"I can talk normally too, you know," Vipera hissed out a short laugh, "but yes, I can. Some things are tied to the abilities of my container, more than I would like."

  I frowned, trying to wrap my head around what she was describing. It sounded almost like playing a sort of shell game where the ball was the consciousness, except each cup was different from the last. "So new body, new capabilities?"

  “Not quite. It’s more like by remaking it, my body has fully caught up to your advancement. It’s complicated, and we don’t have time to get into it right now,” She explained, nodding her head in the direction of the chamber entrance, “we have company.”

  I turned to see Kels, Signe and Angus heading my way. I trusted her; she would explain everything to me in time, when there was time. Though I might have to prod her about it a little later. Finally, I relaxed and let go of my boosting Skill. I was not prepared for what the Skill referred to as the backlash. The backlash hit me like a truck as my physical stats nosedived. I couldn't properly describe what it felt like to have my stats change so suddenly by such a large amount. It was like gravity was suddenly doubled, just for me, while my bones turned to rubber. I stumbled and sagged only to be caught by Vipera as she supported me with her coils. She had more than enough length and width to easily support my body by this point.

  "Ooohhh, that's rough. Not a fan of that." I groaned out loud. I could see the others approach at a brisk, practiced jog, and read the outlines of concern on their faces. I didn't miss the wary glances around the chamber either. I tried to straighten up—a valiant effort, but my bones felt like they'd been used to stir concrete. I let out a rattling breath and leaned more heavily into Vipera, who gave me a serpentine grin, all fangs and smug.

  Kels was the first to reach me. He took one look at the rapidly vanishing headless yeti corpse, then at the mess I’d made of myself, and another at the very-much-alive Vipera wrapped around me and supporting me at the same time. His heavy brow furrowed, “Well. You’re not dead.”

  "Surprisingly," I said, not sure if I was joking or not. "Give it a few minutes, though." My words came out slightly slurred, and my own brow furrowed in annoyance. "Backlash from a boosting Skill, I'll be better in a few minutes. Doesn't matter," I groaned, "boss is dead, dungeon is clear. I'm not moving for at least a few minutes, I've earned that much." I could feel the blood running down my face from my right eye socket, which I was keeping shut at the moment. Overcharging those Spells the way I had had been colossally stupid, I could recognize that now that I wasn't drowning in rage and wrath. Thankfully, the consequences of that decision wouldn't be permanent if past damage was anything to go by. That was certainly one of my favourite parts of having access to my personal healing effects from Vipera and my amulet. There was little in the way of damage I could do to myself that I couldn't fix if given the time and resources to do so. I suspected that with practice, I might be able to make other items like consumables from [Spirit Forge] as well. That was for another time, however.

  The next five minutes passed in a haze, the boundaries of time as fuzzy as the inside of my mouth, which felt like I was hungover. My world had narrowed: the whiteness of the ice, the blue-black blood slowly freezing in pools, all that remained of the boss monster. The thrum of my own pulse echoing the ache in every muscle and bone. Past the pain, I only noticed the cold when it threatened to bite through the endorphin crash and turn my limbs to so much brittle meat. Despite my weak protests, Kels took the time to wrap a bandage around my damaged eye socket. I was just going to be tearing it off in an hour or two when my eye healed enough that I could see out of it again.

  "Yeah, you've earned a break, after the show you put on." I almost missed the soft comment from the team leader as he took up his shield and moved to take watch. Shield up, ever the professional, Kels took over the watch. Though I caught the way he surveyed the chamber, the bloodied webs that covered the place, and my own state with a wary sort of respect. It wasn't just that I'd killed the thing; it was how. Brutally.

  If I hadn’t been sure before, I was sure now that they had been watching from the chamber entrance.

  Signe circled Vipera at a distance, eyes bright and clinical behind the exhaustion, as she tried to figure out what was different about my familiar. Unlike Kels and Angus, she just might have had the magical senses to detect that something was, in fact, different.

  Angus didn't say a word. He just sat down nearby and pulled out a handful of protein bars and jerky from his pack and proceeded to enjoy his MRE-like meal. Though from what I'd hear at various points, I think I would have preferred the jerky and protein bars to an MRE myself.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I relaxed and let Vipera cradle my wrecked body. The action was over for the moment, and this was as close to peace as I was going to get.

  ——-

  The next indeterminable amount of time passed like a kind of lucid dream, an after-battle high chasing out most of the pain and nausea, replaced by a tiredness I could taste in my teeth and bones. Vipera pressed her scaled bulk against my body, cradling me easily in her bulk. Her new form had a density to it that it had lacked before. I couldn't quite describe it; the words eluded me. It was as if she were more real than she had been before. Sitting there, I let my hand rest on her gleaming scales, finger tracing the strange, root-like lattice that crisscrossed her body, making up her scaled form.

