The Great Thief
chapter-160

Chapter 160: Cash Cow

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Lu Li smiled before equipping the bandana from his backpack. His eyes were glowing with excitement.

He wasn’t a good person, nor was he good at accepting fault. Previously, when the Imperial Secret Service had attempted to hunt him down, he didn’t bother to seek revenge. However, the time had come for retribution.

“Who’s that? Why hasn’t he left yet? Does he want to die?”

Seeing that Lu Li had no intention of leaving, the Imperial Secret Service members became unhappy and stormed over to him.

“Are you talking about me?” Lu Li lowered his voice as he asked.

“Nonsense, are you deaf?”

This was Hurricane, a member of the Imperial Secret Service’s Assassination Team, which was specifically tasked with clearing out areas. Seeing that Lu Li wouldn’t budge, he pushed him.

This was a common way to start a fight with another person. Once their emotions had been riled up, they would immediately start fighting.

All this time, Lu Li had his back to the player. When he finally turned around, Hurricane saw that his entire face was covered with a black bandana that only left his gray eyes exposed.

“You…” Hurricane was a little surprised. He didn’t expect Lu Li’s face to be covered.

“I hate people who try to take over area.”

Lu Li’s wrist dropped as he casted Shadowstrike.

Hurricane was a little shocked when he saw Lu Li’s bandana, but after Lu Li attacked him, he laughed, “That’s hilarious – you haven’t even gone into Stealth. You want to openly attack me, a warrior.”

But a second later, he stopped laughing.

System: Shadowstrike Skill Completion 94%, resulting in 250% damage and stunning the target for 2 seconds.

Once the stun was applied, Lu Li attacked as he casually began to walk.

System: Backstab Skill Completion 89%, resulting in 112% damage and applying Armour Break on the target!

System: Ambush Skill Completion 86%, resulting in 107% damage and paralyzing the target for 1 second!

Just as he had recovered from the stun, Hurricane found himself paralyzed.

There were a few differences between a stun and paralysis.

The former could not be lifted until the end of its duration, while the latter would be lifted if damage was applied to the target. However, while in paralysis, the target still could not move or perform any actions.

To Lu Li, these differences were unimportant.

He put his dagger on Hurricane’s throat and gently pulled from left to right.

Slit Throat!

Hurricane watched as his HP rapidly dropped; he was almost dead.

He quickly reacted and immediately casted Trample.

It didn’t matter that this didn’t actually apply any Crowd Control. Hurricane turned around and started running. He wasn’t too far away from the guild’s Healer, who was also running towards him.

The Trample did not affect Lu Li; he had gone into Stealth as soon as he had completed Slit Throat.

The Warrior had quite a bit of HP, so the LV4 Slit Throat wasn’t able to finish him off. But even if he wasn’t able to kill the warrior in one rotation, that didn’t mean the warrior was going to survive.

Hurricane let out a sigh of relief when the Guild’s Healer began to heal him. The Thief hadn’t caught up to him either.

Before he could take his next breath, his vision went black and the world appeared in monochrome.

Was he dead?

The Healer bitterly lowered her Magic Staff; she didn’t understand why Hurricane hadn’t taken a potion. Did he not know that he was bleeding?

Slit Throat’s Bleed effect resulted in a large amount of damage.

As the Healer stared at Hurricane’s lifeless body, she felt a cool sensation in her back.

She really needed to write some feedback for the System. The ice-cold sensation of a dagger stab was way too cruel…

“Fall!”

With a single Backhand Backstab, the Healer went flying. Her body glowed white as she turned into a corpse mid-air.

Crap, he had forgotten about his PVP value.

Lu Li pulled up a panel to see his own attributes and saw an impressive PVP value of two.

This was a new feature from the new System update. Initially, Dawn didn’t have a PVP value. They had always encouraged players to fight each other.

But ever since the PVP incident, their philosophy had changed.

There was a retired minister that once held an important position. He started to play Dawn and became engrossed in Herbalism and Alchemy.

One day, the old man had his butt sticking out as he searched through the grass for herbs. The players passing by thought that this was so unsightly that they killed him.

The old man suffered physically and mentally because of this. As such, when he went offline, he looked for his son-in-law—the Chief of the Internet Supervisory Office. He then aggressively condemned the game’s brutal premises.

The Chief didn’t want to listen this old retired minister, but he was afraid of the consequences. He could only helplessly advise the game company on behalf of the Internet Supervisory Office.

The game company considered it and decided that an overly brutal game wasn’t a good idea either.

Hence, the new PVP rules were introduced.

If a player took the initiative to kill another combat profession player, they would gain one PVP value. If a player took the initiative to kill a player that was five levels lower, the PVP value that they gained would be doubled. If a player killed a Trade-Skill-life player, the PVP value that they gained would also be doubled.

The higher the PVP value, the more things they would drop upon death. This was capped at three items.

There were three ways to reduce one’s PVP value.

The first was by time. Every hour, a player’s PVP value would decrease by one.

The second was by taking Bounty Quests. If a player killed another player with a PVP value, they would be able to offset some of their own. Killing a player with a high PVP value would yield a higher reward. The players with PVP values that were killed would be sent to jail by the system, until their PVP values depleted to zero.

The third was by imprisonment.

For every hour spent in prison, some PVP value would be removed.

This was different to reducing their PVP value by being online. Even if the player logged off, the System would still calculate their jail time.

When it was time for the players to log off in Lu Li’s previous life, players would flock together and go to jail to reduce their PVP value. This phenomenon was truly a spectacle. However, it was condemned by the morally righteous as evidence of their moral bankruptcy.

Most people didn’t want to log off in a jail cell, as it wouldn’t award them with the double EXP period that logging off in a hotel room would.

Additionally, those who voluntarily went to prison to reduce their PVP value were free to leave. However, those that were sent after being killed on a bounty were forced to stay until their PVP value had been fully depleted.

“Everyone be careful. There is a masked Thief in the Thistle Village. His equipment is very strong; do not act alone,” the group leader reminded everyone as he received the report.

After gaining two PVP points, Lu Li had to be more careful. He looked around before finding his next target.

His selection criterion was simple—equipment.

The guy in Lu Li’s sights had good equipment. Although Lu Li couldn’t see the exact attributes, he could roughly guess that they were of pretty high value.

After a rotation of Cheap Shot, Backstab, Ambush and Slit Throat, he was gone.

Lu Li picked up the equipment that had dropped onto the ground and disappeared.

It was a pair of Mage Steel shoes that gave +10 Intelligence and +3% movement speed. These were decent attributes that would sell for at least seven or eight gold coins.

After the system underwent some macro-control, the gold prices stabilized at around $100:1. This meant that these shoes were worth around seven to eight hundred dollars. Name brand sneakers also cost around the same.

With all the costs involved in just surviving, an average player probably would not be able to earn seven or eight gold coins in a day.

He now had three PVP points.

Disregarding his PVP value, Lu Li continued to look for cash cows.