The Great Thief
chapter-58

Not every expert was backed by a union, but all of them had to have a professional businessperson as a friend.

This was something that Lu Li had heard another player say in his ‘past life’. At that time, he hadn’t given that much thought. After all, he was only a member of the Gold Collection Unit. Although he had eventually become more powerful, he was a second-rate expert at most.

It was only today that he finally understood the significance of that sentence.

He finally understood why Moonlight, who only had Common grade equipment, could instantly obtain an incredibly rare set.

Experts needed a businessperson to support them in financial matters. Businesspeople were much more responsible and committed than unions. After all, they relied on their experts to supply them with rare items and equipment. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

Lu Li gave the two remaining LV10 Bronze grade equipment to Shen Wansan to sell and said farewell.

Agreeing that he would go to Shen Wansan first when he found something good didn’t mean that they had established an official business relationship. This required observing the other person over time. After all, they needed to be able to work together towards the same goal.

The system was going to be updated in a few hours. The updating would last from nightfall until the night of the next day. Apart from helping Lu Xin to complete some of the paperwork for transferring schools, he could use the rest of the time to sleep. As such, Lu Li had no plans of sleeping early.

By now, he couldn’t earn any EXP from the LV5 Instance Dungeons, so he planned to find a safe place to train.

Training alone, especially at night, wasn’t as efficient as when they had been training as a group in the Snake Valley. However, gaining a little bit of EXP at a time would add up. At the very least, it would be more than he would receive from sleeping.

There were many players who had the same thought: the wilderness was quite busy and screams could occasionally be heard. Evidently, there were Nightcrawlers around.

After the game entered night-time, Nightcrawlers that were 10 levels higher than the highest-levelled player in that region would spawn in the wilderness. They had fast regeneration, decent Attack, and would kill everything in sight.

If Lu Li bumped into a Nightcrawler, he could transform into a Little Leopard. With his Movement Speed, even the LV20 Nightcrawlers wouldn’t be able to catch him.

It was a pity that Lu Li didn’t have any equipment that gave him night vision. He could only stumble around in the dark, following the route he had taken when he went to obtain the Supreme One Ring. He walked up the familiar path to the back of the mountain. There were 2 types of monsters there: the ‘Injured Wild Wolves’ and the ‘Old Wild Wolves’. They all had average Attack and Defence and were suitable for Lu Li to train on.

In the forest, there were packs of wolves, each containing 20 members and at least one Elite-grade monster. According to the system settings, the Alpha Wolf of this pack was the victor of many death battles, with the loser of each being chased out. Each loser eventually became an ‘Injured Wild Wolf’.

As for the Old Wild Wolves, these were wolves that had been evicted from the pack because of their age.

They were all between LV8 to LV10 and travelled alone. They were much easier to deal with than other wolves.

There were many trees growing close to each other here and their leaves covered the sky, reducing visibility. The monster population was quite sparse, so it wasn’t an ideal place for parties to train.

Lu Li picked a spot that was fairly remote and looked around for wolves to kill.

The wolves could only deal around 20 to 30 damage to him, while he could hit them for 70 to 80 damage. If he used his Ultimate Skill, he could 200-300 damage.

The Supreme One Ring’s normally unnoticeable Vampirism effect was now a great help. Lu Li essentially didn’t need to drink any Potions at all.

He used Stealth to move behind a Boss wolf and stunned it with a Cheap Shot, before unleashing a barrage of normal attacks. As soon as the Boss woke up, he dealt a Shadowstrike chained with a Backstab to the wolf’s unprotected waist. By now, Cheap Shot’s cooldown had now refreshed. The second Cheap Shot put him at exactly 5 combo points.

Lu Li’s Dagger flashed across the wolf’s throat.

Slit Throat!

If he got a Critical Hit with Slit Throat, it would instantly kill his target. Even if he didn’t get a Critical Hit, he would only need to hit the target another 2 or 3 times.

It took Lu Li about 20 seconds or so to kill a monster. The rest of his time was spent on actually finding monsters to kill.

He didn’t know that there were people secretly watching him and discussing.

“His Attack is so strong. When did LV10 wolves become so weak?” More than 30 yards away were two people hidden in the grass, quietly muttering to each other.

“Luckily we didn’t immediately go and attack. Let’s just observe for today,” the other person said reluctantly. His intuition told him that this person would not be easy to deal with. Even with this expert Thief beside him, they probably wouldn’t be able to take him on.

These two people were both Elite Thieves from the Imperial Secret Service Union: ‘Swirling Left Eye’ and ‘Staring Right Eye’. Their teamwork was seamless and even experts had to be careful around them.

“I bet he has quite a few pieces of Bronze grade equipment on him, as well as a piece of Steel grade equipment or two.”

Comparing Lu Li to themselves, the two Thieves both felt admiration and anger. The world was simply too unfair: why did he have such good luck?

“Who cares what equipment he has? He’s going to drop it all soon. We’ll kill him once today, once tomorrow, and again and again until he’s back to LV0,” Staring Right Eye said vehemently. Members of the Imperial Secret Service were infamous for killing players until they were LV0 again.

“Exactly. Boss Seethe is going to be here soon. No matter how strong this Lu Li is, he won’t be able to escape,” Swirling Left Eye said with hatred in his voice.

He had been in the fight with Lu Li a few days ago and was killed in a mere few moments, becoming a stepping stone to Lu Li’s fame.

From that time onwards, the Imperial Secret Service hadn’t stopped monitoring Lu Li. Seeing that Lu Li had ventured out at night by himself, the two Thieves immediately contacted their union while cautiously following him.

They had been planning on finding an opportunity to kill Lu Li, like when his health was low from fighting monsters.

Who would have thought that Lu Li’s health would never drop in the slightest and that he would be able to clear the monsters so quickly? His equipment was much better than theirs, so they gave up on the idea of attacking him and instead waited for everyone else.

The monotonous process of farming monsters caused Lu Li to become less wary of his surroundings and he didn’t notice himself being observed. He also didn’t notice ten or so players entering the area around him. A fireball quickly flew towards Lu Li’s back and he only had time to turn around.

The fireball exploded and if it wasn’t for the game’s settings, it probably would have burned him and the entire patch of Forest.

Lu Li did not immediately enter Stealth, because he would be damaged again in 3 seconds from the Fireball’s Burn. If he went into Stealth immediately, he would be revealed as soon as he took the Burn damage again.

Many other attacks were launched at him and ten or so shadows sprang towards him.

The Warrior in front raised the sword in his hands. Once he entered his attack range, he would instantly use Charge. As long as they could stun this despicable Thief, they could stun-lock him up until they killed him.

There was no sense of justice or fairness, only murder!

Lu Li had to die, no matter what!