The six baby centipedes charged at me, and I darted closer to the entrance of the cave. This wasn’t a fight I could win while enclosed in the cave System. I needed to get out of this cave - regardless of what happened afterwards. I had been trying to buy time for an opening to flee, but this guardian just wasn’t giving it to me.

A moment later, I realized something. This cave was now far more populated than before. I activated {Fractal Rush}, and poured as much essence as I could into my umbrella. I tossed a Renewal at myself right as it felt like my arms were about to be pulled out of their sockets. I snapped towards the cave entrance at speeds even I could barely process. Heart-rending pain shot through my arms as I moved at forces even my enhanced [Fortitude] could barely withstand. I felt like I was about to pass out from pain.

{Fractal Rush} ate a small amount of essence. Then, a wildly disproportionate amount of essence sprang into existence around me, before screaming through the air. Several blades of essence tore into the chimera’s hide, leaving massive furrows of weeping flesh behind. One particularly massive gash appeared on its stomach, oozing black-green blood as I sped by. Even more importantly, three of the baby centipedes died on the spot. Whatever I had cut with my essence blades was too vital for them to continue living. Two more centipedes got a few minor cuts, while the last centipede was unscathed - due to the uncontrolled nature of the essence blades, I had missed it entirely.

For a brief moment, the feeling of being paralyzed returned. I felt like a fly trapped in a web, unable to move or escape. My muscles wouldn’t respond to my actions. It was almost immediately dispelled by my Renewal, but that fraction of a second was enough for catastrophe to strike.

Instead of flying out of the cave, the way I had intended to, I nearly lost hold of my umbrella again. I managed to tighten my grip around it right as I slammed into the wall of the cave. I lost my grip on my umbrella, and it bounced into the cave. My arms made disturbing crunching sounds, and one of my arms bent in a direction it was definitely not supposed to. A moment later, my head slammed into the stone wall of the cave. Luckily, my arms had absorbed most of the impact, or I probably would have died right there. However, I still saw flashes of light, pain, and darkness as something cracked in my skull.

For a moment, I felt blackness nearly overwhelm my vision. I felt dizzy and nauseous enough that even healing myself was hard, because I was so out of it. My instincts saw me through the dangerous situation. I had used renewal enough that it was an instinctual response for me at this point. My alteration essence reserves plummeted, and at the same time, my arm snapped back into the right orientation, and the flashes of darkness and light at the edge of my vision got better. Unfortunately, I had also dropped to about 60% of my maximum alteration essence reserves. 

I shook the final dark spots out of my vision, and glanced at the monsters I had been fighting. The chimeric monster was already healing. I could feel essence washing over its body like waves lapping against the shore, as the massive furrows I had carved into its body repaired themselves in real time. Its healing was far slower than mine was - but it was still incredibly fast. Meanwhile, the three centipedes were still charging at me. The uninjured one was rearing back, doubtless getting ready to spit a glob of acid at me, while the other two were nearly in my face. They were babies, but they were still the size of large dogs. Getting bitten by two of them would mess me up.

I tensed up. This chimeric abomination was incredibly frustrating to fight. Its healing ability was strong enough that I didn’t know what to do. I had far less essence than it did, so I couldn’t get into a battle of attrition - but I also didn’t have a good way to kill it in one hit. Meanwhile, as far as I could tell, its ability to summon enemies was far cheaper than the amount of essence I needed to spend to deal with those enemies.

I weakened the two nearby centipedes with moderate-strength extinguishes, then snatched my fallen umbrella and blasted them down with two more lightning bolts.

The Chimera looked at me. The human face leered at me in a grotesque parody of a smile. The final baby centipede lobbed a glob of acid at me. I redirected it towards the chimera with a portal right as six more monsters teleported into the room.

This time, not all of them were baby centipedes. Three of them were centipedes, and three of them were golems. The golems immediately unfolded, like stone flowers preparing to receive the sun, and then charged at me, while the four baby centipedes prepared to fire more acid at me. The chimera didn’t even seem to notice the acid I had tossed its way - its regeneration magic took care of it before the acid even became an inconvenience.

