“Did you use mana while suffering from mana toxin?” Gary asked, wandering over. His arm was drenched in blood and still looked to be bleeding freely, but the leeches were gone and he didn’t seem worried.

“Seemed time sensitive,” Jason said. “Oh, this hurts. I was pretty much bottomed-out on mana in the first place.

Gary looked over Jason’s cloak of stars.

“You weren’t kidding about a power that makes you sparkle.”

Suddenly an explosion of light and noise erupted from the other side of the pool. A bright stream of lava cut through the air like it was coming from a firehose, crashing into the leech monster. Jason’s head pivoted, goggle-eyed to the source of the blast.

“Was that frigging LAVA?”

Farrah, collar now gone, held her glowing red hand out towards the creature. She mumbled something and a second stream of lava blasted across the chamber. The blood pit audibly sizzled as the lava seared over it, scouring moisture from the air. After two bursts of white-hot lava, the leech monster was largely destroyed, the bindings holding it together completely unravelled.

“This is the part where we step back,” Rufus said, putting a hand on Jason’s shoulder.

“This is the part?”

Jason could still feel the heat on his face as he staggered back behind Rufus, then back some more for good measure. He heard chanting from Farrah across the pool and looked over. There were several orbs of fire floating around her. One of the cloth strips burst from the pool to grab at her, but was intercepted by an orb, burning up on contact.

She stopped chanting and Jason heard a rumbling from the direction of what was left of the leech pile. It started to scatter, but a cascade of lava geysered out of the ground underneath it. Gary, Jason and Rufus backed off even further as lava spattered around the geyser before it dwindled and came to a stop.

Jason looked at the glowing hole left behind, his jaw hanging slack. The red light from the blood pool faded and died, plunging the chamber into darkness. Only Jason’s cloak and the remnant glow of lava provided any illumination.

“We need to get every leech!” Farrah called out. “It can reconstitute itself, even from one!”

Jason looked around the floor. The main mass of leeches had been incinerated, but many leeches had spilled onto the floor as Rufus and Gary stalled it. Salt bag tucked under his arm, he started flinging handfuls at the leeches while Rufus and Gary stomped them underfoot. While the leech mass had only recoiled from the salt, individual leeches vomited blood from their tooth-ringed mouths as they dried up and died.

Eventually there was nothing left of the leeches but blood stains and ash.

You have defeated [Sanguine Horror]

Quest: [The Sanguine Horror]

Objective: Destroy the sanguine horror 1/1.

Reward: [Sin Essence]

Quest complete.

100 [Bronze Spirit Coins] have been added to your inventory.