The Great Thief

Although Lu Li wanted Fat Monkey to fight the Boss, exacting such a revenge plan would be too obvious. For the moment he just had to hold back and record Fat Monkey’s name on a little notepad.

Lu Li just hoped that Fat Monkey would betray the club so that he could justify killing him.

The monsters had almost been cleared out. There were only two patrol monsters to the left of the Boss and it was impossible to pull them out. Lu Li stopped Remnant Dream from wandering too close to the Boss. He planned to kill them while fighting the Boss; it wasn’t as though they could kill the Boss that quickly anyway.

The process was pretty much the same as usual; they first needed to the test the Boss’ abilities.

Gruul’s most unique skill was Grow, which increased his attack strength by 15% every 30 second and his character size by 10%. This effect could be stacked up to 30 times.

Compounding 15% attack strength thirty times would make this Boss impossible to defeat.

No team could support buff-stacking like that, so this Boss was one they needed to defeat as quickly as possible.

Grand Strike – this skill was cast on the closest player with the second-most aggro. An off-tank was required to withstand the attack as it dealt about 12,000 physical damage, but could be reduced by Armor and Defensive stats. This was cast every 20 seconds.

The damage output players within range had to control their damage to make sure their aggro was less than the two tanks.

The Boss also had a skill called Reverberation. This randomly silenced a target for three seconds at a time, so they had to split up to avoid being hit.

They also split up because of some other skills.

Subsidence was a random area of effect skill that dealt damage to an 8-yard diameter area every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. This skill had a range of 3000 yards.

In the later stages, the boss would often cast this skill. This skill dealt physical damage, which meant it could be reduced by Armor. However, the damage of this skill would increase over time because of Grow. If the players stood more than 8 yards apart, then the skill would only affect one player at a time.

Ground Slam was a random knock-back skill that would be immediately followed up with Lord Guru’s Grip.

Lord Guru’s Grip was one of the more terrifying skills. After being hit by Ground Slam, the player would be affected by this debuff. The affected player would lose 20% movement speed every second. After 5 seconds, the player would be Stunned and Gruul would attack all the players at once with Shatter.

Shatter’s damage depended on the distance between players. If the distance between two teammates was less than 2 yards, then the damage dealt would be about 9000. The longer the distance, the lower the damage. Players greater than 10 yards apart did not take any damage.

Unlike Grand Strike, Shatter could result in a critical hit, but it didn’t increase in damage because of Grow.

Therefore, before the targeted player was Stunned, all members should spread out from their teammates to avoid Shatter’s damage. Moving more than 10 yards apart was a little difficult, as there were 20 players and the space was limited.

However, they could definitely separate by 8 yards – even the melee players were able to achieve this.

If you stood too closely together, then it was likely that everyone would just be one shot.

The team had about 10 minutes to defeat Gruul or lose their opportunity. Otherwise, the stacked Grow skills would make the Boss too powerful for the Main Tank to withstand. A high damage output team would be best for this battle, and Gruul didn’t use any magic attacks. Any buffs that they could make use of would also be helpful.

Damage output was key here, and this was reflected in the team’s composition, their choice of equipment and their preparation of potions.

The equipment they had was the best among the current population of players and their potions were no worse than the other clubs. With Ruling Sword’s financial resources and material resources, none of these seemed to be a problem anymore. Compared to his difficult experiences from two years ago, Lu Li felt like he was in a dream.

Gruul required two tanks, which meant that having Azure Sea Breeze and Wandering was just perfect.

The two players were always bickering, but they had grown up together, so they had an innate understanding of each other. As long as they were there, Lu Li only needed to tell them what they needed to do, and they would work together to accomplish it. There was no need to remind them.

The damage that every other player would take was quite sporadic, so they didn’t need as many healers.

However, they couldn’t have too few healers either. Everyone was standing 8 yards apart, so if they had too few healers, they simply wouldn’t be able to reach everyone in time.

Six or seven healers was a suitable number, especially given that the players could adapt to Gruul’s multiple skills and survive on their own. Lu Li began with nine healers at first, but later reduced it to the final number of six.

Having too many melee players also increased the difficulty of fighting this Boss, so Lu Li benched most of them except for the two tanks. In the end, there were only five melee players.

The five melee players were Moonlight, Mu Qiu, Lu Li, Sakura Memories and Water Fairy.

As for why the two Thieves were not benched, this was obviously because it was Lu Li and his girlfriend. If Lu Li and Water Fairy were Warriors, then this line up would suddenly include two Berserkers instead.

No one else would think that anything was wrong. Who would dare oppose the directions of

the boss?

After two attempts, Lu Li had found his opportunity to take Fat Monkey’s DKP. After everyone had come in and started the battle, he found that Fat Monkey had been locked out of the Gruul entrance.

If you didn’t enter in time, you had no choice but to watch from the outside until the people inside were dead.

“Monkey, what were you doing?”

Lu Li was angry and laughing at the same time.

Of course, he wasn’t just deducting Fat Monkey’s points for the sake of it. Being locked out like this in a First Clear attempt was just too low-level of a mistake to make.

“I…I was trying to find somewhere to take a look at my equipment. I thought there was something wrong with it…”

Fat Monkey was sweating profusely and hoped that the Boss would open the door. He would rather be dead on the inside.

“Ah, keep changing your equipment then… or maybe you were talking to a girl and forgot to come in,” Azure Sea Breeze accused, quickly seeing through Fat Monkey’s lies.

“Dammit, Breezy you’re a traitor,” Fat Monkey said bitterly.

“You have been pretending all this time to be a proud single and have insulted him in all sorts of ways. It would be weird if he didn’t take revenge now,” Wandering said coolly.

“This is a top-level violation. I will deduct 40 points,” Lu Li announced, suddenly feeling refreshed.

“No!” Fat Monkey knelt onto the ground as his heart was breaking.

“This isn’t revenge, I am just doing a public service. I don’t care that I’m single or whether

you’re single,” Azure Sea Breeze said, feeling wronged. “Wandering, you idiot, you cast the aura incorrectly!”

Wandering’s Fortified Concentration Aura was meant to assist the healers. The Aura’s resistance to being silenced protected the team from Reverberation when the Grow stacks were becoming too high.

Unfortunately, Wandering had no chance to swap Auras again as Gruul just one-shot him.

“Deduct DKP from Wandering! Kill him with the deductions!” Fat Monkey and Azure Sea Breeze cried out in unison.