Rebirth of the Thief Who Roamed the World

Nie Yan checked his personal storage for gems and crystals.

20 Magic Crystals, 30 Radiant Crystals, 2 Life Crystals, and 1 Power Crystal were required to hatch the Darkwing Dragon Egg. Nie Yan had previously put up a request for these items on the mission boards of the Union of Assassins. He had also mobilized the players in Asskickers United to help him search for Radiant Crystals. At present, he had gathered all but one Life Crystal. But without it, he couldn’t hatch the Darkwing Dragon. It was truly vexing.

Items like Life Crystals had pitifully low drop rates. Finding one was simply a matter of luck.

If Nie Yan could hatch the Darkwing Dragon before entering the Realm of Death, Asskickers United’s victory would be even more certain.

Nie Yan pondered for a moment. He had the players below him post an anonymous request in the Mercenary Association, offering 100,000 gold for a Life Crystal. This kind of reward was enough to create a huge stir. As long as someone had one in their possession, even if they didn’t want to sell, they would find it hard not to.

It would be amazing if he could get his hands on one. However, if he couldn’t, so be it.

He still had many other things to do before entering the Realm of Death.

Nie Yan recalled there was a secret shop in the Hilton Stronghold. However, he had already forgotten its exact location. In the previous timeline, he only heard others talking about it but never checked it out himself. It was rumoured even the cheapest consumables there cost more than 1,000 gold while the most ordinary items sold for tens of thousands of gold. Definitely not something he could hope to afford back then.

Aside from the sky-high prices, one required at least 10,000 merit points to enter this secret shop. After killing so many demon beasts, Nie Yan had already accumulated 30,000 merit points. It was definitely enough.

Nie Yan had never visited this secret shop in the previous timeline, so he didn’t know its exact whereabouts. But from what he heard, it was in the vicinity.

Nie Yan went to ask Ignatius. As a prominent resident of the Hilton Stronghold, he should know at least this much.

After a few minutes, Nie Yan pried out the location of the secret shop from Ignatius.

Xie Yao and the other players of Asskickers United went off to level together. To prevent being discovered by Alliance of Mages, they moved covertly. Nie Yan prepared to set off to the secret shop by himself.

Nie Yan had more than 10 people tailing him while walking down the street. However, once he decided to ditch them, there was no one who could follow him.

Nie Yan went into stealth and entered a nearby alley, quickly shaking off his pursuers.

After moving around in the narrow alleyways for 10 minutes, taking numerous twists and turns and passing through several passages that could only fit a single person, Nie Yan arrived in front of a shop. Two fully armed guards stood by the entrance. Their silver-white armour appeared quite dazzling.

These two guards were in charge of protecting the secret shop. They were normally quite arrogant, but once they saw Nie Yan, they hurriedly bowed and behaved with utmost respect.

Nie Yan paid the entrance fee. Looking at his contribution, only 3,000 merit points had been deducted. This was probably one of the benefits of his Saint of the Hilton Stronghold title.

Nie Yan entered inside and was greeted by a large hall with many shelves arranged on both sides. They were stocked with all sorts of goods.

The person at the front counter was a tall middle-aged man in civilian attire. Nie Yan inspected him with Transcendent Insight.

Peleg (???): Level ??? Titles: Adventurer, EarlPeleg greeted Nie Yan.

“Sir Nirvana Flame, welcome to my humble little shop,” Peleg beamed. He had a capable air about him.

“Mhm, thank you,” Nie Yan replied politely. He started browsing through the list of merchandise.

Seeing the prices, Nie Yan’s heart trembled. It seemed the rumours were not exaggerated. All sorts of Special Items were up for sale, such as the Silk Spinner Ring and Crawler Ring. However, their prices were ludicrously high. The Silk Spinner Ring cost 50,000 gold while the Crawler Ring cost 110,000. On top of this, they weren’t even upgraded, so they were at the lowest grade.

Nie Yan continued looking. The nearby shelves were stocked with all sorts of rare one-time-use items, such as Group Teleport Scrolls.

Asskickers United had a dedicated group of players responsible for gathering Group Teleport Scrolls, so they currently weren’t in short supply.

As long as it was useful, Nie Yan swept it all into his bag. With the existence of this shop still being unknown, the items bought here for 1,000 gold could be resold for 1,500 gold or more outside. Not to mention he could buy those same items for only 300 gold.

After all, with the Saint of the Hilton Stronghold title, Nie Yan enjoyed a 70% discount on everything.

