The large Golem charged at the nearest enemy, which happened to be Fatal at the moment. Gii once again had to use his blood whip ability to pull Fatal towards him and out of the golems attack range. Gii then ran up and launched an attack against the golem, landing his blow squarely against the golem's chest. Although this attack would not do any damage, the golem would redirect his aggro towards Gii and focus its attacks on him.

The benefit of Gii's punishment buffs was that at the maximum level of 5, they would convert 20% of the damage taken for an attack back into the associated stat. Right now the only buff he had maxed out was strength so that he could put out the most damage possible. However, he did have the other punishments active, the most helpful of which was boosting his agility. This allowed him to skillfully dodge the golem's attacks once it was focused on him.

The downside of his buffs were apparent however with the most obvious being that they only lasted for 5 minutes. In any longer battle, he would have to re-apply the buff and take more damage to keep the stat buffs up. The second problem was that if he ran into a situation where he did not have enough health to tank the hits he was taking, it would seriously hinder his strength. This fight was essentially putting him in a worse case scenario and his only hope was that Pixie would be able to keep on healing him while he kept the golem occupied.

Fortunately the group were experienced players and they were able to quickly recognize the best solution to killing this boss. The rest of the group backed away and avoided engaging the golem as much as possible while Gii distracted it up front. Pixie remained close enough to occasionally throw heals toward Gii and the timer slowly ticked down 1 by one. Eventually an entire minute passed and it was looking like it would only be a matter of time before the boss's immunity would be up and they could unleash attacks on it.

However, after the first minute, the golem suddenly turned red and entered a completely enraged state. At this point it started rampaging and completely ignored any attempts Gii made to aggro it. Right as it started going berserk, Gii gave a shout to the group as a warning.

"It's not getting aggroed anymore, be careful I can't keep it occupied any longer!"

Fortunately because of the healing earlier from Pixie, Gii had mostly been healed up so he would be able to tank a hit or 2 if needed. Despite Gii's warning, Some of the group had been getting a little lackadaisical and were slow to respond when the boss ran in the opposite direction from Gii. Term had been keeping a close eye on the fight at first, but when it became obvious that there was not much for him to do, he simply tried to stay on the opposite end of the room from where the fight was. As it dragged on, he realized the golem only had close combat attacks so he got lazy and decided to stay a little closer for when the immunity wore off.

Sure enough, he found himself in the crosshairs of the enraged golem and it was now barreling towards him at full speed. Fortunately he had a high agility stat and was able to barely dodge the large fist that was aiming at his face. Right after that, he spun to avoid a second swing of its fist and was barely able to dodge that as well. Because Gii was on the other side of the golem, he didn't have a clear shot to pull him out of its range. Instead he tried to do the next best option, which was pulling the golem away from him.

His blood whip wrapped itself around the golem's leg and yanked it out from under itself, however due to its sheer size, it was only moved about 5-10 feet and remained upright. Term tried to use the opportunity to jump out of its range, but before he could completely leave its range, the powerful fist slammed into him and bounced him off of the ground like a tennis ball.

[-1755]

The large damage number did not leave his fate to question and Term began disappearing in a whirl of white particles.

"Dammit!"

Sun couldn't help but voice his frustration as he had rushed over in the hope he might be able to get a heal off if a hit landed. Unfortunately, Gii seemed to be the only one who could guarantee being able to survive a hit and that was only if it wasn't a critical strike. As if his words had attracted the Ire of the golem, it quickly turned to Sun who had approached near it and began charging towards him. Dan launched an attack with his crossbow in an attempt to bring its aggro toward him, but the Golem only seemed to have on purpose and ignored any interference attempts.

As he saw the Golem bearing down on his guildmate, Dan released a loud shout.

"HAAAHH!"

There was a burst of yellow aura that wrapped around the boss and suddenly its movement slowed down. Dan immediately yelled again.

"Quickly run! it's only gonna last a few seconds, I haven't leveled that skill up yet!"

Heeding the advice, Sun quickly ran as fast as he could to get away from the boss and was able to utilize the time he was given to escape. The boss, having realized that its slowed movement had allowed its prey to escape, turned its attention elsewhere and re-focused its aggression back on to Gii. Gii was surprised to see the golem suddenly turn around, but was quickly able to ready himself and began to dodge the attacks with his boosted agility. The attacks of the enraged golem were not nearly as easy to dodge as its attacks earlier where he could read into the regular attack patterns. These attacks were now very unpredictable and erratic so it made judging how and where to dodge much more intense.

