The Great Thief

Apparently, some commanders of other clubs were so rushed in their commanding that their voices grew hoarse. The people entering the Instance Dungeon kept on changing, and some poor player’s DKP was quickly depleted.

However, on Lu Li’s side, he didn’t seem worried at all.

When he didn’t have anything to do in the Instance Dungeon, he chatted with Water Fairy. Occasionally, the two of them would just spend some time together by themselves, or mess with Azure Sea Breeze for a bit.

Under his leadership, the whole team atmosphere was very relaxed.

Other commanders of teams were the type who would rage, but here, it was the team members complaining about their commander, frustrated at his lack of care.

This messy lack of care continued over the past couple weeks, before everyone suddenly realized that they had seen all this Boss had to offer in terms of skills and mechanics. Compared to the others, their improvement was much quicker. Glory Capital didn’t know about this. Besides, it was crystal clear that they were doing this Instance Dungeon in alliance with Blood Red War Flag.

Sand Blast was Ouro’s most commonly used skill.

It was cast once every 22 seconds and affected a 180-degree area, dealing 3500-4500 damage at a distance of 45 yards. Those who were caught in the blast fell into a spinning state for 5 seconds, not being able to move. You could drastically decrease your aggro to resist the blast straight away. The Sand Blast targeted those with the highest aggro, regardless of whether the target was actually in range.

A Sweep would be used every 15 seconds and attacked in a full 360 degrees around the Boss. The range was about 15 yards, and it dealt 1000 damage to the Main Tank (2000 to a Thief). It also repelled those within range, and also decreased their aggro.

Then, there was Summon Ouro Mound, which would be cast at the same time as Burrow. Four mounds would chase after their targets.

After 30 seconds, the mounds would release insects, with Ouro boring down into the ground.

Ouro didn’t have many skills. The first two were commonly used, approximately once every 30 seconds. The latter three skills were often cast together, at intervals of around 2 minutes.

Aside from this, when entering the 3rd stage, Ouro would cast a new skill – Spikeweed. This mainly targeted ranged units, dealing over 5000 damage.

Lu Li spent two weeks progressing into the 3rd stage and witnessed the one-shot power of these spikes.

“There’s no way to keep fighting,” Azure Sea Breeze said, kneeling on the ground, looking weary and helpless. It appeared as though he was destined to fail.

“Yeah, it’s too hard.”

Lu Li didn’t disagree. Ouro was the hardest Boss they had encountered, even more so than the Twin Emperors which had taken two cooldowns to defeat.

“Soulless Grass, what are you doing?” Azure Sea Breeze questioned as he began to struggle.

Nothing terrible had happened – Wandering had just rounded up Fat Monkey and a few others to sit on top of Azure Sea Breeze.

“Ooh, yeah, it’s too hard.” Wandering was sitting comfortably, not thinking about him at all.

Quarrelling and fighting. This was the atmosphere of Ruling Sword at this moment in the Instance Dungeon.

“Boss, how long do you think it’ll take for us to take down this Boss?” Fat Monkey asked. After the Donghua Cup, he couldn’t even find a reason to slack off.

“My guess is maybe another 2 weeks,” Lu Li answered.

He wasn’t just speaking nonsense. In his memory from his last life, Glory Capital had taken 80 days to finish off Ouro, which was close to 3 months. Ruling Sword really wasn’t much stronger than Glory Capital, but Lu Li had some strategies that could help them.

With his input, seemingly intentional or otherwise, Ruling Sword was able to complete in two weeks the quest which originally took Glory Capital two months.

With the knowledge of all of Ouro’s skills, as well as some ‘accidental’ research to discover how to target these skills, Lu Li conservatively gave an estimate two 2 weeks for the team to get used to how Ouro worked. If nothing out of the ordinary happened, it would take even less time.

“It was the spikes just then – we couldn’t deal with those even if we had two months,” Fat Monkey said in astonishment.

He had just been killed by that Spikeweed.

