The Great Thief

”I’ll skip the rubbish. Thanks,” Lu Li said as he received the exquisite skill book.

”So you know you’re talking rubbish – aren’t you tired from it?” Lonesome Flower asked in disgust. He hadn’t been particularly friendly to Lu Li lately.

The secret zone wasn’t small, but Lu Li and the others had split into teams and eventually cleared out the map.

There was no way this place was going to be as big as a real map.

It was possible to judge the size of the secret zone based on the number of players that were permitted to enter it. A secret zone that allowed 23 players would only consist of around a dozen different types of monsters.

Everyone cleared out their assigned areas and gradually gathered near the magma.

”There’s a kind of tentacle monster in the magma. I killed some last time; the experience reward is very good. This time, we’re going to clear out all of them,” Lu Li said, then continued on to explain how these tentacle monsters attacked.

”Yuck!” Hachi Chan squealed as she rubbed his arms.

Everyone shuddered in disgust at the thought of the cold tentacles dragging them into the magma. Normally, people wouldn’t be as calm about this as Lu Li was.

”Don’t worry – we have a lot of people, so there’s no way they’ll be dragging us all into the magma this time.”

Lu Li remembered the past and began to wait excitedly for the monsters in the magma to refresh.

He made some noise with his spare weapons and a white tentacle extended from the magma towards him.

”Catch it!” Lu Li shouted.

Azure Sea Breeze was already prepared and he tied the tentacle down with a rope. The tentacle was covered in bumpy suction cups, so the rope was secured on very tightly.

Previously, the tentacle monster wanted to drag Lu Li towards it.

This time, everyone tugged the rope together to drag the monster out.

The monster had great strength, but it was still no competition for 23 players. It screamed as it was dragged out of the magma and onto land.

This time, Lu Li finally saw the true form of the monster.

It was similar to what he had imagined – the monster had more than one tentacle. It was a messy monster with a mass of tentacles, but there was only one tentacle that was long enough for it to reach onto land to catch food.

Its main body was similar to an octopus, but was covered with countless eyes.

The eyes were black and round, like puppy eyes. They were supposed to be cute, but they looked creepy with the sheer number that the monster had.

Since it had been dragged on land by surprise, the tentacle monster’s eyes were filled with fear. It quickly recognized the situation and began to go crazy. As its basic survival instincts took over, it began waving its arms to attack the players.

After he saw how the tentacle monster attacked, Lu Li felt lucky.

Not only did this monster have tentacles to attack, but it also sprayed magma poison. Azure Sea Breeze was caught by the magma, and not only did he lose a great amount of health, but his face was also destroyed.

As Lu Li listened to him scream, he had to remind him that this was only a game.

Azure Sea Breeze then relaxed. The blind effect from the magma didn’t last for too long and he soon recovered, but the dents on his face would probably take a while to heal.

These monsters had taken Lu Li around a dozen minutes to kill last time. Now that his level had increased and he had so many helpers by his side, this process was much shorter.

The experiencing was very rewarding, but Lu Li had obviously received more when he killed the monsters by himself.

Moreover, they had dragged the monster on shore, so they could loot it.

The monster didn’t disappoint them – Lu Li was delighted to see a Lava Essence. He began to question if Bosses were really the only ones that dropped rare materials.

Lava Essence was a rare material indeed and also had a wide range of use – engineering, blacksmithing, alchemy, enchanting – it could be used almost anywhere.

There were limited usages for the material at this current stage of the game. Once everyone reached a higher level, this item would become a rare and important resource.

Of course, this wasn’t an exaggeration; it was worth around 300 gold coins on the market. Most importantly, it was in demand, but supplies were restricted. Most players on the market were buying; it was rare to see someone sell it.

Lu Li silently cried over the Lava Essence that had sunken to the bottom of the river last time. Now that he calculated it, he had lost quite a sum.

This time, he was determined to kill all of these tentacle monsters and take all the Lava Essence that he could.

To improve their speed, he decided to split into four different teams of five to six people. Each team was in charge of one monster – if they decreased the numbers any further, they wouldn’t be able to drag the tentacle monsters up.

”What level of rare material is this, and why does every monster drop it?” someone finally asked.

Even Lu Li was very surprised that every tentacle monster dropped a rare material.

In such a short amount of time, they had already looted dozens of Lava Essence. It made these valuable rare materials feel cheap and he almost thought that he had remembered the wrong item.

”Isn’t it good to have more? If you don’t want them, pass them into the guild storage as points. Or, you can sell them to me – one hundred gold for each one,” Lu Li said in the chat room.

”One hundred gold!” Remnant Dream gasped.

Although she had earned a decent income by becoming the spokesperson for Kirby, she was still quite financially burdened and had slowly become addicted to money.

”Just take it,” Azure Sea Breeze said without hesitation.

”I’ll give you mine too. Just fight me a few more times,” Fat Monkey said quickly. After entering Ruling Sword, he had fought against Lu Li a few times. Although he always lost, learned a lot every single time.

Unfortunately, Lu Li was often too busy to battle him.

”You discovered this secret zone. It’s already nice that you brought us here and we’ve all collected a lot of Fortified Stones from this trip. If you need it, you can take all of the Lava Essence.”

Even though Wandering wanted to kick Lu Li all the time, he had set lines when it came to serious things.

Others expressed that they wanted to give these to Lu Li for free.

Even Remnant Dream said that she was happy to give her Lava Essence to Lu Li for free.

”What are you all doing?” Lu Li asked, not knowing if he should cry or laugh. ”I’m not a leader who tries to squeeze every bit of benefit from his staff members. This is a very exquisite rare material that you can sell for up to three to four hundred gold coins in the future. It’s already a rip-off that I’m buying them off you for one hundred gold. If you guys don’t agree to it, then we’ll just split it evenly.”

Lu Li wasn’t leader-material, but he had his own opinions in this matter.

In his previous life, he had never joined a stable group because all the leaders he ran into were selfish. Whenever they ran into something that they wanted, they would ask their loyal subordinates to give up the item. If the subordinates gave up, the others would either follow with the flow, or couldn’t compete with anything. The good things always fell into the hands of the leader.

As for those subordinates, they apparently received better things afterwards.

Those leaders weren’t concerned about you being angry and leaving either – others would be ready to replace you after you left. They took all the benefits they could to increase their own gains.