The Great Thief

“This is a dungeon; we won’t lose experience or equipment here. What are you afraid of?” As a man, especially a man who tanked monsters all day long, did Azure Sea Breeze really need to be so frightened?

Azure Sea Breeze was speechless. It seemed like it would be hard to make him jump, unless someone kicked him from behind.

“Let me try. I rock climb a lot in real life,” Jaweika said eagerly.

No one else opposed his suggestion. Although Lu Li made it sound easy, no one wanted to give it a try first. Just the height alone was frightening, let alone falling into the lava that would burn a player to death. Although the game had already removed 90% of all player’s senses to protect them, even that remaining 10% would linger on long enough to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

“It’s not that bad once you get used to it,” Lu Li mumbled.

He often travelled with a group of random players in his previous life. Although they didn’t take out any Bosses, they had jumped quite a lot of times.

The burning sensation wasn’t enough to traumatize anyone, but people still resisted overall. Of course, if someone was happy to stand out and set the example, Lu Li wasn’t that keen about jumping first either.

March Rain casted Levitate on Jaweika.

Jaweika carefully moved to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the red lava beneath him. He felt the heat waves from the lava on his face; it was similar to standing near a campfire.

However, he wasn’t afraid. You could tell from his eyes that this guy seemed to be quite excited.

“I’m off.”

Without any preparation or hesitation, Jaweika, the Shadow Priest, jumped down. It seemed like his body was dragged by some sort of mysterious force and like a leaf in the wind, he wobbled and drifted downwards.

“Oh no,” Moonlight sighed.

The others watched closely and quickly realized why. Jaweika’s landing spot wasn’t close to the bump on the cliff, so there was no way he would be able to use it to change his direction. The results were inevitable.

Why didn’t they choose another spot besides the bump to bounce off?

The reason was simple – other areas of the cliff had flames running along them. They would take damage as soon as they touched them.

Levitate allowed players to float for a long time, but it came with one major fall back – the effect disappeared once a player took damage.

Once Levitation was cancelled by the burning damage, it would result in a failure.

Jaweika discovered that he couldn’t succeed, so he simply cancelled his levitation and dropped right into the burning lava, turning into a flash of white light.

Like Lu Li said before, they didn’t lose anything from dying in the dungeon. It was a shame that the healing classes couldn’t pull him back up because he was out of skill range. He had to re-run back and revive at the entrance.

“Give me a Levitation.”

While they waited for Jaweika’s return, Lu Li decided to try it himself.

He didn’t manage to succeed in the first trial. He wasn’t pretending – even with his experience from his previous life, it wasn’t a 100% guarantee that he could land on the right spot.

After Lu Li revived and returned, Moonlight was gone too. He most likely followed Lu Li and dropped into the lava. Jaweika was still half way in the air and Wandering actually came over to queue up. It seemed like he wanted to try his luck as well.

Jaweika didn’t succeed this time, but everyone cheered for him, because he managed to step on the bump. However, his second jump wasn’t in the right position, so he couldn’t land on solid ground after.

Wandering didn’t succeed either and Lu Li had already started his second jump.

Lu Li continued to change positions in mid-air while explaining the mechanics to his team members. He slowly landed on the bump on the cliff, which couldn’t support him for very long at all. With a push from his feet, he flew into the air again.

This time, he did better than Jaweika. He slowly floated across the lava and landed on solid ground on the opposite end.

With Lu Li leading an example, the others grew interest too. Before Sesame Rice Ball succeeded, everyone jumped one by one. Even the girls who were frightened at the beginning took a chance.

Obviously, the girls didn’t succeed because they jumped with their eyes closed.

Lu Li didn’t need everyone to jump over. After Sesame Rice Ball succeeded, he opened up a Summoning Gate and pulled everyone across.

“Alright, let’s go. We’ll head straight to the second Boss,” Lu Li sighed in relief as he took the whole team towards the Troll’s territory.

It wasn’t strange at all for Trolls to appear in the Blackrock Spire.

All the Trolls here were either Flametree Trolls or Smolderthorn Trolls. They belonged to the two Troll tribes that were part of the Blackhand army.

They refused to join the new tribes of Thrall and continued to follow Rend Blackhand. Although they were much smaller compared to Thrall’s tribe, they refused to give up their ancient conquest on Azeroth.

In the minds of the Flametree and Smolderthorn Trolls, they still paid their respects to their ancestors. All other Troll tribes were simply traitors, especially the Revantusk tribe.

The Revantusk Trolls spitefully believed that the Smolderthorn tribe were the real traitors for not leaving the Blackrock Spire. They were the true loyal members who followed Thrall to lead the true Horde. Either way, Trolls outside of the Blackhand army had believed from a long time ago that the Flametree and Smolderthorn Trolls were making stupid decisions. They were silly to continue fighting for an impossible cause – if this could even be called a cause at all.

Perhaps it was because these Trolls came from extraordinary backgrounds, but they were all incredibly strong. Normal teams needed to be careful around them; just their poison alone was enough to kill. However, for the Ruling Sword team, these monsters weren’t enough to take any of them out yet.

“Lu Li, why didn’t we give the first Boss a try? We might have been able to do it. I still have a quest related to the first boss,” Azure Sea Breeze’s suggested, his face filled with regret.

“The first Boss requires Armor and fire resistance; you don’t have enough of that yet,” Lu Li said as he shook his head.

If Azure Sea Breeze was wearing his best equipment, then he would definitely have no problems with his Armor. He almost had a whole set of Legendary equipment. In order to save some gems, he wasn’t wearing his level 60 equipment, but no one else from any other guild would be able to claim to have higher Armor than he did.

The key was Fire Resistance.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have Fire Resistance gears. If he changed into them, he would be able to tank Omokk’s fire attribute damage.

However, with his Fire Resistance equipment, Azure Sea would not have enough Armor. If they wanted to kill Omokk, the tank needed to fulfil both the Armor and Fire Resistance requirements.

This was impossible for Azure Sea Breeze at this point, and the same went for any other tanks.

However, the second boss was a different story. Shadow Hunter Vosh’gajin was definitely more cunning, but Azure Sea Breeze could tank her.

Vosh’gajin was famous amongst the trolls for her beauty and insanity.

Perhaps in the eyes of Trolls, her giant teeth and size, along with her green skin were truly beautiful. However, she was also famous for her madness. As someone who specialized in the Shadow Hunter’s way, she was proficient in witchcraft, curses and healing magic.

She liked to perform all sorts of rituals that claimed to communicate with the ancient gods. After a while, she truly believed that she could communicate with them and became mad.