The Great Thief

There were also a few pieces of rare materials. Now, there was a lot of equipment, especially set equipment, that required various rare materials. There were also many merchants who inflated the prices. Because of this, the value of rare materials couldn’t be easily calculated.

As well as this, Ruling Sword couldn’t buy rare materials from outside.

By the time the Outlands were opened up, Lu Li could level up his Supreme Ring. At that time, he would definitely need a frightening number of rare materials. The leader of the Keepers of the Grove, Remulos, had already hinted at, or clearly stated this point.

There was a limit on how much Legendary material there was on the mainland.

Lu Li was looking forward to levelling up his Supreme Ring from Epic to Legendary.

The Idol of Longevity was Druid equipment, but Hachi Chan didn’t have any need for it. Her idol was Legendary level, and been personally sent to her by Remulos. It was said that it was made by the Demi-God Cenarius himself, and was blessed by quite a few Druids of the Cenarion Circle.

Innocent Child took this equipment for a low number of points with glee in his heart.

He realized that he had really made the right choice by choosing Ruling Sword. As soon as he entered, he was chosen to participate in the First Clear team. Although he couldn’t fight in every Boss battle, he was still a frequent member of Instance Dungeon First Clears. Having not worked for long, he had already received Skill Points from two Bosses, as well as quite a bit of Exquisite equipment.

At first, he thought Lu Li would still prefer Hachi Chan, a veteran of the club, and would give her priority to receive equipment.

It was only when he actually entered an Instance Dungeon that he realized that Hachi Chan very rarely needed equipment, and she was the type who would refuse even if you insisted. Saving up points to be the king of points had already become her greatest delight.

Veil of Eclipse was a magic cloak.

Signet of the Fallen Defender was a Defensive role’s Ring.

Another pair of Desecrated Leggings and Desecrated Legguards found their own owners as well.

Then, there was still the Splinter of Atiesh. It was still kept by Lu Li for now, and when someone needed it, they could apply to receive it from him. Of course, it wouldn’t be free to get the Splinter. They would either exchange it for their aggregated guild points, or for their Instance Dungeon DKP.

The second Boss of the Death Knight zone was called Gothik the Harvester.

He guarded the second road into the Military zone. His strength wasn’t that powerful, but he controlled a powerful Death Knight team. If players had no way to deal with this batch of enemies, then they wouldn’t have the qualifications to battle with Gothik.

Gothik was the master of necrotic spells, responsible for conferring the newest Death Knights the power to summon undead spirits. They benefited from Gothik’s evil and dark spells. Even the lowest level Death Knight was able to bring the dead back to life.

Regardless of whether it was ghosts, ghouls, or skeletons – no dead was able to get away from Gothik the Harvester.

It wasn’t that easy to become a real Death Knight. Apart from possessing superhuman combat skills, you also needed to be proficient in using high-level black magic.

Although Razuvious was an excellent teacher, his skill was only limited to how to destroy an enemy’s body. However, the highest extent for Death Knights to destroy an enemy’s body was to use terrifying black magic to torture souls. Gothik the Harvester was an expert in torturing souls.

“Don’t think that because you’ve gone through the simple test of Razuvious that you can put up your feet and relax. I am where your nightmare begins!”

If Razuvious’ reprimand was already too much for the students to stand, then Gothik’s training would be torture for the soul.

It was necessary to take a drink every day that was made from special hallucinogens. The drinker could clearly feel the pain of their soul being ripped away from the body. Before sleep, they would also have to take an unnamed pill. Their dreams would be filled with the curses of black magic like words in some sort of indecipherable book. They would fight with each other and regardless of whether they were the best of friends or the closest of sworn brothers, in the end, only one would survive.

In their training and decisive battles, the students would become more and more cruel. All of the companions, including himself, were only tools for final victory. They would betray anything just for victory.

His heart degraded quicker and his black magic power increased. By the end, many students simply didn’t need Gothik to teach them how to use Death Pact and corpse-controlling spells. They could simply rely on their depraved selves to learn this type of high-level magic.

And in their depravity, they completely gave up their own humanity. The distinguishing feature of undead creatures was that as they became more depraved, it would gradually become apparent on their bodies. At this, another new batch of Death Knights was born.

When the Death Knights crossed over, they used black magic to maintain their undead warhorses. They wielded daggers in their hand, and beneath their purple cloaks, there was a pair of hollow eyes. Under the lead of the blue war flag of Frostmourne, the Death Knights sped out of Naxxramas and rushed at the intense frontmost lines of the war.

