“It’s here, I found it!” Liana called out to the others through the sandstorm. She stood in front of a tall snake statue with its tongue sticking out, one eye a glowing red ruby, the other eye socket empty. Darith, Jacob and Ryan all reached her within a few seconds, as did a few other players that had been following them closely on the quests through the Forgotten Sands.

“The caravan guys said that putting the jewel of the beast in its eye would lead the way out of the storm.” Darith said as others waited behind Liana.

“Let’s hope this is the last quest, I’m tired of this sand storm.” Ryan commented.

“No kidding,” Another player behind them said. Liana placed a red gem from her inventory into the eye socket of the snake. Suddenly there was a loud booming roar and the ground shook around their feet. The winds picked up for a few seconds until suddenly they completely stopped and all of the sand dropped out of the sky.

“Whoa, it stopped! The sandstorm completely stopped! I can see the whole area clearly!” Darith shouted excitedly, glancing at his map. “Even my map is working now.” He smiled.

“Finally, I’m tired of getting sand in my ears.” Ryan said.

“Same.” Jacob added, as others made similar comments while brushing sand out of their hair.

“Whoa, look at that!” A player called out, pointing some distance across the desert behind the snake statue. Standing in the middle of the desert under the scorching hot sun was a large ruined city, partially covered in sand.

“Incredible, this is the first time I’ve seen it! The Fyu’jin Ruins! Come on, World Traveler, hop in and let’s go! Who knows what treasures await!” The Caravan leader said, suddenly appearing with his wagon, camels and companions beside them.

Travel to Fyu’jin ruins?

Level 20-29

“Finally made it, and our level restriction will be almost gone.” Darith said as he and Lianna hopped in the wagon, Ryan and Jacob joining shortly after.

“About time!” Jacob said excitedly. After having finished all the quests in the area, both Jacob and Ryan had reached 20 and 22 respectively, while Liana hit 29 and Darith hit 30. They enjoyed the ride and rest they got in the wagon.

“Remember guys, our first priority is to find a spell to remove curses.” Darith said.

“How do you find a spell anyway?” Ryan asked curiously.

“I think bosses drop them, that’s how I got remove poison.” Liana shrugged.

“Hrm, so we lookin’ for a boss then?” Jacob asked.

“Guess so.” Darith replied.

“Cool, wonder what kinda monsters are gonna be in this place.” Jacob said excitedly. It wasn’t long before the wagon passed through a large archway and entered the ruined city. It looked just like something out of a movie, only they were able to walk around and explore it. All of their faces lit up with excitement as they hopped off the wagon, grabbing the only quest from the caravan leader.

“Quest says we need to find the entrance to the Forgotten Temple.” Ryan said.

“According to the desert key we got, that’s the next level area.” Darith said.

“Seems like there’s not much to do here then.” Jacob replied, sounding a bit disappointed.

“Mayiera wouldn’t tell us about this place being related to curses unless it really was, she’s an NPC after all. We’ll find something.” Darith said reassuringly as several more players started entering the city behind them.

“Let’s get started then!” Jacob shouted, and they ventured forth into the city. They didn’t get very far before they found a large black glowing stone sitting plain as day in the middle of the sandy streets.

“What’s that thing?” Liana asked.

“Not sure, treasure?” Ryan suggested as he started walking forward to pick it up.

“Analyze.” Darith casted on the gem.

Cursed Soul Gem - Level 22

Normal Monster, uses swipe and blinding sand attacks.

“Watch out, it’s a monster!” Darith shouted just in time to stop Ryan as the gem shot upward from the ground surrounded by sand which swirled and twirled around it until the sand took the form of a humanoid figure and started slashing its fingers out at Ryan.

“I got it.” Jacob said, unsheathing his sword and charging at it to cut it in half with ease, but the monster took no damage and turned to swipe him for 200 damage. “What the heck?” Jacob said as he was hit by a heal from Liana back to full health.

“Try the gem. Chain Fire!” Darith shouted, releasing a stream of 8 fireballs at the black gem in the sand figures chest. The gem exploded and the creature died.

