The Great Thief

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

Azure Sea Breeze managed to control Razorgore as he continued to destroy the eggs one by one. The newly-spawned monsters watched as Razorgore did this and were all filled with rage. Their target was Razorgore, but they were not spawned to help them fight the Boss. Instead, if the Boss died before all the eggs were destroyed, he would self-destruct. The explosion would then lay waste to the whole room and destroy everything, including the players, which meant a squad wipe.

Therefore, their mission was to protect the Boss.

Working together with the Boss to destroy the eggs was the first stage of the battle.

There were three types of monsters that spawned – Orc Warriors, Orc Mages and Dragonspawn. These three types of monsters were among the more difficult to fight. Orc Mages could cast Arcane Explosions and Fireballs, and were extremely threatening. The first squad wipe was in no small part because of them.

Before Razorgore self-destructed, he let out a final stoic cry.

“If I descend into hell, then you mere mortals must come with me!”

“We can’t. The monsters don’t seem to end,” Wandering shook his head and sighed.

“It doesn’t seem possible that we can clear all the monsters, but the Mages pose the biggest threat. We need to make sure to eliminate them as soon as they come out,” Lu Li said, expressing his agreement. From what he knew about the different strategies, he understood that there was a method to deal with these three types of monsters.

When the DPS of the players was not that high, a focused offence was the best way to tackle the problem.

The squad had three players that could hold command – Lu Li, Wandering and Sky Moon. Lu Li was the calm type, and furthermore, he had the ring that could revive. Wandering was the observing type. He could find methods and strategies out of what seemed to be nothing. The newly-joined Sky Moon was someone with unbridled imagination. This group’s results were not the most simple.

“Kill the Mages first. I don’t think the Warriors pose much of a threat. Let’s find a person to pull the Warriors away and around the area,” Lu Li instructed, then continued to say, “As for the Dragonspawn, I saw Hachi Chan make one go to sleep. We’ll let the Druids use Sleep on them. If the Druids can’t handle them, get the Warlocks to use Fear. Then, the Hunters can kite.”

After the three of them discussed the possible strategies, this was the result.

A perfect theory could not account for all the unexpected. For example, when the new monsters spawned, they would also attack the people on top of the control platform. Lu Li deployed a group to defend the control platform and also arranged for a support to use the gem.

This was because when Azure Sea Breeze lost control of the Boss, there would be a cooldown until they could use the gem again.

Lu Li brought along three Druids, a few Hunters and three Warlocks. Because of this composition, the Dragonspawn didn’t pose much threat to them. As for the Mages, the chemistry between the players at the start wasn’t great, so they wiped a few times. However, they gradually improved.

The worst thing was driving the trains.

Lu Li gave three Warriors the responsibility of driving the trains. This was because a Warrior’s movement speed was usually above average, and they also had skills to gain aggro as well. Furthermore, Warriors wore plate mail, so their defense and health were higher than the average player.

Fortunately, they had two strong players within the three Warriors. These were Moonlight and Deadly Gold Underpants!

Deadly Gold Underpants also joined the team this time. He and Moonlight were quite capable at driving the trains, and they also had health potions and movement speed potions with them, so it wasn’t a problem.

They couldn’t use AoE attacks in this phase of the battle, or else it would wake up the Dragonspawn that had been inflicted with Sleep. Another problem was the players pulling the small monsters’ aggro from the drivers to themselves. After reducing their Guild Points due to their mistakes, no one dared to use AoE skills anymore.

After a few failures, they eventually found that this phase was quite simple.

Lu Li then gathered two Priests. These two Priests were both Dark Elves, meaning that they had the special Dark Elf skill Shadowmeld. They would enter the room after the beginning of the battle, but their responsibility would not be to fight. Instead, they were to stand guard at the door. If there were casualties, then they would be at the furthest possible point to revive their teammates.

This didn’t mean that they could employ this strategy for every Boss fight. The main point was that the Boss’ attacks didn’t reach that area due to the shape of the room.

They could revive the players on the edges of the room, but not the ones in the middle.

