The Great Thief
chapter-377

Chapter 377: Elites Were Not Easy Pickings

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In the storm of arrows that were fired, some of them would slip through and hit them. However, most of the arrows were blocked by the Grass shield.

After they moved a little closer, Lington commanded the archers to shoot fire arrows. After a few arrows hit the grass shield, it caught on fire. Everyone was choking from the smoke and the fire was dealing a lot of damage to them.

“Change the shield!” Lu Li shouted while coughing.

Azure Sea Breeze threw away the big grass shield that he was holding onto and equipped a new one from his bag.

Braving the barrage of arrows, the Xin Xin Mercenary Group slowly inched towards the archers.

Could they have directly attacked them?

Sure, but it would have placed a huge burden on the healers. Lu Li had set the dungeon on Nightmare Difficulty, which meant that the monsters had 50% more attack power than they did at Elite difficulty. They also had Armor Break, Piercing and other attribute debuffs that would have inevitably resulted in some of them dying.

Azure Sea Breeze would hold the shield, so that March Rain only needed to occasionally heal him. The others just had to stay low and follow behind him.

They couldn’t help but admire his prudence. Following him into Instance Dungeons was always an eye-opening experience. He did things that no one else would think of and it would work so effectively.

Eventually they were receiving attacks from all directions.

“Breezy, you keep their aggro. Everyone else, attack the archers.” Lu Li’s voice was steady as the battle begun.

In reality, he didn’t need to say anything. Everyone knew that they needed to attack the archers first; they only had 800 HP after all. However, compared to other level 30 elites, they had a ridiculous amount of damage.

For an Elite to have such little HP and Defense meant that they had exchanged it for a very high Attack. As such, if they couldn’t quickly kill these archers, they were done for.

If they didn’t kill the archers first, the whole group would be killed.

Twenty archers had died and Lington hadn’t done anything about it yet.

It didn’t matter how powerful he was as his strength was in his commanding ability.

Given the fact that he wasn’t a proper Boss, Lington’s own strength was actually quite mediocre. It only took them a few minutes to kill him on the spot.

Although he was weak, he still yielded a large amount of EXP. After all, this was an Instance Dungeon at Nightmare Difficulty.

Lonesome Flower also received quite a bit of EXP and managed to level up. He had become the second person in the party to reach level 30. He was also the second person in Dawn to do so.

The rest of the group were all level 29. Azure Sea Breeze, Sakura Memories and March Rain were the exceptions that had almost reached level 30.

Sakura Memories and Azure Sea Breeze were both levelling madmen. These two didn’t do anything else apart from Instance Dungeons and farming. As long as they had time, they would spend it on levelling, which is how they had made it to fifth on the level rankings.

Azure Sea Breeze spent most of the time pulling the mobs towards Lonesome Flower, who would then cast his area of effect skills while being healed by March Rain. This was quite an efficient strategy.

When Lonesome Flower was pressed for time, he would charge into a group of level 32 mobs and rely on his resistances. He looked for mobs that had high attack and low HP to bolster his EXP gain. It was also quite efficient for him to farm on his own.

Unfortunately, this time, no one received any Skill Points. They only had the equipment drops to look forward to.

Officer Lington had dropped three things. The first was a Warlock Skill Book; this was given to Sesame Rice Ball.

The other two were equips with decent attributes. The first equip was a pair of Gold Priest Healing Gloves which allowed a Priest’s next skill to be cast instantaneously.

This was an exquisite effect for saving a critical situation.

For Magic Professions, the longer it took to channel a skill, the stronger it was. The Priest’s healing skills worked the same way.

If there was a longer channel time, then more health could be restored. March Rain could use these gloves to instantly heal up dying teammates.

The other equip was a level 30 Silver Cloak that was for Hunters. Not only did it increase movement speed, but it also increased range by 20%. Although it was very useful for a Hunter that liked to kite with their bow, Remnant Dream was unlikely to make use of it.

However, as a level 30 Silver equip, its attributes were much better than that of a level 25 equip. As such, there was no question about whether to equip it or not.

After Lington died, a door in the courtyard opened up.

When they passed through, they found themselves in another courtyard, facing Dog Trainer Roxi. This was where she trained the hounds.

There were many Scarlet Monks patrolling the courtyard. Dog Trainer Roxi’s work was very important to the Scarlet Crusade, as they intended to use the hounds to fight the Ccourge. They also had the added benefit of being able to tell who had been affected by the plague.

These Scarlet Monks didn’t seem difficult to deal with. They didn’t have much HP and instead had higher than average attack.

However, this dungeon was still at Nightmare Difficulty, so inferences couldn’t be drawn from the knowledge they had gained from the previous dungeon. If they treated the monks as some kind of fodder, they were likely to clear out Lu Li’s entire party.

Fortunately, Lu Li was well aware of how hard it was to deal with these Scarlet Monks.

“Remnant Dream use your bow and arrows. Breezy and Wandering, you guys draw aggro. Let’s divide them into two groups before attacking them. Do not let more than two Scarlet Monks stand together,” Lu Li said seriously.

“What happens if more than two of them are standing together?” Wandering asked.

“The three monks will cast a flame storm together. It has a wide range and deals a large amount of damage. It could clear us all out instantly,” Lu Li explained.

With that possibility in mind, Azure Sea Breeze and Wandering acted cautiously, and Remnant Dream didn’t dare to do anything that might transfer the aggro.

The monks were similar to the Paladins, but they were even more devout. Their way of life could only be described as ‘bitter’, and regardless of whether it was a time of peace or war, they just drank water, ate rough dry bread, wore linen cloths and wielded simple weapons.

As they were fighting them, Lu Li made sure to instill a particular lesson into his teammates.

He did so especially for Azure Sea Breeze and Wandering, who would often command other teams. The lesson was this: do not underestimate level 30 elites.

The Elites were not easy pickings!

Perhaps they were not the most powerful, but they usually had their own unique ability.

Take these monks for example – the Xin Xin Mercenary Group could easily take out a lone monk. However, if three of them stood together, they could easily exterminate ten players.

The idea was simple, but most other players could only recognize it after they had been slaughtered by these monks.

They had spent an hour clearing out these monks, but Lu Li didn’t become impatient.

At that time, the Ruling Sword’s Elite group had destroyed the Scarlet Cemetery’s hidden grave guards and had started on Bloodmage Thalnos.

The Elite Group had 100 players which were split into parties of ten. With Lu Li’s secret strategy, they managed to clear out the hidden grave fairly easily, which yielded equipment and high spirits.

Ruling Sword’s Elite group turned out to be stronger than they had expected.

The other guilds had many parties as well, but no one else had found the hidden grave!