Advancing through the nest had suddenly become a lot slower. Knowing these brix might use other types of magic as well made us wary. Sure, Liam was an excellent counter to shadow magic, but what else might they use? What if one of them suddenly spewed fire on us? Or frost?

The mission had gone from daunting to straight up dangerous. But brix were also vengeful. If we didn’t finish this now, they’d be coming after us. So we had to advance.

Every minute or two, one of the things would dive at us from inside the cave. We dispatched each of the creatures methodically, and swiftly. We had an advantage in numbers, for now, and we leveraged it.

And as one creature after the other fell, none of them showed any strange abilities anymore. It made us tense up even more. We hadn’t seen any of them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Eventually, as it was always going to happen, we encountered more and more of the things. It was a nest, after all. We never expected numbers to be in our favour. But the issue with having them more densely packed was that a single scream would attract half a dozen more of the things.

We had to turn to kiting them sooner than we would’ve liked. It was a mix of strategies we used, usually involving some form of ranged attack and retreat, to pull the monsters away, picking them off one by one.

For some time, it worked. Liam would take an arrow with a string around it, wrap it in shadow, and drag it along the floor. A swift wrap around one of the brix’ legs, then a tug from Emilia, and we could dispatch the monsters before they knew what hit them, attacking all at once.

But it was also extremely time consuming, and slowed our progress to a crawl. Especially since we had to clear the threads, which would lure out multiple monsters, then take them on one after another, and go back to clearing threads.

After just a few hours, all of us were already sweating and panting. Wasting so much Qi before the fights even started was becoming a larger drain than just charging in upfront. I knew Marie realized the same thing, but she still didn’t change her orders. So we went on for another hour, before we finally needed to stop.

Liam couldn’t enter the shadows anymore. He’d spent a bit over five hours almost constantly submerged, dipping in and out whenever he needed to, and it had used all his Qi. Casting the technique again would put him at risk.

“Alright, Fio, you’re taking the lead,” Marie quickly ordered, and I nodded. It made sense. Sure, Marie may have been better at seeing and scouting, but I was quite a bit better at actually defending myself if one of the monsters noticed. In a one on one scenario, at least.

So, I walked in further. When a brix sprung at me, all I needed to do was block a strike, and dodge a second, before it was turned into a pincushion by my comrades.

Slowly, bit by bit, as the ground sloped down, there was less moss. The greenery gave way to cold, damp stone. A few patches of iridescent fungus began sprouting, and perhaps they were even cultivated by the brix for their young. Or just to see; the dim light the mushroom emitted would be enough for the monsters to see with.

At least it made their threads glint. I was… slightly less careful than Liam in how I approached them, clearing a generous area around me by swinging my spear. Whenever the light caught on another thread, I would cut it away, and simply walk carefully otherwise.

And so, little by little, we’d made it down the slope. We encountered another mutated brix, using lightning magic. It made itself faster and gave me a strong zap once, enough to leave my skin smoking when it died after.

Though after that unexpected encounter, we made it through the remainder of the cave somewhat fine. The most brix we had to face at once had been four, which still let us frontliners mostly hold them off, as damage came in from behind.

Finally, when the day was probably nearing its end up above - I could only guess, since we were too deep underground to get any sunlight - the cave opened up. This was the real nest, up until now we’d only been heading through an entrance.

You could generally tell when something led to a nest by a couple things. The most telltale sign was the amount of energy leaking from them and going to them. Nests breathed. Almost like they were alive, they’d pull in Qi and Mana and whatever else floats in the air, then burst it out as well.

Like some kind of twisted cultivation.

That was why generally higher levelled parties took them on. We were at right around the minimum people would recommend to go face a nest, and even then, telling where the entrance to it was hadn’t been very hard at all.

Seeing it? That was different entirely.

When the cave opened up to a large cavern, I had expected it to be bustling with brix. Expected it to be full of the creatures. What I decidedly hadn’t been expecting was the horrendous stench that came from there.

The nest was a grotesque thing, an… amalgamation of crystals, flesh, stone, and plants. At the core of it all, there was a spherical orb, nestled in between structures of liquid bone, deforming and changing to accommodate the sphere as it moved.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

And the heart of it all did move. The orb would expand and contract, with each instance sending a shudder throughout the entirety of the nest’s mass, bits and pieces of it shifting, melding, and most importantly devouring.

Animal parts nearby would disappear into the mass. Dozens of brix were throwing the results of their hunts at it. Plants, animals, anything that had once been alive was fed to the creature in droves, then disappeared within it. And then, a part of it would warp, change, ripple, and turn smooth, and from it a new brix emerged.

Many of the monsters spawned from the nest sported changes. They were taller, seemed stronger and faster, some had different colours, too. One spawned from the opposite side of the cave from us, crawling out with antlers on its head, and serrated scythes.

I felt the Qi that thing gave off and shuddered. It felt disgusting. Worse than any other type of Qi I’d ever felt, except maybe rot. But even then, this had a more distinctly wrong feeling to it. Like the nest was gnawing at me, trying to rip my own Qi right from my core and integrate it into itself, so it could spew out more monsters.

