It was always strange when the white threads of Sacrifice alighted on me instead of any external target. Always gave me a weird feeling like I was Sacrificing myself somehow.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Sight Flayer Curse [1] / 1 [Minor] Self-inflicted Affliction from an Ally [2]. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward [1]: Vitality raised by 5 ranks until curse-giver is defeated.

  Reward [2]: Shared Vitality established between caster and ally for 20 minutes. ]

  I stared at the second reward. The first was more or less expected, but it was the second that caught me off-guard. In the midst of our encounter with the Sight Flayer, I had to think rapidly.

  “It worked!” Cerea said.

  I nodded. But we didn’t have time to bask in the success of our little plan. Ugnash wouldn’t be able to hold that thing off forever.

  “It more than worked,” Khagnio muttered. He was probably feeling the strange, ethereal tether between us that tugged on my will. Our will? I wasn’t sure. And there was no time to test things. “Let’s repeat the trick till that thing’s dead.”

  “I think I’ve got a better idea,” I said.

  It was a testament to the experiences we had gone through together that, instead of scoffing, Khagnio regarded me with excited curiosity.

  “What have you got, mageling?”

  “Take this,” I said.

  I pulled out one of my knives from my belt. As I handed it to Khagnio, I pushed in as many threads of Gravity I could in a short time. I didn’t turn on Infusion yet, though.

  “Chuck it at the Sight Flayer, please,” I said.

  It wasn’t as simple as I was making it sound, of course. With all the tentacles waving in the air, hitting the monster with a throwing knife wasn’t going to be easy.

  But Khagnio proved his worth as a rogue by finding the right opening and then slamming the knife from a distance into an open eye of the Sight Flayer. It screamed in that strange tone again. More importantly, the revenge activated once more.

  Except this time, it was faced with extra Vitality courtesy of myself. Through the strange link established by the Sacrifice reward, I was able to will a chunk of my Vitality to Khagnio, which helped him tank the returning damage from the monster a lot better than before. A few new wounds and blood spurts popped up, but it was much less severe than last time.

  “Boiling, blistering Pits,” Khagnio muttered after a little wince. “Why do you have something crazy like that, mageling?”

  I didn’t answer. My focus was on our monstrous enemy. More specifically, on the fact that we needed to take care of it as soon as we could. I could have tried using Field Manipulation to lock it down, but then, I’d be the one receiving the backlash. Better to sequester the damage to people with higher Vitality.

  Of course, the Sight Flayer wasn’t taking it lying down. It shrieked and cried out, several of its sparking tendrils wrapping around the knife to tug it free.

  That wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were more tricks up its sleeve we had to be wary of. Those included a storm of the other tentacles lashing out everywhere, and several of its remaining eyes shooting out beams of the same sparking energy adorning its tendrils.

  We had to scramble to dodge those.

  Khagnio had it easy with his rogue powers and training, but Cerea and I were desperately trying to avoid getting hit. Even then, a few tentacles managed to strike my armour.

  It was untenable, but I was already working on it.

  “Ugnash!” I shouted. “Jump on it!”

  He had been about to rush the monster to pummel it directly while still tanking its hits, but he paused at my voice. “Ugh, I hate this.”

  Ugnash didn’t hesitate any further. He leaped straight up at the Sight Flayer. The monster screeched and tried to react in time by drawing all its tendrils closer to push back Ugnash from thumping down on it, but it had forgotten a simple thing.

  I was still running a flood of threads through the gear of my party’s tank.

  Infusion acted fast. The mana threads I had pushed into Ugnash’s gear came to life, becoming a deep void purple, turning the entire huge Rakshasa several times heavier than he already was.

  He crushed through it all. The Sight Flayer didn’t even get to shriek. Ugnash and his immense weight shattered through the wall of tendrils before quashing the monster to bloody, gooey pulp, its brain-like body almost exploding outwards as it split apart under the stress of the big Rakshasa’s amplified weight.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Vitality Attribute has risen by one Rank.

  Vitality: Silver VII ]

  I wasn’t paying much attention to the notification because the monster’s body was releasing a stream of black motes into the air. Right. That was another thing about Sight Flayers. After death, the remainder of their essence went up to join nearby monsters, giving them a remnant of their fallen comrade’s strength. Annoying.

  Thankfully, there weren’t any more of them nearby. The black motes dissipated to nothing. A part of me wondered about Sacrificing them, but that was a long shot since I had a feeling the Weave wouldn’t allow me to claim ownership of them.

  I was a little too distracted by the remnant of the Sight Flayer to notice that I had released the extra weight I had added to Ugnash.

  “Ugh,” he muttered as he stepped away from the mess.

  Or tried to. He took one step, hand reaching out to steady himself on one of the walls, but the eye there snapped its stony eyelid closed. Ugnash yanked his hand away with a yelp, before slipping and falling on his ass.