“Ah, yeah, go figure.” Jacob said to himself.

“Those things seem pretty cool, wonder if I can learn to summon them like the skeletons.” Ryan commented.

“Now we know at least one type of monster around here, so watch out for glowing black gems on the ground.” Darith said. The others nodded and they continued onward. As more and more players arrived in the ruins, the group of four only got more and more lost. There were plenty of soul gem monsters to fight, varying in shape, size, and level, but aside from that there was nothing.

The ruined city had no building that stood out to them, nothing that resembled a forgotten temple, and none of the monsters were using curses. After an hour of wandering, discussing findings with other groups of players and Liana repeatedly looking at the time on her cell phone, they were still no closer to discovering where the temple was.

“Alright, it’s hot and I’m getting tired of seeing sand.” Ryan sighed as he leaned against the wall of a nearby building.

“We can’t give up, we have to find a curse removal skill!” Liana pleaded to him.

“Why do you need it so badly anyway?” He asked her, Darith ignoring the conversation and going deep into thought.

“It's a bit complicated... Someone I know got cursed by another player though, a very bad curse that’s going to kill them unless I remove it.” Liana said.

“Whoa, a death curse, those exist in this game?” Jacob asked surprised, to see Liana nod. “Damn man, now I wanna learn to remove curses too.” Ryan’s expression became more serious from Liana’s words as well, and looked to see Darith.

“You’re usually the genius game beater, you figure out anything?”

“I’m looking at the map of the ruins I have so far. I’ve leveled up my cartography quite a bit now and it’s showing me accurate details of the environment. I’m trying to see anything that stands out.” Darith said, moving his index finger over his map. He had opened a large window in front of his vision that only he could see and was panning around it by dragging his index finger.

“There’s no single building that stands out... Except, hrm.” Darith said as he looked at the building next to them. “There’s 5 symbols on the map that look like they represent towers, this building is one of them, but it’s not a tower at all.” He pointed across the street from where they were standing.

“Maybe it used to be a tower?” Liana suggested.

“We already checked inside. Just one of those soul gem things.” Ryan replied.

“I’ll check again just to be sure.” Darith said, running into the building. Liana followed without hesitation, as did Jacob, but Ryan walked rather slowly behind them. Inside it seemed like a normal house with several rooms, nothing on the walls and no form of furniture remaining, just piles of sand that had been blown in from the wind. Darith then ran up to the second floor, and it was completely roofless and wall-less.

“If this was a tower, it means the top fell off.” Darith said, walking to the edge of the 2nd floor to look down at the streets below, then panning over the city around them.

“Look, the house next to us, it didn’t have a second floor, right?” Liana said while pointing to a dark square room across from them. They could see inside it from where they stood because there was no wall, and the group of them all moved closer to get a better look.

“It looks like the walls are sideways...” Ryan commented.

“That must be it! That’s the top of this tower we’re standing on!” Darith said excitedly as he hopped over the gap between the buildings into the side-ways broken top half of the tower. It was difficult to traverse through the sideways building but eventually they hit a dead end room, lit scarcely by sunlight coming through a hole in the middle of the wall in front of them, which normally would’ve been the roof of the tower.

“Nothing, empty just like the rest.” Ryan sighed as Darith stepped forward into the room and made a weird clunk sound. They all looked at his feet to see a round golden metal gong that seemed to have broken off the roof.

“Is that a gong?” Jacob asked as Darith stepped off of it.

“It’s gotta be a secret or something, let’s see what it does!” Darith replied, and without hesitation he lifted his staff up and swung it downward at the center of the half-buried gong, It let out an odd ringing sound that silenced itself as it was unable to vibrate on the ground under sand.

“Gotta lift it up first.” Liana rolled her eyes at him.

“Right.” Darith nodded, stepping forward and trying to lift it up, but the gong was way heavier than expected, even despite the high strength stat Darith had.

“My strength is being brought down to only 30 in this map... Ugh, can you give me a hand?” Darith asked.

