After identifying the equipment, Nie Yan walked outside. Glancing down at his skill bar, he saw only two skills: Stealth and Vital Strike.
A perfect thief was built from countless skills. A thief could go without equipment, but never without skills.
Nie Yan knew the few early spots that dropped Thief skill books like the back of his hand. But he wasn't going to waste much effort farming those books—anything that could be farmed could be bought on the market.
Where else could he get rare beginner skill books？
Nie Yan slapped his forehead. "How could I forget about this?"
For a thief, wanting sustained combat ability often means choosing between Alchemy and the Bandage skill. Alchemy involves making various health potions, elixirs, and such. In battle, a health potion is like a second life; drinking a slow-recovery potion after a fight allows one to quickly regain combat readiness and speed up leveling. Bandages, on the other hand, are less effective than instant-recovery potions. Basic bandage skill can only be used after combat ends.
Nie Yan knows a place where he can learn the rare Combat Bandage skill.
At higher levels, buying mid-tier and above instant-recovery and slow-recovery potions from the market would be very expensive. After all, every instant-recovery and slow-recovery potion is like something players have scraped together from meager resources, with sky-high prices. Unless you're well-off, regular players often can't afford to use instant-recovery and slow-recovery potions.
But Nie Yan is different. His head is full of quick money-making methods, so he doesn't have to worry about cash. Later on, he can just buy instant-recovery and slow-recovery potions from the market. There's no need to bother learning Alchemy. But if he learns Combat Bandage, it can greatly improve his survivability. Putting two and two together, he makes up his mind.
First, let's go learn that Combat Bandage.
Nie Yan spends two copper coins at an NPC pharmacy to buy two bottles of Basic Underwater Breathing Potion, then heads toward Randuo Lake, not far from Terak Village.
Passing through several level 2 and 3 monster zones, he sees many players forming parties to grind. They usually claim a spot: melee classes like Warriors and Paladins pull aggro, and then Mages keep bombarding. Some parties even bring Priests. Even though Priests don't have healing yet and their damage isn't as good as Mages'—basically freeloading on experience points—they're still popular in parties. Because for any party that wants to make progress in the future, they need to build a good relationship with Priests. Lacking a Priest is like lacking an endless backup blood bank.
As for thieves, they're easily ditched by parties early on, but thieves' solo leveling speed is famous. As long as you buy all the essential skills, thieves can solo level at a speed that's no less impressive than mages, so not being able to find a party isn't a big deal.
Grinding at spawn points is pretty boring, but they can still chat, and time flies by when they're just shooting the breeze.
Nie Yan carefully passed through these players' grinding zones. When players fight each other and one kills another, the penalties are turning red-named and being unable to return to town. If you're killed while red-named, you lose more levels and drop all your gear. But after grinding monsters for a while, the red name will fade. So many players will take risks for the gear on others' bodies, even willing to go red-named just to make someone drop their equipment. For safety, you have to be very careful when encountering strangers in the wild.
By Lake Rando, this was the murloc spawn area. It's said that murlocs are descendants of the ancient sea monsters, the Naga. After countless generations of reproduction, they evolved into what they are now—fish bodies with human limbs, using their sharp teeth and harpoons as attack weapons.
Murlocs are level 3 monsters, and there are a lot of them. There's also a murloc village nearby. Nie Yan first had to pass through the edge of the murloc village, enter Lake Rando, swim across the lake, and then he could reach his destination.
The murloc village sat on the shore of Lake Rando, with hundreds of wooden huts scattered sparsely on the sandy beach by the lake. This murloc village had at least over three hundred murlocs, several dozen murloc chieftains, and two elite murlocs. To clear them all out, it would take at least a thousand people.
Nie Yan was about to use Stealth to sneak around the murloc village when a system prompt sounded.
Area Announcement： Triumph Guild will clear the area in three minutes. Players near the murloc village, please leave.
Triumph Guild？ Nie Yan raised an eyebrow. In his previous life, he had some grudges with the Triumph Guild. The guild had a large number of members, acted arrogantly, and often cleared areas at will. Once, a brother of Nie Yan’s killed three Triumph players because he was dissatisfied with them clearing the area, sparking a conflict. The Triumph members hunted him down and killed him, vowing to reset him to level zero. At that time, Nie Yan and his group were weak, forced to hide in the deep mountains and practice hard for over a month, only daring to come out after leveling up. Even then, they could only defend themselves and dared not confront a big guild like Triumph head-on.
Don’t even get me started on that humiliating feeling back then.
In this life, history will absolutely not repeat itself. That score will be settled, but not right now.
Nie Yan had just entered the game not long ago and still needed to accumulate capital little by little.
He dashed toward the shore of Lake Rando.
Looking ahead, the emerald water met the blue sky, and the lake shimmered under the sunlight.
The Triumph Guild members were mobilizing nervously. Signs of their players were spotted in many nearby areas. They had come in force, apparently preparing to strike the Murloc Tribe.
The Murloc Tribe wasn’t a dungeon but a monster gathering spot—places like these often spawned some decent loot.
Nie Yan passed through a grove of low trees, about two hundred yards from the lake.
A fireball tore across the sky, shooting straight toward Nie Yan.
A flash of firelight, and Nie Yan’s gaze cut through the trees, landing on an elemental mage in a red robe. He was from Triumph, a level 3 elemental mage！
Mages are divided into three types: elemental mages, arcane mages, and divine word mages. Elemental mages can command the powers of ice, fire, and lightning; arcane mages can master arcane arts; divine word mages are the rarest, with the hardest skills to train, but they are the strongest—they can wield divine spells.