  “Steady there,” Khagnio said in between chortles. “You big lug.”

  “My bad,” I said.

  “Just get the tendrils,” Ugnash said.

  “And don’t forget the mana core,” Cerea added.

  “Ugh.”

  Turned out, the main part of the dead Sight Flayer that they wanted to harvest were the tendrils and the mana core, both of which were recoverable despite our strategy to take it down. It took about twenty minutes of work, but we had soon gathered the egg-sized mana core that was basically another stone eye, and also a bunch of the tendrils.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “You’re lucky they aren’t sparking anymore,” Ugnash said, having cleaned up his boots so he wasn’t slipping and sliding any longer. He and Khagnio had a fair share of the health potions, so the both of them were now good as new. “Those things hurt.”

  Ugnash’s words turned out to be a mix of prophetic and ironic. As we travelled farther on, we soon came to another tunnel. We had to stop when we reached it, though.

  The entire tunnel was chock full of the tendrils.

  “Um…” I was about to ask how that was even possible since we couldn’t exactly see one of the Sight Flayers, but Cerea butted in first.

  “There’s no way I’m fitting all that in my Dimensional Storage,” she said.

  “We don’t need all that.” Ugnash stepped forward unerringly. “Just need to cut our way through.”

  We proceeded to do just that. First though, we needed to crush some more runes to protect ourselves against the sparking energy of the tendrils. I also made sure to perform another Ritual of Precaution to ensure we suffered as little as possible.

  [ Ritual

  You have performed 1 [Minor] Ritual of Precaution. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Vitality raised by 4 ranks and resistance to afflictions raised by 40% for 40 minutes. ]

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Rune of Ailment Ward. Windfall bonus activated.

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Rune of Regeneration. Windfall bonus activated.

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Rune of Lifesteal. Windfall bonus activated.

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Ritual Reward. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Aura of Ailment Ward negating all damage from [Minor] statuses and debilitating effects engaged.

  Reward: Aura of Regeneration restoring health, stamina, and mana at a [Minor] rate engaged.

  Reward: Aura of Lifesteal restoring all lost energy upon enemy death engaged.

  Reward: Vitality raised by 5 ranks, resistance to afflictions raised by 50%, and Agility raised by 5 ranks for 30 minutes.

  Reward: All applicable effects engaged in a radius of 12 meters for 3 hours and 20 minutes. ]

  We probably should have used a couple of those before the Sight Flayer fight, but we had intended to see just what a baseline battle would look like. While Khagnio and Ugnash had faced both monsters before, neither had fought them together and it had been a while since their last encounter. I didn’t blame them for not remembering a ton.

  At least it wasn’t difficult hacking through the tendrils. Messy, sure, but we made good time.

  “If you’re wondering,” Cerea said with a knowing look. “And I know you are, Ross—the tendrils come from within the walls because there are Sight Flayers inside the walls too.”

  “I figured,” I muttered. “Is that why there are eyes on the walls too? Except, no eyes on these walls, I suppose.”

  “Yes. They’re essentially stages of growth. The eyes are like the seeds. They can germinate on the walls, then dig deeper to sprout within the dungeon walls. Eventually, they emerge in their Sight Flayer stage like the one we fought. The flying ones we’ve been talking about are like the pre-germination stage of the seed-transfer, if you will.”

  “The way you talk about the Sight Flayers makes it sound like that’s not their final form…”

  “Astute again, Ross. You’re right, because that’s not the final stage of their growth.”

  She didn’t elaborate on what said final stage was supposed to be because we had finally managed to hack our way through the flood of tendrils to come to another opening. Khagnio had held up his hand again to halt us.

  “There’s more of them,” he said.

  I wondered if he had ranked up whatever perception-style Attribute or Aspect he had because he hadn’t been this forthcoming in the last dungeon. “More? As in, more than one?”

  “Yes. Three.”

  Wait. I just realized he hadn’t perceived them so much as just swooped forward with his Aspect of Stealth to take a peek and then return, all before I was even aware that he was gone. Sneaky, sneaky Scalekin.

  “Simple strategy,” Ugnash said. “We repeat what Ross pulled off with the last one, just as fast as we can. Cerea can provide backup from the rear. Your Aspects won’t hurt them, but you can still distract them if they try to interrupt us, because we’ll be forced to tackle them one at a time.”

  We couldn’t think of a better plan just then, and we also didn’t want to spend forever there. Plus, with all the buffs from the runes that I had crushed active for several hours more, we were empowered enough to theoretically take on several at once.

  Theoretically.

  “One second,” I said before we rushed off.

  I crushed the other style of runes still left and channelled Sacrifice while I did so.

  [ Sacrifice

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Rune of Augmented Power. Windfall bonus activated.

  You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Rune of Mana Firepower. Windfall bonus activated.

