The Great Thief

Hot Twitch was confident in himself, but he knew that confidence alone wouldn’t be enough to influence the outcome of the match. He needed to actually defeat Lu Li to bring glory to his name and help the Brotherhood start over.

But was Lu Li going to give him such an opportunity?

Of course not!

If he hadn’t recently changed his equipment, he might have been worried when he saw the pet Cro, but now, he didn’t feel any anxiety at all.

When faced with true strength, all threats were meaningless.

Lu Li knew that his Stealth was ineffective because of the Undead Crow, so he didn’t even bother using it. He instantly appeared behind Hot Twitch and began to attack him while tanking the crow’s attacks. At this point, the weakness of the crow became immediately apparent.

Its damage was too low!

This exquisite pet was famous for its ability to control Thieves, but it was also infamous for its low attack power.

Dawn was a relatively fair game. If the crow could counter the Thief’s skills and still do high damage, then there would be nothing a Thief could do against it. Even someone like Lu Li wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

Hot Twitch couldn’t do anything but try to create as much distance as possible between him and Lu Li.

The ranged damage of a Hunter was one of their greatest strengths, but they were quite helpless in melee combat. This meant that if their opponent got close enough to them, their attack power would be greatly weakened.

“Why are my attacks dealing so little damage?”

Hot Twitch was horrified at this discovery. He normally dealt over 500 damage to Cloth Armored professions, but was somehow only dealing 300 damage to Lu Li. On the other side, Lu Li’s attacks were dealing over 500 damage to him.

“Dammit, how many pieces of equipment have you changed?”

“About four to five pieces.”

“That’s impossible. When it was New Years, I could still deal over 500 damage to you,” Hot Twitch said as he jumped back and successfully created some distance from Lu Li.

“You don’t have to believe it, but I really did change four to five pieces of equipment,” Lu Li responded, then followed up with a Sudden Thrust. Not only did he catch up to his opponent, but dealt a significant burst of damage as well. He was telling the truth, but nothing he could say would convince Hot Twitch.

Hot Twitch thought of the equipment that he had recently changed and considered the possibilities.

“Is all of the new equipment level 55?”

He had managed to equip a level 55 item by using a Level Reducing Gem, so he knew of the power-spike that came along with it. Now that he was experiencing the changes that Lu Li had undergone, the idea of Lu Li upgrading his gear began to solidify in his mind.

“We are opponents; I shouldn’t need to explain these things to you,” Lu Li said with a smile.

“Hey, I thought the Brotherhood had presented me with a rare opportunity, but I guess I’m the fool here,” Hot Twitch sighed sadly. He was still attacking as often as he was before, but his arrows weren’t as accurate. He obviously knew that his dreams weren’t going to be realized.

“Well, you just ran into the wrong opponents. It’s not single elimination in the top 16 anyway, so hopefully you’ll have another opportunity against another guild,” Lu Li consoled sincerely.

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Hot Twitch knew that his guild wasn’t going to win this time, and had almost completely stopped attacking.

Lu Li saw that his opponent seemed to just want to chat, so he also slowed down the pace of his attacks. The strongest member of the Brotherhood had given up and they had already sent out three members, so Lu Li didn’t need to worry too much.

“Would you like to have a few drinks after this match?” Hot Twitch asked.

“What do you mean? You don’t mean to be switching guilds, do you? We actually do need good Hunters, but we can’t afford to pay the transfer fee right now,” Lu Li said with a grin, but looked somewhat regretful.

Hot Twitch came with one of the highest transfer fees last year. The Brotherhood had paid millions of dollars for breach of contract and millions more for the signing fee. They could have purchased a large guild in its entirety for that price.

Ruling Sword just couldn’t afford that kind of payment at the moment.

“You’re kidding – my reputation would go down the drain if I jumped guilds again. I am probably going to stay in Brotherhood just like Wood Fearing, and I will probably die with Brotherhood…” Hot Twitch said with a wry smile.

Hot Twitch was originally a star player in Peacetime Dynasty, but he wasn’t valued very much there. He wasn’t treated well and wasn’t given many opportunities to play.

His relationship with the club wasn’t good and Peacetime Dynasty was going downhill anyway, so he naturally had no intentions of being tied down there. Unfortunately, there were too much contractual restrictions between Peacetime Dynasty and its players, so he had to pay a huge sum of money to leave.

Most major clubs looked down on breaches of contract like this, but only the Brotherhood extended an olive branch.

Lu Li wasn’t such an uptight person that he couldn’t express his admiration.

The two contestants fought wildly on stage, but it was clear that the energy wasn’t in the game. The commentators couldn’t just say that they were disrespecting the game, so they just spoke dryly about the players’ past events.

“Do you have any intentions to form an alliance with Brotherhood?” Hot Twitch asked, finally revealing the reason for the conversation.

“An Alliance?” Lu Li was quite surprised when he heard this. He hadn’t really been looking for an ally. After all, the major guilds were generally unfriendly towards Ruling Sword as they were considered to be a threat.

Hot Twitch misunderstood Lu Li’s meaning and looked a little disappointed.

Even though the Brotherhood was greater than Ruling Sword in terms of numbers, they couldn’t compare in development potential. Even one of the oldest guilds couldn’t stand a chance against them, so it was no surprised that Lu Li didn’t want to ally with them.

“Wait, I don’t mean it that way,” Lu Li said as he shook his head, then asked, “Who are you representing when you are offering this alliance?”

How could a mere celebrity player be qualified to determine an alliance between two clubs?

“Our boss, Mr. Hong, is the director of the Brotherhood. The guild executives are currently undergoing changes under his leadership,” Hot Twitch began to explain. He was almost ran out of HP, but fortunately, Lu Li stopped attacking just before he did.

Lu Li was stunned before he suddenly remembered a story from his previous life.

In his past life, Mr. Hong had made drastic reforms to the Brotherhood in an attempt to remedy their continuous decline. However, if Lu Li remembered correctly, it started well, but the outcome was not as they had intended.