The Great Thief

“Maybe we can have a drink with him,” Lu Li suggested after thinking for a moment.

In fact, there were several strategies that they could employ here, but this was the only one that made sense. The others required a leap of logic that was almost incomprehensible. For example, one of them required the players to stand at the entrance of the bar and yell:

“Vorfalk, your mum is calling you home for dinner!”

Vorfalk would then run out of the tavern within seconds. However, this strategy was quite strange and Lu Li felt like it wasn’t really his style.

“If we need to drink to get close to him, I would be perfect for the job,” Hornet’s Nest said as he licked his lips.

He had tried some of Ironforge’s liquor before, but he hadn’t tasted their wine before. The Ironforge’s wine was slightly bitter, but it had a mellow barley aroma. As for the bitter taste, it was followed with a long, pleasant aftertaste.

“Of course not,” Lu Li couldn’t help but retort before explaining, “Vorfalk is the guardian of the Tavern’s warehouse. If you take out a drink from the warehouse that isn’t sold here…”

Everyone suddenly understood what Lu Li was trying to do.

“What we need to do now is to observe what wines are being sold in the tavern and write them down. We will then need to go to the pub warehouse downstairs and steal some wine,” Lu Li continued.

“I’ll go with you,” Water Fairy said.

“Alright, everyone else write the kind of wines that you can buy in the tavern onto the chat channel.”

Lu Li and Water Fairy then went into Stealth and began to follow a waiter down to the basement.

The tavern warehouse was locked with three locks. The security measures used were quite thorough.

Fortunately, the waiter opened the door of the warehouse which allowed Lu Li and Water Fairy to sneak into the wine cellar.

“Should we kill him?” Water Fairy asked.

If they didn’t kill the waiter, then the waiter would take the wine and leave, locking them both within the warehouse.

The two Thieves engaged onto the level 55 Elite NPC. The fight was naturally effortless, but the NPC unexpectedly dropped something.

‘Tarnished City Magazine’!

It was so dirty that it looked like it had been run over by 10,000 horses that had been running in the mud.

Why did this item drop when he was with Water Fairy? In the process of picking the item up, Water Fairy had also seen its name.

“Uh, it’s just some item,” Lu Li said awkwardly. If he threw it away now, would it look like he was trying to hide something? However, if he kept the item, that wouldn’t look great either.

“So even the game would drop items like this. What does it do?’ Water Fairy asked calmly.

“Yeah, there are some NPCs that like this item,” Lu Li said after a moment. Only some monsters in Dawn would drop items like this, mostly pirates, sailors, robbers and bar waiters.

Lu Li remembered that there were some NPCs that were difficult to communicate with, and these items could be used to trigger quests from them.

He looked around in the wine cellar and quickly found what they were looking for – the legendary Sulfuron Slammer.

The seven bottles of Sufuron Slammer couldn’t just be taken out and sold casually. Sulfuron was the word of another race that meant fire. Originally, this wine could only exist in theory, as there wasn’t a flame hot enough in the world to make it. However, when Ragnaros was summoned, the Sulfuron Slammer became a reality.

Lu Li couldn’t understand how Ragnaros helped the efforts to make this wine, but that wasn’t important.

Each of the seven bottles was worth a thousand gold, and these bottles wouldn’t refresh after they had been taken away. Lu Li carefully observed the surrounding areas around the wine cabinet for any traps, and carefully took the bottles after dealing with them.

“You have three bottles and I have three bottles. We can use the remaining bottle to lure out Vorfalk. All he needs is to smell the wine,” Lu Li said, then gave three bottles to Water Fairy before adding, “Don’t tell them about this; this is between you and me. This might be petty of me, but they were being insincere first.”

Originally, Water Fairy didn’t want it because she didn’t drink.

However, after hearing Lu Li say that it was between them, she felt moved and didn’t want to reject it. She took the three bottles of wine and put them into her backpack.

After they returned, Lu Li opened a bottle and walked to the entrance of the tavern.

The aroma of the burning heat slowly spread. Dark Keeper Vorfalk, who was drinking in the tavern, smelt the aroma and ran out of the tavern screaming.

The other Dwarves who were still drinking were laughing and joking. They didn’t seem to care at all.

“Breezy, go in. He seems a bit angry,” Lu Li said as he stuffed the bottle back into his bag and kicked Hornet’s Nest to signal that the battle had begun.

“Thieves! You despicable thieves!”

Vorfalk who was brought out by the scent of wine was quickly forced to change targets. Under the System’s rules, he couldn’t ignore the Main Tank’s Taunt skills. However, he must have been really annoyed, because he immediately went Berserk.

“Run away!” Lu Li cried out when he saw Vorfalk spurt a large amount of liquor onto the ground that flowed outwards and sizzled as it went. The liquor didn’t seem to have lost the aroma that it started with before Vorfalk drank it.

Players that were hit with the liquid would not only be poisoned and receive continuous damage, but would also be mentally disgusted.