I flew towards the entrance of the cave again. This time, I managed to avoid getting hit by the spider’s paralysis spell. I finally made it into the open terrain of the forest.

I flew upwards. I wanted to put some distance between myself and the centipede. A moment later, I felt a flash of fear. What if the spider caused me to lose my grip on my umbrella again, and I plummeted to my death?

I hesitated, and then flew back towards the ground, right as the golems and the chimera tore out of the cave and dashed towards me. The centipedes followed hot on their trail. The chimera’s eyes alighted on me, and it shot another grotesque smile my way as the golems charged.

I flew behind a tree, and activated my soul sight. I needed to know what the threats here were. I hadn’t actually fought a golem properly yet - I had killed the first one too fast to even figure out what their regular attacks did. The centipedes could fire bolts of acid at me if I was in range, so I needed to watch out for that. The chimera -

A moment later, the chimera’s butterfly wings flapped, and the massive creature lifted off. It sped towards me like a freight train, bulldozing trees in its way, and I darted out of the way again right as it crashed through the tree I had been taking shelter behind. I set up a field of spatial tripwires right in front of the chimera’s face, and the creature bulldozed through those too. I could see it getting cut up by the spatial ripples - the problem was, the creature was regenerating so fast that it didn’t matter.

What was I supposed to do here? Even keeping up with this monster’s speed was hard for me. Both of my essence reserves were at about 60% now, and I hadn’t even inflicted major damage on the chimera yet. Worse, its summons were also ready to join the fight. A moment later, the golems lifted their arms towards me, and fired a round of boulders at me as if they were catapults.

The golems were not helpless in a ranged fight.

I opened up some more portals, and tried to redirect the projectiles of the golems back at the golems. The rocks staggered the golems… but didn’t do anywhere near enough damage to actually kill them. Meanwhile, the acid globs from the centipedes were getting more and more accurate, and the chimera looked like it was getting ready for another charge.

I started calculating, trying to find any way to win this fight. {Breath of the Storm} couldn’t do it. Extinguish could weaken its life force a bit, but it would heal up almost instantly. I couldn’t win a battle of attrition. I had no chance of killing it in one big hit - its neck was too sturdy for me to behead it, even if I got lucky with an essence blade. A moment later, the only plausible answer struck me.

{Dream of Hunger}. A one-use per world item that would let me drag any monster into a ‘dream,’ in a vastly weakened form. I was pretty sure that meant that I would fall unconscious, which meant I needed to deal with all of the minions in this area first - but if I could kill the three golems and four centipedes, I might be able to kill the centipede.

I also needed a medium from the Chimera, but it had left plenty of blood on the battlefield while it had been healing. I paused. Was it really time to use {Dream of Hunger}? If I used it now, I would probably have to give up on the rest of the trial. I would still check to see if the other guardians were stronger or weaker than this one, but frankly, if this was an average guardian, I didn’t see myself getting through the other two gates in this challenge. But that was fine. I was here to get as many stats as possible - not to die in some half-baked attempt to win when I stood no chance.

I turned towards the three golems, and dropped them all with extinguishes. Their external, rocky shells were too sturdy for me to realistically kill them with anything besides extinguish. Extinguish might not be the most essence-efficient way to kill monsters, but its ability to ignore armor was devastating against some enemies.

Then, I activated {Fractal Rush} again, and flew towards the centipedes at top speed. Two more died, and a third was injured by the essence blades. I followed up with two more lightning blasts, killing the last two and also burning most of my remaining absorption essence - but my absorption essence wasn’t what I needed to deal with a monster trapped in a dream anyway.

With the other threats dealt with, I glanced at the chimera. Essence was surging through its body again - it looked like it was preparing another round of summons. That gave me a little time to work with. I flew to one of the destroyed trees, grab a few bloodstained pieces of tree bark, and activated {Dream of Hunger}.