The fire magic of an Elemental Mage deals the highest damage among elemental magics.
By the time Nie Yan spotted the fireball, it was already too late.
Bang, the Fireball exploded on Nie Yan, taking away twenty-two points of his HP.
System： Player Zi Huo has attacked you. You may exercise legitimate self-defense for 3 minutes.
When facing a mage, either charge in for close combat, or run away quickly.
Confirming there were no other Triumph players nearby, Nie Yan lunged at the Elemental Mage Zi Huo.
A mage's tactic is to maintain distance from the enemy as much as possible, then bombard the opponent with magic.
Elemental Mage Zi Huo leaped backward, cast Pyroblast, another fireball shot out, then he ran backward, trying to create distance from Nie Yan.
When facing magic coming straight at you, a player can dodge by rolling. However, rolling to dodge would undoubtedly give the Elemental Mage an opportunity to create distance. Nie Yan charged at the Elemental Mage, tanking the fireball.
Bang, another Pyroblast exploded on Nie Yan, taking away twenty-seven points of his HP.
Zi Huo needed some casting time for every magic he cast.
The elements for casting magic include posture, speech, materials, equipment, and magical implements. Different magics require different casting elements. Some can be cast with just speech, some require posture, and some require posture, speech, materials, and more to work together.
Each magic has different casting elements and varying casting times.
To cast a magic, it's measured in syllables and gestures. One syllable equals one second, one gesture equals one second. Ten syllables form a syllable group, ten gestures form a gesture group. Syllables and gestures can be superimposed.
The time to cast the Pyroblast skill is two syllables and two gestures, which takes two seconds. Without learning mobile casting, using the Pyroblast skill requires stopping in place for two seconds.
Nie Yan closed in as Purple Flame cast Blazing Shatter, thrusting forward to shave off 23 HP from Purple Flame. A mage's defense is extremely fragile.
Purple Flame leaped backward, unleashing a Blazing Ring as flames scattered outward.
Blazing Ring required only a single syllable to cast.
At such close range, dodging was impossible. Nie Yan took the hit, losing 39 HP. With a flick of his finger, he grabbed a bottle of primary instant recovery potion from his belt and chugged it.
Purple Flame's movements were fairly standard, but not very fluid. Every mage gets a bit tense when a thief closes in.
Taking advantage of the Blazing Ring's execution, he retreated.
Nie Yan had invested heavily into agility, making his speed as a thief quite commendable. At this moment, his speed gave him the advantage as he relentlessly hounded Purple Flame, landing two consecutive thrusts that chipped off 36 HP.
Purple Flame launched another fireball, hitting Nie Yan.
The faith time calculation counted three seconds per round. Any spell with a casting time shorter than three seconds could not be interrupted unless the caster died. Even in close quarters, Purple Flame could still counterattack Nie Yan.
Under the fireball's high damage, Nie Yan was left with 25 HP. Purple Flame retreated a short distance, raised his staff, and began chanting a spell. Flame elements rapidly swirled around his staff, gathering into a cluster.
In Purple Flame's view, he still had 51 HP and was safe for now. Nie Yan, however, was down to just 25 HP—one fireball would be enough to blast him to death.
As Purple Flame chanted, fire elements rapidly converged, and the flames blazed fiercely.
“Go to hell！” Purple Flame felt everything was under control, the firelight illuminating his sinister face.
Nie Yan knew how perilous this moment was. He had already forced his way to Zi Huo's side, slanting his eyes to glance at his Rage bar—his Rage was fully charged, meeting the requirement.
His deep black pupils locked onto Zi Huo’s throat. The dagger in his hand shifted from a standard grip to a reverse grip.
“Vital Strike！”
Nie Yan and Zi Huo brushed past each other. A cold gleam slashed across Zi Huo’s throat, splitting it open in a gap as blood gushed out.
System： Vital Strike completed. Attack position offset by 5%, causing additional attack damage bonus.
－51, a damage value floated up from Zi Huo’s head.
The fireball Zi Huo had been gathering in his hands dissipated and broke apart. After death, any magic a player was casting would be interrupted.
Life and death reversed！
How is this possible！
His eyes were filled with sheer disbelief.
Never underestimate a thief’s burst damage. In front of a thief, even if you hold an overwhelming advantage, never feel safe—because in the next moment, the one dying could be you.
Zi Huo’s eyes dimmed as he thudded to the ground. Even in death, he still couldn’t understand how a Level 2 thief could suddenly unleash such devastating damage.
The damage from the Vital Strike skill really is impressive.
Nie Yan put away his dagger, then bent down to pick up the equipment Zi Huo had dropped—a Level 0 Bronze Staff with Perception +3, probably sellable for over ten copper coins.
“There’s an enemy over there—Zi Huo is down！”
“Chase him, don’t let him get away！”
Nie Yan had killed a Triumph member; such a big commotion was bound to catch the attention of nearby players. Six Triumph members closed in on Nie Yan from all directions, trying to surround him.
Nie Yan sprinted toward Randuo Lake. His running speed was slightly faster than that of ordinary players at the same level, quickly putting some distance between himself and the others.
A Berserker appeared in front of Nie Yan, blocking his path.
“Think you can run? Not so fast, Straight Sword Slash！”