If a dragon only knew how to spam its Dragon Charge, it would be invincible.
Different topic.
If Starscourge Radahn only knew how to spam Radahn's Rain.
If the Dancer of the Boreal Valley only knew how to spam her spinning attacks.
If Sir Gideon Ofnir only knew how to spam Comet.
And —
If the three Sulyvahn's Beasts in this lake only knew how to spam Lightning Spears.
"You motherfu—! YOU MOTHERFUCKER — YOU CAN'T DO THIS!"
That was the anguished, helpless scream of an adventurer staring down an incoming Lightning Spear.
Water conducts electricity. Everyone knows that.
The Sulyvahn's Beasts' magical spear-shaped lightning attack normally hit once on land — a single point of contact.
Inside the lake, though, the current spread.
Even if someone dodged the actual bolt cleanly, the electric ripple radiating across the water's surface still delivered brief paralysis. And that paralysis became the fatal opening for the next Lightning Spear to land clean.
Worse, the three Beasts had settled into a rhythm — spacing themselves out, taking turns launching lightning, specifically timing shots against the adventurers' recovery frames.
"I'm sorry! Genuinely my fault! I should never have put everyone at risk just to satisfy my own curiosity!"
Under different circumstances, Fingri would probably have dropped to his knees and begged forgiveness on the spot. He had, genuinely, zero pretension about him. Got along with anyone.
Unfortunately, the only real fix available now was killing all three Beasts and getting everyone out.
Three Sulyvahn's Beasts. In slowing water. Attacking on a coordinated rhythm.
Sounded difficult.
Was, in fact, exactly that difficult.
"AAAAH!"
Two bolts fired in sequence at Bone Fang members. No clean way to dodge either — waist-deep water and slowing status made evasion functionally impossible.
All they could do was scream "Help!" and shut their eyes.
"CRACK!"
Thunder flashed past.
The nearest adventurer registered, slowly, that he hadn't died.
He opened his eyes, disbelieving, and found himself staring straight into Fingri's confident smile.
Fingri had blocked the shot.
"Call for help, and I'll be there like a flash of light."
He brushed golden hair aside with theatrical ease, the picture of heroism itself.
Provided you ignored the sizable patch of charred flesh directly behind him.
He'd dispersed the first bolt cleanly. The second, he'd simply eaten.
"Pfft—"
"Mr. Fingri — you're throwing up blood!"
"Hehe, couldn't be. Just the tomato juice from this morning."
He wiped the red from his lip and turned to face the three Beasts still leaping through the water in the distance.
"Aleya — Flight, now! Using it defensively like this shouldn't trigger the monster-strengthening effect again — right?"
Given Sein Dungeon's apparent institutional grudge against flying, nobody could actually confirm that. But avoiding it wasn't an option either — outrunning three Sulyvahn's Beasts on foot simply wasn't happening.
They'd have to gamble and hope for a little mercy.
In the end, Aleya never actually cast Flight.
Matilda beat her to a solution.
Hell March could freely reshape its armor when it wasn't summoning phantoms — nearly as though the armor itself possessed some independent will. She stripped the plating off her entire right arm and threw it toward Fingri.
Beneath his feet, it reformed into —
Stilts?
Stilts, in the water? Wouldn't the drag still be roughly the same?
That wasn't the point at all. She meant them as a launch platform.
Fingri stepped onto them with both feet, and his entire body shot toward the Beasts like a comet. Whenever he showed signs of falling short, Hell March reformed under him again, catching him and relaunching.
A cut-rate version of Six Powers technique, effectively.
The Beasts weren't intimidated. Pure instinct told them to disrupt his approach with lightning. All three opened their jaws in unison along his projected flight path.
Two days earlier, this exact attack had caught Luluwo — tossed around like a discarded doll, thoroughly humiliating.
Fingri moved better than Luluwo had.
And his backup was more reliable too.
The Hell March stilts abruptly split into three separate fragments and drilled directly into all three open mouths simultaneously — expanding immediately like inflating balloons.
The Beasts staggered, thrown badly off balance, swaying hard left and right. In the same instant, Fingri connected his blade cleanly across all three.
Hell March had by now exceeded its effective range and stopped responding to Matilda's control entirely. Didn't matter — Fingri had already been delivered exactly where he needed to be.
And the monsters could happily —
GG. Let's go, Fingri. Show them what Flash means.
Then several dark shapes resembling seaweed bloomed beneath the surface.
"Splash!"
Right as Fingri set up for Gravity Slash, ready to take out all three in one committed strike, the lake surface exploded.
The centipede "sweethearts" from the sewer tunnel emerged and delivered him a full, loving embrace.
"Huh?"
Only after multiple writhing limbs had already wrapped around him did the realization actually land.
That's why the lake had felt so quiet.
Everything was hiding underwater.
They'd been so locked onto the Sulyvahn's Beasts they'd forgotten a lake this massive couldn't possibly host just one monster type.
The classic problem with hunting an elite in open wilderness — random threats ambushing at the worst possible timing.
Always clear the surrounding area before starting a hunt. Especially wild boars.
