The Great Thief

Chapter 1886: Chess

To begin with, the team still died a few times. This made Lu Li, who wanted it to be over and done with, almost give up on this Boss.

Fortunately, things got easier as they went on. Finally, they defeated the Boss on their fourth try. This was a soul-stirring battle. In the end, of the fifteen people, only three remained alive, but just barely.

In fact, Terestian Illhoof wasn’t a particularly difficult Boss. They just needed a bit of time to find their feet.

A Skill Point was rewarded to Azure Sea Breeze, but he wasn’t all that happy about it. Lu Li had gotten one as well, so what was there worth showing off?

“Stop complaining and quickly loot the equipment,” Lu Li grunted. “Kids these days…someone needs a spanking.”

Girdle of the Prowler, which was a Dark Gold item, was given to Sakura Memories, while the Mender’s Heart-Ring, which was a Dark Gold healing ring, was given to March Rain.

Lightning Capacitor!

This was a piece of Epic equipment, and was a magic accessory. Its famous special effect absorbed a portion of Critical Hit damage in the form of an electric charge. After accumulating three charges layers, they would be released.

This made it quite valuable, but what attracted the players more was the group-controlling effect that these charges had.

The electric shock would spread to multiple people in a radius of 10 feet. Those who were afflicted by the charge would be frozen for 0.5 seconds. You couldn’t do much in 0.5 seconds, but you could interrupt a channel or shock Thieves who were Stealthing around you.

This was the only special effect. The attributes weren’t all that powerful either, otherwise, the magic professions would go crazy over this item.

Satyr Charm!

As the last item, Remnant Dream had looted a pet tool.

After it was used, a little monster would be summoned.

In the end, this item was given to Remnant Dream. This pet, which didn’t need to eat and could accompany Remnant Dream to have fun, was very welcomed by her now.

The next Boss would be Netherspite. As long as the director was killed, this Boss would appear. You could also choose to skip it and not fight it, but Lu Li neither immediately initiated the fight, nor did he skip it.

Rather, he first went to play some chess.

If someone really did defeat the director and Shade of Aran, they could come right over and snatch away this Boss’ First Clear. However, Shameless Lu definitely wouldn’t allow this sort of thing to happen.

When entering the chess room, it could be seen that the entire room was a chessboard. On the left were the Horde’s pieces, and on the right were the Alliance’s.

There was no difference in terms of the skills of the chess pieces at the same positions; they were all the same. The only difference was in the appearance and the name. If you were from the Alliance, you would control the Alliance side. In the same way, the Horde would control the Horde side.

After the battle started, the King was controlled first. The king was at the center of the battle. If the opponent’s King was attacked, this would result in victory, while the opposite would end in defeat. Even though they didn’t control the pieces, when they encountered enemies, they would also automatically attack.

Lu Li chose a few people to control the pieces, while the others went elsewhere to do their own thing.

If they were really following the rules of chess, there would be quite a few people here better than Lu Li. However, the situation wasn’t exactly like that. Medivh was cheating while the players were playing.

He would periodically produce fire where the players stood, forcing them to run away. This was the reason you had to move the pawns in front of the king.

He would increase his pieces’ attack, so you had to pay attention to when you needed to run away.

The pieces to the left and right of the king – the beast prophet or human priest – could both heal the King. When the King was being attacked, they could be controlled to heal him.

As long as they avoided his underhanded tactics, and used the area-of-effect attack of the Doomguard or Water Elementals, this battle would prove to be easy.

In his last life, he and another player solved the chess puzzle in Karazhan. Now, on their first attempt, they familiarized themselves with the mechanics. On their second attempt, they were formulated a plan of attack, and on their third attempt, they got to the last stage.

The King fell to the ground, the game ended, and everyone went to the box in the corner to collect their winnings.

Mithril Chain of Heroism, Dark Gold, Headdress of the High Potenate, Dark Gold, King’s Defender, Epic.

The three pieces of equipment weren’t bad. Lu Li divided them up according to the principle of prioritizing competitors.

They would be dividing it up like this for now. However, this did not set in stone who was going to have it. Even if the competitors didn’t receive an item, during competition times, they could still borrow it. As such, they didn’t feel as though they had to own these items.

After the game of chess, they came before Netherspite.

What was different about Netherspite compared to most other Karazhan bosses was that mistakes were not tolerated.

They needed to do all their planning before they started the battle, and the battle required every team member to execute everything perfectly. In the battle, was it possible to have each team member understand what they were meant to do and how important it was for them to it?

If every person got into the rhythm of things, then the battle would be relaxed, but if there was just one person who didn’t understand what they were doing, it would be hard to avoid a team wipe.

The first few times, the team was wiped to gain experience.

They didn’t need to waste potions; they just had to spend time and repair costs for equipment.

In the new patch, the game had increased equipment repair costs for the level 70s. Apparently, there were already some small guilds that had to cancel most of their guild activities because they couldn’t afford to repair equipment. Some had already even cancelled guild funding for equipment repair.

If a guild wasn’t even willing to take on the costs of equipment repair for a group activity, then it was only a matter of time before it was going to disband.

For Ruling Sword, it wasn’t just group events – the guild even paid for repairs from damage incurred in non-group activities. However, there was a daily limit, and once that was exceeded, they couldn’t use guild funds for equipment repair.

Only Lu Li, who had experienced the lowest levels of life in the game, knew how important a little help with equipment repair was to players at lower levels.

This sort of benefit provision added more pressure onto Ruling Sword’s finances. If it wasn’t for Lu Li supporting it all the way, Square Root 3 would have followed the example of other clubs ages ago. Together, the two clubs of Ruling Sword and Judgement Spear had more than 100,000 fighting members. The repair fees for each day were an astronomical figure.

As for other clubs, they would just provide guild funding for group activities.

It was only those groups in the Elite teams and above that could repair their equipment whenever they wanted.

However, they could only reap if they sowed. Lu Li’s seemingly foolish stance allowed for the two guilds’ grassroots-level players to be exceptionally strong. Once you entered into either of these clubs, for the most part, you wouldn’t be leaving in a hurry. You might even slowly develop to become a top player.

They had gone through about a dozen team deaths here and repaired their equipment twice. Finally,

they had cleared up any confusion about most of Netherspite’s skills.

The Netherspite battle was divided into two stages – the Nether gate stage, which lasted for 60 seconds, and the Banish stage, which lasted for 30 seconds. The two stages would keep alternating, until the sxith Banish stage ended, which meant that the battle had gone on for 9 minutes. If the Boss still hadn’t been killed, it would enter into a Berserk state, and all the damage done within the ring of light would be increased by 400%. The team would be dead within 10 seconds of this.