The Great Thief

Instance Dungeon Bosses respawned every midnight. This meant that if players couldn’t beat the Boss, they would have to try again the next day. Whenever Lu Li took part in an Instance Dungeon, he would be completely serious about it. Wandering wondered if he was serious enough.

“And I thought you could finish this without me,” Lu Li joked, it was the first thing he said upon re-joining his team. It hurt Wandering and Sky Moon’s pride, as only when Lu Li acted as a commander could the team beat the Boss. Meanwhile the two of them couldn’t achieve anything without him.

“Why don’t I take command this round and you tell me what I could improve on?” Wandering suggested. “Sure, take it away,” Lu Li replied indifferently. Losing another battle wouldn’t hurt the guild much anyway.

The battle began. The first stage required a player to talk to Nefarian and the dialogue was quickly skipped through. Everyone had become irritated from the many times they have listened to it. With the dialogue exchange concluded, two giant doors lowered onto the ground and became the spawning point of dragons. There were quite a few types of dragons. They had to battle different coloured dragons and Chromatic Dragons which were created by Nefarian.

Red dragons could stack fire damage and were immune to fire spells. Blue dragons could deal frost damage which slowed down its target, drained MP and was immune to ice spells. Green dragons were the least dangerous, it could stun players for a second and decreased a player’s aggro. Black dragons could deal fire damage in a large area and were highly resistant to fire and dark magic. Bronze dragons could deal arcane damage in a large area and were highly resistant to arcane magic. The last type were the chromatic dragons created by Nefarian. They would spawn at intervals and had to be killed quickly. After all, Chromatic Dragons were very strong. It would put Lu Li and his team in a tight spot if a bunch of them ganged up on them.

At this stage, Nefarian was invincible and would continuously deal darkness type AOE damage that could control players. Controlled players could only heal and deal damage while they temporarily fought against their own team.

“You are taking too long to clear out the dragons. You guys should’ve already come up with a strategy to deal with them considering how many times you’ve done this,” Lu Li spoke out. He knew it was essential to minimise the loss of manpower by clearing out the dragons in this stage as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the later stages would be impossible to beat. If they couldn’t even deal with the first stage efficiently, they’d die from fatigue before even reaching the end of the battle.

“We did come up with a way to deal with them. We just haven’t had many chances to put it into practice,” Wandering defended.

“People fighting the red dragons use fire-resistant potions, Hunters use Traps and Mages use Blizzard. The two warriors need to focus on containing the dragons, don’t let them attack the others. Team Four, I’m talking to you. Stop running around and return to your positions,” Lu Li commanded. “Chromatics are here. Team Six and Seven, it’s your turn. Focus on dealing physical type damage. Team Six, you’re in charge of clearing out Chromatics on the left.”Read more chapter on NovelFull

With Lu Li here, no longer was the team formation a mess, nor were the players unsure of what to do. Everyone had a clear objective and handled their positions well. The team had instantly increased in efficiency. Moreover, whatever monster had spawned, Lu Li knew exactly who to command to fight it, what skill types to use and what potions to drink; the team naturally listened to his strategies without question. Lu Li was willing to help out with the Instance Dungeon even when he had his own missions to do, and the team respected him for that.

“Mages use Polymorph on the players who are controlled. Sky Moon, you’re in charge of team One and Two, Lonesome Flower’s in charge of…” Lu Li ordered, indifferent to the original strategy Wandering already had in place. Lu Li’s strategy ensured that all players who had gotten controlled would be immediately released.

“You can dodge the Boss’s Shadow Bolts. What do you think all these pillars are for? Just hide whenever he uses it and stop relying on darkness resistant potions. How much do you think those cost?”

“If you can’t dodge them then you should use the potions. What do you think those are for?” Lu Li was getting annoyed at his team’s subservience and inability to make decisions for themselves during crucial moments.

As time went by, the first stage of Nefarian was cleared. It had taken them much longer than necessary to clear it. However, Lu Li didn’t expect his team to beat Nefarian this time, so it didn’t bother him too much.

During the second stage, Nefarian, in its dragon form, came down from the skies.

