The Great Thief

“Jump down? You’re kidding, right? It’s so high up!” Azure Sea Breeze felt his legs turn into jelly. Even Sakura Memories could not believe him.

“Let’s go back, let’s go back.” Wandering decided against Lu Li’s suggestion.

Lu Li knew what he was doing. There will be an old and broken-down shrine at the dead end, which was a couple of meters up ahead.

If they jumped from there, there would be a body of water to break their fall.

This was discovered by a group of players who had wanted to break the Instance Dungeon record time in Lu Li’s past life. As such, they thoroughly studied the Instance Dungeon and found this shortcut.

Retracing their steps back to the beginning could lead them to the right path as well. However, doing this would waste more time.

After becoming confused and lost their direction several times, the group finally reached the fourth boss.

“Apparently, this boss drops shields. Someone from the Blood Red War Flag looted a LV20 Silver Grade shield last night.” Azure Sea Breeze was tempted to give the boss a kiss after hearing about this.

The turtle Boss Kresh was a passive monster. As long as it was not attacked, it would not aggro onto anyone. Even if Azure Sea Breeze gave him a kiss, nothing would happen.

This giant turtle was the most ancient inhabitant of the Howling Caves. Nobody knew how many years it had survived down here. The calm and docile Kresh was not affected by Navalex’s nightmares.

However, Kresh was hunted by almost every party because it dropped a very rare defensive shield.

“Why did you attack Kresh? Kresh has done nothing wrong,” the turtle Boss whined depressingly.

Rare treasures naturally attract hunters. It was human nature to hunt for things that they desire.

Kresh wasn’t difficult to defeat. Apart from its high defence, it had very little offensive powers. It only had a skilled called Crushing Bite, which had an Armor Pierce effect. However, the effects didn’t stack, unlike Piercing Heart Wolf General.

After about 20 minutes or so, Kresh was defeated without putting up much of a fight.

“I’ll do it myself,.” Azure Sea Breeze said as he stopped Remnant Dream.

Remnant Dreams wasn’t against this because apparently, the only valuable thing that this boss dropped was the shield.

Azure Sea Breeze rubbed his hands together and stretched his legs, preparing to take the loot. He even prayed to some unknown gods and deities.

“Goddamn, why is it this?!”

Lu Li went over to have a look and saw that it was a “Worn Turtle Shell Shield”. He could only consolingly pat Azure Sea Breeze on the back.

Worn Turtle Shell Shield was a LV20 Steel Grade shield, however, it was nothing but trash compared to Azure Sea Breeze’s current shield.

This was nothing out of the ordinary. Kresh’s Back was considered the best LV20 Silver Grade Shield. However, its drop rates were terribly low, at 5% in Elite mode and 20% in Nightmare mode.

They weren’t taking the First Clear, so the drop rates were even lower.

“Lu Li, can we try doing Nightmare mode later?” Azure Sea Breeze was triggered by this and had become ambitious.

“Yeah, we can do nightmare later,” Lu Li agreed.

The first five bosses were possible on nightmare mode, however, the last three bosses would be quite difficult to defeat. Not only were they high-level, but they also had extremely annoying crowd control abilities.

It would be hard to clear the entire dungeon, but they were doing it for the loot anyway.

The party picked up some useless equipment and materials that dropped from Kresh and continued onwards.

They walked along the river ditch as they cleared out Deviate Crocolisks along the way and eventually reached Skum.

Skum was a Kodo beast from the North Barrens and had come to the Howling Caves to seek refuge from the harsh environment.

Much like the other inhabitants of the cave, it had also become corrupted.

Now, dark energy flowed through his body, turning it into a massive and cruel beast. It would attack anything that came too close with its sharp tail and lightning.

Glory Capital, Bloor Red War Flag and the other major guilds were all stuck on this boss.

The reason was simple – Chain Lightning.

This was a Shaman’s most commonly-used mobbing skill. The damage wasn’t very high, nor did it have any bonus effects.

However, when Chain Lightning was casted by a boss, it became unimaginably powerful.

Chain Lightning: Skum strikes an enemy with a lightning bolt that arcs to other nearby enemies. Deals high nature damage, targets are paralysed.

It hit multiple targets and caused paralysis.

Skum was essentially the first Boss in Dawn that could deal damage to multiple targets.

Chain Lightning had no cooldown and could be spammed multiple times.

Lord Pythas could make melee classes less powerful. Skum, on the other hand, completely rendered them useless, because of its continuous release of Chain Lightning.

Ranged classes alone could not deal enough damage to take out the 80,000HP beast.

The Blood Red War Flag and other big guilds had tried an all-ranged lineup. However, they found that if Chain Lightning didn’t spread among the other players, it would instantly kill the main tank.

There was information about the boss on the forums, and it was known to everyone how difficult Skum was to deal with.

Wandering and the others knew they had an impossible task before them.

“How about we try this? Melee classes try to spread out as much as possible and stay away from Azure Sea Breeze. I’ll share the Chain Lightning damage with him,” Wandering ordered.

Azure Sea Breeze raised his shield and bashed the boss on the head, immediately grabbing aggro.

Skum howled angrily and a lightning bolt immediately hit Azure Sea Breeze.

The lightning did not disappear after hitting him but instead, forked-off to hit Wandering, leaving both of them paralysed.

Normally, Chain Lightning from a Shaman dealt very little damage.

After a few Chain Lightnings, the damage began to stack up, by three or four times. March Rain could not heal enough, so Hachi Chan also began healing.

The Boss’s HP had dropped by about 3 %.

“I can’t hold the boss anymore!” Azure Sea Breeze watched as his HP became critically low and realized that his death was imminent.

Even if he held on, the two healers didn’t have enough mana to last the whole fight at this current state.

“Someone else take the aggro. Moonlight, it’s up to you now.” Wandering’s HP was also dangerously low and he had to switch aggro.

Moonlight tanked the damage for a little while, but eventually gave out as well.

As a Berserker, his defence was much lower than Wandering’s.

“Let’s give up; I don’t think we can do this,” Azure Sea Breeze sighed.

Wandering could switch aggro with Moonlight. However, as the main tank, Azure Sea Breeze had no one to switch with.

The moment he said this, Chain Lightning was casted, dealing 500-600 points of damage and instantly killing him.

Lu Li quickly reacted and ran.

After he reached a safe spot, he used Stealth to leave the battle. The whole party was basically defeated after two more Chain Lightnings.