The Great Thief

Chapter 1700 - A Newcomer Lineup

Chapter 1700: A Newcomer Lineup

It was now Glory Capital’s turn to face true power. They were now left fighting to avoid third place in the Donghua Cup.

Why was it third place?

Since the Gangnam Royals had already advanced, it was just Glory Capital and Ruling Sword left to fight against each other. The loser would take third place, and the winners would fight Gangnam Royals in the championship.

Retribution had come unusually quickly.

The fans who supported Glory Capital were happy to see Glory Capital fight Ruling Sword. After the disgraceful Stronghold battle, they just wanted to see blood being shed.

However, the Gangnam Royals were even more happy.

This was because two things had happened. The first was that they had acquired a Stronghold from Grand Hegemony, becoming one of the few Clubs with a Stronghold. They weren’t like Azure Guard, who controlled a Stronghold with other clubs.

The second thing was that the Donghua Cup had gone surprisingly well for them.

They were going to be second place at least. Heart of War felt like he was once again standing at the top of the Club leader board.

Recently, he had been down because he thought his club had been ruined. In his mind, Lu Li was responsible for this, trying to oppress him and drag his club through the mud.

Now, Gangnam Royals had given up on opposing Ruling Sword. There were some Gangnam Royals players that would even actively avoid Ruling Sword.

If they couldn’t fight them, then it also made some sense to hide from them.

In the Wild, when they were fighting over a Boss or against another guild, the Gangnam Royals players would retreat once they saw Ruling Sword. They would retreat even if there weren’t that many Ruling Sword players.

This happened even while they were in a fight with other groups of players.

Once the Gangnam Royal players saw that their opponents had the Ruling Sword guild badge, they would start screaming about how it was a misunderstanding and would run away without saying anything else.

This was quite undignified for one of the super clubs!

There were many people in China that taunted Heart of War. They said that he wasn’t a real man.

However, Heart of War didn’t care. He looked at his club and how it had recovered, and took pride in that.

The Gangnam Royals was an old-fashioned club, but it was once a fascinating movement. When Heart of War took over, it was one of the top three clubs in the gaming circle. The feeling of being at the top made him take it for granted.

Now, he was thinking day and night about how he could get the club out of trouble and improve it.

He has lost a bit of hair in the process and had almost terminated some contracts before the competition, but he had finally made a breakthrough.

His first principle was to avoid any conflict with Ruling Sword. His second principle was to collect as many experts as possible from the Mercenary Groups. His third principle was to ensure that the first principle prevailed whenever there was a conflict between following the first and second principle.

Once these principles were established, they were strictly enforced. If members of the club fought players from Ruling Sword, not only would there be no rewards ,but they would be kicked out of the club.

Those who encountered Ruling Sword had to immediately retreat. However, they could take a picture when doing so and would receive a reward as compensation.

People who followed these rules felt no shame, after all, their hearts were comforted by some gold coins.

There were some people who didn’t want to do that, and so they left the club, but Heart of War didn’t care. He had money and he had the resources from his family supporting him. As long as he developed the club, it would demonstrate that he was worthy of his inheritance. He would have no problems becoming the future head of the house.

However,, Heart of War could also be considered to have profited from a disaster.

The Donghua Cup’s As such had been quite stingy, and were unwilling to arrange flights for the competitors. So, all the competitions had been carried out online. It was no longer the keyboard era anyway, so this didn’t pose much of an issue.

The expectations of Ruling Sword and Glory Capital were obviously quite high. It seemed like both were competing to take the championship.

It was true that the Gangnam Royals were strong, but there would be no competition if they fought either Ruling Sword or Glory Capital.

Lu Li certainly wouldn’t miss this occasion. It wasn’t that everyone didn’t want to pay attention to the Donghua Cup, but that the Donghua Cup just didn’t have the same prestige as the other competitions. Lu Li’s biggest goal with this competition was to train their newcomers. However, if their club could take the championship, it was still a big event worth celebrating.

