The Great Thief

Translator: Halcyon Translations Editor: Halcyon Translations

There was no school in the game, but if you continued working hard, there was no doubt that you could improve yourself.

To put it simply, there were two things in this world to help you improve – Strategies and Videos. The former referred to the theoretical concepts that provided analysis on Instance Dungeons, quests and professional skills. This usually covered a broad range of subjects, but they were often relatively basic and superficial. After all, not everyone would reveal all the crucial details of their knowledge to share with everyone.

This was why you needed the latter to improve – videos.

Some players recorded their own battles. The main purpose of this was to compare it against others and show off how strong they were. These recordings were similar to the strategies in that they were also quite superficial. When Lu Li’s reached a certain level of proficiency, this no longer met his needs.

Later, Lu Li began to analyse these high-level videos of the game.

These were the highest-end educational materials in the professional circles. Ordinary players were not likely to be able to understand them, and even Lu Li didn’t at first. However, he didn’t give up and keep trying. Eventually, under the influence of these videos, he grew better and better at understanding the analysis…

There were quite a few classic videos in the current game, and several of them were of matches in the first season of the league.

Without Lu Li’s rebirth, the top four guilds would be Glory Capital, Gale Legion, Blood Red War Flag and Drizzle Court. The championship would have been played by Glory Capital and Drizzle Court. There were quite a few maps games in the championship match, but there was one that Sorrowless particularly favored. In an interview after the Championship, he said that he had selected this map at a glance and didn’t even consider the others.

This comment helped the reborn Lu Li quite a bit.

Ruling Sword didn’t have many maps they could practice on and had only fought on a few, so their adaptability to new maps was quite poor. It was sheer luck throughout the league that they hadn’t encountered a particularly difficult map yet.

However, all of these championship maps were new. They hadn’t seen any of the eight before.

It was in a time like this that the overall quality of the club’s players was tested. In fact, it was set up like this because the League didn’t want a new club to easily get to the top and put the older clubs to shame.

In the short few days that they had, they couldn’t possibly become familiar with all eight maps.

Under normal circumstances, Ruling Sword would practice each map 3 to 5 times. If they could figure out which maps were good for them and familiarize themselves with the rest, that was a pretty good outcome. They couldn’t use an elimination method, just in case Glory Capital decided to choose the most unsuitable map to practice on. Then, it would be too late for Ruling Sword to regret it.

Fortunately, Lu Li knew what Sorrowless would choose.

The Snowfield map was the one that Glory Capital would choose. In the few days they had, Ruling Sword didn’t train on anything else but this map. Lu Li dared to say that they might not have practiced any less than Glory Capital did.

The others didn’t understand why Lu Li was so sure Sorrowless would choose this map.

Lu Li only said that he had a special contact and that he couldn’t explain it. He ultimately used this authority to direct the club’s training, but the others didn’t think that Lu Li was just making it up either. After all, there was someone in Ruling Sword that Sorrowless really cared about in the Elite Group.

That person was Darkness!

Over these past few days, Darkness felt like everyone had been watching her. She was quite beautiful, so she had long since become used to this kind of treatment, but she had no idea what they were thinking about her.

Regardless, when Ruling Sword’s players finally saw what map Glory Capital had chosen, they were very impressed with Lu Li.

“Mu Qiu, be on standby. Everyone else, remember to keep it together. This map is actually no different from the big round arena, but with more terrain. Just make sure to avoid the caves and landslides…” Lu Li emphasised once again.

They had been studying this map for such a long time that they would have known this even if Lu Li didn’t say it.

Mu Qiu’s current development path had been determined, but there were still some shortcomings so he was accustomed to being the substitute. This didn’t mean he wasn’t appreciated either. If he was able to turn the tide of a fight after joining, substitutes could often be promoted to star players. There were some players like Green Flag Wine and Torrent that were more than happy to be substitutes.

After entering the map, Lu Li confirmed the terrain around them before they proceeded along the agreed route.

This map wasn’t just some snowy landscape; the terrain beneath the snow was very complicated. There were often snow pits, landslides and snow monsters lying underneath.

The snow monsters were long-haired behemoths with large, powerful limbs. They only had two skills – Knock Back and Trample. Most of them lived alone, but if they faced multiple prey, they would call in their friends. If you were a single player, you could deal with one, but if there were too many players, it was better to go around.

As long as you practiced on this map, you would know that these snow pits, landslides and snow monsters couldn’t be completely avoided.

The easiest approach to studying a map was to memorize it, but this was difficult to do in this map because the terrain changed every now and then.

Small snow pits were fine, but the bigger snow pits could suffocate the players and cost them HP. They would then need to be rescued by the others. The System had given them a separate skill to do this, which had a three second channel time before the player was pulled out.

As such, it was necessary for someone to explore ahead of the group. This important task naturally fell onto Lu Li’s shoulders.

“Anywhere where I have walked over should be okay. I don’t think the System is cruel enough to create a snow pit in a place where I have walked. But don’t stay too close to me – if we all end up in the snow pit, then we’ll be in trouble,” Lu Li said as he walked in a zigzag so that it was almost certain that he would trigger all the traps in front of them.

“Why don’t we just wait somewhere for them?” Fat Monkey asked.

This kind of ice and snow environment was disadvantageous for two professions. The first were Thieves because tracks were left behind, even in Stealth. The second were naturally Fire Mages, which was why Fat Monkey really hated the weather on this map.

“This is the championship. If we take it so passively then we might as well not play,” Lu Li said as he shook his head.

Although he was a pragmatist, sitting in one position would show that he wasn’t a good leader. This wasn’t just a championship, but also an opportunity to establish a reputation within the professional circles. They were trying form a culture within the club that would be passed down from generation to generation.

If Ruling Sword didn’t move and just allowed Glory Capital’s players to look for them, their players might be killed by the snow monsters, which would allow Ruling Sword to win by default.

However, this kind of win was useless, and Lu Li would rather lose than win like this.