The Great Thief - Chapter 553

Chapter 553: The Art of Switching Targets
Lu Li did not second guess himself; there wasn’t even a split second of doubt or hesitation .


As planned before the match, all four DPS classes from Ruling Swords switched onto Deadly Golden Underwear and dumped all their skills onto him .
Chanelle only had a sliver of HP remaining and would be teleported out of the arena if they all attacked her .
However, everyone acted according to Lu Li’s strategy and decisively stopped attacking Chanelle, switching their focus to Deadly Golden Underwear . In order to prevent himself from being crowd-controlled, Lu Li even activated his Cloak, as well as his damage and armour penetration buffs .
Deadly Golden Underwear was not expecting the sudden and synchronised attack, so the only thing he could do was to try to stay alive .
However, something happened that silenced the entire arena .
Could Warriors be instantly killed?
Normally, this was impossible, even if the Warrior was focused by 3 to 5 other players . This was something that the developers of Dawn had taken into account in their patches to balance the game .
The only possibility of this happening was if the Warrior was in Berserk mode .
The Berserker class was one of the most popular classes in Dawn, as well as other games . The developers of Dawn worked hard in balancing Berserkers so that they could keep up with PVP titans such as Mages and Thieves . Their background lore read: "Berserkers will do anything beyond reason in pursuit of becoming stronger and more powerful . "


The best description of the Berserkers was ‘unrivalled’ .
The reason why they were such a powerful class was because Berserk mode sacrificed half of a player’s HP and defence to increase damage output . This made them the definition of a ‘glass cannon’ . Deadly Golden Underwear only had 2,000 HP and half of his normal defence when he was jumped, so he was killed almost immediately .
After they killed Deadly Golden Underwear, they immediately shifted their focus back to Chanelle .
Professional Healer had almost 3,000 HP, which was higher than most Warriors . Additionally, he had many skills that increased his survivability . Many teams would tunnel vision on him too aggressively and lose the game because they took too long to kill him .
Chanelle’s HP was already back to full . This showed how difficult she was to kill with Professional Healer’s healing .
Peerless City made an immediate decision to retreat after losing one of their players unexpectedly .
There were times to be decisive and this was one of those moments . Decisiveness was a key factor in determining whether a group was well-trained or not . For example, Ruling Sword had followed Lu Li’s commands to switch targets from Chanelle to Deadly Golden Underwear without hesitation . Peerless city also showed off how decisive they were by running away and avoiding the disadvantageous fight .
A 4-on-5 fight would result in a complete slaughter, especially against Ruling Sword, a PVP powerhouse .
Chanelle and Professional Healer’s crowd-control, Vegetarian Mosquito’s Frost Trap and Green Flag Wine’s Slow were enough to help them retreat from the fight .
Lu Li and the others continued chasing, but the opposing Crowd Control was too much for them to catch up to . They could only watch as they disappeared into the fog of war .

"Screw it, let’s stop chasing . We killed one of them, so we have the upper hand right now . " Lu Li was calm and collected . His shot calling was often compared to a commander in ancient war times, because he always made the right calls and was always a few steps ahead of his opponents .
Even though they had created an advantage for themselves, Lu Li decided that it was best to regroup and plan their next move .
"In the next stage, we’ll fight them with equal numbers . We can sub out anyone, except for March Rain" Lu Li said .
Everyone in the audience wanted to see one team slaughter the other, even if they had a difference in numbers . However, Lu Li’s strategy basically nullified the numbers advantage that they’d created .
In reality, Lu Li had a more despicable way of winning, but decided against it for other reasons .
Since the map was very large, they could to stall out the game and embarrass Peerless City by playing cat and mouse . They had already killed an enemy player, so they would win by default after the remaining 38 minutes was up .
However, there were no rewards for winning this match, so Lu Li decided to win in a special way, which would attract more players to join Ruling Sword .
The Pro League at the end of the year would form an even larger and more powerful Gaming Committee . The first rule that they would introduce would be to limit the number of participating guilds to only 10 .
As such, several hundred guilds would have to compete for the top 10 spots in the tournament .
To determine the top 10 guilds, several factors were considered . Firstly, the strength of the Guild would take up 20% of the criteria .
Secondly, past guild tournament performance would account for 50% of the total criteria . Of that 50%, 30% was their performance in the Pro League, 10% was from past, smaller-scale tournaments, and the last 10% was from their in-game PVP performance in the PVP arena and their battleground rankings .
Lastly, the player vote accounted for 30% of the total criteria .
Many believed that the player vote affected the qualifying criteria too much . However, the committee ignored the criticism and would eventually pass the rule .
Lu Li wanted to keep the fight fair and not embarrass Peerless City because he cared about their feelings . In order to be voted in by the other players in the Pro League qualifiers, Lu Li had to get on everyone’s good side .
"Are we still targeting Chanelle?" Fat Monkey asked .
Even though Fat Monkey wasn’t being targeted in their last fight, he could tell that Deadly Golden Underwear and his teammates were all strong players . He was unsure whether he could survive their attacks if he was on the receiving end of their damage instead of March Rain .
"Their substitute will probably come in soon . It’s too bad we’re too far away from their spawn and can’t ambush him on his way," Lu Li sighed .
"Their substitute is an arcane mage called Half a Cigarette . He doesn’t get much game time, but his mechanics are pretty decent . I’ve encountered him twice in Arena, and our current record against each other is 1 win and 1 loss . My equips are better than his though," Fat Monkey recalled, telling the others what he knew about him .
If he could to defeat Fat Monkey with an equipment disadvantage, he was likely to be quite formidable .
There was a feature that allowed players to invite others to duel them in Arena . Lu Li received several invites a day from random players, but he would usually ignore them . However, the system sent a special notification if the player sending the invite was registered in the tournament player list .
Fat Monkey had also recently been registered with the help of Square Root Three .
This was why Fat Monkey accepted Half a Cigarette’s duel invitation . Upon hearing Fat Monkey’s past experiences, they respected Half a Cigarette even more since he was able to defeat a starter in Ruling Sword .
With the substitute Mage, Peerless City regrouped as a team of five again, but their morale seemed to have taken a hit and they no longer looked like the championship team they once were . Peerless City decided to camp at an advantageous position and waited for their opponents to find them .
"If we don’t go over there, then wouldn’t they lose?" Sakura Memory asked as they observed Peerless City from afar .
"Yeah, but that would be boring . "
Lu Li came up with a new attacking strategy after observing them for a short while from afar .
"I’ll Stealth in . Lighty instead of charging in, I want you to advance slowly towards them . March Rain, make sure you keep your heals on him . Remember not to engage in a fight, but retreat when you are around 20 yards from Green Flag Wine and repeat this continuously . Wait for my attack as a signal to back me up . " Lu Li disappeared into the fog and approached Peerless City, being cautious of traps in the bushes .
Hunters could set traps which caused damage, a snare effect, and revealed your position to the caster . The only way Lu Li could escape a trap was with Gale Steps .