The Great Thief

“What the hell happened?!”

Sorrowless was furious. The members of Glory Capital sat in the meeting room in silence with their heads down, not wanting to look at him in the face.

Who would’ve thought that Ruling Sword would be so despicable! Dirty wasn’t enough to describe how they played the game.

However, deep down, they knew that they would have done the same thing in their position.

“Answer me! If none of you have anything to say, then all of you can get the hell out of here.”

Sorrowless had more power at his disposal than all of the Drizzle Court Organisation combined. Over the years, his power and authority continued to grow and nowadays, if he only slightly raised his voice, everyone would tremble in fear.

“Guild master, I’m very sorry. This was my fault,” a tall and lanky young man apologized as he stood up with an awkward expression.

His name was Chopsticks and he had been following Sorrowless since the very beginning. Despite his lack of abilities and talent, he was quite close with Sorrowless and held quite a lot of power in the guild as well.

“Speak!”

“One of the teams under me planned to ambush them twice. We targeted Lonesome Flower, March Rain and Azure Sea Breeze, but we failed both times.”

Chopsticks was afraid to raise his head. In reality, if he had succeeded, he would have been extremely arrogant.

“And then?”

“Ruling Swords tried to make a deal with me to show them mercy, but I declined,” Chopsticks continued as he scratched his head, “….and now we’re here.”

“All you do is fail!” Sorrowless wanted to slap him across the face so badly.

“How dare they shift all the blame onto us! A lot of things that we didn’t do were spun to make it seem like our fault.” Chopstick felt helpless.

This was what Sorrowless was furious about. Their reputation as a guild was considered God-like and they were considered as one of the best guilds in history.

Now, he would be known as despicable, fake, a hypocrite and a man who would do anything in order to get what he wanted, even if that meant he had to be dishonest. His path to success was tainted with rumors and fake news of his wrongdoings.

For example, when he was contending for the title of the Mage God, he kidnapped Unforgettable Maple’s wife.

That was complete bullshit because Unforgettable Maple never even had a girlfriend.

When Glory Capital and Blood Red War Flag were competing for the Shadow Cup, Sorrowless sent assassins to take out players from the guild, including the innocent lifestyle players.

Besides this, there were rumors of him bribing the judges, bribing developers from the gaming company, bribing opposing opponents to lose on purpose…

Normally, Sorrowless was an expressionless and calm player. However, he felt as if his world had come to an end, because everywhere that he went, there would be fingers pointing at him and accusing him of using unethical ways to win.

“Don’t do things like that in the future!”

“If you want the rumors to stop, we should probably stop everyone from harassing Ruling Sword,” Chopstick said.

As such, the PR team of Glory Capital sent out a letter addressing the recent rumors and denied any accusations by the gaming community. They also stated the Glory Capital valued fairness in competitions and if anyone dared to harass Ruling Swords anymore, they would do whatever it took to support them and punish the perpetrators accordingly.

After a while, no one dared to mess with Ruling Sword.

Those who were out of the loop thought that Glory Capital was being kind and just. However, those that were more involved in the professional scene found it extremely amusing. Glory Capital had been completely outplayed this time and were forced to protect their opponents.

The embarrassment was enough for them to feel like killing themselves!

Meanwhile, everyone went back to levelling up as soon as possible.

Lu Li made it past Lv52 and became the sixth player to reach this level. Those that were ahead of him were Lonesome Flower, March Rain, Azure Sea Breeze, Hachi Chan and Sakura Memories.

This was the first time that Hachi Chan had overtaken Lu Li and she made sure he knew about it all day and night.

In reality, this wasn’t because Lu Li didn’t put in as much effort to levelling up. Recently, he had just been focusing his time and effort on training up his completion rate. His Shadowstrike was basically at 100% and the damage was ridiculously high.

When Remnant Dream finally reached Lv51, Ruling Swords entered Scholomance.

Glory Capital had already sent five small groups to scout out the Instance Dungeon for Sorrowless and provide valuable information about it.

Lu Li was prepared as well because he sent Hachi Chan to scope out the dungeon.

Since she was so favored by the System, she was able to accept all the quests available from the NPCs.

Betina Bigglezink from Eastern Plaguelands gave out a quest called ‘Plagued Hatchlings’ and requested that Hachi Chan to kill 20 Plagued Hatchlings.

When the quest was finished, Betina then asked for a piece of Plagued Dragon scale.

The scale was a quest item that was used to study what the plague did to the dragons. When everyone obtained a scale, they handed in the quest.

Now, the most important part was the quest series from the Barov Family.

The Scholomance that was hidden beneath the Caer Darrow castle ruins belonged to the Barovs.

Back then, the Barovs were considered equal to royalties. They were in control of the land east of the Alterac Mountains and were a rich family with many cities and towns under their name. Their wealth was comparable to the Alterac Family of Caer Darrow castle which housed an ancient and royal bloodline.