And Gothik the Harvester watched them go out with satisfaction. Looking back, he looked at the bloody combat on the dueling field of future Death Knights.

He was going to be the commander, commanding these Death Knights to deal with those invading adventurers.

“You idiots have already actively walked right into a trap. You’re challenging the most powerful! “Although you’ve experienced thousands of dangers to come to the territory of the harvester, standing in front of me…, the only way for you to live is to join the Cult of the Damned!”

“Can we really join?” Azure Sea asked Lu Li.

This guy’s head really was a piece of work. These were just the Boss’ lines. He couldn’t really have wanted to join the Cult, right?

“Alright, alright.” Azure Sea Breeze touched his nose in embarrassment. He really couldn’t understand these people saw him as an idiot. Actually, joining the Cult of the Damned would be pretty cool.

Gothik was a full-on technique Boss.

He only had 300 000 HP. A team which was able to make it this far could finish him off in 5 minutes. The problem was that he would jump off the high wall and summon his minions. The key in this battle was how to reasonably control and eradicate them.

The Boss room was divided in two with a door, with the monster zone on the left and the respawn zone on the right.

After every one of newly farmed monsters on the left had died, they immediately respawned on the right in a pile of bones. When they respawned, their HP didn’t change, but there would be a change in the skills, and all the magic would be gone. After they activated the Boss, the door in the middle would close. The Boss room would become two independent zones, and you couldn’t help each other on other sides.

However, after the Boss arrived, he would cast some potent, widespread skills with his students.

If they fought with DPS on the left, then there would be no way for the right to deal with this. If the left didn’t have enough DPS and control, then they would also be defeated. The key to defeating Gothik was to have a reasonable divide of DPS and effective control methods.

Lu Li named the three platforms one, two and three from the left. Each platform had different monsters.

The Unrelenting Trainees flooded out on all the platforms, and at the same time 11 new waves were farmed. Their attack strength was average. After the trainees were wiped out, they would respawn as specters, and like before, they were rather weak. They had Arcane Explosion that they could cast 30 yards around them. As soon as they entered into the group of healers, the team would be done straight away.

The Unrelenting Knights would form seven waves on platform numbers one and three. They could be locked down with a Priest’s Bind.

The attack power of these monsters was enough to one-shot an average player. At the same time, they would also release a damageless debuff to those around them. Those with this debuff would suffer the Shadow Bolt Volley of another monster, the Deathkight Cavalier, after 15 seconds, dealing 3800 Shadow damage. After they respawned, they would become a Death Knight, capable of casting spells such as Mana Burn and Life Tap. However, these could be stopped with skills like Kick or Shieldstrike.

New Unrelenting Riders were only present on platform two, with four waves in total. The main skills of the riders worked with the Knights for the Shadow Bolt Volley. They also had a Shadow Aura with a range of about 35 yards which would deal 500 damage every 3 seconds. However, the bigger danger was that it could stop the use of magic.

After they respawned, they divided into undead riders and undead warhorses. Both had the name HP, but they couldn’t withstand as much as Death Knights. The former basically had the same skills as the Death Knights, and were immune from all control skills. The latter could Trample, and could grant a movement speed buff to those around them.

The beginning of the battle was relaxed. After the Boss finished with his drawn-out nonsense, three new waves of trainees would be spawned. Each only had 4500 HP, so they were finished off easily. Then, every 22 seconds from the start, new knights would be spawned. From the start of the third wave of knights, new riders would be spawned every 22 seconds.

The nightmare was slowly arriving. If the left side wasn’t completely controlled and the DPS wasn’t powerful enough, then what would the right side be like? A warhorse, an undead rider, two Death Knights and three specters were respawning at basically the same time. They would need at least four Warriors to aggor them!

Moreover, if there was just slightly not enough DPS, then 22 seconds later, there would be even more undead forces following right on their heels.

Perhaps some guilds were able to keep this sort of extraordinary DPS ability. However, this rash way of fighting evidently wasn’t possible at the current point in time. If Ruling Sword couldn’t do it, then other clubs definitely couldn’t.

Since the monsters on the right respawned and were exempt from magic, all the Mages and Warlocks would gather on the right. Thieves and Hunters naturally became the main force behind DPS on the right.

