The Aftermath.

It felt like hours had passed before John finally managed to shake enough life back into his own body to try moving again. For a good long while, he just stood in the middle of the wreckage of his most recent battle and stared numbly at the giant, bronze church bell through a fog of dust. The same bell that he had brought down on his enemy as it loudly rolled and clanked away. The metal instrument no longer musically hummed from the initial impact, but it did keep moving, rolling over the shards of the beacon again and again until it bumped to a final stop against a nearby building and shocked John out of his stupor enough to try and blink away his own surprise.

Somehow, he hadn't died from his last, **** attack.

He was left with only six health points left, a handful of other pop-ups, and a soreness that ached all over his body as he came to realize that everything from his knees down was trapped within a pile of rock and rubble... but he was alive. That one little thought brought a little smile to his face, even as his Gamer's Mind struggled to slowly push him back from his own inaction and shock. He was alive...

He did it!

A soft chuckle broke past John's lips as he stared at the spot where the horde of zombies had been converging on him. A handful of shimmering items glistened back up at him from where all the loot had dropped as bright moonlight finally broke through the darkness that had pervaded the general area. There were no other enemies left, thankfully. Any enemies that had been left seemed to have either been crushed or despawned when he finished off the Beacon. He truly had won. A flash of color rushed into his immediate line of sight as his pop-ups **** their way back into focus, and John couldn't help but smile at the shimmering golden images that appeared before him.

Bleakfield has been cleared, captured, and is now under your control!
Bleakfield has been added to your list of maps and cities!

Bleakfield: Beacon Of Ruin has been defeated!
+300 Exp!
+2 Undead Essences!
+2 Human Bones!
+1 Shadow Essence!
+10 Arcane Rocks!
+$5,000!

Achievement Unlocked! 'A Whole New Caliber!'
You defeated your first boss! Congratulations!
+100 Experience!

Achievement Unlocked! 'Didn't see that one coming...'
You won a boss battle all by yourself! Who's tougher now?
+1 Endurance

Achievement Unlocked! 'Dodge This!’
You used your environment to finish off a major enemy instead of just hitting it with your own abilities! Way to think outside of the box! Keep it up!
+1 Intelligence

Thankfully, it didn't take John very long to dig himself back out of the stone and junk that he had been buried under after that. It didn't take him very long to pack up to leave either. He didn't bother with stopping to regenerate or trying to fix his newly dented armguards. He just moved on. According to his pop-ups, the town truly was cleared, and with its conquering came a whole new tab for John in his character menu. Unlike the other tabs, the new one had no name. It was blank and tinted with the same bland, peach color that he had come to grow fond of since he had obtained his powers. When he opened it up, he found... well, he found Bleakfield in it, or rather, a map of Bleakfield. The map of the town came with a dozen other customization options. The first and most prominent of which was the name of the tab or kingdom itself.

Unfortunately, the area where he was supposed to be able to select the name of the kingdom was dim and grey, like it had been locked out or something that he had failed to obtain yet. He was able to access some of the other options, like specific building tabs, tax alterations, and citizen information, but... without any people actually living in the village anymore, all of these new options were all fairly useless to him. Even if he had wanted to use them, there was no one to live in the buildings, pay taxes, or contribute any kind of information. The most he could truly, actually do was just... change the name of the town, and at the moment, the name Bleakfield seemed really appropriate.

It was teasing him with all of the things he couldn't use yet, actually.

Though there were a lot of new options for the young gamer to try and access, he mostly spent the time on his way back to Urga just looking through them. The Orc didn't answer John when he first walked up to the house he had left her in. He wasn't all that surprised with her; if he had been in her shoes, he might not have answered either. However, it wasn't until John broke back into the house that he realized why she didn't answer.

Urga was gone.

She wasn't hiding, she wasn't walking around looking for him, or even stumbling around like a zombie that had been raised back up. She was just gone. The house she had been hiding in was empty. There weren't even traces of something or someone else breaking into the house to **** Urga into running and hiding. There were no traces or trails of her to tell him where she might have gone, and for a moment, he started to worry. A horrible tightness began to turn and gather in his chest and stomach, and with a small little gulp, he tried to **** it back down.

He had cleared all of the undead out of the town, right? He had to have. If he hadn't, then his pop-ups wouldn't have told him that the village had been cleared. If something had happened, then he would have received a message telling him that she had died or been hurt...