“Yeah, sure.” Jacob said, moving to help him lift it. “Oh man this thing is heavy, I’m also capped at 30.” he and Darith both struggled together, until finally Ryan joined in, and together they managed to get the gong standing upright.

“If this gong requires 90 strength to lift, and this area limits our strength to 30, that means we’d only be able to do this with at least 3 people no matter what our level is.” Darith said as they caught their breath.

“What’s your point?” Ryan asked.

“Whatever this gong is for, it's like the game wants to make sure we have a group before we ring it, so be ready.” Darith said, and the others nodded at him.

“I’ll ring it, are you guys ready?” Liana said, and the three boys nodded. She then hit the side of her fist into the center of the gong and it let out a loud ringing sound, it didn’t last very long, but long enough. Small engravings and symbols on the gong began to glow black, until suddenly a black light shot out from the gong out of the top of the tower, then upwards into the sky.

“Whoa, look!” Darith said as the boys dropped the gong and ran to a window in their ceiling to watch. The black light hovered over the center of the city for a few seconds, then disappeared. They all waited for something else to happen, but nothing did, and they heard the sound of several footsteps approaching from outside.

“What now?” Liana asked Darith.

“There is 5 of them on the map... Maybe we need to hit all 5 at the same time.” Darith suggested as they stepped in front of the open wall of the broken tower to see quite a few other players arriving in the streets below.

“What was that light?”

“Did you guys figure something out?”

“Aren’t those the Knights of Justice guys?” Different players called up to them.

“There’s no way we can hit all 5 at once, it took three of us just to lift one gong, the level restriction pretty much guarantees that doing that is impossible.” Ryan sighed as he glanced at the scorching sun for a moment again, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“If it’s just us, yeah... Think you can convince the other players here to work with us?” Darith asked Jacob, who smiled and hopped from the broken tower onto the open second floor of the neighboring building, then walked towards the ledge closest to the street in order to have the gathering crowd of players below see him clearly.

“Who here is on a quest to find the Forgotten Temple somewhere in these ruins? Show of hands please.” He called to them, and without hesitation they all put their arms up. “Just your luck, the Knights of Justice may have discovered the secret to these ruins, but to unlock it we will need your help.” He said, and all of the players below seemed to go quiet instantly.

“We’ll need four parties to pull this off, the players in each group will need to have a combined strength of 90 points. Once we can meet that criteria, we can go forward with the next step.”

“My group meets that criteria.” A dark skinned tall, muscular man said as he stepped forward. He had a large round wooden shield on his back and a small sword sheathed on his beginners belt.

“Chadwin, level 21, not bad. We’ll need need three more groups then.” Jacob said, watching over the groups as they started gathering together and discussing their stats to one another.

“Why do we need 90 strength?” One player asked.

“Once we’ve got all the groups my friend Darith, the Great Wizard, will explain the plan.”

“He’s really pushing these titles on us, huh?” Liana raised her eyebrows.

“Yep, that’s Jacob.” Darith chuckled back.

“Hope this plan works.” Ryan shrugged as he sat against one of the towers walls. “Otherwise they’ll probably think we’re a bunch of morons.”

“It’s gotta work, that light can’t be for nothing, right?” Darith replied, though he now started to doubt himself a bit.

“We’ve got it too!” A tall female orc with dark brown skin said as she stepped forward wielding her axe. Jacob noted her name as Ashley, a level 23.

“Do the players need to be in the same party?” One from below asked Jacob.

“No, and it doesn’t have to be just 5 players in each group, we just need 4 groups that have 90 strength.” Jacob replied.

“Okay, then if his group comes with ours we’ll have enough.” The Gorthan replied.

“We need 50 more strength in our group!” Another person called.

“I’ve got 30!”

“I’ve got 32!” Two players replied to them.

“Great, then with them we have enough as well.” The leader of the group called up to him.

“Perfect, that gives us 4 full groups with 90 strength. Darith, your up!” Jacob called to him, and he nervously hopped from the broken tower onto the roof with Jacob.