“Actually, there was a sign that came with the Spikeweed. I thought it was just mounds to begin with but now that I think about it, it’s not really the same as that mound skill. You just have to avoid it when it moves around. Then, you can avoid the spikeweed damage. Am I right?” Sky Moon asked. He was a player with very detailed observation skills.

Lu Li realized that since Sky Moon entered the team, he didn’t have to worry about his reborn identity being discovered.

Lu Li just needed to give a hint and the others would figure it out. Things would end up going even better than what he expected. If the whole general situation went smoothly, then Lu Li would have to step down gracefully and let Sky Moon take the lead.

“Yeah, everyone pay attention. Moon here has been really observing carefully,” Lu Li praised.

“Why don’t you let Moon command?”

According to the order set out, the three of them followed the principle of 3/1/1. Lu Li commanded three times, while Wandering and Sky Moon commanded once each, giving Lu Li time to rest.

However, this guy Wandering was so lazy he didn’t even want to command once.

“If you’re not tired, we’ll do that.”

Lu Li didn’t oppose this. When Wandering was lazily slacking off and didn’t want to waste his brain cells, he would definitely not be able to command as well as Sky Moon, who was still young and had energy. Wandering was already prematurely entering into his later years.

“Sure.”

What else could Sky Moon say?

Thieves were in a relatively awkward position against this Boss. Lu Li and Water Fairy had to avoid Sweeps and definitely couldn’t acquire too much aggro, while maintain a high output at the same time. In order to reduce aggro, they had no choice but to run over to the Main Tank and tank the Sand Blast.

Although those who were attacked by the Sand Blast incurred high damage, their aggro would be cleared.

Lu Li had chosen two pieces of equipment from the guild storehouse that increased Nature Resistance. What was more, he had more HP than the average Thief, so occasionally tanking a Sand Blast wasn’t too much of a problem. Water Fairy was in a similar situation, but it was better for her to have some better equipment.

Lu Li’s current equipment wasn’t as good as Water Fairy’s.

There were a lot of items that he hadn’t updated. Some of them didn’t have any special effects, and some of them weren’t replaced simply because he hadn’t come across anything better.

If Bosses didn’t drop any Thief equipment, what could he do?

Furthermore, there was his ring. It looked like he would have to wait until next year when more areas were opened up.

This Boss wasn’t friendly to melee players. He had to keep on moving, so in terms of DPS, he was completely outclassed by the Magic players.

Sky Moon didn’t command this battle any differently. He used the same tactics that Lu Li had before, such as having two Tanks at the front and back. When the Main Tanks were knocked out by the Boss and the aggro cleared, the secondary Tank would stand over and Taunt. After the crowd-control duration ended, the Main Tanks would then run back to where the Secondary Tank was just standing.

Because aggro didn’t clear reliably, Hunters became the main damage output force.

As soon as Feign Death came off cooldown, they would cast it again to clear away their aggro. It was much more convenient than for any other role.

Priests also had a similar skill called Fade. After casting it, their figure would gradually blur, and the aggro they accumulated would correspondingly decrease.

When they had teammates, a Priest could use this skill to avoid one attack. However, if their teammates had died, there was no use. It didn’t truly conceal their figure like Stealth.

Seeing the number of people dying continuing to increase, with even a Tank dying, Sky Moon found time to chat with Lu Li while commanding.

“Actually, I think we can use a Bear Tank.”

“A Bear Tank? Why?” Lu Li didn’t really understand.

“I feel like a Bear Tank is better to face off against Sweep. This skill is used way too often. The Warriors have to change their position to block it, which wastes a lot of Rage, and the cooldown time is relatively long too, so we can’t be too careless with it. It wastes a lot of time for the Warriors to go back and attack Ouro. Just then, a few died because of this,” Sky Moon explained.

“Sounds alright.”

Lu Li was a Druid in his past life, so he really understood this role.

A Bear would charge once every 15 seconds, using up 5 Rage points. Every time there was a Sweep, they could block it first, building up aggro in the whole process.

“The Bear Tank of the current patch…” Lu Li was actually a bit hesitant.

It’s not that he hadn’t thought of this issue before. Drizzle Court’s Deep Watersong was outside, waiting for orders.

