The Great Thief

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

The Red Dragonscale Protector!

In Lu Li’s previous life, someone had made a list of the best shields available.

The Red Dragonscale Protector was ranked the fifth!

On some authoritative websites, the Red Dragonscale Protector was generally ranked within the top three. Even Dawn’s designers had publicly stated that this Shield was one of their proudest works.

In terms of appearance, one side of the shield had a dragon’s mouth, while the other had seven dragon scales. It had vivid dark lines and was quite large, capable of covering most of a player’s body. For a very long time, the Red Dragonscale Protector was the symbol of a top Defensive player.

This shield was like a wall that could be used to block incoming damage for an entire group.

When outside the Instance Dungeon, if you saw a Defensive Paladin walking with this shield, there would be plenty of players trying to team up with them. On the other hand, if you saw a Berserker carrying this shield, then they must come from a super guild.

The Shield’s main bonuses were Constitution, Strength and Intelligence. Because of these stats, Berserkers would usually have to give this item up to the Defensive Paladins. Warriors didn’t need Intelligence, but Defensive Paladins needed mana to cast their skills.

However, if you discounted the Intelligence bonus, the shield could also be used by Berserkers.

The shield had two special effects that were particularly strong, and were the reason why it was so highly sought-after. The first Special Effect didn’t need much explanation; it was just a general damage reduction. The second Special Effect was an area of effect Buff. It wasn’t as strong as the one that little Red Dragon had, but it still improved the strength of the whole team for a certain amount of time. The third Special Effect was Red Dragon Protector, which was also an area of effect buff. It prevented all the players from dying, whether they were in an Instance Dungeon or in the Wild.

Of course, this was limited to teams of 40 or less.

If a 100-player group could use this special effect, then this Shield would probably start affecting the game balance.

As such, Lu Li really wanted this equipment. Wandering was the top Defensive Paladin of the guild. Since Azure Sea Breeze couldn’t significantly improve his strength anymore, this would undoubtedly make Ruling Sword’s First Clearing team more powerful.

“This shield is for you,” Water Fairy said. She seemed to be able to detect Lu Li’s desire, and handed it over with a grin. “If we want to use it, we’ll come looking for Wandering.”

How good it was to have a mutual understanding!?

The girl had volunteered it, and Lu Li felt moved, so there was really no condition he wouldn’t accept.

“What are you guys doing? There’s another one.”

Even Remnant Dream was getting bored watching this interaction. She felt like these two club executives were quite arrogant, and that they didn’t care about the people around them.

Pendant of the Fallen Dragon!

This was a magical healing item with a high Intelligence Attribute, high durability, and great mana regeneration. It also had a healing effect.

This item was more suitable for Priests or Tanky Healers, so Lu Li assigned it to Water Fairy.

Although Ruling Sword had the most players in the fight against the little Red Dragon, if Drizzle Court and Peerless City’s players were added together, they wouldn’t have much fewer players than Ruling Sword. The repair costs and potions had also been provided by Water Fairy, so this assignment wasn’t unreasonable at all.

After clearing out two waves of mobs, the players then entered the trap room.

The trap they encountered was called a ‘Repression Device’, and it applied a debuff called ‘Repression Aura’. This greatly reduced the movement speed and cast-speed of the players affected by it. The trap required a Thief to disarm it, but there was still a chance for it to trigger during the process.

The monsters in the area mainly included the Death Talon Hatcher, the Blackwing Taskmaster and Corrupted Bronze Whelps.

The most terrible of these were the Death Talon Hatchers. They had a low-range aura around them which would deal continuous fire damage to any player that got close. This effect could also be continuously stacked and would only disappear after leaving the aura for a while.

The Blackwing Taskmaster could cast area of effect healing, but Lu Li just instructed the Mages to Polymorph them, so they were not a major threat.

The easiest monsters to deal with were actually the Whelps.

This was a Thief’s world. With five Thieves present, they had good awareness of what was happening inside the Instance Dungeon. This meant that there were very few casualties in the trap room, and soon, everyone could see the Boss.

