*Clang*The golden bell shrouded with a green halo became the biggest source of light. The players who occasionally glanced at this place were awed by the sheer magnificence.
A hundred-foot-tall sickle-wielding scarecrow, the farm filled with countless bugs, and a black abomination that was swatting down at the ground. At the same time, Zyrus also jumped up to meet pugalo’s strike head on.
*Clang*
The clash of their weapons rhymed with the tolling bell. Pugalo was trying to destroy the shrine while Zyrus was busy fending off its blows.
“Break its defense Franken.”
“On it.”
*Roooooar*
Not even a second had passed before two shining antlers slammed on Pugalo’s chest. The armor on the boss shattered as if it were made up of fragile glass.
“ATTACK!”
*Whiip*
The abomination born from the abyssal legion slashed with its tentacles and tore apart the scarecrow’s chest. Rather than the physical force, what dealt the blow was the abyssal mana and the halo spears.
-200,000
That was the final damage value that popped up above the field boss. Normally, 1-5% damage dealt by Erebus wouldn’t even scratch the defense of Pugalo. But everything changed with Franken’s one-time attack. This was the result arising from pugalo’s negative defense form taking synchronized strike from his summons.
“Your skill’s pretty great.” Zyrus couldn’t help but praise his companion.
“Of course it is. A pity that I can only use it once on the same target,” Franken replied as he carried off Zyrus. The reindeer had used the same skill to finish off the other scarecrow boss before.
The duo stood on the roof of the shrine and watched the transforming Pugalo. Its dark brown straws took on a metallic luster while the fire in his eyes blazed with even more intensity.
Zyrus already had a plan in mind for the second phase. His poison-related abilities were useless against most of the bugs and Pugalo. Even the shrine’s debuffs like Sacrilege, Anathema, Desecration, and Heresy were ineffective on it.
*chiiiing*
All 10,000 straws that made up Pugalo shot off in every direction. The bugs were shredded apart, and the same fate befell on all of his summons except for Elsid and Zirnitra. Despite his strong endurance Zyrus pressed his temples at the sudden spike of pain. There was no getting used to this.
“What a vicious attack. There’s no way to survive unless you know how to fly.” Ria’s voice sounded from afar.
“There is one. Just use the players and their corpses as a meat shield."
“Tch…vicious.” Ria shook her head as she realized how insidious this zone was. At the same time, she and everyone else saw the scarecrow emerge from the transformation.
<Get Down>
Pugalo slashed in fury since its earlier attack had done nothing to Zyrus. How would it know that his opponent had memorized all of its skill patterns?
“Zirnitra, protect the shrine with your shield. You two attack the moment apostasy is triggered,” Zyrus shouted off his orders and dived down towards the fuming scarecrow.
[Arcane lance]
[Vector Fall]
[Spear Aura]
[Wrath of Jotunn]
The twilight crusher zoomed down like a homing missile, followed by azure lances and white spears. Zyrus had used everything in his arsenal to deal damage. His regen rate and vitality weren’t omnipotent. He knew that if he took any hit on a fatal area then he’d lose more than his max HP and lose this fight.
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10k,20k,50k,100k…
The damage kept accumulating as he unleashed his relentless offensive. He even used long cooldown skills like Quake in order to deal the most amount of damage in a short time.
But even after hitting its weak spot, 100k was his limit. A quarter of an hour had passed since he had activated the sweet nightmare and noxious shrine.
*Clang*
Finally, the moment he was waiting for arrived.
<NOOOOOOO>
[Avatar]
Zyrus transformed into an abyssal dragon and clawed at Pugalo. At the same time, Franken, Zirnitra, and Elsid attacked it with their full power and retreated.
Apostacy: There is a 10% probability that the poisoned targets will abandon their faith.
For a being like Pugalo, its faith was the very core of its existence. Anything that affected that was bound to deal fatal damage.
The towering scarecrow was now kneeling down and howling in pain. Magma-like tears were falling down from its hollow eyes. It didn’t even resist the black dragon that was tearing apart its body.
Even Zyrus was surprised by apostasy’s effectiveness. If he knew this beforehand then he’d have used this to deal with the last phase.