...right?

Not realizing he had been holding it in, John violently spat out the breath that had been caught in his lungs as he stepped back outside of the house. He could feel his stomach still slowly rolling deep in his gut as he stared back in the direction of the camp and sighed. It was possible that she ran back to the rest of the camp like he had told her to, and he wouldn't have blamed her if she had. If he had run across an enemy that outclassed and overpowered him that much, then he might have retreated too. The important thing was that, if she had run back, then he needed to follow after her and meet up again.

Unfortunately that meant that the walk back to the camp, without a guide to lead him around, took a lot longer the second time around. It shouldn't have been hard for him to make his way back. He knew that the camp was just in one direction, and with the overview help of the Bleakfield map, it wasn't that hard for him to at least find the right direction. The problem he had was that, despite how barren the eastern market on the edge of town was, the area surrounding Bleakfield was still incredibly slick. After a couple of minutes, the combination of rainwater, ash, and dust made it almost impossible to walk through town, and John found himself stumbling again and again all the way up until the point where he reached the wall of trees that the camp had been situated in. The forest itself was gigantic, tall and thick enough to the point that none of the rain fell through the gaps between the trees. Instead as he was walking, John noticed that the rain did something a little out of the ordinary and seemed to travel along the leaves and branches before it gathered and dripped down the center of the trees themselves until eventually pooling at the base of each tree like a hundred small, separate pools.

The smoke from the camp was also heavier by the time he got back. The smell of ale, meat, and sweat filled the air as John crossed over the threshold into camp... and blinked hard as a number of other Orcs suddenly gasped upon seeing him return. The local warriors and tribesmen stared in open-mouthed astonishment at him as he walked past them... and into the heart of homes where Urga's tent had been located. All conversations quickly came to a sudden end as John stepped out into the open where his mother was now standing outside, half-naked in the open for everyone to see. A handful of other Orcs all stood nonchalantly beside her, including one particularly ostentatious shaman, as the motherly brunette continued to pour bowl after bowl of fresh water onto the face of a familiar Urga. The Shaman, or whatever it was that the Orc served as, didn't use any magic as John tried to casually reunite with the group.

For the most part, actually, the Shaman didn't do anything other than growl and criticize as his mother tried to help Urga clear the crimson effect from her eyes. He was dressed in... well, almost nothing. The ostentatious side of his personality came mostly from the hundreds of piercings and tattoos that littered the Orc's skin. Nearly everything, from his head to his toes, was covered in a blanket of bone ladders piercings and trophy markings, things that stabbed through parts of his skin up along his legs, his back, nose, nipples, or neck. His skin was covered in so many black markings that it was almost impossible to see any green left on him anymore.

Worse than that... what black hair he had was styled into a mullet, which John found to be more than a little disturbing on the head of an Orc.

He didn't cast any spells or try to use anything magic related... he just insulted the methods his mother was using and made comments about how some entity frowned on them for their weakness until John found himself outright glaring at and carefully stepping between him and the rest of the group. He was careful to not outright challenge the other Orc, but it didn't necessarily stop him from trying to shun the Shaman away from them. After a couple seconds of having John rudely bump up against him, the other Orc scowled and abruptly backed away, muttering guttural slurs under his breath about humans.

"I think that should do it. I don't see anymore blood," his mother was saying as John turned to look at the shaman when he finally walked away. Immediately behind the shaman, John saw a number of other, familiar Orcs standing by who all turned to glare at him when he tried to follow after the other man. The first two he noticed were the always furrowed faces of Lagash and the pack Alpha who had given John a chance to let Urga live. "Is it any bette-Oh..." his mother said suddenly from behind him. A soft crunch could be heard from the ground beneath them as Brenda suddenly took a step back and bumped into her own son. John slowly turned back around to face the two girls as Brenda cautiously moved to stand behind John as he faced his Orcish **** and froze.

There were no pupils in Urga's eyes by the time that John turned back around to face her. There were no irises, no black or colored spots or rings betraying where the center of her vision might have been. Her eyes were just white, a complete blank slate in place of the crimson red wound that had been there mere moments ago... much like a scar left behind after healing from a wound.

"N-no..." Urga squeaked and slowly squeezed her arms tight to her body. A slow, nervous tremble overtook her body as she shook her head back and forth, desperately trying and failing to look around.

"I still can't see anything..."