The Great Thief

Translator: Halcyon Translations  Editor: Halcyon Translations

Even before the battle, the war had already started around Hillsbrad.

Horde and Alliance players were scattered amongst this vast, new map, trying to find worthy opponents. The Glory Point buff had already started and killing someone with a similar title to you was worth it, even if you were killed in the process. This was a feast for Glory Points, held by the gaming company itself.

Glory Points were an important aspect of Dawn, firstly because of the equipment that they could provide. Although the equipment wasn’t as great as the equipment dropped by the Bosses in the Wild, it was equivalent to what dungeons dropped. On top of this, the equipment obtained from Glory Points were more suitable for PVP, so a lot of PVP players would often try and obtain a whole set.

Secondly, there was the mount. Most of the current players in Dawn could find a mount within their own race to ride on, but if they didn’t like the look of their race mount, they could try for the PVP mount.

The PVP mount for the Alliance was a horse, while the Horde had a wolf.

Then, there were the rare materials and the gems. Some of these could be obtained by exchanging Glory Points with NPCs at a more expensive rate. However, Glory Points were much easier to obtain compared to killing Bosses and all these items could be traded. It was hard for random players to find teams for Bosses, so using Glory Points to earn materials was a good solution. The only downside was that these material options were more limited.

Finally, there were also some potions, special items, quest scrolls and other random items.

The System had refreshed more experiencing-rewarding monsters on this map due to its new expansion. These monsters had the power of an ordinary monster, but gave the experience of an elite. Even players with average equipment could challenge them, and of course, the efficiency would increase if they teamed up.

Many players bundled together, which only attracted more predators.

Wild Bosses had temporarily left the game, and NPCs became the top powers of this map. Even the most-average sentry NPC would have the strength of a Boss. At the very most, they would have a little less health than a Wild Boss since they were humanoids.

The items that these NPCs dropped were quite good as well, so they instantly became the target of expert players.

Although the Bosses left the scene, there were still some semi-Bosses patrolling around. There was a certain chance of them dropping rare materials, but usual players barely had a chance as the major guilds had a monopoly on these semi-bosses.

Lu Li and Water Fairy took 200 hundred long-ranged players with them, but they didn’t participate in this mixed battle. Their target was clear – they were aiming for Bygraves.

Of course, both Ruling Sword and Drizzle Court wouldn’t give up this chance to improve their guild. Wandering had already taken a few troops with him to get ready; they were going to participate into this faction war with other ordinary players.

Lu Li and Water Fairy were still dragged into the chatroom of the commanders.

This was the chatroom for all executives and commanders of the Alliance faction. In this faction war, everyone from the Alliance was playing on the same team. It was more profitable for them all to gather and fight as one. Jade Flower Lover was the highest commander, while Wandering was responsible for arranging the players of Ruling Sword and Drizzle Court.

Regardless of how they all viewed this War of Hillsbrad, at the very least, all the players gave it their best shot.

System: Deck Tower Point has been attacked by the enemy faction, please reinforce immediately.

System: Saltheril has been attacked by the enemy faction, please reinforce immediately.

At once, the System announcements boomed in everyone’s ears. Lu Li chose to ignore all of them. These announcements were sent to all players; they weren’t quests directed at him. If they were to receive a quest for this battleground, they would have to get it from the bounty board in Southshore.

“Haha, it’s so popular down here at the bounty board.”

Fat Monkey was probably near the bounty board. Just as Lu Li was thinking about the bounty board, he immediately heard the teams talk about it in the team channel.

“Hurry and come over; we don’t have time for quests today,” Lu Li said.

“Come check out these bounties! It includes bounties from the System and the players can even increase in price. Lu Li, I have a higher bounty than you right now!” Fat Monkey exclaimed proudly.

“We could check out the Southshore first. The NPCs walk slow anyway, so we’d be able to catch up easily,” Lu Li said to Water Fairy.

Water Fairy agreed and the forces began to leave the NPCs as they turned into Southshore.

Southshore looked completely different now. Its location had been moved further to the southwest, in the opposite direction to Tarrenmill. This was the major base for the Alliance and its size had been expanded by a few times. It wasn’t any smaller than the other major cities.

At this time, the bounty board was packed with players, who were mostly looking for quests.

Only a small portion of the quests on the bounty board was given out by the System or the faction. Most of the quests actually came from players.

For example, if Lu Li had a grudge against Sorrowless, he could spend some gold coins to request for Sorrowless to be slain. The System would help with the judgement of the quest, and once it was deemed to be completed, 80% of the coins that Lu Li paid would go to the player. The remaining 20% would go into the System.

Interestingly, only players who had entered the map could have a bounty placed on them. Before the bounty was completed, players could not leave the map until the event has ended.

Many players had grudges against each other, and many of them were more than happy to spend some gold coins to get their enemies killed.

Lu Li searched up his own bounty. Once someone placed a bounty on a player, then other players could not start another bounty on the same player. However, other players could raise the bounty and help attract more players to complete this bounty quest.

The first player who set a bounty of 200 gold coins on Lu Li was Swirling Left Eye.

This seemed like a large sum, but the value of in-game currency had dropped. However, it was still $70-80 per gold coin, so this 200 gold coin reward was worth tens of thousands.

What really attracted players to the bounty on Lu Li’s head was the add-on prices that followed after. A huge chain of numbers followed beneath and by the time Lu Li searched up his own bounty, he was worth around 4000 gold coins. Whoever killed Lu Li would immediately be rich.

Of course, it was impossible to receive all 4000 gold coins in one go.

If too many players participate in the add-on of a bounty, then one successful hunt would only give the player the bounty money of 10 players. It would be a rinse and repeat process to receive the entire bounty.

Many of the competitors that he was familiar with were around the same price. In fact, Sorrowless was only worth around 3000 gold coins because no one dared to kill him. Moonlight was slightly higher at around 5000. This was most likely because he had killed too many people, but there were not many around that dared to challenge him either.

Fat Monkey was worth 7000 gold coins. He was a newer competitor, so people still had hopes in killing him.

Lu Li checked out the bounty and took the bounty quests that were related to Swirling Left Eye and Staring Right Eye. These two old enemies had a higher bounty than he did. Swirling Left Eye was around ten thousand, while Staring Right Eye was around eight thousand gold coins. Lu Li was just uncertain how much he could get out of this price pool.

Although Lu Li was at a much higher status in the game, he wasn’t a saint. Anyone that placed a bounty on his head deserved to be hunted.

Each individual could only take tree bounty quests at once. Unless they completed the bounty or gave up on it, they wouldn’t be able to obtain any more quests. As such, the second quest that Lu Li took up was the quest that involved Bygraves. It was a System bounty that players couldn’t add-on to. However, the bounty was worth fifty thousand gold coins. If they successfully took him down, that would be around forty thousand gold coins in total for them.

Even though all that participated in the event would be splitting the money, as the commanders of the party, Lu Li and Water Fairy would definitely receive a greater portion of the gold.