Zac

Zac, repeatedly designated the Evil Necromancer Zac, is an undead spellcaster who imprisons the souls of Antelope Village and turns the dead of the centaur palace into restless spectres. He is first pursued through an extended main quest and later fought as the Level 50 Yellow-Gold boss at the top of Centaur Castle, where his experimental skeleton and uninterruptible area damage produce the game's first Yellow-Gold boss clear. (Chapters 64–76 and 142–158)

Biography

Lone Desert Smoke and Soaring Swords

Emmy first identifies the target as the evil Necromancer Zac and sends the party to the Cave of Bones to free Antelope Village's imprisoned souls. Zac does not personally appear there: his skeleton servants call him their lord, while the apparent final opponent is the fallen knight Shurian. Killing Shurian releases the villagers and completes that stage, but Stark immediately reveals that Zac has escaped and remains a threat, changing the objective from rescue to pursuit. Much later, the centaur chief Maya locates him in the ruins of Centaur Castle and accuses him of disturbing the royal dead and creating the spectres attacking her people. (Chapters 64–76 and 142–143)

At the castle's top floor, Zac is still channeling power into a Gigantic Experimental Skeleton and says that he needs living souls to complete it. He instantly restores the construct from zero to one million health, rides on its shoulder, and attacks the party while the skeleton's persistent Decaying Abyss consumes the available floor. Once the construct falls, Zac enters direct combat with much stronger Shadow Arrows and Darkness Amplifying. At twenty percent health he begins chaining uninterruptible Shadow Bursts across the whole group, forcing Han Ying Xue to abandon general healing and sustain only herself and Zhang Yang after the others spend their remaining damage and die. The pair outlast his area damage by the margin of a mana potion and secure the first Yellow-Gold boss clear. (Chapters 155–157)

Zac's death completes both the main quest and the centaurs' defense quest, ends that outbreak of undead attacks, and yields the party its first large Yellow-Gold haul. As a dungeon boss, however, he is repeatable rather than permanently removed: Centaur Palace bosses respawn every seven days. The group returns whenever possible for his Level 50 equipment; as their levels and gear rise, the palace run contracts from five or six days to a single night, changing Zac from a near-exhausting progression wall into a farm target. (Chapters 157–158, 177, 179, 182, 193, and 209)

Appearance and personality

Zac is an undead figure shorter than one meter, dressed in a black robe and carrying a staff taller than his body. Beneath the hood, his face is dry and deflated, covered in wrinkles and pimples, with yellowed teeth; despite his size, his features show that he was human rather than a dwarf while alive. His staff emits dark magic during the fight and is described as fiery red when it falls from his hand at death. (Chapters 155–157)

He is sadistic, theatrical, arrogant, and unusually responsive for a boss NPC. Zac delights in fear and helpless prey, calls the experimental skeleton his “darling,” and threatens to use the party's bones to build another one. He continuously boasts and taunts, even improvising an insult when Fatty Han challenges him, but grows impatient and escalates to area attacks when the party survives longer than expected. (Chapters 155–157)

Abilities and gameplay

Zac is a Level 50 Yellow-Gold undead boss with two million health and one million mana. He has very high armor—estimated above two hundred before defense reduction—so fast physical off-hand attacks can fall to a single point of damage. His encounter has two functional stages: while the Gigantic Experimental Skeleton lives he supports it from above, and after it collapses he lands and fights as the primary boss. (Chapters 155–157)

Necromancy and the Gigantic Experimental Skeleton

Zac creates restless spectres from the centaur palace's dead and maintains an unfinished giant skeleton with channeled dark power. When engaged, he restores the construct's entire one-million-health bar through rapid one-hundred-thousand-point healing ticks in about half a second, too quickly for healing reduction to be applied. He then floats to its shoulder and launches random Shadow Arrows for about one thousand damage while directing the construct. (Chapters 142 and 155)

