolutely believe it.

In the end, what others did didn’t matter to him. He just wanted to focus on his own thing.

Once again, Lu Li brought the team into the Instance Dungeon and began a new day. His goal was to take down Ragnaros in this week. Otherwise, the cooldown would reset everything in the next week.

“Actually, this isn’t the most difficult dungeon that I’ve been a part of in games, generally speaking,” Azure Sea Breeze remarked, then continued, “There was a game called Island World in the year before last year. We wiped around 170 times on a pirate ship. It took us around a week to clear it…”

“Actually, it was two weeks, and you even played around with a girl. What was her name again?” Wandering corrected him.

“I forgot.”

Azure Sea Breeze tried his best to remember her name, but he couldn’t, despite his efforts. He paused for a second, and hesitatingly said, “I only remember that I called her Leaf, no matter in real life or in game.”

“How did you guys meet?” It seemed surprising that Azure Sea Breeze had a girlfriend, so naturally, everyone was curious.

“Alright, I’ll tell you guys.” Azure Sea Breeze didn’t want to say, but Wandering clearly didn’t mind interjecting.

Under Azure Sea Breeze’s murderous stare, Wandering told the story.

“We were not that well off when we just started university, so we learnt to work with computers and the hardware along it. At that time, Breezy was doing some work at a female dorm, testing out the cables there or something. Hehe…at that time, the girl was only wearing a bathrobe as she walked past him. As you guys know, he was squatting on the ground…”

“Then? What happened?”

All the players present were keen listeners. They had just wiped, so they were still regathering their strength while eating some bread. Even Lu Li didn’t mind as he was just as curious.

“At the same time, someone got excited and placed his hands on the circuit boards. The result? He was shocked by the current and he fainted.”

Wandering didn’t even care about Azure Sea Breeze’s stare and laughed as he continued, “Leaf suddenly jumped in surprise, and who knew? She immediately gave our brother Breezy here CPR.”

“Wow! How romantic!” some girls in the team squealed.

Azure Sea Breeze knew that he couldn’t hide this matter any longer, so he interrupted, “Romantic? I nearly died that day. After I woke up, the doctor said to me that if she had given me CPR for any longer, it would’ve been bad. Can you guys imagine someone strangling your neck instead of squeezing your nose when doing CPR?”

“Hahaha…” Everyone was laughing at this. The girl seemed to be quite adorable.

“Then, they went into Island World and started playing together, because Leaf liked the ocean view in there. It was one of the hardest games that we’ve ever played,” Wandering sighed. “Actually, we weren’t good at those types of game.”

“We might not have been good, but we were still part of the top 10 squads in the game,” Azure Sea Breeze proudly said.

“It was unfortunate that we didn’t get used to it at the start, so we were pretty bad. Leaf then left us for another group after a while,” Wandering said, with a seemingly sad face, as if sympathising with Azure Sea Breeze.