The Great Thief

“A Dark Gold!”

A normal monster had dropped a Dark Gold equipment. Remnant Dream felt as if her luck was finally coming back to her.

“High fire resistance. Magic classes, report in your fire resistance. The three of you with the lowest fire resistance players, send over the details of your gloves,” Lu Li said after he checked the equipment. Although it was Dark Gold, it wasn’t worth any less than a Legendary for this dungeon because of its high fire resistance.

Lu Li pretended to be calm and confident in front of everyone, but he actually wasn’t so sure about passing the dungeon.

His plan was simple – take out the monsters first for levelling. They wouldn’t lose Experience anyway in a dungeon and killing these level 62 monsters was worth their time. Even if they were to divide the Experience equally amongst themselves, it wouldn’t be any slower than training in the Wild.

Not to mention, they would be able to obtain some decide fire resistance equipment in this process.

Under normal circumstances, only players at max level with a whole set of level 60 Dark Gold equipment would have a chance of passing the dungeon. Lu Li and the others didn’t meet the level requirement to pass, but many of them possessed Legendary items. A few of them were almost fully garbed in Legendary equipment. Once they increased their fire resistance, there was a chance of them passing the dungeon.

“Firelord. What a dominating name,” World’s Best Friend muttered, feeling the urge to talk smack again.

“Stop wasting time – go,” Lu Li pushed him.

He didn’t plan for them to complete the dungeon today, but if they didn’t even take out the first Boss, that would be a waste. As such, it was important for them to quickly take out these small monsters first.

“Boss, there’s a patrol there. What if it comes to us when we’re fighting?” World’s Best Friend asked as he pointed at the Earth Elemental that was moving at breakneck speed.

“Uhm, let’s wait for it to come over first then. Great work on paying attention to the details,” Lu Li said as he felt sweat drip down the side of his face.

The monster that World’s Best Friend pointed at was a Lava Annihilator, another wipe factor in the Molten Core. These monsters were a lot more common in the dungeon and they moved very quickly. At the same time, taunts were relatively ineffective against them, so tanks would have to constantly cast their spells. Or else, they would assault the team with their speed.

Fortunately, their attacks were a lot weaker, so it was quite hard for a team to wipe if they were fighting this monster alone.

The real problem was that this monster might suddenly come over and join the battle while the players were busy dealing with other monsters. Its signature move was Charge, which would knock players away into the lava pool nearby. They couldn’t climb back up themselves either. If they were closer to shore, they might be able to ask their healers to help, but if they were further away or had already sunken deep, they would have to hastily run back to their corpse.

A worse situation that Lu Li could think of was the monster using its Charge to push a player into another pile of monsters.

Dawn players referred to these monsters that were attracted outside of original battles as add-ons. In other dungeons, add-ons were just a little more troublesome, but in the Molten Core, they were fatal.

The reason why Lu Li didn’t enlighten everyone was because he was hoping that his team would grow familiar with the attack method of these monsters through wiping a few times.

Now that World’s Best Friend had reminded everyone, Lu Li could explain. In fact, he had to encourage World’s Best Friend’s behaviour. The Lava Annihilator was a common monster with a greater patrol range, so it would be too troublesome to find them one by one and kill all of them. That would simply waste too much time.

It was easy to kill a monster by itself, and it caused no damage at all.

After they took out this monster, they faced the Firelord.

This lava cave was filled with these monsters and after the previous lessons, Azure Sea Breeze didn’t dare to underestimate them anymore. Although each wave only consisted of two monsters, he didn’t dare try luring a second wave. Instead, he carefully used his rifle to hit one of the two monsters from afar.

The two monsters were both ranged, but because Azure Sea Breeze positioned himself out of their sight, they still ran over.

“World’s Best Friend, look after the other one. Wandering, watch out for any other monsters, and healers, keep to the same targets as before. Don’t let our tanks die because of your healing mistakes. I won’t hold back from deducting your DKP,” Lu Li instructed.

DKP referred to the abbreviation for Dragon Kill Point.

This originated from a slightly popular game overseas.

In many games with western backgrounds, Dragons were all represented as ridiculously powerful bosses that guarded priceless treasures. A team would no doubt be well-trained to be able to take down a dragon boss. The works of these dragon slayers would be noted, recorded and stored using Dragon Kill Points (DKP). This would be the measurement of their work and it was also the only way to decide how the priceless treasure at the end was to be split.

