The Great Thief

As for C’Thun, Lu Li recalled that C’Thun didn’t take as long as Ouro to defeat in his previous life. There was a team who killed C’Thun around two weeks after defeating Ouro.

This didn’t mean that C’Thun, the first Old God to appear in Dawn, couldn’t even compare to its own pet, but that the company had massively nerfed it.

Otherwise, this Instance Dungeon would take forever to complete.

The cooldown reset the day after they killed Ouro, so everything was revived, including the recently-killed Ouro.

If Ruling Sword hadn’t ‘secretly’ killed Ouro, then Sorrowless would have led the Super Team to kill him today. However, Ruling Sword threw a wrench in their plans, so all of them had to disperse and deal with Ouro themselves.

The Stronghold battles hadn’t yet begun, so everyone needed to capitalise on the time that they had while in possession of a Stronghold.

Had it not been for the game restrictions, everyone who had a Stronghold would undoubtably modify the Stronghold wall structure and thickness. The Stronghold owners would be willing to carry a whole mountain to block the Stronghold from attackers if they could do so, even at the expense of them leaving the Stronghold.

The second season of Shadow Cup was upon Dawn again. Currently, it was in the registering stage.

The registering process was much stricter this time. Only the first 10,000 teams who were verified by the official company could enter the competition. It was no longer the case that a casual team that was just simply put together could enter.

Of course, the Shadow Cup was still welcoming to newer squads who wanted to try their hand at eSports.

New teams or teams who didn’t meet the criteria were eligible to enter the qualifying rounds. There weren’t any limits placed in the qualifying rounds, and there were 10 teams per qualifying round. Then, after a process of round robin, the team with the highest number of points would be able to enter the next round.

At the end of the qualifying rounds, there would be a total of around 10,000 to 20,000 teams formally entering the competition.

There were also many new changes this time around. The Shadow Cup’s organisers decided to speed up the competition as per the request of the committee, making it progress much quicker. In the first couple of weeks, over 90% of the teams would be eliminated.

As for the champion of the Shadow Cup, the prize was not limited to an abundant amount of money, but there were also other bonuses such as advertisements and dedicated channels.

However, in the newest update of the statistics, the number of new guilds in the competition from the first season to the current season had increased by at least 10 times.

This indicated that more and more people wanted to join and share in the glories of the Shadow Cup.

There were hundreds of new guilds being created each day. With the increase in new guilds, the bigger fish would swallow up the smaller fish. However, there were also a few larger guilds that would disband over disputes over distribution of resources.

Even a mega-organisation like Ruling Sword would need to be careful of the piranhas lurking.

The new guilds with a bunch of money on their hands didn’t seek to establish a good foundation and build themselves up that way. They wanted to instantly become mega-organisations themselves, so they targeted the big guilds.

After all, the lowest-ranked members who were hired in these large organisations had a salary that was comparable to a white-collar worker’s salary. They were paid at a minimum of 3000 dollars per month, which was not too much and not too little.

Furthermore, 3000 dollars per month was the base. If they had better items and could pass the review, the salary would increase even more.

As for the elite members in the organisation, they would be able to live a lavish life with their salary.

These under-handed conducts were common in the gaming circle. People who didn’t have a goal or a plan in mind simply didn’t have the ability to judge a player’s capability. Therefore, once they start plateauing and start going bankrupt, that was when they would calm down and plan out their actions.

At this point in time, Ruling Sword needed to take measures.

With 80,000 members, they were going to need to cut down 10% to 20% of their current members in just two months. There was also another factor which led to anxiety for many people. This was the decision to either stay in the organisation and try and get a better position, or to leave the organisation and earn as much as they could independently. There were many perspectives and answers to this.

Ruling Sword couldn’t do much at that time. They could only increase the benefits of the organisation members, while improving the wealth and quality of items inside the guild vault.

Other organisations were even worse off. The sudden increase of gold circulating within the game forced most guilds to go through a period of stagnancy and no growth. Ruling Sword’s market economy was also being greatly inflated because of it.

According to some experts, if they wanted to sell Dawn and the company, it would be valued over a trillion dollars. With this, they would be one of the top ten most expensive companies.

They had started from humble beginnings and now, they were at the pinnacle of the world. They were also one of the reasons that many news channels named this era as the ‘Virtual Era’.

After the Shadow Cup released the news, Sorrowless immediately came out and spoke on behalf of Glory Capital. He initiated a suggestion for a global invitational competition that would be organised by many well-known organisations.

This was much earlier than what Lu Li had expected.

Lu Li thought that he had a long time to catch up, but he didn’t expect Sorrowless to already have such an idea in his mind. Furthermore, there were even detailed plans in place already.

When Lu Li heard the news, he was completely speechless.

Was this the butterfly effect?

This was something that struck fear into Lu Li himself.

However, this was logical. Lu Li was, after all, a person who had been reborn. Furthermore, he had done so many things in his current life. If no one else could see that there would be additional effects, then those people would be much too stupid.

In reality, those who could make a name for themselves wouldn’t be stupid.

Without Lu Li, Glory Capital would have been undeniably the number one organisation in the whole of the Chinese region. No other organisation would even come close to them, no matter in Instance Dungeon raids or Wild Bosses.

Under these circumstances, Sorrowless already wanted to start a Glory Cup. However, he wasn’t impatient about it. Naturally, the progression of this idea wouldn’t have advanced as quickly.

However, with Lu Li in this timeline, Sorrowless was likely to be quite frustrated already.

A lot of the plans had progressed much quicker than what Lu Li had expected, especially this time with Ouro. Sorrowless thought that he had everything planned out and prepared for. All he needed was just the execution and he would have been able to rebuild Glory Capital’s dominance in Instance Dungeon raids. Who knew that Ruling Sword was going to upset them?

Sorrowless hadn’t felt these feelings and emotions for many years. He obviously chose to retaliate.

The Glory Cup was his trump card. It would be enough to regain all of his lost reputation. Furthermore, he wasn’t going to fight with Lu Li over Instance Dungeons anymore. He admitted that Instance Dungeon raiding was Lu Li’s expertise.

He knew that he couldn’t win here.

The footage of the killing of Ouro by Ruling Sword still hadn’t been released yet. There was only the screenshot of the Boss’ corpse after the kill.

The forums went insane after this. Everyone was disappointed at the result of Ouro being slain. There were also some people who suggested to make C’Thun the target instead. Now, everyone started to bet again.

Globally, many guilds and organisations poured in an abundance of resources and manpower. In the end, they still didn’t win. How could they bet again? The name of Ruling Sword was engraved into everyone’s minds and hearts.

At least, in the Instance Dungeon raiding aspect, they were evenly matched with Glory Capital.

Sorrowless wasn’t even willing to keep competing, let alone Jade Flower Lover.