The Great Thief

After defeating Frankriss the Unyielding, Lu Li announced that everyone could now take a break.

They had already killed four Bosses, so there was no need to keep rushing along. The other clubs were likely still stuck on the third Boss and there were many players that needed to participate in the competition.

 The Donghua Cup was almost coming to an end.

Ruling Sword’s rookie team and Peerless City’s rookie team had both entered the top ten, but Drizzle Court’s rookie team was eliminated fighting for 10th place.

A win or a loss wasn’t that important in a competition like this. There were no famous players who were participating. Blood Dagger had made an apperance once but solely to vent his anger. He didn’t play anymore afterwards.

The players who were participating were basically all newcomers.

 There were also some PVE players who didn’t usually participate in things like this, but wanted to experience this part of the game.

Because of this, there were many Mercenary players in the competition representing outside companies. It was a form of advertising for these groups.

Lu Li had a similar idea in his previous life, but he couldn’t find anyone to participate in the competition with him.

Azure Sea Breeze was constantly being chased around and killed, so he had no time to make money with him in advertising.

At this time, the Donghua Cup had officially entered the top ten stage.

The top ten included the main clubs – Glory Capital, Ruling Sword, Peerless City, Seventh Heaven, Gangnam Royals, Wings of Dawn, Blood Red War Flag, Azure Guard, Grand Hegemony and Blue Universe.

Glory Capital’s youth camps were famous all over the world, as many top players had come from there.

They were simply the cream of the crop. Even without Blood Dagger being involved, they were still able to advance to the top ten with the highest scores.

The second highest scoring team was Blue Universe’s team.

They were actually already professional players, but they had been kicked out of their previous clubs by Water Fairy. They were now all playing in the Donghua Cup under new identities, but they were in fact not real newcomers.

Then, there was Grand Hegemony. Their situation was similar to that Blue Universe. They had a lot of money and were very powerful.

The Gangnam Royals were previously unable to get anywhere in these competitions, but this time they had hired experts from the mercenary community and filled the rest of the team with strong players of their own. This strategy performed quite well.

The other teams were made up of newcomers, or at least a majority were newcomers.

 In Ruling Sword’s team, Fat Monkey and Mu Qiu were the already established professional players.

 However, they didn’t play too much. The requirements of a newcomer for the Donghua Cup was that their debut had been less than a year ago. Even so, this would include people like Fat Monkey, Kitty Likes Meat, March Rain and even Lu Li.

If Lu Li, March Rain, Fat Monkey, Mu Qiu, Kitty Likes MEat and Sakura Memories were playing, they could easily win the championship.

It was just that Ruling Sword had quite a unique status, and doing that would obviously just be bullying the other newcomers.

The players who were participating for Ruling Sword were true newcomers and were under the leadership of Short Circuit. Short Circuit’s performance had been very good. His progress had been compared to Fat Monkey’s progress.

However, his character was quite different from Fat Monkey. He was an Ice Mage, and he had a seamless fighting style.

Someone had once analysed a video of his fight and found that he was a player that had made almost zero mistakes in the Donghua Cup. Almost everything he did was perfect.

Of course, this wasn’t the only style that was good.

Often, an overemphasis on attention to detail would lead to the forgoing of other things.

When dealing with other newcomers, the pursuit of perfection wasn’t a big deal. However, when dealing with other strong star players, pursuing perfection would just result in more mistakes.

Lu Li had discussed this attitude with Short Circuit, and he had said he would pay attention to that while in game, but there were some things that were very difficult to change.

At the very least, Lu Li couldn’t see any signs of it getting better.

However, this wasn’t important. Lu Li had experienced Rebirth, so he expected this style from Short Circuit.

Almost all players had their own style, which could be a strength or a weakness. People just had to play to their strengths, instead of trying getting everyone to change.

Short Circuit’s style was to be OCD.

Mu Qiu had also participated in this competition and had changed his fighting style. He had gone from a tanky healer to a damage output player. In a sense, he was also a newcomer.

Of course, he was also one of the players that only played occasionally, so he didn’t have that many opportunities in the Donghua Cup.

There was also Lonesome Flower and Azure Sea Breeze who went on a few times.

“How about we’ll go watch the competitions to relax? I’ll pay for the tickets,” Lu Li suggested. He saw that everyone was quite interested in the matches, so he decided to be generous.

“Whatever!” everyone scoffed at his proposal.

 It was just a few silver per ticket, but he had made it out like he was being super generous.

This was a match between Ruling Sword and Blue Universe. It was quite a difficult matchup as the Blue Universe players were basically established professionals.

Both Fat Monkey and Mu Qiu were playing, otherwise, they would have no chance.

These guys didn’t care much about winning or losing the Donghua Cup, but there were some who did. Some groups were using this Cup was a means of launching their comeback. THe Gangnam Royals were one such group.

Ruling Sword wasn’t matched up against the Gangnam Royals this time, but Lu Li wished they were.

However, Gangnam Royals weren’t that fortunate either. They had been matched against Glory Capital’s Youth Camp group. These players were generally considered to be as capable as established players. The mercenaries in the Gangnam Royals were unlikely to be skilled or strong enough.

After entering the arena, Lu Li and Water Fairy sat together.

Nine Phoenix and Wendelian were on stage. Nine Phoenix was a professional commentator and Wendelian was the commander of Gale Legion and a very popular female player within the gaming circle.

“This will be a very interesting match. Ruling Sword and Blue Universe have both scored quite highly. However, it is a pity that we won’t be seeing familiar faces like Lu Li, March Rain, Moonlight and the rest,” Wendelian said confidently. She should have been against Ruling Sword as Gale Legion was subordinate to Glory Capital, and Glory Capital had now named Ruling Sword as a major opponent.

“Actually, I quite like Fat Monkey and Short Circuit together. They are an Ice and Fire OTP,” Nine Phoenix laughed.

 “Lu Li was quite lucky to have found a player with such great potential,” Wendelian said somewhat reluctantly.

The Shadow Cup was where Lu Li and March Rain had risen to fame. The Professional League was where Far Monkey and Kitty Likes Meat had made their mark. And here in the Donghua Cup, it was Short Circuit and Mu Qiu with his altered fighting style.