  I groaned as I flexed my body. It felt better. Not great, but better. I could tell I definitely wasn't suffering the backlash of [Auric Convergence] anymore. That was a plus. Having my stats back to normal seemed to have relieved a great deal of the damage I had suffered in the battle. I rose slowly from Vipera's coils, stretching my arms over my head while my spine let out a satisfying series of pops and cracks. I glanced around the ruined chamber, the constant crackle of ice and the occasional thump of a larger piece shifting had become a constant companion, such that it faded into the background almost completely.

  No longer inhibited by [Auric Convergence] or its backlash, my senses surged out to cover the chamber. The boss monster and I had done a lot of damage to the chambers walls, even now they were still shifting and crumbling long after the fight was over and done with. I could feel curiosity from the others in the room, likely wanting to know whether I had recovered or not now that I was standing under my own power again. I imagined that to Kels, Angus and Signe, I had looked more than a little rough around the edges when they had first entered the chamber.

  There was something else, though. Something hidden. Following my aura senses, I zeroed in on a half-crumbled section of wall across the chamber from the entrance. Everywhere else in the room, every other spot on the walls just felt like an expanse of ice until my senses butted up against the 'nothing' that was whatever lay outside the dungeon's confines. This spot, though, never hit that point. Instead, I could feel a tunnel continuing forward.

  "Kels," I called out, eyes glued to the wall. "There's a tunnel buried under all the ice there." I felt everyone go still at that announcement, and I felt the shiver of suppressed worry as well. Another chamber could mean another fight. A fight we weren't in great shape for right now. Kels didn't ask how I knew—maybe he was already at the stage of not wanting to know. Honestly, it wouldn't be much of a surprise at this point. He just grunted and, with a nod, rounded up Signe and Angus. Angus finished his jerky with a kind of doomed look, and Signe knuckled a streak of blood from her temple and steeled her jaw. I could tell by the set of her shoulders that no one was interested in being surprised again, but I was also pretty sure we were all on the same page: if there was more to this dungeon, it was better to hunt it down now before it festered into something even worse.

  We crossed the chamber, the crackling ice echoing under our boots. The wall I'd pointed out looked the same as the rest of the chamber. It just happened to have some larger chunks of icy wall crumbled in front of it. The space I could feel behind the crumbled ice felt short, though, short enough that I was certain that the yeti wouldn't have been able to force its way through. That signalled to me that this was meant to be separate from the boss chamber. This was something else, not just an addendum to the boos room.

  It only took a few minutes for us to shift the largest chunks of fallen ice away from the wall, leaving a flat expanse of icy wall in front of us. It didn't quite match the rest of the wall surrounding it, however. The colour was just slightly off. Where the rest of the wall was an almost silvery bluish white, this part of the wall leaned much farther towards the blue. Now that it was uncovered, it was almost like looking at a bad drywall patch job. One that had been painted over, just a shade too dark to match the rest of the wall around it.

  Even riddled with cracks, it was still standing upright, but I could tell it had been weakened by the damage done to the chamber. It wouldn't take much to knock it down.

  My fist crashed against the wall, and it gave way before the blow. My arm rammed straight through the ice wall all the way up to my elbow. A strange tingle shot up my arm, almost like a static charge. I yanked my arm back, peering into the hole. I had a sinking feeling I had just punched my way into something that might be like a gas pocket. I waited for a moment, using [All-Seeing Eye] to try to confirm. There was nothing, just mana. Extremely dense mana, almost like it was compressed.

  I struck again. Three strikes later, the ice crumbled completely, revealing what I had sensed earlier. Mana wash roared past us as the wall came down, denser than even the boss room had been. It was as if the ice wall had acted as a sort of porous dam. It hadn't been able to stop the mana from seeping past and out into the dungeon at large, but it had slowed the flow at least somewhat. A long black tunnel formed from familiar black basalt rock was what appeared behind the wall, physically at least. It looked rough-hewn, rather than the familiar, clean lines of the dungeon corridors.

  "Not a fan of that," I muttered, glancing at the others. Judging by the looks on their faces, they had sensed the mana wash rushing past, even if they couldn't see it directly, the way I did with [All-Seeing Eye]. All Rankers had some degree of sensitivity to mana, in much the same way every Ranker had an aura, though it varied drastically between Rankers. It was at least enough that most could detect rapid changes or large changes in mana nearby. Even if in a limited way, that someone with more specialized Skills for it would deem as simple or basic.

  Turning back to the tunnel, I started forward; the lack of light didn't hinder me in the slightest. I didn't even need [All-Seeing Eye], truth be told, it was easy to forget the level of night vision my Bloodline offered me passively. It wasn't often that I needed it anymore, unlike when I had first received it, where, without it, I would have spent a very short life stumbling blind through the dark. We moved into the tunnel at a slow walk, cautious about what the dungeon had in store for us around the next bend.