Taking a moment to collect myself, I shook my head. This thing needed to die. I shot a glance back at the party, and received a few nods. The others felt it too, then. That the nest was a threat we couldn’t allow to exist.

Despite the amount of brix, and the amount of threads, I could feel the Qi in my body wanting to course, and I let it. Immediately, from my golden core, a torrent of power rushed forth. The nest wanted to have it? It would need to claw it from my cold, dead core.

Without hesitation, I jumped. No, perhaps jumped would be an understatement. I leapt forward, as far as my legs would carry me in a single attempt, soaring and contorting to avoid the threads, and cutting those I couldn’t avoid.

Then, in the air, when the brix were just looking up, I took a second and third step, avoiding their traps and their poison as I made way towards the nest. My skin was enveloped in golden radiance already, and sparks of Divinity wormed their way towards me, reinforcing me further.

In a moment, I was already at the nest, cutting through the air with my spear towards the white cage holding the nest’s heart. I could hear it beat, feel the vibrations in the air, as time seemed to stand still, my spear inching closer to it by the millimetre.

A fraction of a second later, I was blasted aside as though swatting a fly.

Blood splattered from my mouth as I smashed against the cave wall. Ann’s barriers had saved me from the dangerous webs around, but they couldn’t exactly stop the pain of soft flesh hitting stone. The cavern quaked, and cracks sprung up as I slid down the rock.

My mind was rattled. I could barely tell where right and left were as my head spun. My body moved, nonetheless, somehow relying on instinct and the desire to end the nest. But the efforts were cut short by the brix rushing towards me.

They were far too fast for my eyes to keep up with. My sight was so blurry, I couldn’t even tell how many there were, only specks of green and blue and grey dashing towards me. I needed to dodge, desperately, but I didn’t know how to.

Yet, in the daze, a spark blossomed in my mind. Was that… Cass? A memory flashed before my eyes, one of my master, when he’d still been active. He was simply doing drills in the garden, showing me movements far beyond my skill back then, and I had not been able to recall them perfectly until now.

Then, my muscles twisted.

I couldn’t make out what happened, but the green blurs spun in my vision as my body moved. No, as I moved.

I contorted and spun, flashes of sharp, lethal green passing by right in front of me. I lost a strand of hair to it, but not the flesh it had targeted. Another scythe came at me from below, and a memory flashed in front of my inner eye again. A spin of my spear that would transition defense into offense.

The butt of my weapon spun up, throwing the brix’ scythe off-course. Then, I thrust my weapon forward, stabbing into one of the monsters I hadn’t even seen. Another dodge followed, another beat parry, then two more strikes.

By the time I came back to my senses, I found three of the things dead around me, and my party members clearing some more space.

[I activated [Mirror Mind].]

Shit. That was what it felt like?

Talents were generally passive, but this had not been at all.

[Spear Technique - Fundamentals has reached (Intermediate)!]

Not even remotely. My head was still foggy, and yet, I knew how to execute all those movements, and at the very same time, it had shown me so many tiny flaws in how I generally did things. Instinctively, I slid my hand a little lower on the spear, and loosened my grip slightly. I’d been wasting strength through that.

Even my feet shifted subtly, my pose different.

“Get out of your head, Fio, we’re in the middle of a fucking fight!!” Matt yelled at me, and suddenly it all snapped back into focus.

I shook my head, getting rid of the last vestiges of that vision as I engraved the lessons deep in my mind. Golden Qi circulated through my spear, and it felt as though the weapon accepted it more easily. As though I’d grown more worthy of our bond. When I lashed out, I sliced off the scythe of a brix so easily, despite my aching back.

The residual imprint of what I saw guided me, helped me compensate for my aches and injuries with other muscles, allowed me to keep fighting. My legs were generating more torque, going through my hip, up into my arms, and connecting my body in a fluid motion to stab forward.

Whatever stood where my spear landed was annihilated. “Holy crap,” I heard Eric mumble, but by then I’d already stepped forward some more.

We were finally in proper formation again. Emilia’s shield was infused with a gray glow, batting at every creature that got near her, and blocking swing after swing. Matt had abandoned his attempts at banter, his eyes once more lit up with sharpness, the fragrance of plum blossoms slowly beating away the stench of the nest.

The familiar smell pulled me into a combat mindset again, and I felt idle thoughts melt away like candle wax. Whenever I attacked, someone guarded me, whenever I retreated, someone took my place. Arrows, throwing knives and spells howled by my ears, striking brix and webs alike. A few of them sunk into the nest, dealing minor damage, too.

Occasionally, Divinity or Mana would flood my body from outside, providing bursts of speed and power. Before, they would come aimlessly, but as the battle went on, each one came with better timing. During a dodge, turning it from a shallow wound into none at all, or during a strike, making a glancing blow into a killing one.

One after another, the brix fell. Wounds on my skin were mended by golden radiance and bright Divinity. I heard dozens of shields shatter over the course of a few minutes, and despite that, fireballs still flew forward, incinerating the monsters and their webs, making them less mobile.

We were gaining ground, bit by bit. And just as a smile snuck onto my face, I felt a change in the air. A frost spell, seeping into me, slowing me down. The mutated brix had finally come to defend their creator.