Brandon madly grinned as he found himself surrounded by dozens of zombies from the undead race within Turda's part of Astoria's Forest. They pulled themselves out of the ground with all the features that made a zombie a zombie. Rotting, stinky, slow, and starving for human flesh! With only their hunger for life pushing them forward, they slowly made their way over to Brandon. He was completely surrounded, but he didn't look worried in the slightest.
He pulled out a Life Mushroom from his inventory while holding his voodoo doll in his other hand. The mushroom was eaten quickly. It tasted strangely meaty and temporarily tripled his health. "Friends on the Other Side!" Numerous dark shadows fled like a pack of rats from Brandon's shadow.
They raced toward all of the zombies within the vicinity and hid within their shadows. "Cursed Fatal Strike!" Brandon took out a curved dagger and stabbed the straw doll. In an instant, the zombies collapsed to the ground deader than before, while Brandon lost half of his health. All of their experience flowed into him, and he leveled up.
"Haha! This is so fun! In what other game could a healer solo a group of monsters on their own!? World of Eternia, I love you!" Brandon crazily laughed.
Friends on the Other Side affected both allies and enemies with the unique status effect, cursed. Cursed Fatal Strike was an active skill that halved Brandon's own health at the cost of doing multiplied damage to enemies debuffed with cursed. It multiplied his mind and magic stat together for an outrageous amount of damage. This skill would be considered broken if it wasn't for the long cooldown of the skill itself, the cooldown on health/recovery potions, and most bosses had high resistance to the cursed debuff. Brandon took it as a balancing thing since it did do outrageous damage, even at the first skill level.
Brandon's fighting style relied on cursing his enemies first before spamming his skills. Cursed One was an advancement path focused on debuffing the enemy to support your allies. Of course, he could still give buffs and heals to his teammates, but most of the Cursed One's skills were around debuffs and taking advantage of debuffed enemies. Brandon particularly loved weakening his enemies till they were putty in his hands.
"You must be the annoying fly that has been messing with my belongings..." A robed figure sat within a cave with their back turned to Brandon.
"Necromancer, for what reason are you causing trouble in Salona? This is Humanity's territory!" Brandon righteously shouted.
"Humanity?" It chuckled. "The Mushroom Queen has already conquered humanity. I'm simply sowing seeds on behalf of my lord for our eventual battle to the death with the Mushroom Kingdom. Only one race will be able to rule over Eternia, and I'm not sorry to say that Humanity will be the first to fall." It stood up and laughed as purple magic gathered around its body.
Brandon placed his arm in front of his eyes and blocked the flying dust and stones blowing. He thought that this necromancer had such a cool boss animation! As the boss battle began inside some dark but spacious cave, several zombies started rising from underneath the ground. The necromancer stared at him, floating in the air with a purple barrier around him.
Just to test it, Brandon tossed one of his sacrificial knives at the shield. It bounced off without a single point of damage as the word Invulnerable popped up above its head. It was a sort of gaming knowledge 101 thing where if the boss was unable to be hurt and there were a bunch of minions around. You had to kill the minions first before you could damage the boss.
"Friends on the Other Side!"
"Spirit Possession!"
When Brandon had all the zombies cursed, they suddenly started to attack each other from the skill Spirit Possession. Now that Brandon had a second to breathe, he took out a mushroom without shame. Sure, he wasn't struggling yet in the boss fight, but Brandon didn't care at all about having a challenging gaming experience. Brandon cared about having a fun gaming experience! And what he considered fun was absolutely obliterating the enemies! Brandon ate the mushroom and quickly wiped out the zombies, and the necromancer boss dropped his shield.
"So, the rumor was true that Adventurers could resist the Mushroom Queen's control... I suppose Humanity might have a place after Lord Deathmaw conquers Eternia after all." The Necromancer rubbed its bony jaw. Brandon also thought it was hella cool that the NPCs responded to unique actions the players took. "I suppose we might find out what makes adventurers so different from other humans by performing a few experiments. I hope you all don't mind." It chuckled.
"Sorry to tell you, but you won't be leaving this cave dead or alive, necromancer!" Brandon righteously shouted. "Ritual of Blood!"