Die. Respawn. Repeat.

A clump of vines sporting distorted, screaming wings of crystal launches itself at me. I grit my teeth and summon a Force Construct to block it. The wings themselves can't get through my armor, but they resonate with a sound-based skill that I think belongs to Dhruv. Even without being able to hurt me, they create a viscerally unpleasant, disorienting resonance that cuts through the shell of my armor.

As if the Root Acolytes replicating our skills weren't bad enough, they seem to be able to use those skills at a higher level than we can—or at least at a higher level than most of us can, at any rate. By default, any skill they use seems to have the strength of about an A-rank skill, and that's not accounting for the flowers on their backs. Those things bloom with a sickly color that modifies the skills they use, almost like my Mirror Twice Shattered Inspiration does.

The effect isn't significant, but it's just enough to alter the skills. Just enough to throw off our attempts at defense based on what we know of each other. We're still holding them back, but it's a much closer fight than before.

Much closer than it should be, considering how easy the Sewers have been up until now.

The Empty City as a whole is supposed to be harder, and I'd been wondering when that increase in dungeon difficulty would come into play. Everything we've encountered so far have been almost too easy to fight. Part of that is because of my new skills and all the training in the Grove, of course, but even then, it hasn't felt like the challenge level was... appropriate. If anything, it's felt like the Sewers have been holding back.

I guess this is what it's been holding back for.

Three Root Acolytes leap toward me, their flowers glowing bright with parasitic color. The first one has a dozen tendrils turn into a dozen swords, Ahkelios's Blade Infusion flashing through the vines to leave something sharp and wicked in its place. The second screams, creating a shockwave of sound that causes a visible distortion in the air. The third flickers erratically in and out of phase, intangible vines aimed straight for my heart.

Distorted Crux.

Around me, a bubble of warped time forms, causing the attacking Acolytes to slow as they approach. The storm of blades becomes something closer to the gentle spin of a carousel; the shockwave slams into the temporal barrier and turns into what looks almost like a sheet of glass; the last Acolyte simply freezes in place, parts of its body stuck in a Phaseslip.

Amplification Gauntlet.

A blaze of Firmament coalesces around my right hand, the Generator Form giving it a sleek, refined look. Two nozzles near the base of the gauntlet serve as thrusters, and I swing my fist into the first Acolyte, shattering six of its swords and hitting its central mass with a crunch.

The gauntlet dissolves into raw Firmament. I shape a Force Construct next, manifesting a cone-shaped drill that pierces through the sound-shockwave and into the Acolyte behind it; what's left of the shockwave is forced to disperse into a bang that echoes back at the wave of Acolytes in front of me. It throws a few of them back, but not enough.

I turn to the third one only to find that Adeya's taken care of it—she has a wing placed right where the core of the Root Acolyte is. Its Phaseslip has taken it out of phase, but it can't move back into phase without essentially stabbing itself in the chest, and it's already begun the process.

I grin and deactivate Distorted Crux, and when the skill finishes deactivating, the Acolyte collapses onto the ground, dead.

"I feel like you aren't taking this seriously," Adeya says. Her wings flare around her and she darts forward into a crowd of the Acolytes before they can activate any of their skills. She wraps those wings around herself like a shield, then begins to glow with an incandescent light—I can feel the heat of the skill from here.

So can the Acolytes, clearly, because a number of them burst into flame. And that's before she spreads them and starts spinning.

"I'm taking it seriously," I say, although I can see why she might think I'm not. A few of the Acolytes have managed to sneak past us, despite our best efforts; lucky for us, the scirix are doing an admirable job in taking out any stragglers that make it through us, or failing that, they manage to hold off the Acolyte long enough for one of us to kill it. "Most of my skills aren't meant for large-scale destruction. I'm trying to conserve Firmament in case something happens."

"Because something always happens," Adeya mutters darkly, and from the way she clenches her fists, I can see she's speaking from experience. "You think there's going to be a third phase?"

"I'd be surprised if there wasn't."

A Root Acolyte whips past Ahkelios and Dhruv, headed straight toward the defending scirix with a strange combination of skills I don't recognize—it looks almost like it's turned itself into a living star, except the light it radiates can quite literally cut. I hear several of the scirix cry out in pain.

Before it can get any closer to them, I slam a palm into the ground, activating a skill I haven't really had the chance to test except in the Grove.

Spectral Guardian.

That's the skill I got thanks to my defense of Isthanok. A part of me isn't sure I deserve it—many people still died during that defense. It doesn't matter. The skill is what I need in the here and now.

A massive construct of golden Firmament bursts out of the ground with a roar. It looks a little like the Knight Inspiration's base form—a bipedal creature of bone and metal, with a slitted helmet that obscures all facial expression. It wields a massive broadsword that glitters with power, and when it swings that sword forward, the cutting light from the Acolyte is split in two.

Stolen novel; please report.

It's almost headache-inducing to try to parse how that works.

The Spectral Guardian takes advantage of the gap in the light to reach for the Acolyte with a single massive hand, grabbing the entire, flaming thing before beginning to squeeze. It's slower than it should be, almost as if it's taking satisfaction from the kill. There's a series of cracks and crunches.

And then the light stops.

"How long could you do that?" Adeya asks, raising a brow at me. I shrug. The skill's more of a drain on Firmament than I'd like it to be, but with the kinds of Acolytes that make their way past us to the scirix...

We still have to make sure the expedition team survives. That's a second failure condition, even putting aside the fact that I don't want to see them hurt.

