The Great Thief

After he returned from the Trial Tower, Lu Li went to the Administrative Hall.

This was one of the busiest places in the city and there were countless NPCs and players that were running errands. That’s right, NPCs much like players, also had their own lives. It was actually quite difficult to tell the players and NPCs apart at first glance.

Some windows had hundreds of people lining up for them, but the real estate window was not one of those.

When Lu Li arrived, there wasn’t a single person in line.

The value of property in the game was far beyond the realm of affordability. Very few people were willing to spend more than ten thousand dollars to purchase a virtual house. Ninety percent of the players lived in the inns and hotels that were provided in the game.

The people who visited this window were mostly rich and had too much spare cash on hand.

As such, Lu Li attracted a lot of attention from others, including a few girls that looked at him flirtatiously. They were planning ways in their mind to seduce this rich man.

The NPC was sitting there in boredom until Lu Li came. He quickly stood up to serve him and asked, ”Dear adventurer, how may I assist you today?”

Even his mask couldn’t hide how cool he felt.

Lu Li didn’t realize that his popularity was high enough to influence how NPCs treated him. NPCs in the main town would rarely be this well-mannered and courteous to players.

This was an indescribable feeling.

”I want to build a studio for myself and open up the family storage service,” Lu Li said as he took out his deed for his house and placed it down.

An in-game house could be customized by the buyer in any way they desired without permission from the officials of the game. However, the work studio that Lu Li wanted was too difficult to build himself, so he needed to spend money and employ the NPCs.

As for Family Storage, it was basically a storage system for your house that linked to both personal and guild storages.

However, the player needed authority to access the guild storage. Since Lu Li was the guild leader, he had full access to the storage which was very convenient for him.

”What sort of functions do you want your studio to have?” the NPC asked in a pleasant tone.

”All of it I guess, preferably with two working stations.”

Lu Li wanted one for himself and one for his sister, even though Lu Xin cannot play the game right now.

”That’ll be… 300 gold all together,” the NPC announced after quickly calculating the total cost.

Three hundred gold would be enough to buy a small house in an average town, but Lu Li had spent this on a work studio. Spending money so lavishly stunned all of the players around him.

”What about the Family Storage? I need to link both my personal and guild storage to it.”

His intentions weren’t to brag or show off to others. However, in his past life, there were countless times where he was extremely envious of other rich players and wished that one day he could stumble upon a lottery win.

”That will be… another 200 gold. Five hundred gold all together,” the NPC said in an excited tone.

To make the game more realistic, NPCs were designed to be intelligent and had their own personal motivations and goals. Quite a large sum would be pocketed by him because of commission.

Lu Li checked the numbers and confirmed the transaction, after which 500 gold was taken out of the 600 gold in his inventory.

The money he had recently made was almost all gone.

Although the price was high, so was the efficiency of the building process. As soon as Lu Li returned home from the Administrative Hall, there was a new house near his lakeside residence with a sign that read ’Alchemy Room’.

Since it was a game, the work studio was built immediately.

He opened the door and was greeted by a very spacious working area. It may have been slightly overkill because it was far too much for him and his sister alone. The inside of the house was built with space-compacting technology, which made it more spacious than it appeared from the outside.

The 300 gold was definitely worth it.

Lu Li could see rows of materials, rare items and his legendary dagger in his personal storage. The next panel was the guild storage.

Although he was considered to be quite rich, the guild storage wasn’t as impressive compared to his personal one.

Since there were more than 80,000 members in his guild, most of them would use the storage as a bin. They would throw in their useless junk, such as potions, items and materials in exchange for guild points.

Because Lu Li was the leader, he was granted access to all the items in the storage. However, even if he wanted to, there was absolutely nothing in there for him to take.

With a press of a button on his work station, the options for Engineering appeared. He decided to begin practicing and level up his Engineering while he had some time on his hands.

Since he had first joined the game, Lu Li never had a break. It was non-stop leveling up, clearing dungeons, competing in tournaments and improving his PVP skills.

All of his professions were lagging behind, including his Alchemy, Engineering and Forging. He had promised Water Fairy to forge three items a day, but never fulfilled it.

Water Fairy couldn’t force a guild leader of 80,000 players to take time out to Forge items for her every day.

Lu Li’s Engineering was currently at Lv174; he was six levels off becoming an Advanced Engineer. Currently, he had three advanced Engineering recipes waiting for him to craft – the Gnomish Poultryizer, Goblin Jumper Cables and the Goblin Rocket Boots, which required Lv240, 260 and 280 respectively.

He had also found an easier recipe from his storage – the Goblin Mining Helmet

Apart from increasing the user’s Mining profession by 5 points, it was absolutely useless. It would only be useful if the user came across a high-level ore supply and was a few levels off.

However, that situation was very niche and the recipe was quite common as well. Most engineers would craft these just to level up their profession, so there was no hope in making money off them.

The only upside to this recipe was that the materials used to craft them were a lot cheaper.

Lu Li learned the recipe and smelted some dark iron ore in the furnace. The dark iron ore was taken from the guild storage. No one dared to say anything since there was nothing wrong with the leader taking some ore.

While he waited for the ore, he took out his tailoring knife and cut some heavy leather.

Sewing was quite easy and he didn’t need to learn the profession because he knew how to do it in real life. After making a basic hat, he poured the liquid iron ore into it.

Seven minutes later, a Goblin Mining Helmet was made