The Great Thief

“Boss, the monsters behind us are respawning,” someone reported.

Before they had even defeated the first Boss, the monsters they had previously cleared were already respawning. They were respawning quite quickly too.

“Grab some of the players to deal with them. I want to fish.”

Lu Li was sitting on his chair and didn’t move. He said that he wanted to fish, so Water Fairy didn’t move either. Both of them continued to carry on as they had been doing.

The others secretly insulted this couple, but they had no choice except to do as they were told.

Fortunately, they were already familiar with these monsters, so it didn’t matter that they were missing two Thieves. There were also far fewer monsters here, so they didn’t need that much manpower anyway.

After clearing the monsters, Lu Li officially announced the start of their next attempt at the Boss.

“There isn’t much to say. Main Tank, go and pull the surrounding monsters so we can clear them first. Everyone else, pay as much attention as you can to the two fire demons near the Boss. Since the monsters before this were so difficult, we probably won’t defeat this Boss in one attempt, but we have to make every death count. Let’s try to find out as much as we can about the Boss in this attempt,” Lu Li said, making sure not to give them false hope.

In general, it was quite useful to get everyone riled up because you could create a miracle.

However, as someone who had experienced rebirth, Lu Li knew the difficulty of the Molten Core even though he had not played it. Their First Clear experience was bound to be a long and arduous journey. Blindly boosting their morale now would only make their bitterness worse after several defeats.

First, they had to set a small goal. To get to a million, they had to reach a hundred first.

“Brothers, I will be going in then!” Azure Sea Breeze cried out after clearing the mobs and rushed into the Boss.

As for the two minions near the Boss, they were naturally taken over by World’s Best Friend and Wandering. Normally, they would only bring two Main Tanks, but Lu Li brought three this time to deal with the Boss and his minions. Although they had one less damage output player, the risk of being wiped was much lower.

“Boss, who do we kill first?”

The commander hadn’t said anything, which made everyone anxious.

“Kill the fire demons first, obviously,” Lu Li responded.

These two fire demons could be defeated. In fact, if you didn’t know whether a monster could be killed, you should always try, because the monsters would often have strange skills, like…

“Rice Ball has been hit by a Crowd Control!” someone standing next to Sesame Rice Ball cried out.

Sesame Rice Ball was hit by the fire demon’s charm, which meant that he was now fighting his own team, but that was not all. If there was just one Warlock fighting them, then they could just send someone to crowd-control him. However, when he was hit by the skill, he suddenly duplicated into five.

“Wandering go over to tank Rice Ball’s clones. World, tank the two minions, and Breezy, keep fighting the Boss,” Lu Li called out while attacking one of the fire demons. His voice remained calm while giving out the commands, which gave everyone some confidence.

Some commanders liked to yell and scream, but they also sounded nervous when they encountered something new. They didn’t know that their commands were affected by their emotions too.

“They are all the same. There isn’t an aura at the foot of any one of them. They all have the same attack power, so this is difficult,” Wandering reported. The fact that they had a group of Paladins was becoming more useful now, but Wandering was still tanking all of the clones.

“How is their damage?” Lu Li asked.

“It’s really high!” Wandering cried out. “I am already using my damage reduction skills, or else I wouldn’t be able to tank them. There are five Warlocks, and they are all powerful as well. Sesame Rice Ball, how do you have so much time to get all this equipment and have gems for all your slots too?”

“Just kill him then,” Lu Li said without thinking.

“…” everyone was speechless.

“Boss…” Although he couldn’t help himself because of the Crowd Control, Sesame Rice Ball could still speak on the team channel.

He felt like the situation could still be salvaged, so why was Lu Li completely giving up on him?

“Do it quickly, and then deal with the fire demons. Stop wasting time talking,” Lu Li growled. They indeed had to kill the person that had been charmed by the fire demon. This was the initial problem in the solution of this Instance Dungeon, and it would later be removed as the charm would become a form of magic that was dispel-able by Priests.

Since Lu Li had given a clear instruction, everyone had no choice but to obey.

Sesame Rice Ball didn’t even last for five seconds. He was just a Warlock with three thousand HP and Cloth Armor. When everyone focused him, he immediately fell.

Then, they turned to the continue attacking the two minions of the Boss.

The second person to be charmed was Hachi Chan. She was a healer, and although she didn’t pose the same threat as Sesame Rice Ball, she would heal the Boss instead. Having Hachi Chan’s healing the Boss was a terrible thing to deal with, so they also quickly killed her.

Just as everyone was worrying about who would be the next, the Boss suddenly took the limelight from the minions.

Everyone was given a curse that burned their Mana, Energy or Rage and increased the Mana, Energy or Rage required by their skills by 100% for five minutes.

This was an area of effect skill, and it had a very wide range.

Some players thought that this wouldn’t affect their damage on the Boss because it didn’t harm them directly. However, if it was left unchecked, the Warriors’ and Thieves’ damage output would be greatly reduced and the Magic Professions would rapidly deplete their mana, especially the Priests. If they ran out of mana, the healers would be unable to heal and they would be wiped soon after.

This lasted for exactly five minutes. If they didn’t deal with it, then they would have no hope left.

“Mages, deal with the curse,” Lu Li commanded after some thought. He turned his eyes to three people – Deadly Green Orange, Short Circuit and Lonesome Flower. They were a little stunned at first, but then they quickly rushed to get rid of the curse on their teammates.

Mages were rarely specifically instructed, especially in the previous Instance Dungeons.

Even if there was a curse, it was never significant enough that the Mage would spend their time lifting it. As such, when Lu Li called for them to remove the curse, they felt a little forced and had to take some time to work out who had been affected. This was nothing to do with their performance as they had been attentively dealing damage and managing their aggro, but they had never cared about who received a curse before.

Druids could also remove curses, but Hachi Chan was still lying on the ground.

By the time everyone’s curses were removed, some of the Magic professions had much less mana than before. Some had even completely run out. Two of the Tank Healers reported that they had no mana left and could only support by casting minor healing skills.

“Mages, what are you thinking?!”

Lu Li desperately resisted the urge to cough up blood.

Although Lonesome Flower was not a PVP player, he had been doing Instance Dungeons with Lu Li for such a long time, so his response time was much shorter than the average person. Short Circuit was a very talented player, but perhaps he was still untrained because he was moving very slowly.

Not to mention, there was also Deadly Green Orange. She was a professional player, but was wasting time anyway. This girl was the most deserving of Lu Li’s anger.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t from Ruling Sword, so Lu Li couldn’t just single her out.

“Sorry, this is the first time I’ve removed curses,” Deadly Green Orange apologized quickly. She was brave enough to admit her mistakes and was confident that she would do better next time.

The other two Mages immediately understood what they did wrong when they heard that.

“I would rather the three of you not to deal damage and just focus on removing the curse. Now there’s no point to continue fighting. Let’s just die quickly. Wandering, if you interfere with Remnant Dream’s pet again, I will make sure that you have negative guild points!” Lu Li roared.