The Great Thief

Wendelian was scratching her head. She just couldn’t think of a solution to the dilemma in front of her.

It was impossible for everyone to prevent these Bloodhounds from calling out to their companions. However, once they did, more than a dozen waves of Bloodhounds would arrive to wipe the players.

Wendelian tried several other methods, but the result remained the same.

Under her command, they had been wiped more times to these mobs than they had throughout the entire dungeon run. If she wasn’t a girl, they would have already been insulting her endlessly.

Wendelian had no choice but to ask Lu Li.

“Lu Li, what do you think we should do?”

“I think we need to approach this from another angle,” Lu Li said. He wasn’t going to make Wendelian step down, and pointed to the pack of bloodhounds, continuing, “The attack of these Bloodhounds is based on two conditions – the first is when they hear the roar, but what is the second?”

Wendelian was actually considered quite a skilled commander in the gaming circles.

After thinking about it for a while, she blinked before asking, “Is it seeing its companion get attacked?”

The others then recalled the situation they had been in and realized that when the Bloodhounds roared, the others would look around before finally rushing over to attack.

“Breezly, pull the monsters behind the wall. We’ll fight the, there,” Wendelian quickly suggested.

Sure enough, when the monsters roared, the other Bloodhounds looked around but couldn’t find anything. All they could do was respond with roars of their own.

Once the monsters had mostly been cleared, Wendelian began the attack on Houndmaster Grebmar.

At this time, there were two dogs beside Grebmar. These were bigger than the ordinary Bloodhounds and they seemed to be always closely following their master. They weren’t able to pull these dogs away to defeat them.

These two hounds were more important to Grebmar then the regular Bloodhounds – they were basically Grebmar’s family. A long time ago, this Dwarf orphan began breeding puppies and used them as companions and watch-dogs.

When nothing was happening and Grebmar didn’t need to bring his loyal followers to patrol Blackrock Abyss, he would usually feed them the best beer in the Iron Tavern.

These two hounds were the reason why Houndmaster Grebmar was a difficult Boss.

Under Wendelian’s command, the team got wiped three consecutive times during the second stage due to the Bloodlust Tooth skill. Bloodlust Tooth involved the two hounds biting a player, which would cause the player to go berserk and cast their ultimate skills at random targets.

“This is even simpler. If you can’t fight the Boss, then you should kill the hounds first,” Lu Li said. He couldn’t bear to just stand by any longer.

“We tried that in the beginning. After the two hounds die, he will just recruit two more,” Wendelian protested. She felt wronged because she had already thought of such an obvious thing.

“But did you notice that the second set of hounds had less HP? We can just kill those again. We have plenty of time.”

Although Houndmaster Grebmar would summon three waves of hounds in this way, each wave was weaker than the last. Once all three waves had been defeated, no more would be summoned.

The difficulty of the third phase came from a very annoying skill that Houndmaster Grebmar had.

‘Run! Run!’ was a skill Houndmaster Grebmar would cast when he reached 15% HP. As its name implied, the Boss would try to run away, but 15% was still quite a considerable amount.

As he started running, the other players were left behind trying to catch up.

The more troublesome matter was in the process of catching up, as the Boss would run past other monsters. It didn’t matter too much if it was just one or two waves, but if they ran into too many at once, their team could be wiped.

“Hey, should we try to clear out the monsters first?” Wendelian asked as he looked back at Lu Li after they had been wiped again. She was now quite frustrated.

“Why are you looking at me? There’s nothing wrong with clearing out the monsters first.”

The level 55 monsters were around everyone’s levels anyway, so it was a good opportunity for them to farm. If Lu Li was commanding, he would have instructed everyone to clear out the monsters at the beginning.

In fact, this was actually one of the strategies, but there was no need for him to say so.

After the monsters had been cleared, they chased and eventually killed Houndmaster Grebmar. Even though they had finally overcome this challenge, Wendelian was physically and mentally exhausted and resigned as the interim commander.

“There’s an Epic item. I guess that’s not surprise since I commanded this one.”

Wendelian’s mood was immediately lifted as she looted the body to find an Epic item – the Houndmaster’s Rifle.

This gun was not particularly strong, but it was still a level 55 Epic item which generally made it better than most Dark Gold equipment. Hot Twitch decided to ask for it, as his level 50 Epic weapon was a little weaker.

There were also a few pieces of equipment and rare materials. Lu Li didn’t manage to successful roll for anything, while Azure Sea Breeze managed to roll for all the rare materials.

This was the benefit of having more players. March Rain previously managed to roll for Flarethorn and Azure Sea Breeze had now managed to roll for the rare materials.

After leaving the area where the Houndmaster was, everyone began to search for the Monument of Franclorn Forgewright so they could complete their quest.

Franclorn Forgewright was one of the greatest Iron Dwarf builders in history – he was second to no one!

He was the one who had supervised the construction of Blackrock Abyss, the city with great furnaces. Hundreds of years of hurricanes and war did not shake the walls of this city. Additionally, there was also a huge rock dam that all three Dwarf races would be immensely proud of. It was a grand building that shocked all other races in Azeroth.

At this time, the Monument of Franclorn Forgewright was next to a kneeling Tauren.

“Pyromancer Loregrain!” Lu Li cried out as he prevented his teammates from going any further. “The Twilight Hammer is one of our enemies.”

They had no reason to think that this Tauren would be friendly!

Loregrain was once a respected member of the Ring of Earth, but he later joined the Twilight Hammer for unknown reasons. He eventually came to Blackrock Abyss and became interested in the famous Iron Architect, Franclorn Forgewright. No one knew exactly what he wanted, but Loregrain was very loyal to the faith, and would treat anyone who opposed the Twilight Hammer as an enemy.

This naturally included the adventurers that had arrived in Azeroth.