The Great Thief

After lunch, Lu Li and Water Fairy spent the whole afternoon together at the amusement park. Later that evening, Lu Li went online and his face was barely able to conceal his happiness.

“Damn.. I can’t take this anymore – lovey-dovey day and night. A man drunk on the smallest sliver of success. Has their relationship been confirmed? I bet you haven’t even seen her parents. Hahahaha, the two of you have my blessings to date forever… ” Azure Sea Breeze laughed while gnashing his teeth.

Are you finished? That damned couple have been together since forever. If you have the time to vent, why aren’t you preparing my bandages? Get me two bundles!” Wandering impatiently shouted in reply.

“Why me!? Every. Single. Time! Can’t you get your bandages yourself? Am I your servant?”

Azure Sea Breeze became annoyed at Wandering because his curses of “Lu Li should go to hell” weren’t supported at all by him.

“Haha, better not think too highly of yourself. An idiot cannot be my servant. My servant, at least, has to be someone as capable as Lu Li. Just stop talking stupidly and use the time to get yourself a hot girl!” Wandering responded in disdain.

Damn you. Of course I can get one immediately,” Azure Sea Breeze shot back.

“Looks like it’s time to spam everyone on your beauty list with your desperate love. Oh, don’t forget to say that if you become my girl, you’ll never have to worry again about Instance Dungeons. Am I right?”

Bewildered, Azure Sea Breeze asked, “How did you know?”

“Haven’t you two had enough?” Lu Li interjected. He was on the other side and had already finished preparing the new formations, and was in the middle of checking everyone’s potions when he noticed the two idiots going back and forth on a nearby channel. In Dawn, texts were synchronized with voice. It was true that the conversation could only be heard between Azure Sea Breeze and Wandering as long as they kept their voices down, but they forgot to block the text.

Saying something like ‘date forever’ truly seemed offensive, but that was out of Azure Sea Breeze’s jealousy.

Apart from Lu Li and Water Fairy, no one else knew how they had enjoyed themselves yesterday. In everyone’s eyes, Water Fairy was a high-maintenance goddess that was hard to get close to. Lu Li was the only one who had seen her other side, which was actually no different to any other girl. Even so, Lu Li was indifferent towards what she was, whether she was a goddess or a girl next door.

“I don’t mind taking charge today. It seems like you aren’t in the right state of mind,” Wandering said to Lu Li seriously.

“No problem. If you make any mistakes, I’ll just deduct your Guild Points.”

Upon saying this, Lu Li transferred partial command rights to Wandering so that he could mark locations when he needed to. After this, Lu Li prepared himself to concentrate on taking on the role of a DPS player.

“…”

This was ridiculous. No-one had ever heard of there being a rule that allowed the commander’s DKP being deducted.

Having watched how Lu Li led the team yesterday, Wandering was doing quite well as the new commander, considering they could hardly make it to the second phase during yesterday’s first few attempts.

“Hey! You there! Do you know how to play Thief? Do you like OT’ing that much? Why don’t you just take the team over to hell!” Wandering shouted as he stared at Lu Li like a soap opera villain. It took ages for Wandering to catch Lu Li’s mistake and undoubtedly, he wouldn’t let it go.

Despite Lu Li responding quickly by removing his person, his actions were still too little too late. Being very sensitive to aggro-switching, the Princess of the Black Dragon began spewing fire and everyone close to Lu Li was burned to death.

The team was wiped!

The whole team was destroyed because of Lu Li’s stubborn aggro habits. Lonesome Flower gave a loud, silly laugh, instantly shattering his cold and distant image.

When he thought back to the many times he had been lectured by Lu Li in front of his own sister, he was so happy to see that Lu Li had fallen into a similar situation.

“Deduct his Guild Points!”

“Yes! Do it!”

“We were almost there. It was so close…Damn! Just because… Penalties have to be applied to keep everyone satisfied.”

People who used to honor Lu Li turned their backs on him and started to blame him. In Lu Li’s eyes, everyone was overacting, especially the one who complained that they were so close to winning. It was just phase one, and they had barely made any progress. Why did they have to exaggerate the situation? Lu Li didn’t understand and began to doubt himself.

He had no idea how many people he had annoyed by showing off his love life.

“How many points do you guys want?” Lu Li asked. “Five?”

Lu Li didn’t actually care much about the points deduction. There were many players with high Guild Points, but as a commander and leader, no one had more points than Lu Li.

“Five? Are you kidding me? Seven people were killed. Do you really think each one of them is not even worth a single point? What about you guys? Are you all okay with 5 points?” Wandering shouted. As everyone was sitting to recover HP, Wandering was happily waiting to see Lu Li’s reaction.

“Since when did we calculate the deduction by person?” Lu Li asked as his face turned dark. These people didn’t have any limits.

“Hehe, Boss, if it is ok for you to make mistakes all the time, how can you count on other people to follow your lead?” Wandering continued to probe. As Wandering was speaking, he had already deducted 7 points from Lu Li’s Guild Points. “Since this is your first time making a mistake, I deducted 7 points from your Guild Points. Come on, it is nothing comparing the number of points you have.”

Honestly speaking, the atmosphere within the team was quite good.

They just had to make sure not to make any mistakes that would lead to a catastrophic failure, but everyone was free to talk. Even the senior players were quite down to earth. You were free to say how stupid Hachi Chan was with her poor sense of direction. You could also talk about how much you wanted to squeeze Remnant Dream’s cheeks, or even gossip about how handsome Wandering was and that it was a pity he was not a stripper.

Because of this, the team did not feel bored or tired. Of course, there were very serious commanders like Sorrowless. It was said that he constantly replaced his people during the First Clear attempts. One reason was that he immediately removed anyone who made a mistake. Another reason was that his teammates were stressed out and became fatigued easily, so they needed adequate rest.

Though morale was high, their First Clear attempt was full of difficulties.

It was not that they didn’t make any progress. There were several times when they made it into Stage 3, but there were very few survivors left who were able to fight in Stage 3.

The weekend had almost arrived.

The Molten Core Instance Dungeon was now in full swing, and a second Ruling Sword party had finally taken down Ragnaros. It was also heard that there were other clubs that had completed the Molten Core Instance Dungeon. Since they all had been attempting it for two weeks, nearly every strategy had been discovered. The next step was all about teamwork and investing money.

The benefits of investing money were more than just bringing the team rewards and items to fight against the monsters. There were some other benefits that they might have never expected

Purple Lunar Paradise was one of the few clubs that cleared the Molten Core. It was said that they instantly received a 30-million dollar investment on the night when they were celebrating their completion of the Instance Dungeon. The investor only owned shares in the club and would not interfere the club’s everyday running.

Their initial investment was instantly paid off and more clubs came to follow their way. Even if a team just beat the Instance Dungeon at Elite Difficulty, they would take a screenshot and post it to the forums immediately with the club’s name and date, trying to spark some discussion which could result in an investment.

There was one for Ruling Sword as well; they went to the forums soon after they took down Ragnaros the Firelord.

The officials pinned their post, as it was the first time that a team made up of 40 players beat the Boss in the Instance Dungeon at Nightmare Difficulty. However, many investors were shut down by them because these tough guys were not willing to accept any investments from anyone.