The Great Thief

Chapter 1707: Pre-Battle Mobilization

First Clearing was a rather boring process. Plus, you couldn’t just give up halfway, because going into the Instance Dungeon required a special state of mind.

If you went and did something else halfway, then everyone would require additional time to refocus and adjust themselves again.

Such a short time to rest didn’t affect this and would also allow them to feel more relaxed. Sky Moon had some of his own ways of dealing with certain aspects of this. Additionally, these small details were exactly what Lu Li lacked because his worldview didn’t include the possibility of mental fatigue in the first place.

“How could you be picky when there were still games to play?”

“How could you be picky when you were in an elite squad already?”

“How could you be picky when you were participating in the First Clear?”

“Look at those people who can’t even afford a helmet and have to work so hard to be satisfied. Look at those people who play all day and night and still don’t have a regular team. Look at those waiting on the outside who still haven’t gotten the opportunity to be substituted in…”

What did people have to be dissatisfied about?! How dare they get fed up!

If anyone dared to say this to Lu Li, that they were fed up with team being wiped again and again, then Lu Li without a doubt would let them know what being a ten-thousand-year-substitute meant.

Sky Moon was more down to earth, so he could do things that Lu Li couldn’t.

At this point in their dungeon run, Lu Li was shocked to find that they had progressed to the third stage.

This was an amazing achievement!

Now, they could consistently enter into the second stage, which at 60% of the Boss’ HP. This was an unbelievable thing in comparison with other clubs who were fighting Ouro at the same time.

If the Little Red Dragon was hard enough to break ordinary guilds, then Ouro made the high-level clubs doubt their existences.

Another week passed, and the Donghua Cup was completely settled. As expected, the Gangnam Royals were no match for Glory Capital. In the end, Glory Capital were the champions, the Gangnam Royals were runners up, and Ruling Sword was third. They had each won 10 million dollars, 8 million dollars and 5 million dollars respectively.

Including the entry ticket income, Ruling Sword’s earnings were actually around 20 million dollars.

Dawn’s influence was increasing at an alarming rate. If it were last year’s Donghua Cup, the third place would not have received 5 million dollars. It made sense now that Glory Capital had also created a Glory Cup to capitalize on this.

If all went to plan, after the second half of this year’s Donghua Cup finished, Glory Capital would host the Glory Cup. This was a competition that did not care for clubs, but only personal charisma.

To quote some experts, Glory Capital was prying in its own corner.

Participants and the organising teams both put in money, and skipped the whole club stage, so everyone would naturally earn more. Each of the major clubs didn’t want to see this type of thing happening. If one player had too much, they would lose their drive.

However, the phenomenon of players leaving clubs did not happen. Clubs were the soil for players to survive. Perhaps without soil, flowers could still bloom, but they would wither as soon as they appeared.

Lu Li wanted to beat Sorrowless by one step and create a Ruling Cup, but he didn’t have such prestige.

Not to mention, Lu Li was someone reborn and had experienced the Donghua Cup twice. He knew more than anyone else how successful Donghua Cup was. It was very likely that from now on, other than the professional league matches, there would be no other competitions that could be compared to it.

The first Glory Cup was considered appropriate to the expectations. It was just a group of competitors performing, and the majority of fans were willing to pay for it.

In the second Glory Cup, Sorrowless invited the top players of Dawn from all over the world, and pushed this competition to the international stage. Even the relevant departments showed great concern. If Lu Li was reborn at that time, no matter how crazy he was, he wouldn’t have the courage to challenge Glory Capital.

Glory – it was not only one person’s glory!

After sublimation of the Glory Cup, Glory Capital also became the representatives Northern Chinese district. No one could move their position.

Lu Li’s sense of crises was always switched on. Other people who observed Ruling Sword saw that their progress was catching up to nearly that of Glory capital’s position. However, only he himself knew that Sorrowless was pondering about some sort of gaming kingdom.

If only it were he who organised a Ruling Cup professional league, invited players to form teams from around the world, carried out internal screening of each country, then carried out the competition on the basis of countries…

Perhaps, it would be possible domestically, but the other players overseas would just laugh at him.

Then, there would a huge group of people who would copy his model. However, everyone else was no match for Glory Capital. Sorrowless had unmatched capital and an enormous sphere of influence in the gaming circle, Lu Li would be no match for him.

What Lu Li could do now while Glory Capital still hadn’t reached their greatest heights, was to try his best to compete.

