The Great Thief

Thunder Clap – a skill that was considered legendary in Dawn.

Deals damage to all players in a radius of 10 yards, causing a 40% increase in spell cooldown time and a 40% decrease in movement speed. Lasts 30 seconds.

This skill was the ultimate crowd control ability.

Teams that attempted to clear the Howling Caves often preferred to recruit classes that had long-range attacks, to specifically avoid Thunder Clap.

Typically, bosses pulled out their ultimate skills as the fight progressed. However, Pythas used Thunder Clap as soon as Azure Sea Breeze touched him.

Lu Li, Sakura Memory, Azure Sea Breeze, Wandering and Moonlight were all hit, which greatly reduced their total damage output. They could only sit and wait for the effect to disappear.

“I’ll calculate how often Thunder Clap is used; there must be some sort of pattern. Don’t worry guys, the game wouldn’t design a boss that is impossible to kill.” Wandering wiped the sweat off his forehead and tried encourage everyone.

Much to his disappointment, Pythas’ Thunder Clap did not have a set pattern.

After two minutes, everyone was wiped out.

They all remained silent as they sat and recovered their HP with bread.

“The teams that have managed to clear Pythas probably had more ranged players,” Azure Sea Breeze said, as he anxiously looked towards the boss in the distance.

“Want to try again?” Wandering sighed. Since they were just a mercenary group and not a guild, their options were limited in terms of backup long ranged classes.

Lu Li didn’t mind either – whatever happens, happens.

“Say, Lu Li, do you know any inside information? If you do, please tell us,” Azure Sea Breeze asked.

He wasn’t used to the complete silence from Lu Li. His impression of Lu Li was the all-knowing, Instance Dungeon expert, able to answer all questions thrown at him.

“What am I supposed to know?” Lu Li shook his head.

He knew the trick to avoiding Thunder Clap, but decided against telling them.

Before the boss used Thunder Clap, there was an animation which could only be noticed by extremely observant players.

Wandering was still lacking in this area. Therefore, it was a good learning experience for him.

The second attempt was even worse than the first. Everybody knew that it was almost impossible and didn’t have the same drive as they did in the first run.

Before the third attempt, Wandering sternly said, “Look at yourselves. Is this the attitude that you should have before attempting an Instance Dungeon?!”

Even though he had a tendency to ramble, he was still a courteous party leader. Unlike the typical leaders, he wouldn’t find a scapegoat to push the blame onto whenever something went wrong.

Lu Li rarely entered Instance Dungeons with other players in his past life, simply because he hated the party leaders.

Whenever they were pissed, they would scold someone. They would always target the new or inexperienced players, and looked for opportunities to shift the blame onto them.

The newer players couldn’t retaliate because there were countless people lining up to join the party.

This time, Lu Li didn’t want to go through the same problems, so he formed his own team with several solid players.

“I want everyone to try harder this time; I think I’ve found the pattern,” Wandering said as he began the third Pythas attempt.

Wandering really had the talent to be a leader and ordered everyone to stand at different positions. This afforded the melee-range classes the time to scatter and avoid Thunder Clap. As Pythas raised his axe with both hands, Wandering gave the signal for everyone to get back.

Wandering, Lu Li and Moonlight reacted immediately and avoided the attack. Sakura Memories was slightly slower and was struck by Thunder Clap.

As for Azure Sea Breeze, the Main Tank, there was no point in him running.

“See, that was the key to avoiding the skill,” Wandering said proudly. “When Pythas casts Thunder Clap, he raises both arms, as opposed to only one arm.”

Lu Li was very impressed with his appointed commander.

The trick to dodging Thunder Clap was that simple. Because the Howling Cave Instance Dungeon was so difficult, the gaming company had given Pythas a long animation before casting Thunder Clap. This gave the players some time to react.

When the second Thunder Clap was casted, all four melee classes successfully dodged it.

After this, they immediately pounced onto the boss again.

Without the interference from Thunder Clap, their damage output was greatly increased.

After 10 minutes, Pythas turned into a corpse as he uttered, “The coils of death will crush you…”

They had spent half an hour to clear the bosses, mainly because of the time wasted from the first two attempts.

“Why did he only drop Steel Grade Equipment?” Wandering asked as he searched the body, pouting his mouth in disappointment.

“That’s expected. Pythas has been killed before, so it’s not the first clear,” Lu Li explained.

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get a move on. First kill! First kill!” Azure Sea Breeze chanted.

Since the Xin Xin Mercenary Group had always been ahead of the other parties, it felt like a waste of time to put in so much effort for two Steel Grade Equips.

“Wait, there’s a key here,” Remnant Dream said as she picked up some old keys.

“What’s this for?” Azure Sea Breeze asked as she handed him the keys.

“It’s obviously for opening treasure boxes?”

“Where’s the treasure box?”

The group promptly began searching for the treasure box.

“Here, I found it” Sakura Memories shouted.

Lu Li was surprised that she had been able to find the treasure box so quickly, since it was hidden very well.

Even after the Howling Cave was cleared, many players didn’t know where the treasure box was. It wasn’t until much later that it had been discovered.

Lu Li planned on pretending to be clueless and letting the others search for it.

He didn’t expect Sakura Memories to find it this quickly.

Everyone rushed towards Sakura Memories and found her dangling off the cliff while holding onto a branch. Her hands were pointed at the hole on the cliff-side.

“Older sister Memories, aren’t you afraid of falling?” Hachi Chan asked as she carefully looked down.

Sakura Memories’ bravery was commendable; even Lu Li felt terrified at the sight of her dangling above the ground.

“Give me the keys. I’ll open it,” Sakura Memory volunteered.

The party watched as she swung from one branch to another like a monkey and into the hole.

“Can you do it?” Azure Sea Breeze’s face looked pale.

“I think she can,” Sesame Rice Balls said anxiously.

“Not only is she beautiful, but she’s also so talented in everything,” Wandering and the others agreed.

Sakura Memory returned very quickly.

Everyone was extremely impressed with her ability to scale a cliff with her bare hands.

They looked at her in disbelief, momentarily forgetting about the treasure box.

“Something nice came out of it.”

There was a 16-slot bag and a recipe.

“You found the bag, you can keep it,” Wandering said. No one had any objections.

“我背包够用，老大你不是一直说背包空间不足吗，给你用吧，”落樱回忆很豪爽的将背包丢给陆离。

陆离也不客气，他连御风戒指都送出去了，十六格背包虽然珍贵，但也比不上白银戒指值钱。

图纸是裁缝的图纸，能做出来15级的黑铁布甲护腕，分配给三月雨了。

“接下来怎么走，回头吗？”杀掉这个BOSS之后就没路了，蔚蓝海风困惑的看向飘零和陆离。

“跳下去怎么样？”陆离开玩笑似得说道。

“I have enough bag slots, didn’t you say you never have enough bag space? Here you go.” Sakura Memory threw the bag to Lu Li.

Lu Li accepted it.

The recipe was for tailoring for a LV15 Steel Grade Cloth Wrist Armour and was given to March Rain.

“What’s next? Do we head back?” There’s a dead end after killing the boss, Azure Sea Breeze asked Wandering and Lu Li.

“How about we jump?” Lu Li said jokingly.