Chapter 3: The God of Thieves (S-Rank)

All S-rank talents are unique and exceedingly rare.

In the second year after the game invasion in her previous life, various leaderboards emerged. Nearly 80% of the individuals on the Top 100 Combat Power rankings had their information laid bare by others using items or talents. The remaining 20% had managed to conceal their details through unknown means, but among those exposed, only two possessed S-rank talents, both ranking within the top ten.

Just two. And both were connected to the male protagonist—one was his sworn brother, the other his second wife. S-rank divine talents seemed to be the exclusive property of the main characters' team.

Even if she couldn't develop further for the next year, she had to have this talent! It would allow her to rise rapidly while simultaneously suppressing her enemies. More importantly, she had an incredibly bold idea regarding the second skill.

It was already 4:00 AM when Yu Xun'ge selected her talent and entered the game. Ever since she drew the S-rank talent, her heart had not stopped racing.

Her character materialized in a bustling yet gloomy city. The pedestrians passing by were mostly pale-faced undead, suggesting this was the main city of the Undead race.

【Character】 Ge Wu'en (Level 0, 0%)
【Divine Talent】 Thief God (S-rank)
【Race】 Undead (?)
【Racial Traits】 Undead Will | Ingestion
【HP】: 100/100
【MP】: 100/100
【Strength】: 5
【Constitution】: 6
【Intelligence】: 10
【Agility】: 11
【Luck】: 8
【Charisma】: 9

Beyond these basic stats, there were more detailed advanced attributes such as critical hit rate, critical damage, hit rate, and cooldown reduction.

Currently penniless, her top priority was to find a way to make money and then learn skills. She approached the nearest NPC with a question mark over his head. After a brief conversation, she received a quest to clear out the city's rats, with a reward of 10 copper coins.

Although Yu Xun'ge rarely played games, she always valued efficiency. She first toured the entire city, accepting every available quest—from killing rats to delivering letters and running errands like buying corpse-worm bread. Only after her quest log was full did she begin.

She killed rats while on the way to deliver letters and helped the blacksmith buy ale while on the way to purchase corpse-worm bread.

In one hour, she completed 17 quests, earning only 2 silver coins and a tattered cloth bag. It was a spatial storage item with six slots, each capable of stacking up to 99 of the same item.

But these were not her most important gains. This hour was less about completing quests and more about acting as a street wanderer; she used the Thief God talent on every NPC she encountered.

The 20% and 10% success rates were truly low. It didn't mean that stealing from 100 people would guarantee 20 successes; probability is sometimes like metaphysics. When lucky, one might hit every time, but when unlucky, the success rate is low enough to make one despair.

Whether it was because drawing the Thief God talent had exhausted her luck for the day, she didn't know, but she had stolen from over a hundred NPCs during her questing and succeeded only three times.

Her Luck stat was 8! Yet she only succeeded three times!

However, the haul was bountiful:
【Rune Satchel】 【Bag of Money】 【+1 Agility】

The Rune Satchel was an exquisite, palm-sized bag with 24 slots. Yu Xun'ge equipped it immediately. Aside from one equipment slot at the waist, everyone had two bag slots. She equipped both bags, intending to bring them back to the real world.

The bag of money contained 18 gold coins! The exchange rate for gold, silver, and copper was 1:100. In her previous life, she had spent three years doing quite a few unscrupulous things to get by, and even then, she only had about 300 gold coins in her account before she died. This showed just how valuable those gold coins were.

After turning in all her quests, Yu Xun'ge stopped taking new ones and went to learn skills.

With only seven hours of game time, she couldn't level up much. The people who had "jumped the gun" in her previous life and climbed the Top 100 rankings with only B-rank or even C-rank talents had done so because they learned skills from the alien races during the beta test.

Once the game invasion began, these racial skills would never again be taught to the people of Blue Star. It wasn't that Blue Star lacked professional skills, but those required time and effort to learn. The beta test was different; as the world cast its anchor in the form of a game, many things were crudely "gamified." While the alien races themselves had to spend money, time, and energy to master a profession, in these brief seven hours, one only needed to follow a progress bar to learn in the game world.

