The Great Thief

Actually, if Wings of Dawn persisted, it could’ve been sold for 200 million.

When defeating a Stronghold, the total cost shouldn’t have been more than 50 million dollars. The requirement was that you could defeat it. Lu Li had used two Fel Reavers and an army of top players to accomplish this.

The land was auctioned for more than 30 million, but since they won, a portion of this money was deducted by the System. More than half still went into Lu Li’s pocket. There was also wear and tear from the Fel Reavers. Repairs required a lot of expensive materials, but the cost wasn’t too great.

As for the lost equipment, winners of the battle would generally even earn a little.

Lu Li and Square Root 3 were already ecstatic with 200 million. As for sharing the 20% interest afterwards, naturally, it was clearly impossible.

“You have no idea what his expression was like, ahahaha.”

Dream 13 had returned back to his own club, and was sitting in his large, luxuriantly furnished office, describing the scene of what had happened to his little cousin, who was half-lying on the sofa.

“Hahaha, he must regret so much that he wanted so little. It must be so hard to take.”

Elevenless also laughed so hard that he nearly curled up.

“I reckon he’ll be regretting it for three months. Who knows? He might find out that we would have been able to accept a price of 500 million. At that point, he’ll feel so bad about it he won’t be able to eat or sleep. Who knows? He might even give Water Fairy a cold shoulder. Then, Water Fairy will say goodbye to him and you’ll have a chance.”

“What rubbish.” Elevenless jumped up.

“Huh? You really are a special one. You won’t even be honest with your feelings. If you fessed up before, who knows? You could still have had a chance,” Dream 13 said with a face full of disdain.

“When did I ever say I liked Water Fairy? Can you stop making things up,” Elevenless shot back in exasperation. “If I liked Water Fairy, wouldn’t I rather like Lu Li? I do more with Lu Li than with Water Fairy.”

“Hehe, idiot,” Dream 13 laughed coldly.

“You’re the idiot. When they give a price, that’s the price it’s going to be. You think money grows on trees?” Elevenless continued to rant.

Later, the three brothers scuffled together in the leader’s office. The beautiful secretary adjusted her glasses and continued to bury herself in watching the latest period drama.

After receive this giant amount of money, for a short while, Lu Li almost didn’t know how to spend it.

However, there was no way to hand over the Stronghold directly, so in the next stronghold battle, everyone would have to fight a real battle for it. At the most, Ruling Sword wouldn’t send Fel Reavers out, and the defenders would be a touch weaker.

The prerequisite was that Wings of Dawn had to successfully auction off their right to attack.

At the same time that was going on, the competition was still running. It was just Ruling Sword who wasn’t able to compete every day. Apart from competitions, Lu Li and his party spent all of their time levelling up and completing quests.

It wasn’t all the time that they would face an opponent like Wings of Dawn. Most opponents wouldn’t have the strength to fight back, even if they worked hard to farm equipment.

The best equipment for those in the level 60s was Dark Gold. Epic was relatively rare, and Legendary was even harder to find. No matter how hard they tried to rack their brains about this, they couldn’t find equipment that could give them an advantage.

With everyone levelling up, level 65 set equipment gradually became weaker because of penalties. All of a sudden, Elevenless’ power dropped massively.

After defeating a few more opponents, Ruling Sword and Wings of Dawn successfully progressed through, becoming one of the 10,000 competitor teams.

It didn’t seem too hard to rise above the rest in the group of 10,000. For Ruling Sword, this was a likely outcome, but other clubs wouldn’t think the same way. They would be lucky if they could progress into the intermediate levels, but in the final 10,000, luck wasn’t a factor anymore.

Moreover, because of the competition’s system, overseas players would also begin show up.

In the first round, Lu Li faced an overseas group.

Before the competition, both sides had an opportunity to exchange short pleasantries.

However, Lu Li quickly got a headache from hearing their annoying language.

“They’re really excited. They think they’re playing against a Chinese team,” Kitty Likes Meat explained in a small voice. After that, she went over to have an exchange using the same random language.

“See, Kitty’s so amazing,” Fat Monkey said with respect and admiration.

He and Kitty Likes Meat had entered into Ruling Sword one after the other. They were both Magic players and were of a similar age. During the day, they still fought against a common enemy when they were out, but naturally, they couldn’t catch a break in their private time either.

Although Fat Monkey lost much more than he won in battle, he still fell into Kitty Likes Meat’s snare, although he was never fully convinced.

Now, he had been convinced.

“What the hell are they saying?” Lu Li asked.

“They’re speaking Gaoli. My dad had an e-sports friend who used to live in Gaoli, so I learnt a little bit. They said they hope to establish a solid friendship with us,” Kitty Likes Meat reported to Lu Li after she came back.

“And how did you reply?”

“I said we’ll see after you beat us,” she said with a shrug.

“Beautifully done.”

Lu Li didn’t have any particular goodwill towards foreigners. He was most familiar with grassroots culture, and as the saying went, most righteous people were from poor backgrounds and most bad people often were educated. On the contrary, the lowest class of people wouldn’t care too much about international affairs and so on.

The team on the other side was one of those top few teams from Gaoli.

Of course, this was speaking within the context of their own country. This club called Purgatory Shrine was safely in the top 100 over there. For ordinary players, this was already something they dreamed of that was out of their reach.

As for Ruling Sword…

“This is a top Chinese team and were the champions last time. Can we beat them?”

The face of Purgatory Shrine’s leader was full of worry.

“Boss, how can you speak like that? Where’s our weakness? How can you talk about how good they are and dismiss our own power. It’s the first time we’re playing against a foreign club. We can only win, not lose,” a Warrior said in a stern, reprimanding voice.

Although the team leader was stronger, the Warrior was an old player, having been around these circles for nearly 20 years. He bowed in apology with great discomfort, extremely timid and ashamed.

“We’ll definitely make it.”

The Gaoli players mobilized themselves with great enthusiasm before the battle.

“At the very least, we can get one or two total points,” the leader of Purgatory Shrine quietly added in his heart, quickly strengthening his faith.

Meanwhile, Ruling Sword did not do any pre-battle mobilization. Rather, they met with some trouble.

A few people had been fighting it out to the point of injury regarding who would be sidelined for the match. Though they usually scrambled for stuff like this on a normal day, they were still able to negotiate between themselves peacefully. However, today was the first time they were up against overseas players, and no one wanted to give in and miss their place.

“What are fighting about? It’s about being sent out right – what’s the point fighting about it? Stop arguing,” Lu Li scolded.

Everyone thought about it and realized they were acting like they had never seen a foreigner before. At that, they all shut up sheepishly.

“Ahem, this first battle is super important. We can only win, not lose, so…It’s still gonna be me,” Lu Li said shamelessly.