Behind me, Yarun is shouting, gathering injured scirix behind the Seed's altar for treatment. Only two of them are severely hurt, from what I can tell—the other three, besides Yarun, are still valiantly defending the Seed.

Good enough for now. The Guardian should take care of any other threats that approach them, even with its inability to move. They've already shifted positions to account for its help. I turn my attention back to the fight as Premonition screams a warning, just in time to duck beneath a blurred blade; I reach out to clamp a hand around a tendril of the Acolyte in question, then toss it back into the mass of tendrils climbing out of the tunnels.

[Ritual Stage 3: Water the Seed.

60% complete. 10 minutes to completion.]

We've made some progress, but not enough. Ten more minutes of this is going to exhaust us all. Even worse, some of the Acolytes are starting to pull out weaker versions of my more dangerous skills—I can see one of them pulsing erratically as it holds a version of Distorted Crux as a barrier around it.

I can't afford to let that one live. I Warpstep toward it and then hit it with two quick Timestrikes to bypass the temporal barrier. There's a defiant screech as the Acolyte tries to resist, to pour more Firmament into the skill and slow down its impending doom...

But it doesn't have nearly enough. I leave behind pulped plant matter, then turn my attention to the next three Acolytes. One uses a strange skill that makes its tendrils shimmer like a nebula in the void of space, and I hiss in pain when it wraps around one of my wrists—that thing burns.

Primordial Matter. It's one of Taylor's skills, I think. He told me about it on one of our runs through the Sewers. A skill that transmutes an object or part of yourself into a state of matter that shouldn't be able to exist. It rejects everything around it violently, but burns most of his Firmament to use. It's powerful, supposedly nearly impossible to cut or damage.

I wrap a Chromatic String infused with the full weight of around five minutes of Concentrated Power around the offending tendril and yank, severing it. Then I wrap the same String around its core and yank a second time.

Just as I crush it, Premonition alerts me to the second Acolyte, and I throw up Distorted Crux just in time to stop its needle-like projectiles from stabbing me in the face. A Compressive Pulse blasts all those projectiles back into the Acolyte, and I wince as I watch the roots and vines immediately shrivel and decay.

I think that might be one of Ahkelios's newer poison-related skills. Not that they're supposed to be poison. I'm reasonably sure he got that skill because of all the practice he put into cooking; the Interface didn't particularly seem to appreciate his attempts.

To be fair, neither did my stomach.

"Hey!" Ahkelios yells indignantly from across the room. "We're still linked, you know!"

"Focus on the fight!" I call back.

The third Acolyte hangs back warily. It doesn't have eyes to speak of, but I can still feel the weight of its gaze as it evaluates me, trying to decide on a vector of attack. I see the shadows beneath the Acolyte slowly begin to lengthen toward me.

Nope. I create a Compressive Pulse right in the middle of the Acolyte, and it dies without a sound.

Something feels wrong. Even with the Acolytes pushing us like this, the fight still feels like it's too easy. Ahkelios and Dhruv are working together remarkably well—their skills seem to complement one another, with every one of Ahkelios's sword strikes producing a bell-like tone that Dhruv immediately wields like a hammer. Adeya and I are both more independent fighters, but we're each able to take up about half the stream of incoming Acolytes from the opening we're defending, and neither of us have gotten badly hurt.

Gheraa and Taylor...

I pause, staring at them. So does the Acolyte that was about to attack me.

I have no real idea what's happening at that side of the chamber. I'm pretty sure Gheraa is using one of his area control skills, but for the most part it just kind of looks like he's managed to get all the Acolytes to join him in a dance party. There's even music playing from what I'm pretty sure is Taylor's phone.

Every so often, one of the Acolytes trips up and immediately bursts into flame.

That's... technically an attack, I suppose?

Sure.

I shake my head and turn my attention back to the fight. The important thing is that the Acolytes aren't getting past them.

It's not long before I identify Compressive Pulse as my most effective weapon here. It doesn't cost that much Firmament in comparison to some of my other skills, and I can deploy it a lot more rapidly and with a lot more range. The closest Acolytes I can simply crush, barring any defensive skills. The ones that are further away I have to lob the compressed force at.

A short time after that, I discover that if I hold a Compressive Pulse on an Acolyte that's using a skill, it compresses the skill and the Acolyte into one lumpy, plant-shaped ball of matter. If I throw that, it acts almost like a grenade, erupting into a violent and uncontrolled expression of whatever skill it was trying to use.

"Uh, Ethan?" Adeya says pointedly. "You're laughing again."

"In my defense," I say. "I just figured out how to make grenades."

Adeya blinks, then nods. "You know what? Fair enough."

It's when there's one minute left that it happens. When we're at 96% of the Seed's watering, with only a single Acolyte managing to make its way past us and pushing our saturation to 92%.

One minute left when Ahkelios and Gheraa both shout in alarm and Premonition begins to blare at full volume.

The waves of Acolytes have largely stopped. Now we see why—it's to make way for the third phase.

Deep in the tunnels, there's an almost crushing wave of Firmament. A hundred Root Acolytes force themselves together into a single crushing mass. It happens in every opening in the chamber, a total of three times, and the wave of power that emerges crushes every remaining Acolyte and brings the scirix to their knees.

Out of the left tunnel, a scirix-mantis hybrid emerges, his body woven out of tendrils of plant matter.

Out of the right tunnel, an Integrator form, stripped of all pretense.

And out the center, a distinctly familiar-looking human, with vines sculpted to replicate even my disheveled hair.