100k,200k….700k
At last, Pugalo lifted its head after losing 70% of its HP. By the time it realized what had happened, it was already transforming into the final form.
<I WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU>
“Too late,” Zyrus roused his mana and walked over to the shrinking Pugalo. In the third phase, it had two main skills.
Blessing of Famine which gave the players a ‘hunger’ debuff and decreased their energy levels. The second one was Guardian’s Vengeance which increased Pugalo’s speed and penetration bonus proportional to the damage it had received.
Zyrus didn’t care about the first one as such a weak debuff was nothing against his willpower. As for the second one, there was only one outcome: Death.
With the amount of damage he had dealt to Pugalo, it could pretty much one-shot him even with his celestial vitality.
Zyrus channeled all of his power to use the 13 curses of void. He didn’t want to erase Pugalo from existence since he wanted to use his authority ‘Numen’ on it.
‘You can appoint slain foes as the ‘Watcher’ of your base-’ these were the exact words written on the authority’s description.
Thus, his goal from the start was to kill Pugalo while keeping his source of existence. He knew that the field bosses had their source controlled by the system. Only their physical body descended on the various rings, and their source of existence was used to create such bodies in every loop.
Camazotz, Tauranox, Nuckelavee…none of them could be 'reused' after he had erased their existence.
It was just that this time, Pugalo wouldn’t disappear.
[Eye of Annihilation]
Time slowed down as millions of white threads became visible in Zyrus’s eyes.
From the first week of the tutorial to this day, the eye of annihilation had improved a lot. At first he could at most see the enemy’s weak spots and mana flow. Now, he could ‘see’ the threads of laws with his bare eyes. At the same time, his progress of Heavenly Eye also skyrocketed.
This wouldn’t have been possible if not for his experience during blood fusion. He had seen these white threads for the first time when he was eating the burrow rat king’s soul. Thanks to the right direction it gave, he was now able to see the scene in front of him; albeit temporarily.
Zyrus had guessed long ago that these threads were maintained by the system. He had to sever them in order to capture Pugalo while maintaining his source of existence.
He knew that he wouldn’t have such power unless he worked hard for another thousand years. And even if he succeeded, who’s to say that Pugalo wouldn’t go out of control? In the end the flag’s authority was also maintained by the system. Messing around with them would be akin to suicide.
So rather than severing these threads, he had to manipulate them by using his 13 curses of void and Numen’s ability.
He had to accomplish this task in just 10 seconds. Otherwise, he could only appoint a husk of Pugalo as the watcher.
[Curse of Collapse]
Zyrus couldn’t affect the threads with his power, but what about the space around them? he used the curse of collapse to contract all of the threads near the center of Pugalo. The concepts he had learned now proved their worth.
[Curse of Nothingness]
[Curse of Uncertainty]
Next up, he used two curses simultaneously. In the slow-motion vision of his eyes, he saw dozens of chains pop out and bind the area where the threads connected with Pugalo.
Curse of nothingness had a two-pronged ability. First, to erase the part bound by shackles, and second, to erase one’s mental strength or willpower.
At the same time, the curse of uncertainty allowed him to bypass the threads' domain and directly attack the parts they were connected to.
If we take a puppet as an analogy, then this process was similar to binding the strings that were controlling the puppet and then destroying the puppet’s parts which were connected to the strings.
Of course, the difficulty was much greater. Pugalo was after all a mighty being and not a mere puppet. Not to mention the system’s power that controlled its very source of existence.
Zyrus took a deep breath and focused with all his willpower. The last and final step was the most crucial.
To put it bluntly, whatever he had done so far hadn’t affected the threads at all. He was simply nudging them here and there to place them in the desired location. Now, he had to sever the puppet and at the same time, bind it with new threads and attach those threads to the old ones.
There were three tasks to be done in the final step. Destroying Pugalo’s source of existence would mean its total annihilation. The threads would detach from it on their own when that happened.
[Curse of Oblivion]
For the first time Zyrus extended the quantum field outside of his body. Rather than any offensive ability, what he needed was something that could ‘deceive’ the system into thinking that Pugalo was dead.
Chapter 175: Puppet
8 min read