The Great Thief

Lu Li’s original speed was quite fast. Although he was slowed down by Stealth, he was still much faster than the regular followers. However, this Elite Druid’s speed was increased by the Cheetah Transformation, allowing it to easily keep up with Lu Li.

With countless number of monsters hidden in the mud, it was impossible to avoid them all.

After a few minutes, a monster drilled out of the ground in front of Lu Li. This led to the first battle in his trial.

Muddy Swamp Monster, LV20.

It was tall, had good defense and used poison attacks. Technically speaking, it was an elemental and was very sensitive to movement. Many players who had faced this monster in their quest were killed by it.

Lu Li didn’t try to save any of his skills. He immediately used his cloak’s special effect to dodge the Swamp Monster’s attack and appeared behind it. He then stunned it and attacked with full force!

The moment he started hitting the target, the Druid follower cast Starfire, which dealt an impressive amount of damage.

The Elite was much stronger than a normal follower.

The Swamp Monster quickly fell. Lu Li hurriedly picked up its loot and ran away.

If he didn’t run away, he would basically be asking to die. He knew better than anyone how dangerous this place was, even if he was unfamiliar with it.

When he was sufficiently far away, Lu Li looked back. The place where he had fought the Swamp Monster was now teeming with them.

The wilderness was endless and there were no constellations in the sky, so it was difficult to make out any sort of direction. Fortunately, the Druid follower could provide directions to him. Otherwise, he would have been lost here forever.

Occasionally, there would be puddles in the ground. Lu Li had now fallen into these puddles twice, and was now uncomfortably wet and covered in mud.

Soldiering on, he wiped the mud off his face and silently continued.

As a professional player, he couldn’t worry about things like this!

After an hour of walking, he had tallied up over a dozen encounters. Most of them were harmless, except for the two Elite snakes he had fought. They had a potent venom which rendered the Intermediate Antidote useless. However, the Druid was able to heal him.

Lu Li tried to give some bread to the Druid Follower, but was unsurprisingly rejected.

Followers couldn’t use a player’s items; this was enforced by the system. Lu Li had to stop and allow its passive regeneration to restore its mana.

He had originally intended to kill some other players to increase his score. However, the map had been completely empty for the entire hour he had been in it. He couldn’t kill anyone even if he wanted to.

There had to be something wrong.

However, in reality, the truth was simple—he had been assigned to a difficult map.

According to the system’s identification protocols, Lu Li belonged to an S-rank map. Moreover, this was a particularly difficult S-rank map.

The number of players who were assigned to this map was very small - not even one percent of the population.

In a dozen days, maps in this category would stop being selected, as no one had ever successfully completed them. In the future, no one would ever see these maps again.

A high risk usually meant an extraordinary harvest. When Lu Li picked up the loot from an Elite monster, he decided not to rush back out.

A Lightning Mark!

This was something that could only be dropped by LV20 or higher Wild Bosses. However, because of these Elite monsters, Lu Li already had two.

The drop rate was incredibly high.

Lu Li issued a command to his follower to break out of Stealth and step into the swamp waters.

A Swamp Leech crawled out of the mud and sprayed a water arrow at the Druid Follower. The Druid immediately transformed to its original form and started to fight back.

The Swamp Leech didn’t move very quickly. Before it got close to the Druid Follower, Lu Li was already Stealthed behind it.

The fight had to be quick; he couldn’t stay in one place for too long as he would be surrounded and overwhelmed. The ants here were like elephants and most monsters were LV20 Elites.

Besides having a poison, the Swamp Leech also applied a painful slow.

After a minute or so, it was killed by Lu Li and his follower.

A Strengthening Stone!

This was also another LV20 Boss drop. Bosses below LV20 only had a very small chance of dropping this on their First Clear.

Perhaps it was because of Leech’s thick blood, but by the time Lu Li had picked up the Strengthening Stone, there were already four or five other monsters approaching them.

This was no problem for them!

They both transformed into Cheetahs and quickly lost their pursuers.

Just like this, Lu Li continued to farm monsters. After three hours, not only did he find 5 rare materials, but he also had three Strengthening Stones and two LV15 Steel equipment.

After his last encounter, he ran hundreds of yards before stopping.

He only had half his HP remaining and the Druid’s mana was also very low. Deciding against healing himself, he took out a piece of bread and regenerated the HP.

The Druid’s mana automatically regenerated; he could save some money in that regard.

Just as he sat down, he felt a slight wind behind his head.

Cheap Shot!

The high-speed, air-slashing sound was all too familiar. Lu Li even heard it sometimes in his dreams.

Without any hesitation, he plunged into the mud in front of him.

After getting up, Lu Li immediately commanded the Druid to freely fight. Another Thief appeared and crowd controlled it, then started to attack.

The follower who was attacking the Druid was most likely a regular one, as its attack was not very high.

This was the clever combination of the double Thief.

Lu Li wiped the mud off his face and immediately used his Cloak’s effect to move behind the Thief player.

The Thief player was shocked. He had considered countless possibilities, but none of them involved Lu Li’s ability to dodge Cheap Shot.

When attacked with Cheap Shot, the usual response of a player was to turn around. Although this wouldn’t avoid the skill, it would lessen its effect.

Lu Li was the first player he had ever seen to react so late and still dodge Cheap Shot.

By the time he was able to react, the circumstance had already drastically changed. Lu Li disappeared and reappeared behind him. This was the perfect Cheap Shot.

Four second stun!

The Thief Follower that was attacking the Druid rushed to save its master. However, the Druid raised its hand and a cluster of vines rose from the ground, tightly entangling its opponent. It then ignored the tangled opponent and attacked the Thief player with Lu Li.

In this mirror matchup, the Thief with weaker equipment simply did not have the power to fight back. When he finally realized that he was dead, the System had already prompted him of his failure.

System: Killed a competitor, increased evaluation score by 3 points.

Unfortunately, this map wasn’t small enough; he had only met one player so far. Lu Li was unable to use PVP to effectively increase his score.