The Great Thief
chapter-1655

10 hours!

Everyone was already completely exhausted, there were still over millions of players here fighting. Flesh and blood had formed a steel wall that firmly blocked the army of insects in their old nest.

The people who stayed until now would not allow themselves to retreat, no matter if it was for the sake of reputation or honour.

Crippled Black Ant as one of the Paladins was fighting at the front this whole time. He enjoyed the feeling of hot-blooded fighting and being invincible in the face of death. In fact, he had already died several times today.

This 10-hour high intensity battle was even making Black Ant feel dizzy.

If it was any other ordinary person, they would have needed to go to the back and rest for ten minutes or so at the very least. However, Crippled Black Ant had forfeited his rest.

He had now already entered into the core elite team, so he was a lot more knowledgeable.

The three-guild alliance was already out of more reinforcements to fill the gaps. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have the players who had been fighting since the beginning still at the frontlines. These people couldn’t retreat, otherwise the other clubs that were watching on would seize this opportunity.

They had farmed enough Reputation anyways. No one would give up the opportunity to mess with Ruling Sword at the end.

In fact, there were already people who had been forcefully withdrawn by the System as a result of mental fatigue. This was kept hidden from the other players in case it collapsed the frontlines.

Even though other clubs had also fought from the start until now, their members were constantly rotating.

“Ant, go and rest for a bit. You can barely stand straight,” Big Dog Li said as he came over and helped Ant clear away the monsters beside him.

The two of them didn’t have much of a relationship, but because they were both mercenaries and had the experience of joining Ruling Sword, they had naturally become good friends. Big Dog Li’s sharp tongue wasn’t working in this moment because he was also tired.

He was a Mage and often needed to move to the vanguard in order to recover his mana, so his fighting strength was a little lower than the Paladins.

 “Keep going for a little while longer. This is nothing. Before, when I used to level up, I wouldn’t stop at all from morning to night. I used to be at level 40 when I first started and now I’m already at 60,” Crippled Black Ant responded with a grin.

“We’re fighting so hard. I don’t know if Shameless Lu will give us any benefits,” Big Dog Li joked out of habit.

 “What other benefits do you want? There’s already an endless amount of Reputation.” Crippled Black Ant had received an Enhanced skills book after entering Ruling Sword. Th Reputation now was more than enough to learn this enhanced skill with plenty leftover.

 “After this battle is over, do you think the club members will receive some reward?” Big Dog Li asked, then continued to gossip, “I heard that the players during previous quests got a few Epic equips. Shameless Lu even got the only mount.”

“What?!” Crippled Black Ant suddenly froze.

Big Dog Li followed his line of vision and nearly threw away the staff in his hands. Behind the insects in front of them was an area of empty land.

Empty land. It was not at all strange to see empty land.

However, for the past ten hours, the players of Ruling Sword had only gazed upon a sea of insects.

 “What happened?” Big Dog Li mumbled.

 “Elves!” Crippled Black Ant cried as he pointed to the lateral rear side. There stood a group of elf NPC soldiers. They had just thrown a wave of arrows and immediately killed off the group of insects, creating a patch in their ranks.

“The reinforcements are here!”

“The reinforcements are here!”

More and more players discovered this group of unexpected visitors. Some people cheered, others cried and some even laid flat on the ground without a care in the world. People who were mentally exhausted could finally relax once the NPCs came. Of course, there would not be only such a small group of Elf soldiers.

In reality, a large number of Night Elves had entered into this region. Not far from them was a small team. One part of them was using bows and arrows to clean up the insects, while the other part was directly building arrow towers.

The Elves’ arrow towers were formed on the base of plants. The vines would wrap around the wood and it would quickly grow to form the towers.

Dotted along the wall, the arrow towers were like road signs that succeeded in curbing the insect’s momentum. Plus, the Elves’ range of attack was very wide. Their shooting distance was much further than players and they dealt AoE attacks.

Basically, wherever the arrow rain swept, insect corpses would be left behind.

“These NPCs are not only level 60, right? They’re too strong!”

The players’ looked envious. Under normal fighting circumstances, it would take several players to subdue one insect, and even then, they couldn’t instantly kill it.

Meanwhile, the Night Elf Archers would kill them in one wave of arrows, no matter if they were ordinary insects or elite monsters.

“Where were these NPCs earlier? They didn’t come until we had fought to this point.”

“These NPCs are so annoying! I still haven’t farmed enough reputation!”

 “Stealing our business! Boss, we already agreed on no take-backs with the money,” an ‘EXP baby’ said, then quickly ran to the back before people turned their heads. He had a bitter face and was ready to cry when he saw that his EXP bar was nearly at 60.

Players would farm monsters in group and collect fees from an ‘EXP baby’ according to their level or time.

Even though it was much simpler to level up than at the start, it wasn’t as fast as it was now. The ‘EXP baby’ had levelled up from 48 to 59, and was just a step away from getting to 60.

“These NPCs are so badly behaved. How dare they come and steal our monsters.”

Many of the players were complaining, but not Lu Li. He was very grateful for these NPCs. He even wanted to go over and shake their hands to say, “Comrades, we’ve been expecting you.”

Otherwise, in another couple of hours, the frontlines would definitely collapse. If it got to that point, then the Instance Dungeon couldn’t be opened, and the whole quest would most likely need to be started all over again.

As of now, the starting quest for Ahn’Qiraj was finally over.

The next thing they needed to face was Ahn’Qiraj’s two other Instance Dungeons – the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj and Ahn’Qiraj Ruins. However, Lu Li would never forget his quest rewards. The last ten hours of arduous battle couldn’t reward them with nothing, even if the System was greedy