The Great Thief

“Should we fight the boss or continue?” Lu Li worriedly asked.

“Man up! You’re an experienced player; why do you look so uneasy? Even Remnant Dream and March Rain are both calm.”

“Fight the Boss my ass,” Azure Sea Breeze said raggedly, as he jumped off the ship. Lonesome Flower followed.

Lu Li smiled bitterly, shook his head and continued luring the small mobs.

After another 20 minutes, the deck was filled with monsters again.

There were 1440 of them!

After 2 waves, Remnant Dream levelled up to LV17. Azure Sea Breeze levelled after the 4th wave. After the 5th wave, Lonesome Flower also levelled.

Following this, they would still gain more EXP, but not enough for March Rain and Remnant Dream to level up to LV18.

“Dammit, why am I getting so little EXP?” Azure Sea Breeze realised that his EXP bar had stagnated. Lonesome Flower checked his EXP bar and also realised he had the same problem.

“You need more EXP to level up at LV18 than LV17. Besides, these small monsters are only LV15; you’ll receive decreased EXP due to the difference in level,” Lu Li calmly explained.

A difference in three levels was really awkward in Dawn. If a monster was 3 levels higher, it would do bonus damage. If a monster was 3 levels lower, then the player would receive decreased EXP due to the level penalty.

When they were LV17, 180 monsters gave them 5% of their EXP bar. Now, the same number only gave them 1.5%.

When they had finally finished clearing the waves, everyone lay exhausted on the floor. No one could stand killing monsters at such a high intensity for such a long time.

“Do you guys still want to kill these monsters?” Lu Li asked again.

“We must.” Lonesome Flower said, as though he was filled with energy again. His motivation came from his little sister, because she had yet to level up to 18.

“Fine,” Lu Li replied.

“Let’s do this quickly then; the bug will probably be patched by the System after an hour or so.”

“Ah. It’ll get patched?” Azure Sea Breeze was scared and asked, “Would the System ban our accounts if it found out that we abused a bug to level up?” The others became nervous as well. It took so much effort to level up, so if they got banned...

“Why would they ban us?” Lu Li asked, confused.

“Uh...” Azure Sea Breeze and Lonesome Flower didn’t know how to explain. Sometimes, Lu Li seemed like an omniscient god. Other times, he seemed like an idiot who was unaware of common knowledge.

The truth was, Lu Li had only ever played Dawn.

He had no experience with other games, so he didn’t know about the punishment players received from abusing bugs. These punishments included resetting the account and sometimes even a complete ban from the game.

Dawn was different; it didn’t matter how the players played the game, as long as they didn’t disobey the Internet Law Legislation.

It was only a couple of levels they had gained anyway. Even if Lu Li abused a bug to make millions of gold coins, the game company would probably just ignore it. At most, they would request to exchange the gold for real money, in case the exploited gold crashed the in-game economy.

The 3rd time that Lu Li gathered the monsters, he took about 30 minutes, as he was distracted.

Based on his estimations, the bug would be patched after they finish this wave.

In his past life, the bug had stayed around for about 9 hours. In that time, the Gangnam Royals were able to exploit it and gain a level advantage over the other guilds.

However, this time was different. Lu Li and the others were not normal players and took up the top spots on the level rankings.

The other players weren’t blind either and probably would have reported them when they saw the speed that they were levelling at. Once reported, the system would evaluate the bug and assess the measures to be taken.

After an hour, everyone lay exhausted on the deck. They had finally cleared out the monsters.

March Rain was already LV18. Remnant Dream managed to level up to 17 with 70% EXP and passed I No Understand on the rankings.

The party of Lu Li, Azure Sea Breeze, Lonesome Flower, March Rain and Remnant Dream claimed the top 5 spots on the Level Rankings again.

“Come and pick up the loot. Even though it’s a bunch of coppers, there’s enough here to total up to about 100 gold. There are heaps of materials to pick up as well.”

March Rain and Remnant Dream obeyed, and immediately got to work.

“Flower, your sister is picking the loot up; stop being lazy and come pick up some cloth so that she can level up her tailoring,” Lu Li said.

Lonesome Flower was the most exhausted member of the party. He had to continuously cast Blizzard, which made his arm extremely tired and heavy. However, he felt energised again from thinking about how many cloths could be looted.

The cloth, materials and copper coins were all picked up. There were also hundreds of Common Grade Equipment that could probably be gathered and sold for handsome sum. However, they could not be stacked up into a set like the materials, so they ended up leaving these behind.

After resting for a bit, Lonesome Flower got up and said, “Should we give it a try again? What if the bug is still there?”

The bug was still worthwhile, even if their EXP gain had slowed. Compared to training in the wild, it was still much better.

Lu Li thought that it would be a waste if they did not continue to exploit the bug.

The others who were all resting on the ground got up and jumped off the boat.

Lu Li gathered up 180 monsters again and prepared to activate his stealth skill.

Then...

The monsters froze in place.

After Lu Li went into stealth, they all disappeared as well. This meant that the system had already found and addressed the bug issue.

Lu Li blocked the World channel so he couldn’t see what the other players were saying. However, the rest of the party could see the heated discussion that was going on.

Was it that easy to make it onto the Level Rankings?

As the levels increased, it would be harder and harder to level up. Today, they had made some incredible progress and were able to dominate the Level Rankings once again.

I No Understand, Wild and Sorrowless were all kicked off the rankings.

Today, Lu Li had taught the other Dawn players what it meant to be one-upped.