This kind of calculation method grew in popularity amongst players and the Dawn system itself had implemented a DKP calculation system in the game as well.

Team leaders or other assigned managers had the authority to alter this DKP, which meant that it was easier to deduct points. DKP was in close relation to the profit of players themselves and deducting points was the more simple and efficient way to make players stay focused on their dungeon run.

Relationships alone wouldn’t be enough to make the team grow.

After the players began their exploration in Molten Core, the team size of 40 men only proved how useful the DKP system was.

Before this, teams often rolled for points in dungeons to decide who would take the equipment. However, rolling relied heavily on luck and came with risks; it wasn’t a great method for particularly unlucky players.

For example, if there were two Priests on the team at all times, but only one attended all the dungeon runs, he could lose out to the other Priest if he was unfortunate. This wouldn’t be fair to the players who gave the run more effort.

The DKP system was a more realistic system which rewarded players based on their effort. At the same time, those who attended more often would have more points to receive the equipment first. The only risk that they had to take was the luck of the looter. Regardless, the DKP system was quite suitable for games that had a high requirement for teamwork.

Unfortunately, during the fight, there was still an accident in taking down the Firelord. One of the reasons was because the Firelord summoned a Lava Spawn. Everyone thought that they just had to kill the Firelord and the Lava Spawn would die with the Boss. This was common knowledge and even Lu Li couldn’t say anything. All he could do was to stay silent and allow everyone to proceed with what they were doing.

The Lava Spawn split into two, then to four, then to eight…

Just as everyone took out the two Firelords and let out a long sigh of relief, they realized that their plans had gone awry. These Lava Spawns didn’t disappear; they just kept splitting.

The time that it took them to split also reduced.

The more these Lava Spawns split, the faster they would reproduce as well. In the end, they just kept splitting and the team of 40 men was surrounded by endless Lava Spawns.

Although these monsters only knew Fireball and Flamestrike and their damage was quite limited, there were only so much that Lu Li and the others could do when they were so vastly outnumbered. The healers were targeted first because they healed too much and after they died, the rest could only follow.

After the wipe, everyone gathered together to rest up.

“Kill the spawns first,” World’s Best Friend suggested. He was also a commander, responsible for one of the elite teams in Ruling Sword. Although he always took the guide that Lu Li and the others figured out, he never gave up on learning.

Lu Li didn’t say anything; he just nodded.

He didn’t need to risk himself and make a call first. A wipe was enough to let these guys figure out the problem. As for the time that they wasted, this was a normal price to pay when exploring a new dungeon. It was also the price that these people had to play to continue growing.

Lu Li’s input was to minimize time wastage and give hints when the team wiped continuously and had no clue about the situation.

The restarted the fight and it went basically like last time.

The difference was that this time, Lu Li asked everyone to take mixtures instead of potions. The difference between the two was that potions were a single-use item. Although it lasted for a while, the effect disappear upon death. On the other hand, mixtures were different. They lasted longer on players and the effect would still persist, even after death.

Of course, most mixtures were a whole lot more expensive than potions and the recipes were rare.

Currently, only major guilds could afford to have these kind of alchemists and only major guilds would use something so expensive.

Each member of this 40-man team would need a mixture that cost around 50 gold coins. This meant that each use was 2000 gold coins. Although the value of currency was quite low at the moment, this was still thousands and thousands of dollars, and it would only for one or two hours as well.

Only Lu Li would ask them to take mixtures for small monsters.

Even Glory Capital would consider carefully before doing so, because they didn’t know how long it would take for them to finish exploring the dungeon.

With the help of mixtures, their damage output grew.

One of the Firelords was even taken down before it had the chance to summon anything. Although the other Firelord did summon a Lava Spawn, everyone was already prepared for it, so the Spawn had no chance to multiply.

Even when split amongst 40 players, the Experience gained was very worthwhile. It was almost equivalent to the minor Bosses from their past dungeons.

After a few waves of these monsters, Lu Li finally saw a class set piece. This finally confirmed the legends in the past that even normal monsters from the Molten Core could drop parts of a set. This reward gave everyone even more drive. They even declined Lu Li’s offer to rest a little, saying that they would all rest when they got to the Boss.