To the alien NPCs, her character was one of their own, allowing her to easily and quickly acquire various skills from "kin" NPCs using money. Even if she could only learn the basics, it was a massive fortune.

With money in hand, Yu Xun'ge headed straight to her destination.

Her character panel had only two professional skill slots, meaning she could only learn two professions, though life skills were unlimited. While on the move, she learned every life skill she could find: 【Cooking】 (Novice), 【Fishing】 (Novice), and 【First Aid】 (Novice).

Almost instantly, Yu Xun'ge transformed from someone who couldn't cook into a skilled chef. Moreover, food made with the Cooking skill provided stat boosts. Even if the boosts were small, she didn't hesitate to spend 1 gold coin to learn every recipe available.

【First Aid】 allowed for the creation of bandages. Though once everything was gamified, modern Blue Star medicine was no worse, but learning it was better than nothing.

There were many professional skills in the game world, broadly divided into three categories: Gathering (Herbalism, Mining), Manufacturing (Alchemy, Tailoring, Engineering, Jewelry Crafting, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing), and Service (Enchanting, Inscription).

Yu Xun'ge didn't consider Gathering or Service; the former was too easily replaced as many materials could be obtained by killing monsters, and the latter was inefficient for making money.

Yu Xun'ge walked into the potion shop and spent 5 gold coins to learn Novice Alchemy.

It instantly unlocked eight potion recipes: 【Novice Healing Potion】, 【Novice Mana Potion】, 【Water Breathing Potion】, 【Novice Invisibility Potion】, 【Novice Strength Potion】, 【Novice Agility Potion】, 【Novice Constitution Potion】, and 【Novice Intelligence Potion】.

Any single one of these potion blueprints could have sold for 500 gold in her previous life. Among the top 100 on the wealth leaderboard, aside from guild leaders and those who were already powerful figures before the invasion, the highest individual wealth was only about 700 gold coins.

With 13 gold coins left, she clicked to learn every alchemy recipe she could. After learning 37 recipes, her account balance stood at 6 gold coins.

She then went to the herb shop to buy the ingredients needed for 【Novice Healing Potion】. In a large city, the herbs for such basic potions were inexpensive. A single 【Novice Healing Potion】 sold for 1 silver coin, while the herbs to make it cost only 50 copper coins. She spent 4 gold coins to buy enough herbs for 400 Novice Healing Potions and 400 Novice Mana Potions, using the remaining money to purchase herbs for 3 Novice Invisibility Potions.

It was now 5:32 AM. She was penniless again.

With the servers shutting down at 9:22 AM, she had less than four hours left.

In her previous life, she had learned a potion blueprint, a rather useless one. Once a Blue Star person learned a blueprint, the method of concocting that potion would be imprinted on their mind; by simply recalling it, it was as if someone were playing a video of the process in their head. A player could follow the master in the video to learn.

Essentially, it was no different from learning to cook from online videos.

But now, with her character still in the game, Yu Xun'ge only needed to click "Craft," and the progress bar would fly—a potion was finished in less than a second.

Yu Xun'ge ran to the cauldron in the corner of the potion shop and began brewing.

By 6:00 AM, she had used up all 800 portions of herbs. At first, when her proficiency was low, she occasionally failed, but as she became more skilled, she never failed again.

She now had 397 Novice Healing Potions, 392 Novice Mana Potions, and 3 Novice Invisibility Potions in her bag. She hadn't stopped for a moment, only pausing for two seconds to "steal" from the occasional stranger who entered the shop.

The 803 crafting attempts pushed her Alchemy to Intermediate level, allowing her to upgrade her skill and learn new recipes. The problem, however, was that she was broke again and had to go out and "borrow" from the NPCs.

She could sell the seven hundred-plus potions—excluding the Invisibility Potions—to the shop owner, but they sold for 1 silver coin each while the buyback price was only 80 copper coins! Even if she sold them all, she would only have six gold coins, but upgrading Alchemy from Novice to Intermediate cost 100 gold coins.

It was a drop in the bucket.

She would have to be a street wanderer—no, the Thief God—once more.