Vampiric Scepter!
Another of the Twilight Forest's artifacts.
It could knock enemies back, slow them, deal damage, and produce various other effects.
Most importantly, it absorbed enemies' status and added it to the wielder's own!
It could even steal health and hunger!
To put it bluntly, with this thing, Gu Yu wouldn't need to carry food anymore. Whenever he got hungry, he could just find some creature!
"Another artifact!"
Gu Yu was even happier.
The Lich dropped four kinds of scepters: Twilight, Zombie, Vampiric, and Shield.
The Vampiric Scepter was the strongest, but its drop rate was abysmal. Back when he'd played the game, he'd killed the Lich countless times before he finally found one.
This time, he'd gotten it on his first try!
He gave it a quick test, then put everything back in his inventory.
Even without the first-kill reward, the Lich dropped just as much good loot as the Naga!
After leaving the tower, Gu Yu looked at the map in his hand.
The third boss was the Minotaur Mushroom, which lived in the Minotaur Maze.
There happened to be one right beside the Lich Tower, so he headed over.
It was a huge mound of earth, with vines running straight down through the middle and disappearing underground.
The Minotaur Mushroom lived inside.
Before entering, he needed to make something: a Magic Map Core.
He'd made one when he first entered the Twilight Forest, so he followed the familiar process again. This one differed from the Twilight Map.
The world map needed a ring of paper; the Maze Map Core needed a ring of logs.
He surrounded the Magic Map Core with logs to turn it into a Maze Map Core, then filled the surrounding spaces with nine sheets of paper.
Maze Map: complete!
To be safe, he made two, then jumped into the maze.
The Minotaur Mushroom itself wasn't strong. It was even easier to deal with than the Naga. Finding it, though, was complicated.
He had to navigate the maze, which was the kind of thing that ate up time.
"There's an artifact in the maze too. I hope I get lucky and find it."
Gu Yu began searching the maze.
Elsewhere, the Blond Elder watched Gu Yu's fighting style.
After cursing out the intelligence department, he immediately sent Mark and the others a notice.
[Magic Orbs can be reflected to break the shield. In the second phase, hide in a corner, use blocks to block the enemy, and take advantage of the openings to kill the zombies.]
"Jett, great! There's a Health Potion here!"
The Lich Tower had many small, separate studies, all packed with bookshelves.
Some of the bookshelves hid chests.
There were plenty of potions inside, and Mark found a Health Restoration Potion.
For every contestant except Gu Yu, this was an artifact!
According to the rules of the Block World, monsters respawned every night, and some burned up in the daylight.
Others, like creepers and spiders, weren't afraid of the sun.
Anyone who wanted to progress had no choice but to deal with them. Progress meant fighting.
And fighting inevitably meant injuries. Broken bones and fractures were all too common.
Ordinary wounds could heal slowly with food, but it was hard to recover from something like a severed limb through food alone.
That was when health restoration became invaluable.
It could regrow a severed limb, as miraculous as a divine blessing!
Gu Yu, on the other hand, didn't need any of that.
With Steve Physique, my stats are above yours!
He'd never lose a limb or break a leg, so there was no need to worry about recovering from such injuries. In his hands, health restoration was simply health restoration.
He had Jett drink the potion, healing his broken bones.
"Magic Orbs can break the shield. Come on, let's go back and kill it!"
Now that they knew the mechanics—and had even been given a tip for the second phase—Mark was brimming with confidence.
This time, they were careful on the way up, deliberately avoiding the gaps and reaching the top of the tower safely.
He raised his shield. Smack!
The blue Magic Orb bounced back and hit the Lich, successfully breaking one layer of its shield.
"It really works!"
After exchanging a glance with Jett, the two immediately launched a coordinated attack.
Then...
They were dumbfounded.
The blue Magic Orbs were easy to reflect. Shields, bows, and swords could all trigger a reflection.
But the Lich didn't just throw blue Magic Orbs. It also had more dangerous orange-red ones.
The moment one of those things touched anything, it exploded.
If a shield blocked it, that was fine. There was a chance to reflect it, and the shield could reduce the damage. But if it wasn't blocked...
While his shield was on cooldown, the Lich hurled one at him. Mark instinctively tried to reflect it with his sword.
Boom!
The explosion erupted from the sword. The recoil sent him stumbling back several steps, and he nearly dropped his weapon.
[-10!]
Even with the Naga armor protecting him, the blast cost him half his health!
If another red Magic Orb hit him, he'd be blown to pieces!
"Why are there red Magic Orbs too?"
Caught completely off guard, Mark hurriedly dug out a section of the area and hid.
He ate until his hunger was full, then used a potion to restore his health.
When he returned to the fight, Jett hurried over.
"I can't hold out any longer!"
Mark sent Jett to recover while he faced the Lich alone.
He could handle a single Lich, but the problem was that there were four now.
Each one was only a little paler in color than the real Lich, and otherwise indistinguishable from it.
They could fire Magic Orbs and hurl explosives.
Standing in the middle, he had to face Magic Orb attacks from all four sides!
The battle grew more and more intense, and Mark felt increasingly disoriented.
He'd never been very good at reflecting attacks, and now there were red Magic Orbs that couldn't break the shield. His mind was muddled, and his body was exhausted.
In the end, he leaped off the tower and hid inside a box of blocks with Jett.
The Kyushu audience breathed a sigh of relief.
"That scared me. I thought they'd actually stolen Great God Gu Yu's method!"
"So what if you know the tricks? It's not like you have the strength to win!"
"The second phase takes technique, but the first takes strength. Do you have what it takes to learn from Great God Gu Yu?"
"Now that's a proper boss! Watching Great God Gu Yu fight it, you'd think the Lich wasn't strong!"
"Too bad the Lich can't destroy blocks, or it would've blown you up!"
"Here comes the funny part!"
Using blocks in the second phase was a shortcut, but there was no faking Gu Yu's skill in the first phase.
Dodging attacks from four Liches, judging the angle for each reflection, and hitting the real Lich at just the right moment—
None of that could be picked up overnight. It took practice.
Before, they'd only paid attention to the tricks. Now the viewers finally understood.
Gu Yu's grasp of combat was every bit as impressive!
It would take a period of practice before they could hope to defeat the Lich.
As long as they stayed safe, the two of them could slowly learn.
Across the block worlds, the faster contestants were killing Nagas and searching for Liches.
The slower ones were still wandering around the resource zones and the Nether. Overall, they fell into three tiers.
Gu Yu in the maze was in a league of his own. Everyone else was in the T1 or T2 stages, depending on their dimension.
Most were still spending time working through the necessary steps. Before long...
The sky darkened again.
Park Sam-chang hurried home from the resource zone and let out a long breath.
"I dug up two blocks of dirt today, and even found a Hay Block!"
Hay Blocks could store wheat, so he had food now.
He could feed his Mushroom Cows and other animals.
Thanks to his hard work, Park Sam-chang's farm had grown larger and larger.
Besides the Mushroom Cows, he'd also found eggs, hatched chicks, and built a chicken coop.
[Current overall block score: 6 (Micro Block)]
[Player Rank: 9]
Looking at the tree saplings he'd planted and his ever-expanding block, he was quite pleased.
"I don't get why Gu Yu keeps building that stupid wall."
Since Park Sam-chang had blocked it off with a stone wall beforehand, he couldn't see what was actually happening on the floating island.
With nothing to do at night, he could only lie down and watch the sky.
"Seems like there've been more zombies lately... Huh, why's the moon so red?"
As he stared at the sky, a line of small text suddenly appeared.
[Blood Moon!]
Before you continue