“I ah, well, my Charisma skill isn’t very high, so forgive me for not being good at speaking good.” Darith said as he nervously walked across the wall-less second floor.

“Just give us the plan.” One player shouted up to him.

“Al-alright. Using my mapping skills I was able to locate 5 special buildings in the city. My map displayed them as towers, but as you can see, there are no towers in this city, because they’re all ruined. This, right here, is one of the towers.” Darith pointed to where Liana and Ryan were standing, then looked back to see the crowd of players staring up at him silently, waiting for his next words. His heart skipped a beat as he glanced down at his feet, then remembered that it wasn’t his fat normal self they saw, but his nemothyne body with fox ears. He let out a sigh of relief to himself, then continued.

“Inside the Tower we found a gong, it took us a combined 90 strength to lift it, and ring it, and that was the cause of the light you all saw. We believe that in order to solve the puzzle of these ruins we’ll need to ring all 5 gongs at the same time, that is why we needed 4 more groups to go to the other 4 towers and ring the gongs all at the same time.” Darith said.

“And then what happens?” Chadwin asked from below.

“I’ve got no idea, this whole game is a mystery to me.” Darith replied nervously.

“Aint that the best part about it though? So what do you guys say, you in?” Jacob called to the players.

“Sounds like a better plan than just wandering around aimlessly.” Ashley shrugged.

“Yeah no kidding, been here for over an hour now.” Another player said.

“I’m in. Where are the other towers?” Chadwin asked.

“Alright, leaders of each group please come up here.” Darith said, and without hesitation all 4 players heading the groups used jump skills to hop up on top of the building next to Darith. Chadwin, Ashley, a Gorthan and a female Nemothyne with raccoon ears and tail.

“Chadwin’s group should head that way. You see the intersection on that side of the city?” Darith pointed across the ruined buildings. “The one with the window missing its top half, and no roof?”

“I see it.” replied after squinting his eyes.

“The broken tower should be around there.”

“Got it.” He nodded.

“Ashley’s group can head straight north, to the tower there, near those two buildings leaning on each other.” He said, and she nodded to him as she followed his pointing finger to spot it. He quickly gave similar directions to the other two players.

“How will we know when to ring the gongs?” Chadwin asked just as they were about to head out.”

“Do all of the groups have their own staff user, or spell user?” Darith asked after thinking for a moment.

“We’ve got one.” Chadwin replied.

“Us too.” Ashley added.

“Same.” The other two party leaders said.

“When you find the gong, have your casters shoot a waterbolt or two into the sky. Once I see all four waterbolts, I’ll fire a firebolt up right here. When you see it, hit the gong.”

“Sounds good, let’s do it then.” Chadwin said, hopping off the roof and running in the direction of his tower, the others following suit.

“What should the rest of us players do?” Some left over players asked, still standing in the street.

“You guys can act as escorts for those guys, help them find the gongs faster and clear out any monsters for them!” Darith suggested and they all nodded excitedly, everyone seemingly eager to be a part of Darith’s plan.

“Alright guys, execute Knight of Justice Plan: Ring the Gongs!” Jacob shouted, causing the players to cheer as they all headed out in different directions.

“Phew, that went a lot better than expected.” Darith let out a sigh of relief as the last of the players left the area.

“That was awesome Darith! You came up with a good plan with all those guys so fast.” Liana cheered.

“That was nothin’, this guy used to come up with all sorts of crazy strategies for bosses and stuff.” Jacob said as he patted the little fox boy on the back.

“I’m surprised they all listened.” Darith replied.

“Well of course they’d listen, they’re all players just like us. This is really starting to feel like an MMO, but it's so much more.” Ryan said as he stood up and stretched his legs.

“It’s incredible though. We’re really standing inside the desert ruins of a video game, not with just a controller.”

“At this point, I’m too afraid to ask how it’s all possible.” Liana added as they enjoyed the view of the ruined desert city. Just then they spotted a waterbolt shoot to the sky from the Direction of Chadwin’s tower.

“Look, they found one gong already! My plan is working!” Darith said.

