Rebirth of the thief who roamed around the world (BOOK 1)

Chapter 182 - Fierce Person

The head of Withered Leaf was called Aqua Smoke Stub.[1] He ranked third among all professional players, even higher than Kill Love. For the vast majority of players, such an esteemed figure could only be heard about, never seen. Unlike other famous players like Sleepy Fox and Kill Love, he always stayed relatively low-key, but that didn't mean he was any less ambitious. He simply walked a different path from them.

His operations in Conviction didn't expand beyond creating a top-tier elite team, which took on various tasks from large financial groups, including completing quests and clearing dungeons.

They didn't discriminate between enemy and ally. As long as the employer was willing to spend the money, they were willing to take on any task. According to hearsay, the Withered Leaf gaming organization generated immense sums of money for the Tuoba Financial Group every day.

"Tell him not today. We can chat when I get back to the city," Nie Yan said. Logically speaking, a set of Level 30 Gold-grade equipment wasn't enough to attract the attention of the head of Withered Leaf. Was it possibly something else...?

"Impressive..." Tuoba gazed at Nie Yan with a somewhat dissatisfied look. Any guild leader would be wild with joy if they heard Smoke Stub wanted to meet with them. Withered Leaf was indeed a formidable organization, but its interests lied elsewhere, so they didn't often come in conflict with the guilds. In a situation where there were only merits and no demerits, who wouldn't want to rope in such an ally? Yet, he had actually directly refused.

Tuoba told Withered Leaf of Nie Yan's reply.

Not long after, Nie Yan suddenly received a call from Withered Leaf. Wryly smiling, he pressed accept.

「How are you? I'm Smoke Stub.」An air of dignity lurked within his gentle tone.

From Nie Yan's recollection, Smoke Stub was a fierce person who was very protective of his own people. In the previous timeline, a guild had killed a member of Withered Leaf. In retaliation, not only did Smoke Stub ruin that guild's business connections, he also led an army to directly seize their stronghold. The massacre that followed remained fresh in the minds of players even long after the event, as well as the declaration that he made to everyone present: "Whoever touches the people of my Withered Leaf should be prepared to lose not only their life but everything else!" The reputation of Withered Leaf grew immensely after that.

Nie Yan thought Smoke Stub was going to be a bandit-type character like Heaven Breaker, aggressive and overbearing. He didn't expect him to be so soft-spoken and polite.

「Uh, hello...」Nie Yan answered, trying to guess why Smoke Stub was so impatient to reach him.

「Kill Love and I have some dealings together, so I know about the Union of Assassins. Name a price, I'd like to request a prince role in the union.」Smoke Stub got straight to the point. Even a blind man could easily spot the bright future that lay ahead of the union. If he could enter such an organization, it would be very helpful to the growth of Withered Leaf. Another point of concern was that if he didn't take the initiative to join now, he couldn't say for sure that a lot of potential work later on wouldn't be snatched away from them. No matter how strong Withered Leaf was, there was no way it could contend against such a large syndicate of professional players. Even now, a mere several days after its inception, it had far surpassed Withered Leaf in manpower.

Nie Yan finally cleared the mystery. It seemed Smoke Stub had found out about the Union of Assassins from Kill Love. Smoke Stub could've easily joined the organization on the basis that Withered Leaf wasn't much weaker than Battle Crazed Alliance, but he required the prince role for them to gain any sort of strong foothold later on.