The Great Thief

It was already the second day in the Molten Core.

Ruling Sword was Dawn’s weather vane. Although they weren’t the first ones to start the Molten Core, all the other guilds would begin attempting it after news spread that Ruling Sword had taken down the first Boss.

After all, not advancing meant that they would fall behind.

It wasn’t that no one knew this truth, but it was because competing against Ruling Sword was

another matter compared to laziness.

Of course, trying didn’t mean guaranteed success. Being lazy, although comfortable, was even worse.

Smaller guilds were even less motivated to attempt the Molten Core. After all, Dawn was such a big game with so much content other than Instance Dungeons. They could easily make a living through other means.

Although the first Boss was defeated, it still took them a long time. One night was quite a long time indeed. The small monsters all respawned, so Lu Li needed to take the party and clear them out. This provided them with a bounty of EXP. Sakura Memories was able to level up to 60, while the others weren’t far behind. If they could clear another two Bosses, even Lu Li would be extremely close to level 60.

After clearing the small monsters quickly, they met with the first five Core Hound pack.

They wiped multiple times here yesterday, so they were familiar with the important aspects of fighting the Hounds. Lu Li came up with a strategy based on observations from yesterday.

“On my command, five people come and take aggro. Each person takes one hound, no more.”

Even so, they still wiped. This was because after a hound was killed, it was revived. The tanks didn’t check, so one Tank fell after another. As expected, chaos ensued. The five hounds, once revived, instantly wiped the team. The lesson from this story was that these monsters were capable of reviving.

“We need to kill them simultaneously. Otherwise, the remaining will revive the dead ones,” Lu Li said.

If he had let them test out the reviving mechanic, they would eventually find out, but it would waste too much time.

They started from the beginning again. This time, each of the tanks held one monster. Then, the AoE DPS classes would unleash their skills upon them. After this, the Thieves and Warriors would be the ones to regulate the HP bars of all the monsters.

These Core Hounds did not necessarily have to be killed simultaneously. That would be much to difficult, even under normal circumstances.

The window of opportunity to kill all the hounds together was much larger, so they just needed to

kill them in a certain amount of time. Even if the hounds were revived, they just needed to try again using the same strategy. After all, they knew about the revivals, so they were more alert.

It was much harder than it looked. Who knew how many teams couldn’t even pass this stage?

After clearing out the first group of hounds, it was much easier afterwards.

Upon reaching the second Boss, Magmadar, everyone rested for an hour and a half.

Magmadar was Ragnaros’ favourite pet, with the Flame Walker Lucifron protecting it. It was said that when Ragnaros was sealed away, his enemies’ corpses were fed to this large beast. After this, Magmadar swore its loyalty to the Fire Lord.

“There’s news, but the price is extremely high,” Square Root Three messaged Lu Li.

“It’s only one skill book. How can it be priced at 2000 gold?”

Lu Li was speechless. Even if the price of gold had fallen, it was still valued at a ratio of around 30:1. 2000 gold was equivalent to $60,000 in real life!

Although he was quite well off and able to spend $60,000, it was still a blatant rip-off!

In his previous life, Tranquilising Shot couldn’t even fetch 10 gold.

That’s right – Lu Li had asked Square Root Three to help him find a Tranquilising Shot skill book.

Magmadar was difficult because of its ability to use AoE crowd control, as well as its Enrage. They had a solution to the crowd control but Enrage was different. Enrage was the reason behind countless squad wipes. A rule was set up, warning against all who attempted to fight Magmadar. Without a Hunter who knew how to use Tranquilising Shot, this Boss was a complete waste of time.

Remnant Dream already had this skill, so there was a chance to deal with Enrage.

However, this was not enough to kill Magmadar. The team’s levels were not at 60 yet, so there were level penalties. Furthermore, the Main Tank also was affected by Crush.

It would be favourable if they had two Tranquilising Shot skill books.

Besides Lucifron, these skill books could be dropped by the level 40 Sand Creepers, or monsters like the Marsh Defilers. These two types of monsters weren’t the main monsters in their area, so the spawn rate was quite slow, and the terrain was difficult to fight in. Ruling Sword had so many members, yet not even one had this skill book. How low was the drop rate for this?

Square Root Three managed to contact a few black-market dealers and guilds about the skill book.

There was someone out there who owned one. Originally, this was already allotted to the Hunter in the team. However, the Hunter was busy and wasn’t able to get online, so the squad leader just left it there.

Of course, they raised to price to a ridiculous amount after knowing that someone like Lu Li wanted it.

The squad leader had originally priced it at an insane price of 8000 gold, which was valued in the range of a hundred thousand dollars. For a normal person, earning even one hundred thousand dollars from the game was already extremely rare.

Unfortunately for the leader, Square Root Three wasn’t dumb enough to use that much money in exchange for a skill book with limited use.

Hunter skill books were not that valuable. Even the best skill books only sold for around a few hundred gold.

Both sides were being quite aggressive with the haggling. Square Root Three managed to get it down to 2000 gold, but the squad leader wasn’t willing to go down any more.

“Tell him that if he was willing to go to 1000 gold, then we’ll buy it. If he still doesn’t want to sell, then we’ll pull out,” Lu Li said, but thinking for a while, he added, “But it’s still best if we can get it. Otherwise, it’ll be a little hard for the second squad to take down the first Boss.”

After clearing Lucifron yesterday, Ruling Sword and Drizzle Court made a second team enter the Instance Dungeon. They wanted to try and see if they could take down the first Boss with the second team.

This wasn’t impossible, because the second team chose to tackle the Hard difficulty. Lucifron on Nightmare difficulty had a guaranteed drop for Tranquilising Shot, while Lucifron on Hard difficulty wasn’t a guaranteed drop. Although it wasn’t a guaranteed drop, the chances were still extremely high.

If they could take down the first Boss successfully, then there would be a second Tranquilising Shot book.

Square Root Three continued the negotiations, while Lu Li and the team focused on fighting Magmadar. They wanted to familiarise themselves with the Boss’ mechanics even if they had no chance of clearing it. While Lu Li waited for the news, Lu Li brought the squad to wipe a few more times.