After the first war, the fate of the family was completely changed.

The disloyal Alterac king formed an alliance with the Ogre army and attacked the Alliance army. They harassed the citizens of the Alliance while they invaded the Lordaeron army in Hillsbrad Hill so that they couldn’t provide backup.

However, with the help of Uther, the traitors were dealt with very quickly.

The remaining forces of the Alterac kingdom escaped to the land of the Barovs – Caer Darrow.

Barov stood with the Alliance and with the help of the Elven forces from Silvermoon City, they managed to surround the Alterac forces and handed the traitors over to the Lordaeron Alliance.

The betrayal of the Alterac Kingdom stirred up the wrath of the Dalaran Mages. They sent out troops to completely eradicate what was left of the Alterac Kingdom and completely flattened it.

As for the Barovs, who used to be a royal family of the Alterac Kingdom, they were spared for their help in the war.

The war ended and the Lordaeron King, Uther’s father, made the decision to take away the Barov’s land, including Tarren Mill, Southshore and the other surrounding cities, with the excuse of making this area a strategic war location.

The Barovs lost a lot of their power and wealth and began cursing the family of Uther.

The other royal families of the Alterac Kingdom who survived the war began despising the Barov Family. From their point of view, the kingdom was defeated because they did not stand with their king. The Barovs became hated from both sides, but could do nothing except cower in the lonely island of Caer Darrow.

Not content with their enormous holdings, the Barovs entered into a deal with the human mage Kel’Thuzad, leader

of the Cult of the Damned, who tempted them with eternal life.

The House of Barov was tempted and pledged their allegiance to Kel’Thuzad and the Scourge, becoming the horrific Scholomance, a school of necromancy.

Ras Frost Whisperer oversaw the operation of the Scholomance with Darkmaster Grandling.

The quest could be triggered by the NPC servant of the House of Barov.

The first Boss was a professor of the Scholomance, Doctor Theolen Krastinov. Supposedly, he had sacrificed thousands of innocent lives in order to perform his undead experiments. He needed to be punished and deal with the consequences of his actions.

In order to help them with the dungeon, Eva Sarkhoff handed them 15 bottles of potion called Eva’s Undead Whispers.

The potion provided the players with a powerful buff which increased resistance against undead damage and decreased resistance to undead spells and crowd-control.

The importance of this potion was not to be underestimated. Lu Li knew how powerful and crucial these potions were because they doubled their chances of survival.

Why were there 15 bottles?

This was based on the number of players that were allowed in the Instance Dungeon, which had been raised to 15.

Besides the 10 players from the Xin Xin Mercenary group, Lu Li also invited Kitty Likes Meat, Mu Qiu, Fat Monkey, Her Tears and Jaweika.

Two Warriors, two Warlocks, two Mages, three Paladins, two Priests, a Druid, Hunter, Thief and a Shaman – even though the class composition wasn’t ideal, these were the top players in the guild.

In the current patch, Thieves were strong in PvP settings but weren’t as useful in Boss fights, so they did not recruit another.

Druids could be beneficial for boss fights, but there weren’t any powerful Druids in the guild.

There were other Shamans such as Rain like a Wanderer, but the team didn’t require anymore healing. The main healers were March Rain, while the secondary healers were Mu Qiu and Hachi Chan.

There were three Paladins, a tank, a healer and a DPS player.

In this patch, Paladins were quite useful because of their party buffs which increased Defense, Attack and Tenacity.

Jaweika was a shadow priest. Shadow Priests were decent in this patch, but the main benefit that Jaweika provided was that she could replenish the MP of other Mage classes.

After the team was assembled, they each stocked up on their potions and began attempting to clear Scholomance.

The entire gaming community knew that Ruling Sword was attempting this dungeon because everyone was keen to see who won the bet between Lu Li and Sorrowless.

Ruling Sword and Glory Capital were head-to-head in the odds of winning the bet right now.

Sorrowless had been crowned the God of Gaming in the recent years, holding numerous records in various games, and had rarely been defeated in his gaming career.

Lu Li was a newbie in the gaming community but had proved time and time again that he was the best strategist and leader in the game.

Both sides were similar in levels and gear because most of the players from Glory Capital were at least Lv50.

After Ruling Sword began, Sorrowless also led a team of 15 players to the dungeon.

The Scholomance was located in the center of the island.

The dungeon was like a miniature maze, infested by Mages, Warlocks and other Cursed Disciples.

Darkmaster Grandling taught the students here how to raise the undead in the name of the Lich King. He used to be a Dalaran Mage, but was obsessed with the powers of the dark arts, so he betrayed the Alliance to become more powerful.

After a while, Sorrowless and his team made it onto the island and both sides wanted to win no matter what.

This bet was followed by many players and other professionals in the scene. Sorrowless gave Lu Li a nod before the competition started.

If he had known it was Lu Li who stirred up the rumors, Sorrowless might have killed himself from rage and frustration.