Rebirth of the Thief Who Roamed the World

The fragment of Splitting Edge was a silver-white, rhombus-shaped shard of metal. Its surface was meticulously scored with shallow grooves in a design that formed Yemos Runes, named after their creator—Legendary Blacksmith Yemos. According to some historical accounts, Yemos was still an Advanced Blacksmith when he first forged the Splitting Edge. Its blueprints would later be copied and passed down to a few, select Blacksmiths across the continent.

The Splitting Edge was a rare, low-level Charge Weapon which came with a supplementary skill. The charge referred to the fact that the weapon had to be charged to a certain extent for the skill to be activated, so the wielder couldn’t abuse it as they pleased. After the skill was released, the weapon would be drained of its energy and the player would have to wait for it to slowly replenish.

While Charge Weapons could be found at higher levels, the Splitting Edge was the only available weapon of its kind for low-level Thief players, and it had amazing properties to boot. Outside of Sub-Legendary and Legendary weapons, it ranked as the number one Thief weapon below level 50. It was no wonder players nicknamed it the best vegetable knife in the game!

In the previous timeline, Nie Yan at Level 39 had run the Blood Marsh over half-a-dozen times and spent over 3 gold in the loot auction in order to finally obtain twenty fragments of Splitting Edge. He wasn’t nearly as rich back then, so the endeavor had directly transformed him into a penniless wretch.

Under normal circumstances, Nie Yan would have to bring a task force of three twenty-man teams, composed entirely of Level 30 players, in order to clear out all the mobs in the central hall of the Light Monastery. However, since he had the Silk Spinner Ring and Crawler Ring, things were much simpler.

With several teams working together to clear out an area, a player who wanted a certain drop would have to divvy out money to everyone else in the group as compensation. Even then, they might not necessarily end up with it because others would undoubtedly be eyeing the same thing as well.

However, solo-clearing was different. All of the drops would belong to Nie Yan.

Who knows? Maybe after clearing out all the Corrupted Silver Paladins in this place, he’d have a complete Splitting Edge to himself.

Having taken down the Corrupted Silver Paladin, Nie Yan glanced at his experience bar. It had filled up to about 17%. These guys give pretty good experience. I guess this isn’t a bad spot to do some levelling.

Nie Yan began the process of clearing out all the mobs in the area. He employed the same method as before, as a stream of crossbow bolts sent Corrupted Silver Paladins collapsing to the floor one after another.

After killing his fifth Corrupted Silver Paladin, a bright radiance enveloped Nie Yan as he levelled up to Level 19.

He was fast approaching Level 20.

Nie Yan had collected five Splitting Edge fragments so far, one for each Corrupted Silver Paladin killed. He scanned up ahead. Many more were still left, especially around the two dark gold chests. Both chests were surrounded by hosts of monsters.

The drop rate for fragments is decent.

「Thud!」Another Corrupted Silver Paladin collapsed. Walking to its corpse, Nie Yan picked up a piece of equipment and a small book.

Paladin’s Prayer (Quest Item)

Description: Carry the Paladin Prayer with you on your journey to seek out the true fates of the Ten Holy Paladins. You will uncover astonishing truths.

Quest 1 – Kavana’s Death

Description: Brewin succumbed to his ambitions after the death of Kavana. He abandoned his faith; and so began a merciless massacre, the former hero turned his blade against his comrades.

Objectives:

☐ Find Kavana’s corpse.

☐ Retrieve his Paladin Medal.

The Paladin Medals represented the glory of the Ten Holy Paladins—Kavana, Brewin, Bertrand, Kramer, Crispim, Sandeman, Clive, Hayzelden, Bassil, and Chadwell. When they brought their Paladin Medals together, they could make contact with the Archangel Tallod. According to lore, Tallod was still guarding the Gates of the Death Realm even though he hadn’t made an appearance in nearly a millennium.

Paladin’s Prayer was a slightly dilapidated, one-handed hammer with a seemingly ordinary appearance. However, Nie Yan could feel formidable divine power surging through his arm as held it in his hand.

Any other Paladin weapon paled in comparison to the might that radiated off this hammer.

A quest item… Nie Yan didn’t know who completed the quest related to the Legend of the Ten Holy Paladins in his past life, nor was he knowledgeable of how it concluded. However, since it had to do with the lore in the game, he was certain the grade wasn’t low.

As Nie Yan read through the quest summary, his eyebrows jumped in surprise. It was actually a Legendary quest!

Seems like this quest doesn’t just end with the Light Monastery…

Nie Yan turned his focus to the book. It was somewhat damaged, but he could still make out the words on the cover as belonging to the Ancient Common Language. He deciphered the meaning of the silver-gilded characters.

「Legend of Kavana」

Nie Yan flipped open the book as large segments of ancient text greeted his eyes.

…Kavana revered the will of God, a devout follower of the Light, an Advanced Holy Paladin… Archangel Tallod: “Child, may the Light protect you…” …Kavana encountered Brewin, Bertrand, and many others like him. They fought bravely and valiantly against the atrocities committed by the dragons while enacting the will of Light. So began the Legend of the Ten Holy Paladins in the Glennin province… The appearance of the young dragon girl, Benita, created a rift in the group… Kavana set her free, returning her to Karud… Kavana’s corpse lay in the central hall of the Light Monastery. Even in his eternal rest, he desired everlasting light for all…

The rest of the text was too damaged to read any further.