This was the advantage of a title. In the previous timeline, countless players with high rank titles had made their fortunes reselling items. It was a pity the goods sold in secret shops were in limited supply. If a certain item sold out, it would take days or even weeks to restock.

Nie Yan could buy a 10,000 gold item for only 3,000. This was practically a steal. Anything selling for 10,000 gold here was bound to be precious.

Nie Yan skimmed over numerous goods before his gaze fell on a gold box. Contained inside were 12 identical rings. They looked unique, crafted out of a silver-white metal with a mysterious circular formation engraved at the top.

Each ring cost 30,000 gold, meaning all 12 together added up to 360,000 gold.

This was a frightening sum to ordinary players.

Even with a 70% discount, it still cost 108,000 gold, far more than most ordinary players possessed.

Nie Yan checked the properties of the rings. They were identical.

Hyperlink Ring (Sub Legendary): Special Item

Description: Grants the Hyperlink skill.

Hyperlink: Allows the user to teleport to another owner of a Hyperlink Ring within the same map. Cooldown: 15 minutes. Range: 5,000 meters.Reading the description of this skill, Nie Yan’s heart trembled. This ring was quite nifty, especially in the right hands. The cooldown was short too, only 15 minutes.

These 12 Hyperlink Rings were definitely worth their price.

“Peleg, do you have more of these Hyperlink Rings for sale?” Nie Yan asked.

“I’m sorry sir Nirvana Flame, I don’t. Like other Sub Legendary and Legendary-grade items, this set of Hyperlink Rings is unique. These 12 are the only ones in existence,” Peleg explained.

Since it was like this, Nie Yan could only drop the subject. However, to have 12 of them was still good.

Nie Yan planned to give these 12 Hyperlink Rings to the top players of Asskickers United. He already had their owners in mind: himself, Xie Yao, Tang Yao, Bladelight, Smoke Stub, Sun, King of the World, Young Seven, Painted Muslin, Sunny South, One Strike Vow, and Lustboy.

Of course Asskickers United had many more experts. However, only 12 Hyperlink Rings existed.

Besides the 12 Hyperlink Rings which cost 108,000 gold, Nie Yan bought many other useful items for the elites of the guild. Even though each and every single one of these items cost a small fortune, they were definitely worth it.

After concluding his shopping spree, Nie Yan had spent a total of 600,000 gold to fill all five of his bags up with items.

Nie Yan left the secret shop with a satisfied smile on his face. Next time, he would buy even more items to resell to others for a decent profit. However, there wasn’t any time right now. He needed to prepare for the upcoming battle in the Realm of Death.

Over in the Cripps Stronghold, players kept bringing all sorts of goods to Guo Huai, who in turn had them transported to the Hilton Stronghold as quickly as possible. Once there, Nie Yan would handle the rest.

The reason Alliance of Mages’ ambush succeeded last time was in part due to their many scrolls. Those scrolls had caught Asskickers United off-guard, leading to a large amount of casualties. Otherwise, with the superiority of Asskickers United’s players, the final outcome might have been very different.

Fighting fire with fire. If they were fighting to see who had more scrolls or gold, Nie Yan definitely wouldn’t lose out to Alliance of Mages.

Nie Yan had Asskickers United’s players return to the Hilton Stronghold. He then started distributing useful items to everyone. Every player received all sorts of items worth at least 1,000 gold in preparation for the upcoming battle.

With the preparations finished, the only thing left was to wait for tomorrow. Alliance of Mages’ side had probably finished preparing too.

Alliance of Mages’ players were all gathered in the slums north of the Hilton Stronghold. They had bought several houses here. They were quite remote and also extremely cheap. Due to how far they were from the heart of the stronghold, travel was inconvenient, a far cry from Nie Yan’s personal villa.

They had gathered a total of 1,200 top experts. Divine Protectors had also sent some of their best over. Cao Xu’s side showed no sign of movement. That was to say, Guo Huai’s information network had no way of infiltrating Direwolf and tracking their movements.

Just what kind of existence was the Direwolf gaming organization for their number of experts to remain a complete mystery?

A dark hand behind the scenes like Cao Xu’s wouldn’t allow Alliance of Mages to walk to their deaths. He would definitely dispatch some of his most trusted subjects to oversee this battle. It seemed achieving victory in the Realm of Death wouldn’t be too easy. However, Nie Yan would finally get a chance to meet the experts under Cao Xu’s control.