Although Vorfalk was like a Boss, he was still only a Dark Keeper responsible for holding the key. It only took a little effort for Lu Li and the others to deal with him. They didn’t receive any decent equipment from him, but they had now acquired the key to all six treasures.

Finally, they were able to return to the Treasure Trove and start dividing up the treasures.

The six treasure chests all had the possibility of dropping Epic equipment.

Of course, this was the theoretical probability. According to Lu Li’s experience of playing games in the past, it still took quite a bit of luck for a player to find an Epic item.

The real value of these six treasure chests was in their rare materials.

It was possible to obtain one or two rare materials in every treasure chest. These rare materials were also usually quite versatile. In particular, the Blood of the Mountain had a wide range of uses and Burning Essence was also a very precious material. There was not much else to say about the Blood of the Mountain. It was a product that could be acquired from mining, but there was a very small chance of it dropping. It was required for several items within Dawn, so its market price was continually climbing.

As for the Burning Essence, it was important for those who wanted to progress through the Black Rock Mountain series of Instance Dungeons.

With a Burning Essence, four Crystal Spikes, a Black Diamond and a Libram of Resilience Book, you could go to the Burning Steppes’ Flame Crest to find Mathredis Firestar and exchange them for a Lesser Arcanum of Resilience.

The effect of the Lesser Arcanum of resilience was simple – it gave headgear 20% fire resistance.

After a while, when more players were able to fight in Blackrock Mountain, there were would more random groups formed. However, the first condition of forming a group was always whether the player had any enchantments on their headgear. Even if they didn’t have any fire resistance equipment apart from this gem in their headgear, it would generally be possible for them to fight in an Elite Instance Dungeon at Blackrock Mountain.

In the first Treasure Chest, a Gold item was dropped. Wendelian, who was responsible for looting the chest, was quite frustrated.

After looting it again, a Blood of the Mountain was dropped.

This was quite a valuable item, so everyone rolled for it together. Eventually, it ended up with Hornet’s Nest.

As they continued opening the chests, everyone would roll for the equipment and rare materials. Lu Li was quite unlucky and didn’t receive a single rare material. However, March Rain and Azure Sea Breeze managed to roll for a Blood of the Mountain and even two Burning Essences.

“Hey Lu Li,” Hornet’s Nest said as he came over and gave the Blood of the Mountain that he had rolled to Lu Li.

“What do you want?” Lu Li asked coldly.

“Don’t you have any emotions? Don’t you know the people who look up to you?” Hornet’s Nest muttered before forcing a smile. “What kind of wine did you have in your hands? It smelled different from a normal wine, and there is only one bottle, isn’t there? The Boss before seemed quite anxious about it; it’s because there is only one bottle, right?”

“Yeah, there is only one bottle,” Lu Li paused before lying.

“How about I trade this for the wine?” Hornet’s Next asked as he threw the Blood of the Mountain into Lu Li’s hands.

Lu Li caught it and hesitated before saying, “Not for one bottle; this wine is too rare. There was only one bottle in the entire cellar…”

“Was there really only one bottle? Alright, how much do you want?”

The more precious it was, the more Hornet’s Nest could help but want it. For those that enjoyed wine, the thought of trying a fine wine that they hadn’t tasted before could drive them crazy.

“When we finish this Instance Dungeon, I can pour you a small cup… Maybe if you give me something else, I can give you 1/10th of the bottle. How about that?”

Lu Li’s performance was quite convincing.

Hornet’s Nest sheepishly let go of his vision to have a full cup of that wine, exchanging it for a much smaller cup.

The wine was not an ordinary amber; it seemed to really be burning with color. Perhaps another way to describe it was that it seemed like it was filled with vigor.

Hornet’s Nest took a sip and slowly relished its taste. After a long time, he realized that this drink had also given him a buff.

“Woah, I got a permanent 100HP increase! That’s so good!”

In addition to the fact that the wine tasted great, he had no idea that it could give him bonus attributes.

“Please, sir Lu Li, you have to share it. Its +100 HP permanently…” Unforgettable Maple sighed and pled with Lu Li. He was a Cloth Armored Profession, which were notorious for having little HP. For some players, 100 HP wasn’t much, but it was quite significant for him.

There was a master chef in Stormwind City that ran an auction for food at 4.30pm every day.

Among the meals was one that could add 50HP permanently. The highest record paid for this item was 600 gold coins, which was the price that Unforgettable Maple paid.

600 gold coins was no small amount. It was 50,000 dollars, which was half a year’s salary for an ordinary white-collar worker.

“The least I can give you for it to work is 1/20th and it will only work once. How can we split it?” Lu Li probably could have refused, but he would have offended a large number of people. This was also a good opportunity to earn a lot of money, and Lu Li was feeling unapologetically greedy.

“How much?” Unforgettable Maple asked as he swallowed and suddenly felt afraid of Lu Li.

The others were suddenly paying attention as well. Even Sorrowless couldn’t help but feel the temptation as he was also a Mage with low HP. He felt that he could do with a HP increase as well.