Ruling Sword had Short Road, Fat monkey, Mu Qiu and two newcomers. Glory Capital had all newcomers. The former team had two and a half players who had debuted in a previous competition, while the latter had demonstrated great strength in the current competition.

Lu Li made an appearance, and it wasn’t just to give his own people encouragement.

He also wanted to observe his opponents in this match. He was curious about several players in Glory Capital. He and many others were looking into Glory Capital’s newcomers to work out what they would be like in future.

Glory Capital had five players in their lineup.

The first was the Warrior Dragon Flame – a 20 year old who was said to be a disciple of the Glory Capital training camp instructor Master Huang. He has had the most outstanding performance in this competition. He had repeatedly defeated other professional players and was Glory Capital’s star player.

His combat style was varied and he also had a lot of combat experience.

If there were no other incidents, he would become a professional player just as Master Huang retired.

This also meant that he would be seen in this year’s professional league.

Moonlight held a high opinion of him. He thought that this player was born a Berserker and had the strength of a top professional.

Lu Li had also watched a game with Dragon Flame in the past, and felt like he was very aggressive at the time.

He hadn’t done much research in his previous life, but he knew that he was rising very quickly to stardom and it was incredible to watch. Even though Dragon Flame was a newcomer, most players couldn’t beat him. It was no wonder that everyone was praising the Glory Capital Training Camp.

It was just like Moonlight from Ruling Sword. If Moonlight resigned from his position, Lu Li wouldn’t be able to find someone to replace him.

The second player that Lu Li was concerned with was a Thief from Glory Capital. Since Lu Li was a Thief himself, and naturally paid more attention to other fellow Thieves.

This player was called Happy Scrolls. It was said that he was a veteran who had been training at Glory Capital for seven years. Now that he had finally debuted, his performance was amazing and second only to Dragon Flame.

He had been training for seven years!

Lu Li was shocked at the thought of this.

Even if he didn’t have anything to do in his previous life, if Lu Li was told to train for seven years and become a professional player, he wasn’t sure if he would accept it.

However, even though he had been training for seven years, he was still very young. The information showed that he was 18 years old, which meant that he was 11 when he entered the training camp and started training.

Glory Capital’s Priest Sky’s Darkness had a similar style to White Westhill and was likely to be following in her footsteps.

He wasn’t as strong as the top two, but still demonstrated a strong ability. Any club would happily take him on as their main Priest.

However, it was his origins that interested Lu Li.

He was actually a person who had come from the Common District, just like Lu Li. He had been lucky enough to meet White Westhill and didn’t even know who she was at the time. Even so, he was taken on and put onto this career path.

This orphan of the Common District’s life had radically changed since then.

After training in the training camp for six years, he appeared before the eyes of the world. His experience was an inspirational story to everyone.

The rest of the team also performed well, which further demonstrated the strength of Glory Capital’s Training Camp. In contrast, several of the newcomers for Ruling Sword, with the exception of Short Road, were not nearly as talented.

Priest Princely Beauty had a username that made it seem like she was a man, but she was actually a woman.

This annoying girl was only 14 years hold when she joined the Ruling Sword’s training camp. It wasn’t Lu Li who first called her an annoying little girl, but Wandering, the most handsome man in the gaming circle.

Princely Beauty was a fangirl of Wandering.

She was the kind that would drool at the sight of Wandering; there was just no limit to her infatuation. She had originally wanted to play as a Mage, but Lu Li persuaded her to play as a Priest after spending some time thinking about it. In fact, this girl turned out to be more suitable as a Priest, so more people encouraged her to do so.

In the end, all it took was Wandering saying how nice it would be to have someone behind him healing him.

Lu Li and the four Sharpening Centre instructors had taken turns for a few days to persuade her but it was all in vain. Wandering had just casually thrown a few phrases around and the girl was immediately convinced. She had resolutely decided to become a Priest and now no one could stop her.

She named herself Princely Beauty, not because she was a narcissist but to praise Wandering’s beauty with her username.

