The Great Thief

Natalia’s voice was growing weaker and weaker as the spell casting continued. In the end, she finally fell into a deep slumber.

Mar’alith breathed a sigh of relief. He carried his wife and planned to leave right away.

Wait a minute. Where were the rewards?

Mar’alith seemed to remember the rewards as well. He stopped walking and said, “My friends, thank you. Without you, Natalia would not have been revived. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Normal rewards would not satisfy the magnitude of my gratitude.”

“No! Just give me the normal rewards! Don’t say something like ‘I will remember what you have done for me’,” Lu Li thought to himself.

Lu Li was already on the verge of tears. In Dawn, not all of your efforts that were invested into a quest would yield rewards. If you angered an NPC, then the NPC wouldn’t give out the rewards or the NPC might even kill you. Furthermore, even if they were satisfied, the rewards might still be a little peculiar.

For example, you could be rewarded with a friendship with the NPC. What was the point? How much could these friendships sell for?

Even without rewards, Lu Li would still gain something out of it. After all, they had participated in the battle, which sped up the completion of the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj by at least half a month. This would shock a lot of Dawn’s players. Now, once the name ‘Ruling’ Sword was mentioned, players from around the globe would know that this was the club which had taken the first clear for Ahn’Qiraj. Moreover, other clubs were still struggling in the first phase of the battle.

There were still players outside of the Chinese region who were still living in the age where Glory Capital was dominating the gaming scene. After all, Ruling Sword hadn’t been established for that long.

However, after Ahn’Qiraj, no one was able to compete with Ruling Sword in terms of Instance Dungeon clearing.

Of course, this didn’t mean that Ruling Sword was untouchable.

To put it simply, Ruling Sword wouldn’t have more than 30 teams that could take down the Temple, even after one or two months. However, those mega-clubs would be able to commission 300 teams to constantly grind the Temple. Even if they only received five Epic items per run, this would undoubtedly add up to a considerable amount.

Ruling Sword didn’t even have five complete Elite teams. One of them was also focused on PVP. Other clubs already had around a hundred, with some clubs having even more.

Glory Capital also hadn’t been slacking either. They had 300 active Elite teams for a while now.

Gale Legion also had more than a hundred Elite teams.

“I always prioritised my business more, but now, I have realised that there are much more important things in the world,” Mar’alith said with a tone of sadness. “I hope that it is not too late, my friends. After I return, I will resign from my position. When that time comes, you can send two Druids to me, and I will teach them some battle skills forged from my experiences.”

He didn’t mention items, gold, skill points or skill books, but Lu Li was extremely satisfied with these rewards.

The Mentor system had already been released for around half a year. Many of the top players already had their own mentors, but this was not the case for 99% of other players. Even within those players who had mentors, the strength of these mentors also had to be considered.

Mar’alith was one of the Cenarion Circle’s highest-ranking commanders. He was highly respected and was extremely powerful.

It would be an opportunity of a lifetime if a Druid could become his student. Of course, it wouldn’t be comparable to being mentored by Malfurion.

“Only two?”

This was the only thing that Lu Li wasn’t satisfied with.

Did Mar’alith even love his wife? They had saved his wife, and yet this was it?

“I am very sorry. I want to spend more time with Natalia. I don’t want to teach half-heartedly, so I’ll only take two students,” Mar’alith explained regrettably. He knew that if it wasn’t for Lu Li, he would have received a corpse instead of a living Natalia.

Innocent Child and Hachi Chan both had mentors already, so the demand for a mentor wasn’t that high at all. In the end, Ruling Sword still took a slot, while Water Fairy’s guild took another. There were no objections. After all, this was a quest that had been received by Lu Li and Water Fairy.

Now, the new Naxxramas Instance Dungeon had been released.

Some players decided to try their hand at this, but even the top players wouldn’t want to go and attempt it straight away. Furthermore, Lu Li was quite busy with all the things within the club.

He immediately looked for Square Root Three.

“Brother Three, come!”

“What’s up? If there’s nothing important, then keep it short. I’m super busy right now.”

Square Root Three didn’t bother about Lu Li’s feelings. He wasn’t too impressed with Lu Li interrupting his work.

He was a busy man now – on a normal day, he wouldn’t even have time to talk and hang out with Lu Li. In the beginning, he would ask Lu Li for tips and advice on many things. However, in more recent times, he realised that Lu Li wasn’t someone who cared about details. That was why he didn’t really want to bother with talking to him about things that weren’t important.

“I want to talk to you about making a branch guild,” Lu Li said.

“You want to do it now? It hasn’t even been a year!” Square Root Three cried out in shock. There were already talks of establishing a branch guild, but it seemed to be premature.

Most clubs wouldn’t exceed 200,000 members, while it was better for newer clubs to remain stable at 100,000 members.

Ruling Sword had already sent some of their members to the Profession Alliance, so they had 80,000 now. However, this didn’t seem like an opportune time to establish a branch guild.

A branch guild wouldn’t purely consist of new recruits, so they would send over a large portion of their current members. The ones being sent over wouldn’t be too happy about it, especially since everyone still wasn’t too sure of their loyalty to Ruling Sword.

After a couple of years, these would no longer be issues

Square Root Three didn’t know why Lu Li wanted to speed up their plans.

“Didn’t you realise that there are more people applying to join the club now?” Lu Li replied with another question.

“That’s true…You’re saying that it was because of the First Clear?” Square Root Three wasn’t stupid. He was just overworked.

“Let’s use this opportunity to rapidly expand our guild. We can’t just let this opportunity slip away.” Lu Li was planning on committing hard. He continued saying, “I’m planning to use all the money that we earned to invest into this. We need to really press for it this time.”

The Glory Cup had already commenced, while the Ruling Cup was still many years away. Lu Li didn’t want to wait any longer.

Ruling Sword’s greatest weakness now was their lack of Elite teams.

Sure, they had taken First Clear after First Clear, which only served to build upon their reputation and fame. However, they needed to capitalise on the opportunity to use this to expand, otherwise, it would all be for nought.