A look of determined focus was on Gii's face as he dodged left and right to avoid taking damage. The rest of the group could only look on from a distance as nobody was willing to get in close and risk becoming the target of the attacks from the golem. Inevitably, Gii had a moment of lapse in his focus and was hit by one of the erratic attacks from the golem.

[-1521]

Gii was able to brace himself for the hit and, thanks to the continuous healing he had received from Pixie, he was almost at full health and was able to endure the hit. Judging from the damage that the golem was now outputting, it was obvious that it was much stronger in it's enraged state and it was becoming unclear if even Gii could continue to withstand the attacks. Gii looked at the timer and realized that they still had to deal with almost a minute of it's invulnerability.

Knowing that if Gii died it would be difficult for the group to keep the golem occupied long enough to survive, Pixie made the decision to rush in close and fire off his strongest healing spell which had just come off cooldown.

[+1600]

Before Pixie could retreat out of the range of the boss, his large bout of healing attracted its attention as it finally had a new target to focus on. It ignored the attacks of Gii and smashed its fist right towards Pixie. As Pixie was right next to Gii, he was too close for Gii's blood whip ability to actually pull him out of the attack range of the boss. As a result, Gii could only watch as Pixie was mashed into paste by the attack of the golem.

Instead of turning back to attack Gii who was right next to it, the golem now turned towards Rebel who was the closest other player to it. Gii waited until it was about 20 or so feet away before he unleashed his blood whip ability and slowed the golem down. Dan also took advantage of his shout ability to give Rebel another couple seconds to run away. With her high agility stat, she was able to quickly get as far away as possible from the enraged boss.

Gii knew that with the last little bit of increased stats he received from that previous attack he would be able to keep the golem occupied without getting hit for the last 30 seconds or so of its immunity. Unfortunately, the golem had other plans and turned its attention towards Dan who had to get closer for his skill to effect the boss. Gii wanted to try and use his blood whip ability to slow the golem down a bit, but he had just used it so it was currently on cooldown.

Dan realized the situation and tried to run out of its range but as he was wearing heavier armor and had less agility than rebel, he was not fast enough to completely outrun the golem. With it's longer strides, the golem was quickly able to close the gap and get into attack range against him. Gii had been rushing to try and intercede between the two of them and try to block the attack but he was still a step too slow and knew he would only be able to reach there after it was able to get an attack off.

As Gii was watching the golem bring its arm up for an attack, he saw a large mass rush in from the side at the last moment. Sun raised his shield and braced himself for impact as the Golems arm swung down with immense force and smashed onto his shield.

[-1216]

Cracks appeared on the large shield and Sun was blasted back a good 5-10 ft. However he was amazingly not dead! Due to the damage reduction on his armor and a lucky low roll on the damage amount, Sun was able to survive with just under 100 HP! As there was less than 10 seconds left on the golem's immunity, Gii knew that they could definitely survive if he could just get them out of the golems attack range. As if right on cue, the cooldown on his blood whip ability had lifted and he immediately used it to pull Sun over to his side.

The golem, now having lost its attack target, began to look for the next thing it should attack. It seems their luck had not run out as Dan had used the moment he was given to retreat and now the closest player to the boss was actually Gii! The golem turned and started advancing towards him but Gii just stood there and kept a close eye on the timer above the golem's head.

3...

2...

1...

Seeing the timer drop to 0 and the barrier aura surrounding the golem dissipate into nothing, Gii gripped his sword tightly and dodged the incoming attack before unleashing a furious strike against the head of the boss.

[-860]

Gii knew that this golem had 75% resistance to all incoming attacks and in addition to that, there was also a 30% reduction due to the tier gap. Despite all of that, the raw damage output from the increase in Giis stats allowed him to overcome everything and drain the health of the boss to 0 in a single strike!

[Level up!]

[Level up!]

The group also received a notification right afterwards as the boss fell to the ground and disappeared into particles.

Congratulations! You have Cleared the Golem Caverns!

Almost immediately afterwards, Gii's stat buffs dissipated and everyone was able to let out a sigh of relief after escaping a difficult battle. They looked over and were able to see a pile of loot that was left behind at the location where the golem had been slain. A smile crept across their face as they wakled over and began to sift through the rewards.