“I know, they accumulate aggro relatively slowly, but as long as the equipment good, this won’t be a major problem,” Sky Moon said, doubling down on his idea.

“Fine, next time we’ll try a Bear Tank. It doesn’t reduce the number of Tanks we have anyway. One more Tank doesn’t matter. The way we’re dealing damage at the moment won’t be a problem now anyway.” Lu Li thought they could try it. In his past life, he was aware of a similar strategy, but it just wasn’t very mainstream.

They died very quickly this time.

The first skill to be cast was Sweep, which was also the skill that the Boss used most frequently. Logically, it would be the easiest to deal with, but it was also the main culprit of team wipes.

If there was a player within 5 yards of the Boss, then the Boss would bore into the ground once every 90-120 seconds. However, as soon as there was no player within 5 yards, it would bore into the ground straight away. The mounds and summoned insects that would follow could kill countless players.

The Sweep would force a retreat. Sometimes, there was a problem with this retreat. Perhaps those who were forced to retreat couldn’t come back to aggro the Boss in time, and the Boss would Burrow into the ground again.

Sky Moon thought for a long time and compared the methods that could be used. In the end, he felt changing to a Bear Tank was a way that might solve the problem.

Lu Li wasn’t against this, but didn’t have high hopes either.

Deep Watersong entered the Instance Dungeon.

“Hehe, you’ve finally come.”

Previously, in another game, he had also played a defensive role, but was a Warrior or Paladin instead. In Dawn, Druids could be a Tank, a healer, deal damage, and could even act cute at the same time.

Deep Watersong chose this role in the spur of the moment, and from that point on, never looked back.

The earlier Instance Dungeons weren’t problematic for him. He relied on his own elite training, as well as a full suit of exquisite armor that had been given to him by his club.

However, this didn’t cut it for large-scale Instance Dungeons. All too often, Druids simply couldn’t hold on, and they weren’t good at pulling aggro either.

With such a weak role, wouldn’t the game company know buff it? The result was that the game company ended up increasing the Tree Sap’s healing, making Druids specialists in continuous healing. Bird Druids were strengthened later too, and had output that could be ranked first on a DPS list.

They purposely didn’t make the Bear Tank more powerful, but even nerfed it twice.

It was like a child raised by a stepmother!

Out of all the elite players in the professional circles, he was the one who entered Instance Dungeons the least.

He even suspected that he had already been forgotten by Lu Li.

“…The situation is like this. I hope you can make up for the shortcomings of the warriors,” Sky Moon said, then gave a detailed explanation to Deep Watersong as to why he had been brought in.

“Relax, I’ve been watching the livestream the whole time. I’m very familiar with the Boss’ mechanisms and skills,” Deep Watersong assured the commander as he nodded with excitement. This commander who he once thought wasn’t that great had given him a chance to show what he could do. Even if it was just to give them confidence, he still had to show what he was capable of.

Some people had been waiting for orders for so long that they went back to do their own thing. After all, if they were called, they could immediately come back. With a Warlock on the team, they could be however far away they wanted and it wouldn’t matter.

There were also some people who would watch the internal broadcast, constantly studying the Instance Dungeon and pretending they were on the stage as well.

“All the best.”

Sky Moon was actually as nervous as Deep Watersong. This was the first time he had made such a big decision.

Azure Sea Breeze was Lu Li’s best friend. It was said that when the game first started, they already knew each other. No one knew exactly how close they were, but in the First Clear team, Azure Sea Breeze was a sure presence and also very well received.

No one would have thought that Sky Moon would change up Azure Sea Breeze’s role as Main Tank and swap to a Bear Tank, which was not so popular in previous patches.

Sky Moon had been called up by Lu Li himself, and had no real achievements to his name. When it came to a First Clear attempt, he would come and command for a while, giving Lu Li some time to rest. If it wasn’t for Wandering being too lazy, he might not have gotten this chance.

Or perhaps in an Instance Dungeon which they had already cleared, he would command the Elite groups.

As for whether he achieve get First Clear under his command, even Sky Moon himself hadn’t considered it, let along the other players.