The Great Thief

To deal with this kind of ordinary, low-attack monster, Lu Li didn’t even need to sit down to regenerate his HP as his Vampirism was enough. He farmed dozens and dozens of monsters before finally collecting enough hearts.

Of course, some of the hearts were rarer than the others.

Given that this was a farming quest that could be repeated, he didn’t worry about which ones he had more of, as long as he had enough to complete the quest.

“I’m back Mr Nafien!” Lu Li shouted as he stood by the cave entrance.

It wasn’t long before he saw the bear come out. Perhaps it was because Lu Li’s face was covered with the blood of the fallen, but Nafien’s complexion seemed much better.

“This is what I asked for. You now have the friendship of the Timbermaw Bears,” Nafien said with a smile as he checked the quest items.

The System prompted him six times that he had completed the quest, which meant that Lu Li had handed in six sets of the quest items. He had calculated this to be exactly the amount needed to gain the friendship of the Timbermaw clan.

Dawn’s Reputation system was a very complicated thing.

The relationship between the player and the NPCs could be summarized as: Hated – Hostile – Cold – Neutral – Friendly – Respected – Worshiped.

Under normal circumstances, unless it was a faction camp or one that was hostile to your race, most would start from Cold or Neutral.

If you did something that satisfied a member of the camp, your Reputation would improve. Conversely, if you angered a member, your Reputation would move towards being more hostile.

Lu Li’s reputation with the Timbermaw Clan was originally Cold, but now, it had skipped past Neutral and was Friendly.

In fact, at the beginning, it was fairly easy to use quests to progress to a Friendly reputation. However, to go from Friendly to Respected and then finally to Worshipped, required a ridiculous amount of Prestige.

Even if Lu Li worked incredibly fast, it was impossible to rush to Worshipped without at least three to five full days of work.

Fortunately, he was mainly here to practice his Shadowstrike, so the Prestige he had gained was just a bonus. The matter of whether he could get to a Worshipped Reputation wasn’t important to him.

“You have done well. Will you continue to help us relieve the pain of those Deadwood Bears?” Nafien asked.

“Of course,” Lu Li said, then added in a sorrowful tone, “Those poor friends are completely lost, so returning to the embrace of the nature is the best option for them.”

“Well, I think I can help you with that,” Nafien offered as he raised his hand and gave Lu Li a buff.

The System prompted Lu Li that he had received Nafien’s Blessing mark, which gave him +40 for all Attributes and 20% movement speed for 3 days!

Lu Li was not mistaken – it really did last for three days. This was the Timbermaw Clan’s famous buff, which enabled players to speed up the process of improving their Reputation with them. A player could only receive it when they were on Friendly terms, and they only had one chance with it.

In fact, this was why Lu Li had chosen to come to the Timbermaw Hold.

He had to make sure that he could win the marathon. A 20% increase wasn’t that powerful, but the fact that it lasted three days was significant.

This meant that Lu Li would have the 20% bonus throughout the entire marathon.

He was already confident that he would win, but there was no longer any doubt about it.

Of course, Lu Li knew that there were would always be someone who had surpassed even him, but he felt like the chances of that were quite slim.

“Thank you Mr Nafien – your blessing has filled me with strength,” Lu Li said sincerely. He even thought that this ugly bear monster was more lovable than the Elf sisters of his race.

“You give me too much credit,” the bear said, then continued, “Keep working hard. Don’t put our forest ancestors to shame.”

Lu Li continued farming for a little while before receiving a call. He then handed over more quest items and immediately teleported to Gadgetzan. He wouldn’t be able to gain enough Reputation for a while anyway, and who knew how long it would take before he could attain the Skill Completion that he set for himself?

In the midst of all these things, he needed to keep money in mind!

Lu Li had been anxiously waiting for this moment for a long time.

The sum for the tickets and bonuses for the first Professional League wouldn’t be settled for some time, and the contract for the endorsement also had a cool-off period. Plus, they had to pay compensation for the players who died to Gangnam Royals. They also couldn’t make the end-of-year payments because of their lack of funds. After all, there was no bonus money if there was none to begin with…

In other words, Ruling Sword was about to go hungry!

Many of the senior executives hadn’t received their own payments for a long time, and some even had to pour their own money into the guild. For example, Square Root 3 had used his own money to acquire gold coins for the guild.

Lu Li had also placed a number of deposits into the guild, leaving only a bit of money to help with the recovery of his sister.

His debt to Water Fairy was still there, although the female tycoon probably wasn’t missing it. Lu Li’s plan to buy a house by the end of the year had to be delayed, especially since his sister really liked the current place that they were staying at.

Even so, Lu Li was still being plagued by the lack of funds.

When he was trying to treat his sister’s illness, he worried about money. Now, he had thousands of people under him and he was still worried about money.

Everyone in this world was always busy with money – it was the reasons that differed. Fortunately, Lu Li had just heard some good news and he felt that his troubles would soon be solved.

Mr. Marin Noggenfogger had been working on research and development with the financial and material support of Ruling Sword.

He actually wanted to change the name of the Noggenfogger Elixir to the Lu Li Elixir to flatter his Boss, but Lu Li simply refused.

Other than money, fame didn’t have much of an effect on Lu Li.

To put it simply, Mr. Noggenfogger had made great progress. The first batch of the potion had been successful and was christened the Noggenfogger Elixir 1.

The invention wouldn’t bring a huge amount of power to Azeroth, but it did represent a sizeable profit.

Mr. Noggenfogger had long known that the entrepreneurial spirit in him had been taken advantage of by Lu Li. That Night Elf was even more despicable than him. He had accounted for his invention and had planned to take his wealth.

However, the contract had already taken effect and he was dying at the time. He had no choice but to

accept Lu Li’s help.

After a few days, Mr. Noggenfogger saw the insidious Night Elf again in the tavern of Gadgetzan. He seemed to be bigger than last time, and was covered in a suffocating smell. It was the smell of blood.

At first, he wanted to talk about terminating the contract, but now, Marin Noggenfogger didn’t want to say anything.