The Great Thief

Chapter 553: The Art of Switching Targets

Translator: Halcyon Translations Editor: Halcyon Translations

Lu Li did not second guess himself; there wasn’t even a split second of doubt or hesitation.

As planned before the match, all four DPS classes from Ruling Swords switched onto Deadly Golden Underwear and dumped all their skills onto him.

Chanelle only had a sliver of HP remaining and would be teleported out of the arena if they all attacked her.

However, everyone acted according to Lu Li’s strategy and decisively stopped attacking Chanelle, switching their focus to Deadly Golden Underwear. In order to prevent himself from being crowd-controlled, Lu Li even activated his Cloak, as well as his damage and armour penetration buffs.

Deadly Golden Underwear was not expecting the sudden and synchronised attack, so the only thing he could do was to try to stay alive.

However, something happened that silenced the entire arena.

Could Warriors be instantly killed?

Normally, this was impossible, even if the Warrior was focused by 3 to 5 other players. This was something that the developers of Dawn had taken into account in their patches to balance the game.

The only possibility of this happening was if the Warrior was in Berserk mode.

The Berserker class was one of the most popular classes in Dawn, as well as other games. The developers of Dawn worked hard in balancing Berserkers so that they could keep up with PVP titans such as Mages and Thieves. Their background lore read: "Berserkers will do anything beyond reason in pursuit of becoming stronger and more powerful."

The best description of the Berserkers was ‘unrivalled’.

The reason why they were such a powerful class was because Berserk mode sacrificed half of a player’s HP and defence to increase damage output. This made them the definition of a ‘glass cannon’. Deadly Golden Underwear only had 2,000 HP and half of his normal defence when he was jumped, so he was killed almost immediately.

After they killed Deadly Golden Underwear, they immediately shifted their focus back to Chanelle.

Professional Healer had almost 3,000 HP, which was higher than most Warriors. Additionally, he had many skills that increased his survivability. Many teams would tunnel vision on him too aggressively and lose the game because they took too long to kill him.

Chanelle’s HP was already back to full. This showed how difficult she was to kill with Professional Healer’s healing.

Peerless City made an immediate decision to retreat after losing one of their players unexpectedly.

There were times to be decisive and this was one of those moments. Decisiveness was a key factor in determining whether a group was well-trained or not. For example, Ruling Sword had followed Lu Li’s commands to switch targets from Chanelle to Deadly Golden Underwear without hesitation. Peerless city also showed off how decisive they were by running away and avoiding the disadvantageous fight.

A 4-on-5 fight would result in a complete slaughter, especially against Ruling Sword, a PVP powerhouse.

Chanelle and Professional Healer’s crowd-control, Vegetarian Mosquito’s Frost Trap and Green Flag Wine’s Slow were enough to help them retreat from the fight.

Lu Li and the others continued chasing, but the opposing Crowd Control was too much for them to catch up to. They could only watch as they disappeared into the fog of war.

"Screw it, let’s stop chasing. We killed one of them, so we have the upper hand right now." Lu Li was calm and collected. His shot calling was often compared to a commander in ancient war times, because he always made the right calls and was always a few steps ahead of his opponents.

Even though they had created an advantage for themselves, Lu Li decided that it was best to regroup and plan their next move.

"In the next stage, we’ll fight them with equal numbers. We can sub out anyone, except for March Rain" Lu Li said.

Everyone in the audience wanted to see one team slaughter the other, even if they had a difference in numbers. However, Lu Li’s strategy basically nullified the numbers advantage that they’d created.

In reality, Lu Li had a more despicable way of winning, but decided against it for other reasons.

Since the map was very large, they could to stall out the game and embarrass Peerless City by playing cat and mouse. They had already killed an enemy player, so they would win by default after the remaining 38 minutes was up.

However, there were no rewards for winning this match, so Lu Li decided to win in a special way, which would attract more players to join Ruling Sword.

The Pro League at the end of the year would form an even larger and more powerful Gaming Committee. The first rule that they would introduce would be to limit the number of participating guilds to only 10.

As such, several hundred guilds would have to compete for the top 10 spots in the tournament.

To determine the top 10 guilds, several factors were considered. Firstly, the strength of the Guild would take up 20% of the criteria.

Secondly, past guild tournament performance would account for 50% of the total criteria. Of that 50%, 30% was their performance in the Pro League, 10% was from past, smaller-scale tournaments, and the last 10% was from their in-game PVP performance in the PVP arena and their battleground rankings.

Lastly, the player vote accounted for 30% of the total criteria.

Many believed that the player vote affected the qualifying criteria too much. However, the committee ignored the criticism and would eventually pass the rule.

Lu Li wanted to keep the fight fair and not embarrass Peerless City because he cared about their feelings. In order to be voted in by the other players in the Pro League qualifiers, Lu Li had to get on everyone’s good side.

"Are we still targeting Chanelle?" Fat Monkey asked.

Even though Fat Monkey wasn’t being targeted in their last fight, he could tell that Deadly Golden Underwear and his teammates were all strong players. He was unsure whether he could survive their attacks if he was on the receiving end of their damage instead of March Rain.

"Their substitute will probably come in soon. It’s too bad we’re too far away from their spawn and can’t ambush him on his way," Lu Li sighed.

"Their substitute is an arcane mage called Half a Cigarette. He doesn’t get much game time, but his mechanics are pretty decent. I’ve encountered him twice in Arena, and our current record against each other is 1 win and 1 loss. My equips are better than his though," Fat Monkey recalled, telling the others what he knew about him.

If he could to defeat Fat Monkey with an equipment disadvantage, he was likely to be quite formidable.

There was a feature that allowed players to invite others to duel them in Arena. Lu Li received several invites a day from random players, but he would usually ignore them. However, the system sent a special notification if the player sending the invite was registered in the tournament player list.

Fat Monkey had also recently been registered with the help of Square Root Three.

This was why Fat Monkey accepted Half a Cigarette’s duel invitation. Upon hearing Fat Monkey’s past experiences, they respected Half a Cigarette even more since he was able to defeat a starter in Ruling Sword.

With the substitute Mage, Peerless City regrouped as a team of five again, but their morale seemed to have taken a hit and they no longer looked like the championship team they once were. Peerless City decided to camp at an advantageous position and waited for their opponents to find them.

"If we don’t go over there, then wouldn’t they lose?" Sakura Memory asked as they observed Peerless City from afar.

"Yeah, but that would be boring."

Lu Li came up with a new attacking strategy after observing them for a short while from afar.

"I’ll Stealth in. Lighty instead of charging in, I want you to advance slowly towards them. March Rain, make sure you keep your heals on him. Remember not to engage in a fight, but retreat when you are around 20 yards from Green Flag Wine and repeat this continuously. Wait for my attack as a signal to back me up." Lu Li disappeared into the fog and approached Peerless City, being cautious of traps in the bushes.

Hunters could set traps which caused damage, a snare effect, and revealed your position to the caster. The only way Lu Li could escape a trap was with Gale Steps.

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