Nick realized that the world outside had grown completely quiet over the last few minutes. That the chittering had vanished shortly after the moon set. Keeping one eye on the pit, he walked over to the great stained-glass window and looked out over the bog.

Try as he might, he couldn’t see a single swarmling anywhere, and the screams of their prey had gone silent as well. They must have headed back underground, he let out a long sigh of relief.

The trapped creature began to gyrate with increasingly frantic energy, as if it was desperate to escape. It must be afraid of the sunrise, Nick deduced. The System said they would all be gone by the break of day.

He suspected that sunlight would be fatal to the trapped swarmling. That when the sun rose high enough to shine through the window and into the pit, it would kill the foul thing. But he wasn’t inclined to wait or take the chance that he was wrong.

Now that the swarm had vanished, he had a way of dealing damage that wouldn’t attract dozens of monstrosities that he had no chance of overcoming. After a long and terrifying ordeal, Nick’s spells were back on the table. Besides, he suspected that he would get more experience and essence if he defeated the creature himself, rather than letting mother nature do the heavy lifting.

Nick was tempted to use piercing ray, but thought better of it after a long moment of reflection while looking down at his prey. Physical attacks don’t seem to do much damage, and there’s a chance that the ray will wind up digging the thing an escape route if it survives. Mana darts directly attack vital energy, so they should be effective, even if I have to cast a lot of them to finish it off.

Before he committed to spending the rest of his mana, Nick decided to give it a test run. If his spell proved to be ineffective, he would just wait for the sun after all.

Mana dart, he summoned his will and focused. Two seconds later, a silvery dart shimmered into existence and began orbiting his head. The spell threw shifting shadows across the building, offering Nick a better look into the pit and its prisoner.

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The instant that his spell coalesced, the black goo went nuts, redoubling its efforts to penetrate the soil, occasionally launching a pseudopod Nick’s way that fell just short of reaching the rim of the hole. Since the creature could obviously sense the mana in his spell, Nick decided that he needed to reduce its chances of dodging before he fired his dart.

He began throwing rocks and various bits of rubble. The swarmling dodged the first few, but then a big chunk of tile hit it square in the middle, pinning it against the earth. Before it could slide out from under, Nick visualized his trajectory and fired his dart, sending the missile down into the pit at top speed.

The living liquid tried to pull out of the way, but it couldn’t get out from under the tile in time. The silvery dart hit it right in the center. Nick expected his spell to sink into the creature’s tissue, like it had every time before. But that was not what happened.

What happened was that the dart exploded, sending bits of dirt flying into the air. It wasn’t a big eruption, more like the pure mana comprising the spell and whatever the swarmling was made of had reacted violently.

The blast tore a chunk free from the black puddle, leaving a smoking, bubbling hole where the silver spell had touched its flesh. Nick wasn’t sure why the dart had behaved so strangely. Perhaps it was a natural interaction between the pure mana of his spell and whatever type the swarmling had an affinity for. The result was promising regardless.

Now certain that his attack would work, he summoned three darts at once, pouring as much mana into them as he could. He sent all three at the swarmling, which had freed itself from the debris and begun desperately seeking any escape. It managed to dodge a dart by throwing its mass to one side, but the other two caught it before it could squirm away.

Another blast ensued, this one big enough to rattle the windows, tearing ragged chunks off the swarmling. The otherworldly horror was still alive, but it was clearly grievously wounded. Nick poured all his remaining mana into a final round of darts.

He took aim and fired, alight with a visceral thrill of satisfaction at bringing an end to the otherworldly entity that had nearly claimed his life. This time, the swarmling was too weak to get out of the way.

All three darts hit the creature dead center. When the dust cleared from the air, only smoking flecks of black goo remained. They quickly dissolved, leaving nothing behind but a foul-smelling smoke that made Nick want to puke his guts out and stung his eyes.