“Why you soundin’ so surprised?”

“I wasn’t even sure there’d be gongs in the other towers. There’s also something else, you notice how I sent them north, south, west and east?” Darith said.

“Yeah... Our tower is right in the middle?” Ryan asked.

“Yep... So whatever those gongs do, it's most likely going to happen here.” Darith grinned.

“Heh, smart thinking.” Jacob grinned. Just then, 2 more waterbolts shot up, then the final one a minute later.

“It’s time, let’s lift it again!” Darith said as he and Jacob hopped back into the tower. Using all their strength and groaning along the way, they lifted up the gong. “Ready to hit it?” he asked Liana.

“Yeah... But, I was thinking...” she started saying, but Darith didn’t wait for her to speak, the gong was too heavy to hold up long.

“Firebolt!” He shouted, shooting the bolt out of a nearby window up to the sky. “Hit it now!” He shouted, and she struck the gong as hard as she could just like before. It rang loud for a few seconds, began glowing black, then once again shot its light into the sky.

“Let’s go see!” Ryan said excitedly as the boys dropped the gong and ran out of the broken tower back onto the neighboring roof. As their black light reached the sky above them, the lights from the four other gongs shot up as well. They were not perfectly in sync, but they all managed to eventually gather together directly above Darith and the others. They all bent their necks back to watch what would happen.

“You were saying something?” Darith asked Liana as they watched the combined black glow of the 5 lights start growing bigger.

“You said that because of the level limit it would require more than one person to lift each gong, right?” Liana asked.

“Yeah?” Darith replied.

“And then there are 5 gongs, so it would require about 5 groups working together, right? Like 25 people?” Liana asked, and Darith quickly realized what she was getting at, as did Jacob and Ryan. They watched as the black light began to form into the shape of a black gem, not unlike the gems they’d been seeing scattered across the ruins, when suddenly they all received a debuff.

Raid Boss Area

Inside a raid boss area, the use of Keys and Return skills are disabled, as is attacking other players. Raid Boss areas can only be exited once the Raid Boss has been defeated.

They all read the debuff and looked at each other nervously, watching as a large dome grew outward from the giant soul crystal in the sky until it covered the entirety of the Fyu’jin ruins.

“That’d mean that the game was making sure there were at least 25 players nearby to progress... Because...” Liana said nervously as she saw a health bar and a name appear above the giant black crystal in the sky.

“Raid boss.” Darith grinned nervously, holding his staff out in a fighting stance, as Jacob unsheathed his sword and Ryan summoned his 3 skeletons. The black gem then dropped straight down to the ground landing on the street not far from where they stood. It made a loud thunk sound and left a huge crater in the sandy stone streets of the ruins, sending up a puff of dust and sand.

It then began to wobble a bit and rise up, shaking the ground around them as large amounts of sand began to fly up from their surroundings, swirling around the gem and blinding their vision for a good 15 seconds until the Gem had finished gathering sand to take on its form.

It took the shape of a giant, fully armored creature, the sand changing color to show silver shoulder pads carved in the shape of eagle’s faces, large leather strapped boots with silver knee pads and highly detailed and engraved golden armor. On its back was a very, very large two handed sword, and in place of a head, the giant black gem sat in on its neck, a small ring of sand rotating around it. The giant was at least 5 stories tall, and as it took a step, its footsteps echoed loudly throughout the city.

Ancient Temple Watcher - Level 30 Raid Boss(?)

“What’s it say about bosses?” Darith said to himself as he hastily hit the question mark with his index finger.

Enemies that are shown as Raid Bosses are extremely difficult and should only be challenged by a large group of organized players.

“This game is really good at giving warnings too late.”

“No kidding.” Jacob said, making a loud gulping sound as he swallowed the saliva in his mouth.

“Analyze!” Darith shouted, aiming the spell at the Temple Watcher. “My analyze skill is too low to tell me his abilities, but it does tell me how much health he has.” Darith said as his eyes opened wide.

“How much?” Ryan asked.

“Just over 10 million...” Darith said in disbelief.