While he was still thinking of a way out, he felt his back getting electrocuted. He looked back in consternation and saw a purple ball of lightning was floating not far away. After another inspection, four such balls had appeared out of nowhere at four corners near the edges of this enclosed space. They started to shoot out lightning bolts.
‘Shit! As if this fight is not hard enough?’ Jack complained. “Is this the boss’ skill?” He asked no one in particular, but Peniel who was floating nearby still replied, “not sure, but I think these balls had appeared by themselves. I didn’t see the boss doing anything in relation to these balls. And they don’t seem to target you particularly.”
Peniel was not in a fight, so she could observe things more clearly. The lightning shot out of these four balls indeed was random. He had been hit by one simply due to bad luck. Still, dodging the lightning from the boss was already hard enough, now he had to pay attention to these four balls’ random shootings again. This had complicated the battle to another level.
All he could do was continue to persevere through. He continued with his pitiful ranged attacks to chip down however little the boss’ HP as best as he could. On one occasion when he cast Energy Bolts again, several of these bolts when off flying towards one of the purple balls in the corner. When it hit, Jack saw a damage number and an indication of an HP bar.
They could be damaged? Jack thought. But should he waste his time to destroy those purple balls? Chipping the boss’ HP had already taken a very long time, one that he doubted he could keep up. Even if he could destroy all four balls, it would simply put him back to the original situation, one that he was still at a disadvantage in.
But one thing he knew from his past gaming experiences, was that most everything was made for a reason. The purple balls seemed to be not part of the boss’ arsenals, so they must have served another purpose. After a short thought, he decided to go after one of the purple balls. Although it also discharged electricity, it only did so at a long interval, unlike the boss. Hence, Jack could still dodge it as long as he timed the moment accurately.
He started to attack the purple ball once it was done discharging its electrical attack. This purple ball appeared to have an HP of 10,000, but its defense stat was non-existent, and it didn’t move, so Jack had a very easy time hacking at it. Jack’s standard sword damage net around 350 damages, courtesy of the boost from enhanced whetstone and sweet dumpling, in addition to other buffs.
The boss also did not just stop attacking him, he still sent Jack numerous lightning strikes. Jack evaded them while attacking the purple ball. At one time he instinctively hid behind the purple ball and was astonished to find the boss’ attacks actually damaged the purple ball.
‘Eh? They are not allies?’ He thought.
So he ended up just stood behind the purple ball and used it as a shield while the boss helped him to reduce the purple ball’s HP.
Jack thought it was strange this rare elite boss continued to just attack him from a distance. If it had run over to him and blasted him with electricity in close range, he would be out of idea as to how to deal with it. But he would take a blessing any time, he would leave the questioning for later.
With attacks from both sides, the purple ball punching bag could not last long. Its HP soon zeroed. While Jack was expecting the purple ball to disintegrate into nothingness. It instead transformed into a pure white ball. However, it was no longer discharging any electricity that assailed him. On the contrary, the dot in his radar representing this ball, which was previously red, had turned into a green dot.
‘Heh? It was my ally now?’ Jack thought in confusion.
During his confusion, an interface appeared above this white dot. Because he was close to this white ball, he could see this interface showed a targeting system. He was in a hurry as the boss was still throwing lightning strikes his way, so he didn’t think much and went ahead to interact with the interface. He heard a notification voice asking him to select a target. Without hesitation, he aimed the targeting system at the boss.
As soon as the targeting system locked onto the boss, a searing thick white lightning bolt shot out and slammed into the boss. The boss’ HP reduced dramatically as the lightning continued to pour into its body. The white ball in front of Jack finally stopped discharging and turned into a dull grey ball. The boss dropped down onto the ground into a kneeling position. White lightning could be seen coiling around its purple body. It was unmoving on the ground.
It took Jack an instant, but he quickly snapped out of his surprise and used Shooting Dash to quickly reach the boss. This was a golden opportunity not to be wasted! He exclaimed in his mind.
Once he arrived, he executed Power Strike at the incapacitated boss. 2000 damage appeared above the boss. A max-leveled Power Strike aided with Shooting Dash amongst other boosts was truly monstrous. Even he would die in a single strike if he was hit by this.
He jumped back once he made his attack, in preparation if the boss retaliated, but it kept its kneeling position. The white lightning continued to coil around its body. After sure it was truly safe, he hurriedly went back in and execute attack over attack without reserve. Eldingar simply stayed there receiving all the assaults without any response.
Even as Jack attacked it frenziedly, he didn’t stop paying attention. He noticed the white lightning was getting thinner and less as time went on. When it was almost gone, the boss started to nudge around. Jack was not taking any chance. He quickly ran away. As expected, once the last strand of the white lightning was gone, it stood back up and went back to shoot lightning bolts from his hands.
Jack ran to the second purple ball. Now that he knew that there was such a way to incapacitate the boss, everything became much simpler. From the last attack, he had managed to take out almost a quarter of the boss’ HP. Considering there were four purple balls, it should be enough to finish the boss.
He repeated the previous strategy by hiding behind the purple ball, ignoring its occasional electrical strike. He used potions and heal scrolls to recover his lost HP. While the purple ball was getting sandwiched by both Jack’s and Eldingar’s attacks.
Once the second purple ball transformed into a white one, he repeated the process, sending another thick pillar of lightning onto the boss. He then used Charge to increase his speed to get close to the boss, since Shooting Dash was still in cooldown, and then hack away the helpless boss with abandon, before quickly ran away again once the white lightning chains became thinner.
Jack continued using the same strategy, repeatedly utilizing the remaining purple balls. By the time the fourth ball was activated, Eldingar only had less than a quarter HP left.
‘No more purple ball after this, need to make this count!’ Jack exclaimed in his mind as the thick white lightning slammed into the boss. Jack rushed at him and started his final burst assaults to take out the boss’ remaining HP.
While the prospect looked promising, when Eldingar only had a sliver of HP left, a strong force suddenly exploded out of its body, eliminating the remaining white lightning chains that were still holding it and pushed Jack away. It then jumped back and flew away to the other end of this enclosed space. It lifted both his hands up. Jack was assuming it would use that giant lightning ball toss again, but instead of one giant ball, more than ten giant balls appeared.
“Holy shit! Is this its dying struggle?” Jack exclaimed in alarm. The lightning ball toss from before had proven that he could not evade it, he would still get damaged by its aftershock. If those many balls exploded at the same time, he would still die even with his Barrier spell on.
In a split second, Jack made a decision. If he could not evade, then just gamble who would die first. He used Shooting Dash which had gone off cooldown to get close to the boss who had run to the other corner. He sent Sword of Light after getting in range. With the additional damage boost from Shooting Dash, the skill produced almost 4000 damage!
Unfortunately, it was still not enough to take out Eldingar, it still had a tiny 500 HP left. Jack had hoped for the 30% critical chance of Sword of Light to take effect, but sadly his high luck stat didn’t help this time. But he had also prepared a contingency if it didn’t happen. He had pointed his staff at Eldingar and activated Dragon’s Eye the moment he executed Sword of Light. He could only rely on ranged attacks, there was no more time to move closer to get the boss into melee range.