Priests could Bind the Unrelenting Knights, so at least six of them needed to be on the left, but it would be good to have one on the right as well.

From experience, much of the pressure on the healers came from the right. Because of this, apart from a Main Tank healer, all the other Druids and Paladins were placed on the right. After a day of wipes, Lu Li fixed up the team, and began to use an arrangement of 6 Warriors, 7 Priests, 3 Paladins, 4 Druids, 7 Thieves, 4 Hunters, 6 Mages and 3 Warlocks.

Of these, 2 Warriors, 6 Priests, 3 Warlocks, 6 Mages and 1 Druids were on the left, and on the right, there were 4 Warriors, 7 Thieves, 3 Druids, 3 Paladins, 4 Hunters and 1 Priest.

This Boss was much more complicated than the previous Instructor Rezuvious in a lot of ways.

The left-hand side had its rhythm of battle completely controlled. Lu Li himself commanded, while the other parts were commanded by others.

The ideal situation was for the monsters dying on the left to be at limit that the right-hand side DPS could handle. When they just started, the right side was evidently relaxed. The few ghouls could be finished off easily. When new knights were spawned, pressure started coming on, but it was still within what they could handle.

The difficult point was that after the third wave of knights were newly spawned, the riders would be spawned quickly again too. At the same time, trainees were coming from all three platforms. At this point, no matter if it was at the left or the right, there was no way for them to meet such high demands.

For the left side, three Warlocks and a Warrior needed to deal with the trainees. Within 22 seconds, 6 Mages had to defeat two knights and a rider. For most clubs, this was almost an impossible task. It was a good thing that Lu Li had Lonesome Flower here.

As long as they didn’t have to worry about accidentally gaining aggro, he was easily worth a Mage and a half.

If they couldn’t defeat them, then the knights at the back would spawn new ones and the team would die.

As such there was another method, which was to have Priests lock down platform three’s newly spawned knights. Then, the Mages would focus their DPS on the knights of platform 1 and the riders of platform 2. This was within the ability of most clubs. At this point in time, the right side spawned a new knight, horse and rider every 7 to 8 seconds.

Since the trainees were affected by crowd-control, including Polymorph, they could choose to use a chain of Mages on the left to alleviate a lot of the pressure on the right. However, this method, without a doubt, increased the potential of danger that the left side faced. Lu Li decided to give it a try.

It was an easy task for the three-way alliance to bring out five or six Mages. There were quite a few substitutes waiting on hand.

The Thief and Warrior teams of the three-way alliance were extremely powerful too. As such, giving up the Polymorph and killing all the trainees from the three platforms from start to end became a possible option.

However, it still took seven or eight days for everyone to grow accustomed to these mechanisms, as well to refine a strategy.

It was a shame that the Shadow Cup meant that Lu Li couldn’t always be in the Instance Dungeon.

The main forces in the three-way alliance First Clear team were all competitors, so there were issues with the strength and arrangement of the players who were replacing them. When they were fighting on the stage, their progress almost completely stagnated.

Glory Capital wasn’t impacted. They had quite a few First Clear teams, and the one which progressed the fastest apparently wasn’t the one with the most competitors.

In the Top 100, the first club that Ruling Sword faced was called ‘Sakura Straw’. It seemed that with just a fraction of their power, they completely destroyed their opponents.

The one who made three kills in the arena wasn’t Lu Li, nor was it Moonlight – it was Mu Qiu.

Mu Qiu was filled with pride. After all, in the present patch, Paladins were mediocre, being weak in attack and having low damage from skills. They were unable to crowd-control and had just passable recovery of HP.

However, when attack wasn’t enough, equipment made up for it, and bad skills were accompanied with Skill Points. There were still special effects from equipment and so on.

Green Flag Wine, Hit Me 72 Times and Mu Qiu were called the three great Paladins of the competition. Whenever anyone met with them, they would get a headache, especially in the arena. They just had to show up and they were guaranteed to finish off one or two people.

In terms of the rankings of those who had made three kills in the arena, Green Flag Wine was first. Blood Dagger from Glory Capital could only be listed below him.

Lu Li simply had no desire to attack this unofficial ranking. If he wanted to make three kills, it wasn’t too difficult of a task. After all, Ruling Sword wasn’t like Grand Hegemony, having to face many strong opponents. Given the circumstances of there being a large gap between their power, getting three kills didn’t require much technique.