With these cleaners around, mistakes were much more forgivable, and the overall safety of the drivers was also much higher. Wandering suggested for Lu Li to deploy a healer on the sides of the room so that they could immediately heal when the drivers’ HP bars were getting low. As a result, the likelihood of accidentally drawing aggro away would be lower.

These healers would often die, but because they stood on the sides, when the monsters were pulled away, the Priests could just revive them again.

Even if Moonlight and Deadly Gold Underpants were skilled, they were still pulling huge numbers of monsters, so they would still be in danger. Any of these monsters would be strong enough to kill both of them.

With the three brains of the team, along with the Dragon Slayer’s Roar effect on everyone, the progress on the Instance Dungeon was naturally quite fast. After a short while, Azure Sea Breeze and his partner managed to control Razorgore to destroy all the eggs, which allowed them to pass the first phase.

Sky Moon also had a suggestion for Lu Li. This was a possibility of using the monsters to lower Razorgore’s HP, but not to the point where Razorgore would be killed.

This suggestion wasn’t improper or outrageous. It was quite difficult for players to fight a Boss with a million HP. However, these monsters could just hack away at him and make progress that much quicker. If this plan worked out, the Boss wouldn’t have that much HP left. At the end, they would just have to whittle down the rest of the HP.

Lu Li didn’t object to this, but he proved that this almost ‘bug-like’ plan was simply wishful thinking.

After destroying all the eggs, Razorgore was released from their control. As soon as this happened, two-thirds of his lost HP was instantly recovered, which surprised Sky Moon. Lu Li didn’t say anything, since his suggestion did seem to make sense. Lu Li admired his type of thinking and imagination.

He wasn’t as mature as Wandering though. Wandering knew that the designing team was simply too smart to leave behind an exploitable loophole like this.

Now, they were in the second phase. After destroying the eggs, all the monsters disappeared. They just needed to focus on Razorgore.

Razorgore was enraged. Although he didn’t like this job and often thought about destroying these eggs, he shouldn’t have destroyed them under the control of these worms.

After returning back to normal, he used Ignite, but it was casted on multiple people.

This Ignite was extremely powerful. Not only did it deal damage over time, but it also caused a Fear-like effect, causing players to run around randomly. Furthermore, this Ignite was also contagious, meaning that it would spread to nearby players.

However, the Boss’ signature skill didn’t really have a major effect.

This was because March Rain had an AoE dispel to counter this. The AoE dispel would be cast after Ignite, thus healing all of the affected players.

Razorgore was even more enraged. This was his personality.

He began to unleash multiple Fireballs.

Some documents noted that Razorgore was an extremely precious Deviate Dragonspawn. Even the Firelord was interested in him. This was because he had an innately strong fire energy. If he was any smarter, this monster could have been a prodigious Fire magic caster.

Unfortunately, he was too stupid.

He had a bad temper and also a bad brain. Therefore, his multiple Fireballs didn’t really have an effect.

After all, everyone could just tackle one Fireball each and share the damage between them, so they weren’t that powerful.

Azure Sea breeze finally gained enough aggro, so everyone began to unleash everything on Razorgore. This phase was much easier compared to the first phase. The team didn’t suffer any casualties in this phase, let alone squad wipes.

However, when they entered phase three, they wiped.

The Boss had Stomp. The melee classes were instantly stunned, so the team naturally wiped as a result.

However, this skill wasn’t unfamiliar to them, so after they knew about it, it was quite easy to deal with.

Lu Li arranged for a Main Tank to distance himself from the Boss. After the Boss used Stomp, this Main Tank would immediately rush forward, Taunt, and take aggro. The other Main Tank would be stunned, but they would recover and then distance themselves. It was essentially a rotation for the Main Tanks.

Lu Li had used this strategy many times before, so it was easy for him to implement this.

They didn’t wipe too many times during the whole process before successfully taking down the first Boss of Blackwing’s Lair, Razorgore.

The most important aspect in defeating the Boss was the first phase. They just needed to successfully control him to destroy all the eggs while the other players dealt with the monsters. As for the second and third phase, the DPS output of the team would be the decider. However, with the Dragon Slayer’s Roar, this wasn’t a problem.