The Great Thief

Seeing as the Strengthening Stones were in limited supply, he naturally had to upgrade his best equipment first.

There were a few things left that he had to strengthen – the two daggers, one of which was the Epic dagger that he couldn’t use yet, and the ring he always relied on.

Lu Li first took out the Shard of the Defiler. This was a Dark Gold dagger that was originally level 40, but he had mounted a stone onto it that reduced its level requirement.

It could be said that a considerable amount of Lu Li’s damage came from this dagger.

Ravenholdt Manor once attempted to make a batch of Epic gear, but there were a number of failures and these were the failed weapons. Water Fairy had also acquired one under Lu Li’s instruction.

Unfortunately, Ravenholdt Manor was a small camp, so Lu Li didn’t dare to introduce his guild to it.

When he had brought Water Fairy in last time, the organization had given both of them a near-impossible Boss quest. Perhaps the fear was still lingering, because he hadn’t gone back to ask for quests since.

Even so, he had to go in tomorrow to check – he needed to upgrade his equipment as much as he could before the professional league.

After being lost in thought for a while, Lu Li put the exquisite weapon into the furnace with the Strengthening Stone and ten gold coins.

It failed!

What? How did it fail on the first try?

In principle, the success rate of the first attempt should have been at least 78%. With the bonus 20% success rate from his skill, there was almost no chance of it failing.

Although the last eight items didn’t produce any special effects, none of them had failed on the first try.

As someone who had a bonus 20% success rate, there was no way he would need to ask someone else to help him, right? Lu Li was standing there with his mouth wide open in shock.

He first suspected his own bad luck and thought it was because of his character.

When strengthening equipment, failure was just a normal thing, even though it was really unlikely in this instance.

Lu Li tried again and succeeded.

If it had failed again, Lu Li would have given up and left. For him to fail like that again would have meant that God had closed this door and even boarded up the windows.

The whole process of strengthening his equipment had been filled with frustrations, but the results were worthwhile.

In the first upgrade, the dagger increased by 15 attribute points. Its Agility went from 20 to 35 points.

This was the kind of attribute that a level 40 Dark Gold equipment should have, but the dagger was too stingy to give it. Fortunately, the upgrade easily raised that stat.

The second strengthening wasn’t as unlucky as the first, but Lu Li was a little apprehensive as he heard the system’s congratulatory voice.

It was just that the result of the strengthening was slightly unsatisfactory. The Strength property had been buffed from 12 to 20, and it gave the first special effect a small buff.

The attack speed had been increased from 30% to 35%.

Lu Li had seen Water Fairy’s Shard of the Defiler; she was showing it off a few days ago after upgrading it three times. It was now at 40% attack speed.

This meant that Water Fairy’s weapon was currently better.

The Attribute increases weren’t bad, but Lu Li wanted an extra effect. He hoped that the special third strengthening would increase the attack speed a little more.

Lu Li could understand if his third attempt wasn’t successful.

In fact, there was a strategy to doing the third upgrade. If you had many Strengthening Stones available, you could upgrade all your items twice. You would attempt to upgrade an item until it was level 3 and repeat with different items until an upgrade failed. Then, you would take the important item and upgrade that.

This was called ’padding’ because the probability of failure after failing was smaller.

It was only those who were super unlucky that would fail multiple times in a row.

However, as of now, Strengthening Stones were too precious and even someone like Lu Li who had acquired so many of them in the secret area couldn’t afford that. As such, he could only rely on his luck.

System: Congratulations, your third strengthening of the Shard of the Defiler was a success.

Shard of the Defiler (Dark Gold): 42-56 damage, +35 Agility, +20 Strength, Socket Slot 1(Enhanced). Special Effect 1: Apply a 20% Armour Pierce on a target for 5 seconds. 2 minute cooldown. Special Effect 2: Attack speed +35%, Special Effect 3: Defile, active. Decreases target’s armor and movement speed by 25%, cooldown 360 seconds. Special Effect 4: Fatal Strike, when the target’s HP drops below 20%, chance to kill the target instantly. Requires level 40 (-8), Durability 120/120.

When Lu Li saw that there was no improvement in the attack speed, he was a little disappointed.

However, when he looked carefully, he was surprised to find that this equipment had four effects. It had gained a completely new effect.

The newly added effect was quite a common one – Armour Pierce – but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t good. Armour Pierce was the top-ranking effect for melee classes as reducing your opponent’s defence was the same as increasing your own attack.

This item now had four special effects, which was what the Shard of the Defiler should have been like.

Lu Li barely managed to hold back the urge to send Water Fairy the properties of his weapon, especially since she had just shown off hers to him two days ago.

However, he was a man and he had no reason to create additional opposition between them. Besides, if he showed her the properties, wasn’t he just losing his trump card? Lu Li’s thoughts were usually quite strange, but they weren’t exactly wrong either.

Now, he was done with his dagger.

The fourth strengthening would damage the equipment if it failed. It didn’t matter if he lost a few attribute points, but if he lost an effect, that would truly be depressing.

There would be an abundance of Strengthening Stones in future, and when he could pad his other pieces of equipment first, he could increase his chances of success.

Lu Li then began to strengthen his ring. The Epic dagger wasn’t particularly urgent as he couldn’t use it now anyway. It was also unlikely that he would be able to buy a stone that reduce an equipment’s level requirements any time soon.

On the other hand, strengthening this ring was a little wasteful.

If he strengthened it now, he would have to strengthen it again later if he upgraded it.

In fact, any upgradeable equipment would be like that as the game took every opportunity to squeeze some money out of the players. This was one of the game company’s favourite ways to balance the wealth gap.