The Great Thief

As everyone knew, Ruling Sword’s predecessor was Xin Xin Mercenary Group.

The Xin Xin Mercenary Group was still currently an organisation. It always remained at the top of the mercenary rankings.

This ranking system ranked all of the registered mercenary groups. Everyone else ranked up by completing players’ requests, but Xin Xin Mercenary Group was different. They ranked up by getting First Clears.

The points that were gained through normal methods were incomparable to the points given by First Clears. One First Clear was the same as half a month of hard work.

Unfair?

None of the other Mercenary Groups were even close to the standard of achieving a First Clear.

This was because instance dungeons were too expensive!

The Xin Xin Mercenary Group had Ruling Sword as their backer. Who could compare? Unless Glory Capital shameless made a mercenary group from their core elite players and focused on wild Bosses, they wouldn’t be able to compete with the Xin Xin Mercenary Group.

Therefore, when mercenaries were being looked down upon, they would always use Lu Li’s name to defend themselves.

Lu Li was a respected figure in the world of mercenaries. Now that he was hiring, there was no need to hesitate to fill the application forms.

Crippled Black Ant took a form and looked at it with a serious expression on his face. With confidence and a genuine heart, he filled in his details and sent the form over. Then, he left the hall.

In the meantime, while waiting for news, he wasn’t in the mood to complete other quests.

Perhaps Lu Li was not only the leader of Ruling Sword, but someone who inspired the lower-tiered players to be greater.

Crippled Black Ant didn’t wait too long before he was contacted. This was because his details were too eye-catching.

He had three Epic items, with the rest of them being mostly Dark Gold. He had one Enhanced skill with his other key skills levelled to the max. His win rate in the arena was 97% and he had defeated pro players before.

This application was immediately put in front of Lu Li.

Crippled Black Ant’s name was a little familiar. Although Lu Li couldn’t remember it, he unhesitatingly accepted this player as one of the ten. Furthermore, he would be someone to be paid close attention to in the Stronghold battle.

If the player was interested, then Ruling Sword would undoubtedly accept him into the guild.

The last nine were picked based on a particular area that they were proficient in. For skills like Stealth, attributes couldn’t determine a person’s abilities, so they needed mechanically competent players.

Besides Crippled Black Ant, Lu Li also found someone who had potential.

Their ID was Bard Big Dog Li. Of course, Dawn didn’t have Bards as a class, so only an eccentric person would add something like that to their name.

As for the reason this person attracted Lu Li’s attention, it was because of his win rate in the Arena. He had a 96%-win rate, which although was lower than Crippled Black Ant’s, was still extremely impressive. This was around the standard of the average pro, while only a player like Lu Li would have a 100%-win rate.

This person had such a high win rate, but his items were jaw-droppingly bad. Besides one Epic and two Dark Gold items, all of the rest were only Gold items or even Steel items.

For ordinary players, Steel items were common. However, to maintain a win rate above 60% with these items was nearly impossible.

Looking at this form, Square Root Three wasn’t that surprised.

“I know this person. He’s built up quite a bit of reputation. However, he offended the Gangnam Royals, so his items were probably just stripped from him. His win rate isn’t that surprising either, since he is quite mechanically impressive.

“How did he offend the Gangnam Royals?” Lu Li asked, feeling quite interested.

Lu Li wasn’t afraid of the Gangnam Royals in the slightest. However, this didn’t mean that they were a pitiful guild that could be stepped on by anyone. For a normal player, this guild was still like a looming mountain.

“His mouth is really quite something – even worse than Wandering’s. He finds joy in making people angry. His personality is quite annoying,” Square Root Three said.

“Uh…How is he as a person though?”

This player would definitely add strength to the team. However, if he was only someone who enjoyed spiting everyone else, he wouldn’t be the best addition. He would only make the team unstable, no matter his abilities.

“As a person…he should be okay. He has a reputation for being genuine and loyal. It’s rumoured that he offended the Gangnam Royals because he decided to stand up for his friends,” Square Root Three answered unsurely.

“Then let’s count him in.”

The final eight were selected fairly quickly. Square Root Three interacted with them under the name of Ruling Sword. They quickly agreed upon the rewards and the compensation for failing the quest.

