The Great Thief

Lu Li continued to cook the sweet potatoes, not letting his guard down, even though the police officers had left.

It wasn’t until the City Slaughter competition had finished that he decided to leave. A bright flash of light appeared around the sweet potato vendor and the next second later, he had completely disappeared out of thin air.

System: Congratulations on winning the City Slaughter Competition with a score of 363. You are also rewarded with 200 points, as well as some Reputation and Experience points.

Lu Li stood near the green tree in Darnassus and looked at the City Slaughter Competition tab where the prizes that could be bought were displayed. These included EXP, Reputation, equipment, rare materials and ingredients.

He looked at the rare materials list, then quickly skipped over this option.

Not only were the rare materials the more readily-available ones, but the exchange rate was absolutely absurd. Lu Li had only received 563 points altogether.

The best equipment that could be exchanged for was Gold grade, which was a pleasant surprise for casual players. However, for Lu Li, there were nothing that caught his attention, so he also decided against exchanging for a piece of equipment. There weren’t any rare ingredients either, leaving Reputation points and EXP as the only options.

There were many different ways to gain Reputation and he knew most of them because of his past life, so he decided to exchange all his points for EXP.

Although this wasn’t enough for him to level up, his EXP bar was nearly full. He estimated that he would be able to reach level 48 once he complete the Stratholme Instance Dungeon.

In Dawn, even if the higher-level players did not spend their whole days training, they would still stay ahead because of competitions and events.

After the competition had ended, Lu Li gathered his teammates and began to make his way to Stratholme once again. Since Ruling Sword did not have any other matches for the day, their main goal right now was to finish the dungeon and complete the First Clear.

There was nothing wrong with spending two days on a dungeon. The higher-level dungeons in the future would take months to complete.

The rest of the community had discovered that Ruling Sword were already attempting Stratholme, and many players began swarming into the Plaguelands. The map was no longer as empty as it once was. However, many of them were still too weak to fight the monsters here, so the map was littered with the corpses of dead players.

In order to make sure Xin Xin Mercenary could travel to the dungeon safely, Lu Li decided to be cautious.

Ruling Sword’s PVP team, led by Fat Monkey, arrived at Stratholme and successfully eliminated the surrounding players.

The map was too large for Ruling Sword entirely clear out because it was shared by both the Alliance and the Horde. Besides, Ruling Sword did not want to anger the players here.

Nevertheless, Fat Monkey and a couple of hundred more guild members was more than enough to ensure the safety of their dungeon group.

After they entered the dungeon, they cleared out some side monsters. Fortunately, the Bosses did not respawn until the dungeon timer reset.

When they arrived at the Bosses that they had previously killed, the corpses were no longer there.

"Everyone, come here and enter this gate," Lu Li said after he carefully examined the pattern of the monsters that were wandering around. He had to ensure that they did not draw aggro as soon as they entered.

When the players entered, the gate behind them would close immediately once the monsters aggroed onto them.

The worst case scenario was that only one player entered while the rest of his team was locked behind the gate.

This had happened to Lu Li once in his past life when his team’s healer was locked outside. The healer almost burst into tears while watching each of his teammates die to the swarming monsters.

They could either pray that all players entered at the same time, or wait behind and observe the monsters.

Because of Lu Li, the Xin Xin Mercenary Group easily progressed through together without leaving anyone behind.

The gates closed behind them when the monsters noticed them and Azure Sea Breeze charged forwards to draw aggro.

The details that the game designers had put into these monsters were very realistic. The Undeads that they had faced before were difficult to look at because of how hideous they were. However, the monsters here were enough to make anyone puke from disgust.

Their bodies were amalgamations of various creatures sewn together. They were bullied and alienated by the other Undead because they were small, weak and did not contribute to battle.

Then, they began thinking of ways of mutilating and changing themselves in order to grow bigger and stronger. In this way, they could reach the peak of the Undead hierarchy and become close servants to Arthas.

As such, these once small and weak monsters began stitching the remains of other creatures onto their own bodies, hence their name "Stitches".

Stitches became powerful machines for battle, usually wielding a hook in one hand and a heavy weapon in the other. They would hook enemies close to them with one hand and then bludgeon them to death.

Because of their high Health and Defense, they were quite difficult to kill and it would often take more time to deal with one than to deal with a swarm of smaller monsters.

"Everyone run towards the walls and corners of the room!" Lu Li yelled.

Azure Sea Breeze had also realized the problem at hand. There were too many monsters wandering around in the room and they needed to clear a way to the entrance for the Boss. However, if they attempted to force their way through, they could easily get overwhelmed by the other groups of monsters nearby.

Hugging the wall protected them and decreased the chances of them aggroing too many monsters. In this way, they were able to clear a path without much difficulty.

Occasionally, a few Patrol monsters would also appear around the map. They were usually referred to as ’911’ because they are able to alert the other monsters for backup.

These 911 monsters included the Bile Spewer, which spit out poison and spawned more monsters from its belly, such as spiders. While they appeared small, they could potentially wipe out an entire team if there were no strong AOE skills that could deal with them.