The scene of it flying down was pretty cool, and it both intimidated and excited the players. The game developers even made the scene part of its official trailer. Lu Li thought that it was fortunate that even though Nefarian would cast Shadow Flame as he landed which could’ve resulted in team annihilation, they would be safe as long as they had the cloak made of dragon skin. Lu Li almost cried out with joy. It was a good thing he had pressured logistics to speed up their crafting of Onyxia’s Cloak. Dawn may be the type of game that gets easier as you become more prepared through crafting and training, but Nefarian was an outlier that was designed to be unjustly difficult. If a team of 40 people didn’t have at least 20 or 30 players wearing the cloaks, there would be no way they could’ve even passed this stage. Without Onyxia’s Cloak obtained from Onyxia’s Lair, there was no way they could beat Nefarian. This was why the game made it mandatory for players to have beaten Onyxia before making the choice to challenge Nefarian available.

The hardest part of stage two had passed, now they just had to be vigilant about the Boss’s targeting, its AOE fear and Veil of Shadow. Unfortunately, the team had faced annihilation this time around as well. Wandering and Sky Moon were lucky enough to have gotten through to stage three a few times, but most of the time, they failed at stage two due to Nefarian’s Fear and targeting.

Lu Li’s failure this time was because the team suffered the stacked-up effect of both the Veil of Shadow and Nefarian’s targeting. Veil of Shadow reduced healing effects by 75% and was critical to the team. Although Wandering had a Druid in charge to counter the effects, Innocent Child, the Druid was unfortunate enough to be targeted by Nefarian. And the other Druids weren’t able to negate the curse on time. By this point in the battle, one main tank moved to the wrong position could lead to team annihilation, and healing was a problem as well.

“It’s simple, just replace him with a mage. With a team like ours, fault tolerance is extremely low. One tiny mistake could lead to annihilation. Why haven’t you considered a situation where a class might have to face two problems at the same time?” Lu Li lectured. Wandering could only blame himself.

“Here, let me take the lead. Standard protocol,” Lu Li said. The protocol was to limit on potion use since they were still deciding whether or not they could clear the dungeon. This meant that they didn’t have to put in all their effort and money into the fight. If they were to use as many resources as they could find during every battle, Ruling Sword would’ve gotten bankrupt a long time ago.

Lu Li and Wandering’s leadership weren’t too different during the first stage apart from the fact that the team’s formation didn’t seem nearly as organised when Wandering was leading. When Wandering was commanding, a few dragons still remained after Nefarian had landed. Thankfully, his quick thinking led to the defence-type classes pulling the monsters aside for a quick clear, However, Lu Li had efficiently cleared out all the dragons long before Nefarian had appeared.

“Priests in Team Two, use Fear Ward on the Main Tanks. I don’t care if you’ve done zero healing, but I’ll have your head if you guys can’t cast the spell correctly,” Lu Li commanded.

“Innocent, you’re in charge of removing the Veil of Shadows. Deadly Green Orange, act as a backup,” Lu Li didn’t even hesitate to bring two competitive players to the table as long as it meant that Veil of Shadows wouldn’t become the downfall of the team.

“Thieves? Stop hiding and face me!” the booming voice of the Black Dragon Prince roared across the battlefield. The first class to be called out were the Thieves, and in an instant, all Thieves were teleported and immobilised in front of Nefarian. Nefarian had no mercy when dealing damage and even casted Shadow Flame at point-blank range at the Main Tanks. Shadow Flame was a fire-spitting attack that dealt 3937 cone-shaped shadow damage, and only a few Main Tanks could survive it. There was no way a Thief could survive the attack.

“Windy, move to position D. Everyone else avoid area D,” even at this point, Lu Li could still command his team in a perfectly calm manner. Azure Sea Breeze had only moved slightly to change the direction of the dragon’s head, and the direction of the flames had been redirected just enough for the Thieves to survive.

“Fear, great. Nice one, Innocent, make sure to keep track of time of the debuff again,” Lu Li was satisfied with the Priest that was in charge of removing Nefarian’s Fear. The time between Nefarian’s casting of Fear and the cooldown time to cast Fear Ward was about the same; if time management wasn’t handled well, the team would face the dire situation of its Fear Wards not being able to keep up with Nefarian’s debuff. Lu Li knew many guilds that had suffered annihilation many times because of poor time management and had no choice but to deploy the Priests to remove Nefarian’s Fear.

“Priests! Priests! Stop healing and start removing the Fear. I repeat, Priests, stop healing! All healers cast Fear Ward. Don’t die, do you hear me? I’m talking to you, Innocent. Has my compliment seriously gotten into your head?” Lu Li yelled furiously.