Ehh...BOSSFIGHT! Maybe...

Beacon Of Ruin used Distraught!

Urga has been stunned!

Gamer's Mind resists the Beacon’s Emotional Effect!

John's companion didn't stop screaming by the time that the wailing of the Beacon had ended. Once John's hearing came back, he shook off the piercing pain in the forefront of his mind and turned to look at the Orc as she dropped to her knees and began to desperately clutch at her own skull. He watched as another burst of sickly violet energy exploded outwards from the crystal and another round of draining took its toll on their health. Urga screamed even louder, and John watched as her eyes welled up, and from them, long, dark, red drops of blood began to drip down the sides of her face. He blinked, as his own vision grew darker and quickly filled with a similarly horrible crimson color before he turned and looked back at the Crystal.

Beacon Of Ruin used Blind!

"Run!" John snapped and turned to grab Urga just before his vision went completely black. He wasn't able see where they ran off to. He just kept running straight, only ever changing to dash in a different direction when he heard something else growl or creak at the two of them. He didn't even try stopping until at least the two of them could no longer feel the effect of the Beacon's control on them any longer, though they didn't have to go very far for that. The hard part was mostly avoiding and keeping the zombies at bay while they were blind.

"We need to leave!" Urga begged him as the two of them blinked and rubbed at their own eyes, struggling to clean the crimson liquid that blinded them. John's own eyes cleared in a matter of seconds, much faster than they would have normally, but he shrugged it off as a side effect of Gamer's Body. Between the two of them, it was much harder to help Urga get her vision back, and because of that, they spent an extra five minutes hiding around the corner of a shack, trying to clear her eyes of the blockage before eventually giving up. They couldn't get her back to fighting shape, and unfortunately, John was left frowning as he tried to figure out what to do. If Urga couldn't see, then he couldn't exactly rely on her bow for backup in the boss fight. "Master, please!"

Another zombie lurched around a nearby corner as John stared at his ****. He took a couple seconds to knock the zombie off its feet and quickly stomp it to **** before he turned back to her. If he really wanted to defeat the boss... then he just couldn't take Urga with him. His advantage for starting the fight at a distance was gone.

"We can't take it-" Urga was still pleading with him.

"No." There had to be a way. There was always another way, especially in video games. The player and the game were supposed to be versatile! If he couldn't go about it in one direction, then he just had to try another, and another, and another, until it eventually worked! He blinked, and turned to where a nearby abandoned house creaked with the subtle winds.

It was probably his best option. Even if he had wanted to just run away from the boss, chances were that it would have just been even more dangerous for him to try and lead the blind Orc out when he could have simply cleared the area.

"You need to hide," he swallowed his own words like a chalky dry pill. He hated saying them, though probably it really was the best thing for her to do. Despite Urga's own arguments for his plan, he took her by the hand and led her into the house. There was another zombie in there that he had to quickly clear out, but with his damage now, it wasn't hard to dispatch it after just a few hits. "Listen to me... it's too dangerous to try and lead you out of here while you can't see. I have to take care of the zombies," he had to pause for a moment as he forcibly settled her into an old, dusty bed nearby. "Otherwise I'll be trying to defend the both of us while we run away. Stay here, keep quiet. If anything comes in that isn't me, beat the living hell out of it with your fists." He didn't pay much attention to anything that Urga said after that. Her pleas and silent cries for him to stay didn't change the fact that there were still zombies roaming about and he wanted to kill that boss. He had to deal with it.

"Try to clean your eyes out while I'm gone, and... if I don't come back, run that way." He lifted her hand and pointed it in the direction leading back to the camp. Hopefully, that was enough to keep her safe. He tried leaving and barricading the house up behind him, but the little whimpers and heavy breathing noises coming from the inside of the house did nothing to soothe his worries.

It was time for Plan B.

Quest Complete! A Modicum of Control

• Do not kill anyone today.

Reward:

• 1 Random item of Rare quality
  And
• 15 Units of a Random Material

Turn in?
YES | NO

Well, the good news was that zombies apparently didn't count towards him failing his quest. The bad news was that he had completely forgotten about it. It was yet another stroke of luck for the young gamer, and even he was starting to tire of it. He wasn't that lucky! By that point, he was just waiting for something extremely bad to pop out from around a corner... but it still hadn't happened yet. Regardless, he hit 'Yes' on his pop-up and grinned at the things it gave him.

+Boots of the Thrall King
+15 Units of Angel Dust

Boots of the Thrall King (Rare Quality).
This dark, scaled, metal pair of sabatons is the favored footwear of the man known only as 'The Thrall King.' When looked upon, these hard metal boots always remain clean and spotless, despite whatever activity the wearer puts them through. The years of use behind this item remain unseen on its unblemished exterior, with every last scale and its Mithril trimming still set strong and firmly in place atop one another like good dragon hide. These boots, because of their enchantment, will always fit the wearer perfectly. While worn, the wearer gains the following effects:
+Gives use of the ability 'Shade'.
Shade wraps the user's image in a blanket of shadows, turning them into a silhouette of darkness in everyone else's eyes. Footsteps cannot be heard while in the Shade form. Shade only lasts for one minute and requires thirty minutes to recharge before it can be used again.
+Restores 5% of total MP with every successful Punch-Kick combo. (3 MP)
+25 Health

Angel Dust: 15 Units
The dry, golden secretions dropped from the flapping of seraphim wings. ?????