  Reward: Aura of Augmented Power doubling all physical damage dealt and the effectiveness of associated Augmentations engaged,

  Reward: Aura of Mana Firepower doubling all magical damage dealt and the effectiveness of associated Augmentations engaged.

  Reward: All effects engaged in a radius of 12 meters for 3 hours and 20 minutes. ]

  Thanks to Sacrifice ranking up so high, the radius of the auras was larger, which meant we’d have less trouble keeping everyone in range of the buffs. I took a deep breath and followed the others into the next chamber.

  Khagnio’s Stealth meant we had already selected our targets and the sequence we needed to follow. I already had Gravity threads running through the knives I had handed Khagnio and through Ugnash’s gear as well. Both their Power Attributes were high enough that some extra added weight was nothing to them.

  “Left first,” Ugnash said.

  We targeted the Sight Flayer on the left. Well, the three of us did. Cerea hung back just a little to make sure the other two monsters weren’t a problem.

  Like last time, there was one Sight Flayer that was simply floating in the chamber, probably awaiting the arrival of pesky intruders like my party. That was the one we targeted. Its two companions were embedded in the rock wall, surrounded by stone-lidded eyes that cracked open as we entered with a rush.

  The monster didn’t even get the chance to do anything. It was just starting to shoot out its sparking tendrils, but Ugnash already had his red, tanking aura active, drawing the majority of its attention towards him. The few tendrils that reached him were all rebuffed off his defence.

  Only a handful got to him because Khagnio was already in position. He moved faster than any of us before chucking a knife at the monster with practiced motion. It struck true.

  I activated Infusion on the blade.

  The monster’s piercing cry at being stabbed from range increased in pitch as several hundred pounds of gravitational force dragged it straight to the ground. It crashed so hard that a little puff of dust clouded up at the contact.

  Ugnash was already leaping. Our whole schtick was hard and fast. Khagnio had taken care of the fast part. Now, it was Ugnash’s turn with the hard.

  Or rather, my turn.

  As his leap reached its downward arc to crushingly land on his target, I focused on Infusion again, increasing Ugnash’s effective weight by several times its original amount. Just as with the first Sight Flayer, he landed with a squelching finality. The monster’s body was pulped into a bloody, disgusting mess.

  We didn’t even get to enjoy our quick victory. Didn’t even have time to marvel that we had taken out a Sight Flayer in half a minute at most.

  Even as the monster died, motes of black energy lifted off its body to add its remnant to the ones nearby. Right. After the death of the last Sight Flayer, there hadn’t been other monsters to make use of its remnant. This time, however, there were two more Sight Flayers all too close.

  Thankfully, it didn’t matter.

  “Incoming!” Cerea yelled.

  She didn’t need to. The rest of us were already on it.

  Khagnio had turned to his next target as soon as the first knife was successfully embedded. His part on the first monster was done. Regardless of whether Ugnash and I succeeded or not, he could—he had to—turn to the other emerging monsters.

  So it was that by the time I turned to the next Sight Flayer after deactivating Infusion on Ugnash, I was using Infusion again.

  The second knife stabbed into the big eye in the middle of the second Sight Flayer’s body turned massively heavy. With a now-familiar but still weird cry, the monster fell hard enough to make it crack, its tendrils whipping and lashing out.

  Poor bastard didn’t even get to use the newfound power it had gained from its companion’s death.

  Ugnash’s turn. He was a little slow, thanks to the mess the first Sight Flayer had left on him. But he didn’t need to run over the ground. He could just jump straight from his location to land on the next target, which he proceeded to do. And just as before, I weighed him down as much as I could before he connected with the second Sight Flayer with a heavy, fatal squash.

  Just over a minute, as far as I was keeping track, and we had already dealt with not one but two Sight Flayers. This had to be record time.

  Unfortunately, the last one was already active and needed only that little bit of time to cause trouble.

  Cerea had tried her lightning, going by some of the charred, smoky bits on the monster. She had successfully distracted it from interfering with our fight against the other two.

  But she had failed to repel it. The monster had grown strong through the remnants, and now, it had her in its clutches. Several of the tendrils had wrapped around her arm and legs and body, slowly constricting the life out of her as her skin turned purple. Worse, it was flashing its sparking energy, virulent magical power driving through all the tendrils to burn Cerea alive.

  Khagnio was attempting to throw more knives, but the monster’s remaining tentacles just lashed them out of the air. Ugnash and I were too far behind to get to Cerea.

  And yet, through the whole mess, even as my heart rate soared, she hadn’t looked panicked once. Cerea hardly even looked troubled.

  When all the monster’s eyes turned to her at once, glowing as they were about to fire off those lasers I had seen on the first one, Cerea just flashed her Aspect of Dimensions. A swirl of monochromatic threads danced over her face, leaving behind one of the reflective masks she had purchased at the temple.

  The next second, the monster fired the energy beams from its eyes.