There were two new releases that week – the Thousand Needles and Un’Goro Crater.

The Thousand Needles was a barren piece of land situated at the bottom of a canyon, which was surrounded by stone structures.

This area was further away from accommodation areas. The Thousand Needles in this version of the game was actually two different lands. The white sand in the area gave rise the name ‘Shimmering Flats’.

No matter if it was the Shimmering Flats or the Thousand Needles, no one wanted to live in the desert.

Centaurs, Buzzards, Hyenas and Kobolds ruled this area.

The Dark Elves defended a moon well nearby, so Alliance players could benefit somewhat here, but the Horde dominated this area. Two Tauren clans ruled and controlled over the entire Thousand Needles. The difference between the two clans was that one stayed near the Cliff Walkers in Freewind, while the other stayed near the Darkcloud Grimtotems.

Both clans were influenced by the Horde culture and had radical views on the blood inheritance of chieftains, so their chieftains and leaders were usually selected by names.

However, there was something a little interesting about them. Both clans lived on the top of mesas. They would only descend the mountain when they needed to hunt or ambush another group. The Grimtotems used stairs and ropes to descend, while the Cliff Walkers used a form of stairs that rose and lowered to allow better accessibility.

However, the Grimtotems had a bridge which led to the Barrens.

These two groups had conflicting views which caused a rift between them to form. At the moment, they were still able to act peacefully with each other. After all, they were both Tauren clans whose nemesis was the Galak Centaurs.

It seemed that the Centaurs were a race that annoyed a lot of other groups. They were very fertile, so they reproduced quickly. Azeroth was filled with Centaurs.

However, the Thousand Needles wasn’t without its benefits.

The first benefit was that it was easy to defend the Stronghold, but conversely it was difficult to attack. From the information given, this Stronghold was situated on a high mountain and was difficult to access. Although there was a bridge on three of the sides, they were terrifying to walk across.

There was one more thing which attracted the attention of many clubs.

Wyverns!

Highperch was not far from here. It was rumoured that Highperch was to the south-western side of the Thousand Needles.

The cliffs were filled with caves and there were hundreds of Wyvern nests in this area, which attracted thieves to come and steal their eggs. The Centaurs saw the Wyverns as holy creatures, so they killed any thief who was caught in the act of stealing their eggs. There were rotten bones and corpses which were tied to wooden poles, warning any intruders against stealing.

However, death did not deter players from coming in. They weren’t afraid at all. There were thousands of players who came here and broke the Centaurs’ line of defense and tried to steal one or two dragon eggs.

In his previous life, Lu Li had also tried this. However, after observing for a while, he decided to retreat.

He retreated because he realised that this wasn’t a place that an individual player could hang around. This was a human-killing machine. The dead players would drop a lot of items, but the ones who attempted to go and steal would be instantly killed by the Centaurs or burned to a crisp by the Wyverns.

Although the players weren’t able to invade Highperch, clubs had always believed that there would be a day where that would be possible.

The other location was much poorer. Un’Goro’s Crater was situated in the southside of Kalimdor. To the West was the abandoned Silithus while to East was Tanaris. There were only a few explorers and similar occupations who lived in the area.

However, Un’Goro’s Crater had something that other places didn’t – the Bloodpetal Sprout.

This was the enormous volcano situated in the middle of the Crater and it held the record for the most scorching temperatures in Kalimdor. This was also how it attracted many Fire Elementals. It was said that this was a place of experimentation which was created by Titan during the creation of Azeroth. The earth spirits which roamed the area appeared to be the sign of this. Including this abnormally shaped spire on the side of the Crater, it was difficult to explain the mysterious powers at work here.

Some of the archaeologists in Azeroth hypothesised that there was a path to another experimental location which was created by the Titans in Northrend. This would be able to explain why the Ahnqiraj Scarabs didn’t damage the Crater’s ecosystem and instead, only stayed to the south of the land.

These two new areas weren’t far apart; both were situated nearby Tanaris. Some ambitious people were already planning to attack both, then connecting them to Tanaris. This way, they would be in control of Kalimdor’s south side.

Lu Li wanted to do this too, but he was much calmer, so he left it.