The Great Thief

“This should be easy to deal with,” Lu Li said. He mulled over it for a while longer, then had an idea. “We’ll go to Zulfarrak’s Instance Dungeon and party up with two other people. Then, we can offer to take them through the Instance Dungeon for free. There should be heaps of people lining up to join our party.”

Naturally, Water Fairy and Remnant Dream didn’t object to the idea.

This was the town where Lu Li fought the Sandfury Troll. He was now here again.

The entrance to the Instance Dungeon was simply overcrowded!

During the initial release period of Dawn, there were many other popular games. Some had been running for over a year and had quite strong reputation and player base. At that time, there were some professional eSports players in those games, but it wasn’t an explosion like this.

As Dawn grew in player base, the other games were declining.

As for the latecomers in Dawn, they usually suffered in terms of levels.

Fortunately, new content was released at level 60, which allowed the new players to quickly catch up to the veterans. As a result of the introduction of this content, there was a huge influx of new players.

“Level 58 Berserker. 5 gold for 3 runs. Last available slot. Must follow instructions.”

“ZUL Party. A Healing Priest only. Noob equipment not needed.”

“Druid Voodoo Chestpiece. Trading for Mage. Go away! I only want to trade for Mage!”

“Shining Silver Breastplate with two unique effects. 5 gold per item. First come first serve! Brother! You look like someone’s who is extremely powerful. There’s a powerful aura around you. You have a bright future! Want to buy one of my Breastplates?”

“Zulfarrak speed run squad. 3=2. Level 40 and below preferred.”

Lu Li also sent out a message into the local channel. This channel was only visible to those around the area.

He decided to turn off the ‘Whisper’ function, so no one was able to message him personally. As a result, there was a large number of players who wanted to join the squad.

Lu Li glanced over the messages and planned to let two random low-levelled players join him.

However, there was a surprise. In his quick glance, he saw someone who was out of the ordinary.

Cracked Glasses!

He was a Hunter but had opted for the Sniper branch, which had high attack and high mobility. The class was strong in terms of survivability and was naturally powerful on the PvP stage.

Perhaps he wasn’t at Fat Monkey’s standard, who had also built his strength from scratch, but to spot a future professional player at Zulfarrak was already an unreal situation for Lu Li.

Lu Li didn’t hesitate to add Cracked Glasses into the squad. He was at level 35, which met the minimum level requirement to enter the dungeon. It was also no wonder that he wanted to join the team. At this level, a player’s capability and mechanics did not matter. No one would invite a player into their squad unless he had a whole set of Epic items.

To have a future pro join his party, Lu Li couldn’t ask for more. Even if Lady Luck continued to smile upon Lu Li, it was impossible for him to meet a second professional player.

In the end, Lu Li just added a Druid called Midsummer Bloom.

“What the hell? What’s going on?”

Lu Li was talking in the local channel while concealing his ID, but he wasn’t concealing it in the party channel. Therefore, when Midsummer Bloom joined the party, he immediately saw the party details and people.

The level 35 Hunter was like him – just someone to fill the spot.

However, the other three were all level 60 players.

Although the number of level 60 players had greatly increased, they still weren’t a common sight, let alone three in the same party.

Furthermore, there was also the three players’ IDs – Lu Li, Water Fairy and Remnant Dream. Lu Li and Water Fairy were household names, but even Remnant Dream was also well known. She was one of the luckiest players in the game and was Lu Li’s own item looter. Her name was pretty much always among the IDs in Lu Li’s First Clears.

“Alright. Let’s get going,” Lu Li announced, immediately picking the Nightmare difficulty.

The two newcomers just mindlessly went along with them. They didn’t object to the difficulty being chosen, since Lu Li had already begun taking First Clears of Instance Dungeons at Nightmare difficulty when he was only level 30-40. The Nightmare difficulty now was a piece of cake.

“Big…Big Boss, do you need me to heal you?” Midsummer Bloom asked with a little tremble in his voice.

“I don’t think I’ll need it. Dreamy, summon a pet that can take aggro. You can just focus on healing. As for you two, if you can fight, then fight. If you don’t want to, it’s fine to stay behind.”

Midsummer Bloom stopped attacking, but Cracked Glasses had already summoned his own pet, which was a highly-offensive Raptor.

Lu Li began to regard him more highly; he had selected a good pet.

The red Raptor was not a rare monster, but its offensive capabilities were not any weaker than the rare pets. The attack speed and movement speed of this monster was also noteworthy. The only weakness was that it lacked defense and could therefore be easily one-shotted. In an Instance Dungeon, Hunters usually would not use this pet, but it was different today. There were three level 60 players, so it was impossible for the aggro to be on anyone other than them.

“Pull one wave to the Boss?” Water Fairy asked as she pulled out her dagger.

“Okay,” Lu Li nodded.

Water Fairy rushed forward and sliced her dagger through each of the monsters. After a high damage number floated up, the monsters chased after Water Fairy.

“Big Boss…is this…” Midsummer Bloom began, then continued, “…the way to live off a woman?”

“Let’s keep going. Don’t fall behind. If you fall too far behind, then you’ll miss out on the EXP,” Cracked Glasses scolded as he slapped his shoulder, then sprinted after the people in front.

Even though Water Fairy might have pulled all the monsters to her, the low-levelled players would occasionally suddenly gain aggro. This was because the monsters were more likely to be drawn towards the lower-levelled players. In order to stop them from getting killed, Remnant Dream would fire a few arrows and pull the aggro to her. Lu Li didn’t do anything from the very beginning, so it did look like that he was living off the women.

All the monsters were pulled to the first Boss, Overseer Antu’sul. Not even the scarabs were spared.

“Begin!”

Lu Li rushed forward then unleashed an AoE skill – Fan of Knives. The attack power of this skill was extremely low, so it was useless against similarly-levelled monsters. However, against level 40 monsters, it was quite useful.

The main DPS was Remnant Dream and her pet.

She summoned a bear, which had very high HP and armour, as well as two AoE skills – Swipe and Smack.

Midsummer Bloom and Cracked Glasses were also attacking, but their DPS was much lower. After all, there were a lot of monsters, so they didn’t dare to get too close.

After less than a minute, the original crowd of monsters turned into corpses, littered all over the battlefield. The two of them, Midsummer Bloom and Cracked Glasses, each gained considerable amounts of EXP. Dawn was a quite newbie-friendly game. The higher-level the player, the less EXP they received for killing lower-levelled monsters. However, the level gap didn’t affect the lower-levelled players in the party and their EXP.