The Great Thief

With the remaining few dozen spirits, Lu Li was successful another three times.

He was successful five times with 80 spirits. This rate was much better than he imagined. He thought it must have been because he had the casting spirit badge which increased the rate, and the casting hammer must have had some impact too.

Casting the spirits had a higher rate of success than collecting them. This was probably the reason Demitirian chose him too.

It was just that Demitrian didn’t know what bad things Lu Li had been up to, otherwise, he definitely would have preferred to give himself the badge.

Lu Li concluded that his success in casting this time was a very useful thing. However, it wasn’t as amazing as he had imagined. Even though the spirit casting was successful, it didn’t mean that it would consistently produce Flawless Epic equipment.

He was successful five times, but only three items were Flawless. One was a flawless Dark Gold and two were Epic.

Of the remaining two, one was an exquisite Epic and one was a fine Epic.

This time, he had made four Flawless level items in total. The extra item was Big Dog Li’s single-handed magic sword. Since it wasn’t spirit-cast, it meant Lu Li was able to produce Flawless things by relying on his exquisite hammer.

On the second day, Lu Li didn’t continue to collect spirits. Resting for half a day was already a luxury. Everyone still had to keep up the fight against the Twin Emperors.

Lu Li had given the club members weapons with great fanfare. People in other clubs obviously knew.

From this, they knew how far Ruling Sword had progressed in the Instance Dungeon. It meant that they could at least take that afternoon off, which meant that Ruling Sword’s battle against the Twin Emperors actually wasn’t going all that swimmingly.

This knowledge meant that all the other major clubs were all of a sudden filled with confidence and ambition.

Without realizing it, Ruling Sword had already become the club to beat for the Instance Dungeon’s First Clear. If they weren’t able to make much progress, then other clubs would feel that their own sluggish progress could be forgiven.

Their ambition wasn’t from themselves either.

Perhaps Ruling Sword wasn’t good at fighting this kind of Boss. If this was really the case, then everyone would have their chance. They couldn’t just allow Ruling Sword to take all the Instance Dungeon First Clears. If they did, then how would this game be fair at all?

Lu Li evidently didn’t plan on letting these guys experience so-called fairness.

The fairest thing about Dawn was that the developers wouldn’t intentionally interfere with the game, as long as players didn’t break the rules. Even if the game went bankrupt, the game company could do nothing but reflect on themselves.

Actually, Ruling Sword never really stopped their advance in the Instance Dungeon.

Azure Sea Breeze and Wandering began to lead a new team aiming at First Clear. Because they had the successful experience from Lu Li and his team, the two other teams were also able to reach the Twin Emperors.

Lu Li’s team was the main force, made up mostly of Ruling Sword member.

The other two groups had chosen a lot of core elites from Drizzle Court and Peerless City. They were even in a phasing-in period. If nothing out of the ordinary happened, these two teams were going to become regular teams.

One time, the old problem of the healers not getting over quickly enough cropped up again. Another time, the bugs weren’t killed and they exploded.

To deal with the first situation, Lu Li thought outside the box. The healers didn’t have to run over at all. When the Main Tanks switched places, the healers could change their own healing targets.

If the healers were running to change their position, it depended on if the commanders gave their commands on time, as well as how quickly the players reacted.

The set healing positions could be changed at their will. This way, the healers would be less effective, but they would be even more ordered, and there wouldn’t be a situation where they couldn’t find their target and just run around blindly.

Besides, it would tire Lu Li out having to deal with all this. He needed to focus on the whole battlefield.

However, the outcome wasn’t negative at all, in fact, it was much better than what Lu Li imagined. He understood something from all this – don’t just blindly follow the walkthrough.

To get to where he was today, all those various walkthroughs were a major help.

Lu Li wouldn’t be unconventional and purposely say that he would want to have a fair fight with other players. If he had some prior knowledge, he would use it. And if he won, he wouldn’t necessarily feel that he had cheated. However, he gradually realized that he was a bit too trusting of all these guides.

A lot of times, his subconscious was telling him that the walkthrough must be right.

However, was the walkthrough really always right?

At the very least, Lu Li thought that some walkthroughs weren’t that accurate. Sometimes it was because the game gradually went through official changes so that eventually the mechanisms of the Bosses changed. Other times, it was because the players who participated in the battle were different and didn’t have the need to follow something instructions to each letter..

If the Boss had been weakened, for normal players, there’d be no problem following the walkthrough. The thing was that now, the Boss was at its strongest, so the walkthrough had no way of helping them with this healer problem.

Also, with Lu Li, there were quite a few healers who were professional competitors. The rest had experienced multiple Instance Dungeon First Clears and were the cream of the crop. They were much more experienced in the game than ordinary players, so it was perfectly fine to let them make their own calls about switching positions.

Of course, solving this problem didn’t mean that Ruling Sword was able to finish off the Twin Emperors.

The reason why this Boss was hard to defeat was because there were too many changes. The Bosses switched positions, exploded the insects randomly, and changed aggro unpredictably as well. If a problem came up regarding any of these elements, it could waste all their efforts.

The new day began with a team death and ended with a team death too.

If you focused only on the failure, then Lu Li and the team didn’t accomplish anything. It was a good thing that First-Clearing an Instance Dungeon wasn’t like this. They were taking baby steps towards victory. Lu Li was sure that the second day would be enough to finish off these two guys.

With another day, it appeared that Lu Li’s estimation was not incorrect.

Around noon, they successfully defeated the Twin Emperors. It took almost two-cooldown’s-worth of time to defeat these two Bosses. If Lu Li hadn’t changed to a new way of thinking, it would probably take at least another cooldown.

One cooldown was seven days, which was far too long.

No one was really sure of what things were like with the other clubs. It was just the expressions of the faces of those going for the First Clear that gave Lu Li some comforting news.

It wasn’t that all the players were professional actors, but that ordinary people would find it hard to put on a troubled expression when they felt overjoyed. Conversely, when they were so unhappy they were about to go crazy, even if they wanted to feign happiness, they wouldn’t be able to do so.

Those who had been tortured by the Twin Emperors for a week were all dazed, and were ready to have a breakdown at any time.

However, Ruling Sword’s all had broad, free smiles on their faces. Shortly after, people from other clubs knew that Ruling Sword had finished off the Twin Emperors.

There was a whole heap of Strengthening Stones which immediately increased the number of Stones in Lu Li’s backpack to triple digits. At this, he put on a brave face and brought himself to Hachi Chan’s side. “Hachi, my backpack’s gonna be full soon. It’s not gonna be able to carry much more.”

“Oh,” Hachi Chan said, not even blinking an eye.

“Oh? That’s it?”

“Do you have things to give me? My backpack is heaps big. It can fit a lot of things,” Hachi Chan said seriously, so seriously that it almost made Lu Li cry.