The skeleton is an elite undead minion rather than Zac's transformed body. Its scythe causes heavy basic damage with split and knockdown effects, while its control immunity prevents Charge from stunning it. Decaying Abyss creates a roughly five-meter dark circle that deals one thousand Shadow damage every three seconds until a target leaves; new circles appear at intervals under ten seconds and do not disappear until the skeleton dies. The party must therefore kill the armored construct before its overlapping zones consume the fifty-meter-square floor. (Chapter 155)

Shadow Arrow and Darkness Amplifying

After the skeleton falls, Zac's Shadow Arrow rises to roughly three times its support-phase damage and is cast about once every three seconds. Darkness Amplifying targets an opponent for ten seconds, doubling that target's outgoing damage but also increasing damage received by fifty percent. This makes the tank more dangerous to Zac while simultaneously turning the next three Shadow Arrows into a healing emergency. The effect is not presented as a simple buff for the party; its offensive benefit is inseparable from its survival cost. (Chapter 156)

Zac's armor remains an important defense during this stage. Five layers of Cripple Defense materially improve physical damage, but swift secondary weapons still struggle, so the group relies heavily on Zhang Yang's armor reduction and stronger individual hits. The corpus does not specify a cooldown for Darkness Amplifying or a complete numerical defense value, only the demonstrated mitigation and its interaction with the party's weapons. (Chapter 156)

Shadow Burst

At approximately twenty percent health, Zac begins a two-second Shadow Burst cast that cannot be interrupted by Crash Magic. Each burst deals about 2,500 Shadow damage across the party, reduced to 2,000 on Zhang Yang and 1,875 on the Defender Endless Starlight by their mitigation, and Zac immediately repeats the spell. The attack is not described with a range or cooldown; in the enclosed encounter, it functions as continuous party-wide damage. (Chapters 156–157)

The counter is resource triage rather than a mechanical interrupt. Han Ying Xue focuses Healing Bond on herself and Zhang Yang while the rest of the group dies after contributing as much damage as possible. Zhang Yang cycles personal heals, damage reduction, item recovery, potions, and life-steal so her mana lasts long enough. This strategy succeeds on the first clear but also shows Shadow Burst's limit: it applies static attrition rather than increasing damage, so sufficiently efficient healing and focused damage can race it. (Chapter 157)

Relationships

• Emmy: The dead Antelope Village girl whose plea begins the quest to free Zac's imprisoned victims. She names him in the original objective even though he is no longer in the Cave of Bones when the party arrives. (Chapters 64–76)
• Maya Kukulo: The centaur chief who discovers Zac in her people's ruined palace and sends Zhang Yang to kill him for turning its dead into spectres. His defeat ends the immediate undead invasion and raises Zhang Yang's centaur reputation to Worship. (Chapters 142 and 158)
• Zhang Yang: The player who follows Zac across both quest stages, identifies the encounter's damage races, and survives the final Shadow Burst phase to kill him. (Chapters 64–76 and 142–158)
• Han Ying Xue: The healer whose triage makes the first kill possible. She preserves herself and Zhang Yang through the repeated party-wide damage until Zac falls. (Chapter 157)
• Gigantic Experimental Skeleton: Zac's undead creation and “darling.” He completes and directs it with captured souls, but its destruction forces him to descend and fight personally. (Chapters 155–156)

Items

• Fiery red staff: Zac's visible casting focus, taller than his body. It channels his dark spells and falls away when he dies; the corpus does not explicitly identify it as the separately listed Harbinger Staff reward. (Chapters 155–157)
• Harbinger Staff: A Level 50 Yellow-Gold staff with 1,340–1,540 magic damage among Zac's first-clear drops. (Chapter 158)
• Other first-clear loot: The initial haul includes the Dragon Tooth Battle Axe, Magician's Brooch, Helm of Eternal Darkness, seven Gray-Silver pieces, seventeen Green-Copper pieces, and three class skill books. Later kills yield fewer top-tier pieces, but players continue farming Zac for Level 50 equipment. (Chapters 158, 179, 182, and 209)