Lu Li didn’t take a cent of the Donghua Cup prize money. Other than distributing it to the participating players, the rest was used to First Clear Instance Dungeons. This time, all the high-level clubs were attempting Ouro, and even the overseas clubs were doing the same. Even though not everyone was going to be competing for the First Clear, once Ruling Sword achieved this, then these other overseas clubs would no doubt think that they were unrivalled, at least in terms of Instance Dungeons.

The other previous Instance Dungeons didn’t have much interaction between domestic and international clubs.

In any case, the club who got First Clear wouldn’t publicise their strategy. It was of no use to focus on them. Plus, the clubs overseas were indeed stronger.

Ouro was the most classic example of this period of gaming – the hardest Boss.

Hence, everyone focused all of their attention onto him. Many people had put defeating Ouro on the same level as national honour. The one club who could kill this Boss would be considered as a national hero.

It was entering the end of the third week, and Lu Li was slightly in the lead. He had entered the Beserk stage for the first time.

Sky Moon had painfully found that he could be wrong. Bear Tanks couldn’t hold on and even Deep Watersong had to admit that his stamina was not enough.

As Azure Sea Breeze became more and more skilled, everyone coordinated better, and the difference between the two Tanks grew more apparent.

“Or perhaps we can try and integrate the two tanks together. Azure Sea Breeze can be the Main Tank and Deep Watersong can be the second. He himself is equivalent to two or three Warrior tanks. Then we can bring in more Berserkers. These Berserkers can hold down the beetles that come out of the ground. If they don’t damage the healers or DPS, then we naturally won’t need to worry about not having enough DPS in the third stage.”

This new strategy didn’t even match up with any of the strategies that Lu Li had in his head. This plan was completely new and had taken him and Sky Moon all this time to create.

It left them only a week to the forecasted time of four cooldowns. Was it really appropriate to change plans now?

It was a good thing to be courageous in trying new things. However, to enact such drastic change was generally not a good idea in First Clearing Instance Dungeons.

Fortunately, this new strategy was complementary to the previous two types of strategies. It didn’t involve complexities of rearranging. Additionally, Deep Watersong and Azure Sea Breeze were very familiar with each other’s positions, so the two would work together seamlessly.

Ouro as a Boss had many difficult aspects. For high-level teams, there were mainly just a few.

Firstly, he would drill in 5 yards if there wasn’t anyone else there. Then, in the second stage, most players would not have enough resistance. Then, in the third stage, there was the spike weed, and lastly came the various problems of the berserk stage.

The first and second problems could all be resolved by using Bear tanks.

The third stage could be solved by swapping to Warrior tanks. Then, the Bear tanks could continue to address the previous two problems with their advantage.

Lu Li had said before, that it was not simply an issue of emphasising who was Main and Secondary Tank between Azure Sea Breeze and Deep Watersong. In other words, no matter a Warrior or Druid, neither was enough to handle the responsibility of tanking Ouro.

At the very least, the current version of Ouro was too powerful to be handled by any defensive profession on its own.

The 4th week was the deadline given by Lu Li to everyone.

Apparently, other clubs had made significant progress on their analysis of Ouro. Many Bear Tanks had already started to enter into Instance Dungeon. Druid equipment, which was initially unavailable, had now surpassed Magic equipment.

Even some low-level Bear Tank equipment was affected too. It was as if Bear Tanks had suddenly become a popular profession.

The officials had also stepped out and published comments along the lines of there being no strongest profession, only the strongest player. Any profession had its own advantages.

The natural resistance equipment went above and beyond.

If this had happened hundreds of years ago, everyone would find it hilarious.

Desperation meant that playing games had a ridiculous future, but the development over a couple of a hundred years meant that people had long become accustomed to playing for wealth.

“There are still two days remaining. If anyone has been saving something, now’s the time to bring it out. From now on, everyone can take whatever Resistance potions you have at liberty. The guild will reimburse you. As long as we get First Clear, all participants will be compensated, no matter in guild points or equipment. On top of that, the club will fork out 200,000 dollars as the celebratory prize for this First Clear.”

Lu Li started to mobilise everyone before the battle. Everything would come to fruition. If they still couldn’t defeat Ouro, then it wouldn’t be a problem that time could solve.

Then, at that time, they would either wait for other clubs to get First Clear or wait for the officials to weaken this Boss.