After entering the training camp, she performed quite well. She was very talented and trained very hard.

It was just that she had this quirk where she would run every morning to see what Wandering was wearing before running back to her dorm so that she could match her clothes with him. They had no idea how many clothes she had packed away.

It was probably because of some rubbish fanfiction on the forums, but this little girl hated Azure Sea Breeze the most because she thought he was interested in Wandering.

This girl had made friends with Remnant Dream, Hachi Chan and Lu Xin. The four of them were very close, so Lu Li really had no choice but to pick her. She was currently the youngest person participating in the competition at only 14 years old. It was good to train them while they were young, because at that point in their lives, their potential was almost unlimited.

The Warrior Soulless Grass was one of the more introverted players. He mostly kept to himself and didn’t say much, but when in battle, he was quite cooperative.

He was a bookworm in real life and worshipped Sorrowless.

However, his worship was different from Princely Beauty. Princely Beauty wanted to be with Wandering all the time, but Soulless Grass’ way of worship was to beat Sorrowless on stage.

Needless to say, that was quite an ambitious goal. There were many people who wanted to beat Sorrowless, but few were successful.

He was a little older at 15 years of age. He hadn’t been trained for long before being put on stage by shameless Lu Li.

Soulless Grass’ performance was still rather inconsistent. When he played well, he could defeat current professional players but when he played poorly, he would get scolded quite harshly by his instructor Dawn Peak.

Dawn Peak was the current instructor of Ruling Sword’s newcomer Training Camp.

He had a lot of experience on stage, and later retired to work as a training for several club training camps. Stellar Union’s Silver Radiant and Floral Paralysis were taught by him. His only flaw was that he liked scolding people, especially if they made a low-level mistake, which often made the younger children cry.

Fire Mage Fat Monkey, Ice Mage Short Road, Paladin Mu Qiu, Warrior Soulless Grass and Priest Princely Beauty – this was Ruling Sword’s lineup.

Lonesome Flower and Azure Sea Breeze, who had been on stage before, were no longer playing.

At the beginning of the match, there were three rounds of individual fights. Ruling Sword sent Fat Monkey and Glory Capital sent Dragon Flame.

One was the future successor of the Mage God Sorrowless and the other was a close disciple of the first instructor of the gaming circle, Master Huang. It was such an exciting first matchup that the tickets to watch this match were quickly being snatched up.

In a Mage and Warrior match up, Mages were generally more dominant, but Fat Monkey was a Fire Mage and this meant he didn’t have as many crowd control abilities as an Ice Mage.

Both of them relied on strong attacks, so it just depended on who could get theirs in.

Visually, Fat Monkey was at a disadvantage because he had to keep running away. No matter how good his equipment was, he was still a Mage. Without crowd control skills, he had to keep running because once the Berserker got into range it would be over.

Any form of fixed combat style was a lie. If a player rigidly stuck to their combat style, then they would stand no chance.

Fat Monkey was usually quite active, and liked to rush in to kill his opponent. Many people would think that this was his style, but he wasn’t a fool, and he wouldn’t rush at a Warrior.

Dragon Flame was desperately trying to keep up with him.

With once chasing and the other desperately escaping, a naïve person would think that the person chasing had the upper hand.

But in fact, Dragon Flame was also having a hard time trying to work out why this Mage was so fast. How many pieces of movement speed equipment was he wearing?

Stop running!

Fat Monkey: “Do you have what it takes to catch me?”

As he ran, he continued to cast fire skills, so Dragon Flame was continually taking damage too.

If Dragon Flame had known, he would have invested more into movement speed... if he had known he would have trained more in movement, if he had known... he wouldn’t have gone first! He would let this old mage fight whoever and then he could bully them instead.

But in this world, there was nothing much that could be done about that kind of regret. Who knows? If he had faced Mu Qiu, he might have fared even worse.

Maybe he could defeat Soulless Grass, but he was already 20 years old, so it didn’t feel like there was much glory to be had in defeating a 15 year old kid.