The question marks on the angel dust were initially a little confusing, but it was probably like everything else. The higher his Craft and Observe levels got, the less he would see those damn things. At least, that was his hope. The boots, on the other hand, were extraordinary. Only after a few days and he already had something of rare quality, and on top of that, it was really damn neat.

The new Shade ability was really useful... in other circumstances, but, unfortunately, it didn't contribute much to dealing with the current boss. It could be helpful later, especially against something that actually had eyes, but at the moment, he had no use for it. He still didn't even know how the crystal had sensed both him and Urga, nor did he know the full scope of its abilities. All he did know was that, if he was going to take it on, he needed to make sure that there weren't any zombies crowding around Urga while he was gone or ganging up on him while he charged that damned thing.

Whatever time John spent clearing out the rest of the zombies after that was only lengthened by how slowly he went about it. He would have loved to move fast and rush through whatever forces were left but... it wasn't the safest method for dealing with the horde. If he had just blindly charged in, then chances were that he would have been overrun in seconds. Instead, he took them on one at a time and took advantage of his new boots to try and save mana. It wasn't all that hard for him to avoid getting hit while fighting against a bunch of creatures that couldn't run to save their own lives... unlives? They were undead, it didn't matter.

If it was just one zombie at a time, he found that he could simply trip them, unload a barrage of attacks, and then move on. If at any point he did get hit, well, the crystal wasn't exactly moving, so he had the time to regenerate.

Before he knew it, three whole hours had gone by before John finally finished clearing out the town. Without Urga there to back him up, killing the zombies off wasn't as easy as he would have hoped. He had considered taking her bow with him, but it seemed like a weapon that would have been difficult to use, and he didn't have the time to learn it. On top of that, most of the time would have still been wasted anyways because of John's thorough searching. There weren't actually that many zombies left, he was just confirming and then reconfirming that he got them all. He tried his hardest to find all the zombies in town before he moved on, and after three hours, he was feeling pretty confident he had killed every last one before he went to face the boss.

The first thing he noticed by the time he got back was, once again, that purple light. It was easily approachable, especially with where the crystal had been set up on its ring-shaped obsidian altar in the middle of town. The second time around, he didn't blindly stumble across it. He put some distance between the two of them, and from across a long road, he peeked around a corner and cast Observe.

Beacon Of Ruin
Level 6 Enchanted Essence
<Precious>
74/74 HP
RP: -200
Effects: BOSS!, Immobile, Mana Well, Truesight, Growing.

Immediately after sticking his head out with line of sight of the Crystal, John felt its presence bearing down on him again. A dull throbbing pain pulsed to the forefront of his mind upon seeing it, and he grimaced as he expected the attack from earlier... but it never came. He heard the wailing of this stone as it floated in place a few hundred feet away, but... it was softer now. It was gentle and each cry fell off with a little more anguish than he had noticed before. It didn't attack him, and John realized that he wasn't even sure if it could have.

It was immobile, and it could most certainly see or sense him somehow... but it couldn't reach him. It was a shame that Urga was out of the fight, or else he could have just had her shoot the thing down from there.

The passive effect BOSS! as it turned out simply just made the enemy stronger. It added more health and more stats to make the enemy harder to beat, but it wasn't anything too major to worry about. Immobile detailed that it was exactly that, immobile. The thing literally couldn't move. Truesight was pretty simple too. Its vision wasn't exactly the same as it would have been for a normal person. Anything that it did see, or sense, it saw the true version of. Darkness or light didn't matter, it saw through both and illusions failed to work before its gaze, so Shade really was useless against this thing.

The Growing and Mana Well status effects had John worried, however. The moment he opened up a new pop-up on those effects, it sent a wave of goosebumps down John's back. There were no hidden meanings behind any of its passive effects: the crystal quite simply took its mana from the environment and it was growing. With each second, the crystal apparently gained more strength, like a timer that just added more and more experience into its level with every second that passed. The longer that John waited to deal with the thing, the harder it was going to be to beat.

Thankfully, it seemed to be very straightforward. He had more health than it and he dealt more damage. Charging it straight on was probably the easiest way of defeating it, and yet... that felt wrong. He already knew it could blind, it could stun, and it had an ability called drain, which he assumed gave it back health. That was quite a lot even to start with, which made the health that it already had nothing more than a simple guess. If it could drain him of HP, there was no telling who could have come out on top in a head to head fight; he had to find another way otherwise it was just going to-

John paused as he watched its max health tick up another point, rounding it up to a full seventy-five. A thin, translucent beam of energy struck out at and sapped from a single stone in a nearby brick wall within the crystal's violet light, and John watched as its health bar quickly regenerated the one point it had been missing with its growth. He blinked, stunned by the sudden change, and just stood there for a couple minutes until it did it again.

He didn't have time to find another method. It was going to outgrow him, and with each growth, the horrible light it cast spread out further and further. The light that betrayed its range of influence... the same light that he couldn't get around if he wanted to get close to it. The same light that he stepped into when he took off charging at the thing.

"RAAAAAAAARRRGH!" If it had been anyone else to let loose that war cry, then it might have actually been a cool moment. Unfortunately, John's voice cracked partway through his run like he was still growing up and completely ruined the moment for him. Of course, he made it all of three steps into the crystal's circle of light before the pop-ups began exploding all over his interface.

Beacon Of Ruin used Distraught!

Gamer's Mind resists the Emotional Effect!

Beacon Of Ruin used Blind! (20s remaining)

Beacon Of Ruin drains you for 8 HP!

Beacon Of Ruin used Answer The Call-ERR-NO UNDEAD IN RANGE!

Beacon Of Ruin used Summoning!