Broodlord Lashlayer was a comparatively easy Boss, but was nonetheless the Instance Dungeon’s final Boss.

Lu Li and the others got wiped quite quickly, as they hadn’t managed the mobs well enough in their first attempt. The Boss’ damage was so high that Azure Sea Breeze lost 4000 HP almost instantly. Wiping was an inevitable outcome when so much HP was lost, and the healers didn’t react in time.

Lu Li then adjusted the composition of the team.

Wandering, who had finally gotten a chance to enter the Instance Dungeon, was mainly responsible for the Whelps. These Whelps were like ants. They didn’t do much damage individually, but together they could be quite a fearsome force.

In addition to this red shield, he had an assortment of different T2 equipment. It was all quite a mess.

Lu Li also arranged another two Main Tanks to accumulate Aggro together. These four Main Tanks needed to keep their aggregate aggro high so that the other players could freely attack.

The issue was that the Boss’ Mortal Strike was too powerful.

Not only did it deal burn damage, but it also reduced a Main Tank’s ability to receive healing by 50%. If they would have been healed for 1000HP, they would only receive 500.

This time, it came down to the quality of the Healers and the Main Tank’s reaction times. It was a matter of whether they get the healing in quickly enough, and whether the tanks could cast their Damage Reduction in time.

Most teams that faced this Boss would get wiped over and over. There were some rumours that other teams had successfully defeated the little Red Dragon, but were now stuck in this stage. It was hard for them to believe they had gotten stuck again, and would have felt like they had been cursed.

However, this was certainly not the case for this three-club alliance.

The areas that were difficult for an ordinary team weren’t necessarily difficult for them. The healing abilities of March Rain were world -lass, and the quality of their Main Tanks were the same.

There was also the Boss’ shockwave, which was a very powerful area of effect damage skill. Once a player accidentally gained aggro, then the Boss would rush over to cast shockwave.

Lu Li and the others had been wiped twice because of this. The Boss would always rush to a densely packed group of players.

In fact, it was quite simple to deal with this skill. After gaining aggro, they just needed to run to the Main Tanks. Even if the shockwave was cast, the Main Tanks wouldn’t be one shot. Then, the Main Tanks just needed to re-Taunt the Boss and they would be back on their way.

As for the knockback skills, Lu Li had been trying to work around them.

When a Main Tank was hit by a knock back, they would lose all their Aggro. This was why Lu Li had put in multiple Main Tanks. The others could then come in to maintain the Boss’ attention. Aggro was the attribute that made the monsters want to attack a player, so the other Main Tanks were needed to Taunt the Boss.

After being wiped a few more times, they had roughly explored all of Broodlord Lashlayer’s attacking styles. Although their knowledge wasn’t as thorough as when they had fought the little Red Dragon, it was enough to dispatch of Broodlord Lashlayer.

When they defeated the Red Dragon, there were four players who received Skill Points. Lu Li wasn’t one of them, but this there were three people that got Skill Points and Lu Li was lucky enough to receive one.

In fact, the attribution of Skill Points wasn’t that random.

The amount a player contributed affected the attribution chance. For a team of 40 players, the players that dealt the least damage, healed the least or performed the worst as a Main Tank would be extremely unlikely to receive these Skill Points. This was something that had been researched by a group of Mercenaries.

The best Mercenary Groups were able progress through the Instance Dungeon Bosses, but they would want to acquire some equipment and Skill Points along the way.

Yet, they soon realized that although finding equipment was easy, gaining Skill Points was almost impossible.

It seemed that the System had set a certain amount of contribution required for the chance of receiving a Skill Point. A player could only be eligible after exceeding the threshold. Perhaps the chances of receiving a Skill Point were higher if their contribution was higher. For someone like Lu Li, it gave him the same opportunity to earn Skill Points even though he had to command everyone else too.

Otherwise, if it was truly because of his bad luck, he would have completely stopped receiving Skill Points a long time ago.

Gems, Rare Materials and Skill books were distributed in two parts. The first part was for Ruling Sword and the other was for Water Fairy. The specifics of how they were distributed didn’t bother Lu Li much.