The Great Thief

Translator: Halcyon Translations  Editor: Halcyon Translations

Lu Li wasn’t able to move much from his position – otherwise, the Summoner would lose sight of him and stop summoning.

This was quite a strong force, but Lu Li didn’t really have to participate dealing damage. Instead, he could take some time to tell Water Fairy about the bug. In another instance of the same dungeon, Water Fairy was leading an elite group of players to exploit the same bug.

Lu Li hadn’t really thought of keeping this secret to himself, but it wasn’t because he was feeling particularly generous.

When Drizzle Court had become an ally, that should have been enough reason to share some resources. Drizzle Court had a 1/3 chance of running into Glory Capital in the next round. It wasn’t realistic to expect them to defeat Glory Capital – after all, they were weaker than Blood Red War Flag. Only Peerless City stood a reasonable chance, but the quality of their players was still weaker.

Still, Lu Li hoped that Drizzle Court would be able to push Glory Capital into showing their hand so they would have an indication of how strong they truly were.

The way that Water Fairy was exploiting the bug was not as effective as Lu Li. After she took a video of it, she sent it to Lu Li, who replied with some corrective instructions.

Fortunately, Water Fairy was still cunning enough to maximize this bug. Even though there were only twelve monsters, she told most of the party members to quit, leaving behind the main tank and star players.

Their Main Tank Deep Watersong was a Bear Tank, which was arguably the best-suited against monsters like these.

After the players reached level 60, there was a defensive route that could be taken. There, the players could be levelled with three Mages and a Healer. A party of ten players could gain almost one level a day. This was currently an unimaginable speed for levelling in the Wild.

Unfortunately, Lu Li knew that a day would come when this bug would be patched and the later players would be forced to fight for whatever monsters were left in the Wild.

With all these players on the Level Rankings now desperately farming, it could be said that Glory Capital’s rush to gain levels has had a major influence. They were perhaps even the main focus of that day. After all, a battle had even broken out between them a Blood Red War Flag. Each side lost thousands of elite players.

However, as the day went on, the next main focus was now Ruling Sword.

From a simplistic perspective, their levelling efficiency was far greater than that of Glory Capital, so they found that their growth on the Level Rankings exceeded Glory Capital’s.

In the beginning, everyone was still uncertain as to how they were doing it. Perhaps they had found a series of quest that granted EXP? But no matter how long the quest was, there was no way it could give continuous EXP for two days straight. The group of Glory Capital players were mostly level 56 on the Level Rankings, but now these players were almost all level 57.

Drizzle Court’s levels were also following that same growth pattern.

Soon, the other clubs couldn’t just sit around anymore. They were desperately trying to find out how they were doing this. The universally-hated coordinates system had now been abolished in the System Update, so they didn’t even know where to start looking for these players.

However, there were particularly smart people trying to work it out as well.

For example, Mr. Zhuge was one the forums discussing how this was happening when he made an observation. He notice that there were fifteen members of Ruling Sword receiving waves of EXP. With every wave of EXP received, it was always the same fifteen members of Ruling Sword. In other words, they was a group of fifteen players, so the most likely place for them to be was the Blackrock Abyss.

If it was indeed the Blackrock Abyss, it would have to be an Instance Dungeon that could spawn a large number of monsters for them to farm. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be levelling so quickly.

As such, the conclusion that Mr. Zhuge came to was that there was a bug in the Instance Dungeon. Regardless of whether it was Ruling Sword or Drizzle Court that discovered it, they had gone ahead of everyone to exploit it.

Numerous other players supported these assertions, and urged Ruling Sword to share the strategy to exploit the bug. They said that they were all part of a big group of Chinese players, which meant that Lu Li had an obligation to share this kind of thing with everyone.

However, Lu Li didn’t bother with them.

Then, some players took it even further. If Lu Li didn’t come forward soon, they would report to the Game Company that there was a bug in Blackrock Abyss.

Although an average player would be scared of the possibility of the bug getting patched out, Lu Li knew the habits of the gaming circle. As long as he didn’t do anything too drastic, they were unlikely to report the bug. According to Square Root 3, there had now been countless players who had gone to the Blackrock Abyss to the find this bug.

That was why Lu Li wasn’t worried. It would take them a few days to even find the bug, let alone report it.

However, what Lu Li didn’t know, was that Glory Capital had also sent many players into the Instance Dungeon. Sorrowless wasn’t too keen on it, as he was meeting Gale Legion’s president in real life.

This president, who was called The Ordinary Life, was actually quite extraordinary. It was said that he used to be a talented professional player, but his status gradually declined over time. In the end, he was no longer good enough to compete and was forced to retire. Eventually, a tradition was started where players wouldn’t give themselves unlucky names, for fear that they would be eventually bound to the fate their name described.

However, the world was often unpredictable and although he had been forced out, he had still not been abandoned by his Boss Sorrowless.