The book had simply gone too long without proper care. Nie Yan could only make out intermittent sections of the text. His only option was to make an educated guess. Kavana and Brewin were joint leaders of the Ten Holy Paladins. They resisted the dragons together. The group later captured a defenseless dragon girl. Kavana insisted on releasing Benita, but others in the group opposed this. The disagreement led to the Ten Holy Paladins disbanding. Kavana died later on, and the ambitious Brewin began massacring the other members of the group.

The story goes on from there.

Kavana’s corpse was laid to rest in the central hall of the Light Monastery… Nie Yan climbed up a pillar and surveyed the place from a higher vantage point. At the end of the hall, on top of a white stone platform above a long flight of stairs, he spotted a giant crystal coffin. So Kavana’s final resting place is over there?

I should clear out all the mobs here first. 「Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!」Nie Yan shot at a nearby Corrupted Silver Paladin, drawing its aggro. It rushed over but could only helplessly circle around the pillar as he let loose a steady stream of bolts.

Nie Yan suddenly received a message from Tang Yao.

「Where are you right now?」Tang Yao asked.

「Light Monastery.」

「What are you doing all the way over there!?」Tang Yao was shocked. He remembered that the Light Monastery was a Level 30–35 map. Guo Huai and the other higher-ups had actually played around with the idea of exploring the map with several twenty-man teams. However, the matter was left unsettled in the end. After all, these sorts of expeditions would entail enormous risks. The guild simply couldn’t afford a huge loss in manpower. It was better to wait for all of the Priests to learn Revive first. At that time, they could go there whenever they wanted.

「I’m doing a quest. How’s levelling?」

「After I got to Level 26, my levelling speed slowed down by a lot, and Heaven Breaker is catching up fast…」Tang Yao said, sounding quite vexed. Heaven Breaker was probably going to hit Level 26 soon. He wasn’t confident in being able to preserve his number one spot.

「Wait for me to come out. I’ll take you guys to some other place to train. What about Yao Yao and Sun? What level are they?」

「Both of them are Level 24.」

Yao Yao and Sun had risen in level pretty quickly. Of course, with Tang Yao tirelessly grinding mobs, their levelling speeds naturally wouldn’t be slow.

「How long before you come out?」

「I’d say a few hours or so. I’ll be finished by then,」Nie Yan replied. He estimated two hours would be enough for him to clear out all of the Corrupted Silver Paladins.

「Alright, I hope sooner than later.」

It would be a heavy blow to Asskickers United if Tang Yao couldn’t maintain his position at the top of the leaderboards.

Nie Yan checked the Starry Night Potion Shop’s overview window. He had already accrued over 300 gold, which after accounting for inflation was roughly equal to 100 gold from when the game first released. With the average level of the playerbase rising, players had much more money to spend, so the consumption of consumables also gradually increased. The amount of business the shop received naturally followed accordingly, from earning about 50 gold a day when the it first opened to almost 200 gold now. This was a huge step forward. Even though daily operational costs were quite high, the profits raked in every day by the shop were even higher!

Since he was in no short supply of gold, there was no harm in buying a few Junior Magic Bombs.

A batch of bombs was priced at 20 gold, slightly expensive, but he was just able to bear the cost.

When Nie Yan got back, he planned to take Tang Yao with him to the Everlasting City. Although it was a Level 40 map, they wouldn’t face any problems levelling there with the help of the Junior Magic Bombs.

Just as Nie Yan was about to continue clearing out the Corrupted Silver Paladins, he received a notification that made his heart sink. The matter he was most anxious about had finally happened!

Black Hell has obtained the fifth chapter from Volume I of the Book of Order, Chapter of Equality. You will be notified of the player’s updated location once every hour. Coordinates: Link Town, 385.382.582.

A player had gotten the Chapter of Equality!

By coming into possession of the chapter, Black Hell was also able to see Nie Yan’s location. It was the same in his past life as well. Every chapter owner were pitted against each other to determine the who all the chapters would belong to in the end.

Nie Yan and Black Hell would inevitably face off!

In the previous timeline, chapter owners resorted to all sorts of unscrupulous means to seize the chapters from their rivals: traps, ganging up, ambushes, assassination, putting up bounties, and so on.

Even so, all six chapters had never fallen into the hands of one person in his past life. At best, two chapters came into the possession of a single person while four others owned a chapter each.

After being left untouched for so long, the dusty history books of the Atlanta continent would open once more to record the feats of the current generation.

Both sides could spy on each other. This was a dangerous game. You couldn’t predict when or where your rival might appear in front of you and launch a surprise attack.

You couldn’t stay in one place for too longer. Otherwise, the opponent would be able to lock onto your position.

If it was only one versus one, Nie Yan was confident in winning. However, if the opponent brought a bunch of people to surround him, then it would be hard to say who would come out on top,

Thankfully, Nie Yan was a Thief. He had a certain class advantage when it came to fleeing. As for Black Hell, he still didn’t know what class they played yet.

Anyone capable of retrieving a chapter from the Book of Order wasn’t a simple.

Nie Yan pondred for a moment. He would focus on retrieving the Chapter of Justice first. As for the remaining two chapters, one was in Black Hell’s hands—giving him a definite target—while the other was still out in the wild. He needed to move quicker. Otherwise, if the Chapter of Honesty fell into the hands of another player, things would become even more troublesome.