The Great Thief

The situation at Scarlet Monastery was extremely messy.

There were many scumbags in the society. In real life, the rule of law was absolute, so they had to be

cautious when doing such things. However, in the game, they didn’t need to worry about the law.

These people took joy in bullying, killing or harassing other players.

Scumbags like this usually weren’t strong players in the game, so there was a very obvious problem here. They might not be able to bully around the people that they normally bully in real life.

The disadvantaged and the powerless could only endure these hardships in real life.

However, it was different in games. Perhaps it was because of their difficult circumstances in real life that they were extremely driven to succeed in the game. This type of people were usually quite strong and had potential.

After hitting many walls, these scumbags finally found a new direction.

Newbies!

Dawn had already been released for a year, so there were many changes throughout the life of the game so far. The most obvious change was that the game helmet’s price gradually decreased. Now, a mere thousand dollars could buy a game helmet. With the ability to earn money in Dawn, many people would take this route to earn their living.

The price drop of the helmet allowed many of the poorer people in the society to enter the game.

The real-life status of the newly-entered players didn’t matter in the game. In the beginning, they all had the title ‘Newbie’. These new players became the targets of these scumbags.

The Scarlet Monastery was an area that was full of newbies, so naturally, it attracted these scumbags.

These Mages were all the same type of people. All of them were scumbags. They were used to killing and harassing other people, especially newbies. However, they would leave the newbies who helped out with their business alone.

However, these Mages’ power-levelling skills were not worthwhile at all.

The prices were extravagant with average results. They would often miss a couple of monsters which would chase after the newbies in the party during the run.

Even if there were no one to take the newbies on free runs, the newbies wouldn’t pay these scumbags to take them. Furthermore, there was a Mage called Soulhun who was just bringing these newbies in for free runs. There was an instance where a newbie that was partied up with these scumbags ended up leaving them for the free runs that Soulhun was leading.

These scumbags were furious.

Free power-levelling would disrupt their business, and this was directly stealing their customers. That was why they decided to kill this Mage.

The process was simple. After all, he was outnumbered.

The first time they killed Soulhun, he had dropped a decent Dark Gold item. This motivated them to crush him into the ground completely.

However, they didn’t expect for a new target to appear.

Lu Li was always the one doing the bullying, whether real life or in game. He wasn’t going to let this slide. He thought that they were just trying to get by with this small business of theirs. He didn’t think that they were a bunch of bullies and scum of the earth.

The new prey decided to thoroughly teach them a lesson.

With one slash, Lu Li immediately killed one of the Mages with around 50% HP.

Everyone in the battle were dumbfounded. The group of Mages wanted to find Lu Li, then kill him and loot his items. However, they didn’t expect him to appear in such a fashion.

Everyone paused.

“Why’d everyone stop?”

Lu Li spun his dagger on his hand, then stabbed a person next to him on the head.

Gouge!

This was a crowd-control skill that usually didn’t deal much damage, but it ended up dealing a little more than 300 HP. This immediately dropped the Mage’s HP bar by a small chunk, but not even the Mage had noticed.

Only professional players would consider everything when battling.

From the first skill, a professional would be able to form a plan regarding offence and defence.

If the Mage didn’t notice the first strike, it was still okay. The second and third normal hits were still manageable. However, it was the fourth skill, Sinister Strike, that dealt a whopping 1800 damage and also inflicted 2 seconds of Stun.

Lu Li followed up with a normal hit and immediately killed the second Mage.

What happened?

No one could follow what had just happened. Why were there suddenly two bodies on the ground?

“My friend…”

The lead Mage was the first to react. He didn’t order his henchmen to immediately attack Lu Li. After all, even the stupidest people would realise that Lu Li was not an easy target. Lu Li had just instantly killed two of his men. This was almost an inhuman feat.

“Eh? When did we become friends?” Lu Li asked.

His acting was actually quite good, but unfortunately, he had a mask on. Other people could only see the two cold and ruthless eyes behind the mask.

“It’s all just a misunderstanding! We were just targeting this person, so it doesn’t involve you. You’ve already killed two of our men, so any misunderstanding between us is gone, right? Let’s leave it at that. How about it?” the lead Mage said, suppressing his anger.

This was a lawless group of people who had oppressed players at Scarlet Monastery for a long time, purely through their numbers. They weren’t used to swallowing their pride.

“Why are you guys targeting him?” Lu Li asked.

“This doesn’t concern you. It’s between us and him,” the lead Mage warmly replied.

“Why doesn’t it concern me? He’s my friend! You’ve already killed him…How many times?” Lu Li turned his head and asked the blue-robed Mage who would dangerously close to dying again, if it wasn’t for him.

“Tw-twice…”

The blue-robed Mage was dumbfounded because this weird guy just claimed that they were friends. Unless, if they were actually friends, but he just didn’t know because the person was masked.

“Don’t joke around. You don’t know him.”

“I do know him! His name is Soulhun,” Lu Li said seriously.

“Pft! You just found out, didn’t you? Friend, are you trying to look for trouble?”

The lead Mage couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I’m not joking around. You’ve already killed my friend twice. It’s you guys who are looking for trouble, not me. Ask them! Who’s looking for trouble here?” Lu Li asked as he pointed to the newbies who had just revived.

A leader could bring four players. Now, there were only three.

Perhaps there weren’t four players to begin with, or one of them had already escaped.

Lu Li didn’t want to stir up trouble, since he preferred to spend this time on collecting souls. Now that he finally had something new to do and strive for, his passion for the game was reignited.

However, he couldn’t just ignore this.

The blue-robed Mage was willing to power-level for free and didn’t seem like the pretentious type. Furthermore, upon seeing that other people were brought into his conflict, he didn’t hesitate to try and save them.

The newbies who were partied up with the blue-robed Mage knew that they were destined to die if they entered the battle, but they didn’t hesitate to join in.