Gale Legion was currently a very strong club that had recently changed leaders. The Ordinary Life was both the club’s leader and president of the guild. When he entered Dawn, he recruited Gaze and gave the club’s leadership to him.

“Boss, this is not good,” The Ordinary Life said with a long face.

The top four guilds were Ruling Sword, Glory Capital, Drizzle Court and Gale Legion, but now, Gale Legion looked weak because their players weren’t even level 56 yet.

“If your levels are low, you just have to keep working hard. Don’t worry about what is happening,” Sorrowless responded as he continued casting his skills.

“I plan to spend some money to find someone to find the bug for me. We still have quite a bit of money stored in the club’s account.”

The Ordinary Life hoped to gain Sorrowless’ support. After all, they were currently trying to make a deal with their biggest rival.

“Don’t do that. I have already asked some players to contact the Game Company and report this bug.” Sorrowless didn’t feel like this bug would have a big impact.

“Boss, how could you do this?”

The Ordinary Life was a Thief and he had not yet given up on levelling. In a flash of anger, he swiped at the monster in front of him and put it down. He wasn’t courageous enough to fight Sorrowless.

“This is the best course of action. How much did you intend to spend on this bug?” Sorrowless asked, subtly trying to get at something, then paused before sighing, “Ordinary, don’t forget what Ruling Sword is missing right now. Money might be the only thing that is giving us an advantage, but once Ruling Sword gets that, they might be able to put it to much better use than us. In future, you should spend more time brainstorming before making decisions.”

The Ordinary Life’s face turned red as he angrily stomped his foot and left. He didn’t even say goodbye.

Sorrowless knew of his temperament, so he wasn’t angry. He knew that The Ordinary Life wouldn’t violate his orders either. He was now just waiting for the Game Company to patch the bug.

In fact, the Game Company was also in a difficult position. They were going to spend these few days testing the artificial intelligence that would eventually take over the running of this game. Then, they were sure that they would receive a great amount of investment from the community.

However, they had no idea that something like this would happen at such a critical time.

If they directly patched the bug without saying anything, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot. They said that they wanted an AI to take over the maintenance of this game, but they were clearly still intervening. There were already many people watching, so it was difficult to make such a direct move.

In the end, it took a high-level executive to stand up and say something about it.

“There is no absolute freedom in any game. All games must be operated under surveillance. Otherwise, no investor would dare to invest any money.”

“We want the AI to take over the maintenance of the game, but the AI was designed by us. Does it work? We don’t know, but our investors are not idiots, and they will be able to see through our act.”

“We should just put the AI on, and see how it handles this situation. There is no other more convincing way to show the investors that our AI is effective.”

As such, the bug was submitted to the AI, and all the top executives and investor representatives participating in this research witnessed as it coped with its first crisis.

The biggest advantage of such an AI was that it could process problems quickly.

This was unlike normal people who had to hypothesize, test, write solutions, seek approval and perhaps conduct relevant risk assessments before a real solution could be implemented a few days later.

When Lu Li decided to exploit the bug, he was actually taking advantage of this fact as well.

If he could have a few days, then he would be able to reduce the gap between Glory Capital and his players. How the Game Company then handled the issue was their business.

However, the AI was completely different. When the problem was submitted, it took barely a moment to complete verification, development, implementation and other relevant steps. Suddenly, Lu Li felt like something was wrong with the bug that they were exploiting. It wasn’t summoning the right number of monsters.

The number of monsters summoned all this time was 25.

But now, only twelve had been summoned, which was half of the previous amount. The efficiency of their levelling had now been cut in half, and now they were levelling at a much slower rate.

“What is going on? Did you move?” Azure Sea Breeze asked in confusion.

“I didn’t. The other teams seem to be facing the same issue,” Lu Li responded as he was verifying his suspicion. The bug had been patched.

Except, the way that it had been patched made him a little confused. Wasn’t it normally the game company’s method to block the bug completely?

At this time, in the game company, erupted in a thunderous applause after a moment of silence. Even if some people couldn’t understand what had happened, they joined the applause. They soon understood as the head of operations explained the subtleties of the bug resolution process.

The AI didn’t feel that such bug threatened the health of the game, so it just reduced the number of monsters that the Summoner could summon, from the original twenty-five to twelve, twelve to six and six to three. Even if the bug continued to be exploited, the benefits would not be so extreme. The EXP that they received wouldn’t be that much more than farming in the Wild. This had effectively patched the bug.

It was a much milder change than what the company had previously made, which was easier for the players to accept as well.

Lu Li sighed helplessly while the group of investors were in awe of the AI. Lu Li then said, “Don’t worry about it and keep farming. The EXP we’re getting is about the same as farming in the Wild, but at least we don’t have to fight others for the monsters.”

However, by this time, Lu Li and the others had already received a huge amount of EXP.

By the end of that day, Lu Li was almost level 57 and the lowest level, Moonlight, was only half a level from level 57. There were a number of Magic Professions that were higher-levelled than Lu Li, but only Lonesome Flower was above level 57.

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