— genuine advice, from an adventurer stationed in the forest region.
Fingri turned his stiffened neck slowly toward his teammates.
The smile he produced was somehow worse than crying.
"Guys… save me."
Being embraced by these things offended some fundamental part of his dignity that he wasn't sure he could recover.
To this day, nobody understood exactly how much raw courage some legendary swordsman in the old stories had needed to get anywhere near an Amygdala willingly.
"Quick — go save Mr. Fingri!"
Moments earlier, Bone Fang had been genuinely panicking over every monster encounter. The instant they saw Fingri caught, something switched on — pure, unfiltered adrenaline, like a hit of straight combat stimulant.
"CHARGE! Save Mr. Fingri!"
"NO! FINGRI!"
Even the Sulyvahn's Beasts froze watching the sudden charge.
Why is this specific human this popular, exactly?
Matilda stared, equally stunned.
Aleya, on the other hand, matched the moment perfectly — scarecrow body swaying in rhythm as she scattered a fresh round of seeds, frost-laden plants freezing patches of water instantly into stable footholds for everyone.
The moment that trick landed, silence.
"IF YOU HAD THAT, WHY DIDN'T YOU USE IT EARLIER?!" Fingri shouted, still fighting off the centipede's affectionate assault.
"Ehehe~"
The whole scene degenerated into genuine chaos. What should've been a routine dungeon crawl had transformed into a full-scale brawl.
Games like this had always carried a reputation as horror content for the weak-nerved. Bloodborne especially so.
But once genuine bravery kicked in, monster horror or disgust factor simply stopped mattering. You charged. Sometimes you died a few more times over the course of it.
But damn, fighting through it felt genuinely satisfying.
Bone Fang had transformed, functionally, into Blood Beasts catching the scent of a fight — determined, no matter the cost, to pull Fingri free of the Beasts' grip. Teeth, fingernails, whatever it took.
"YAAAH!"
One adventurer got seized in a Beast's jaws and swung through the air in a full circle — a genuine death-spin at one point.
Deliberate strategy, though. The strategy of the outmatched. As long as one person sacrificed themselves to occupy a Beast's mouth, the others got a clean opening.
Anyone unaware of the context might've assumed the whole group had been hit with a Berserk spell. Their fearlessness could've stopped a crying child mid-tantrum.
Eventually the noise woke the Onion Knight. By the time his round helmet poked around the doorframe, the fight had already concluded.
The battlefield's aftermath was rough enough that he simply closed his eyes on reflex and returned quietly to his bonfire.
So when everyone revived at the kitchen bonfire shortly after, the Onion Knight was found peacefully asleep, entirely undisturbed by the memory of what he'd briefly glimpsed.
"Next time — I never want to see those things again," Fingri complained, furious.
Then he threw an arm around the nearest Bone Fang member, the picture of two old brothers reunited.
"Owe you all this time. Might've been permanently traumatized without you."
If the centipedes had actually reached him with their kisses, that would've been the end of his life story right there. Straight transformation into a magical girl, followed by immediate explosion into a Grief Seed.
"Shame one got away, though. Think it fled back to the bridge?"
Nobody had tracked where the third Beast had gone. They chose not to worry about it.
After that particular fight, the lake had earned a permanent, mutual disgust from everyone present. Nobody was going back in that water voluntarily.
Checking with Matilda — she'd contributed the most during the Rescue Fingri operation, by any fair accounting — the group decided their next target would be the church to the west the Onion Knight had mentioned.
Leaving the kitchen, Fingri casually stabbed the same Silver Knight still admiring his painting, and led everyone out before the knight could register the anger.
Vordt of the Boreal Valley made his usual dramatic entrance.
An elite with no fog gate simply couldn't command respect, though. Everyone spent the encounter hopping across rooftops, deliberately not attacking, until they'd cleared the street entirely. Once clear, Vordt gave up the chase.
Had anyone been foolish enough to land even a few hits, he would've almost certainly pursued them relentlessly.
Fingri stopped to greet the boy on the way through too. He wanted to help — bad luck had kept him from securing a complete Boreal Valley equipment set so far. All he could offer for now was a few kind words in passing.
"If the Onion Knight was telling the truth, following this main road west should get us to the church eventually," Fingri said.
"Um — might just be my imagination, but doesn't it feel like the monsters get more numerous and stronger the farther west we go?"
Tusk stared at a full squad of Fire Witches materializing ahead, so distracted by them an invisible enemy managed to land a clean slash on him from the side.
"It's fine. Run fast enough, and nothing keeps up."
Under Fingri's leadership, everyone effectively became "Flash." Every monster encounter got solved with pure legwork.
They sprinted through the streets of Irithyll, sweat pouring despite the cold, moving with the specific desperate energy of people declaring, out loud, that they'd never look back and never regret a single choice made today.
Because if they actually looked back —
They'd explode.
The number of invisible pursuers chasing them wasn't even worth counting at this point. More than ten Pontiff Knights already visible on their own. No Fire Witches directly present, but their fire trailed the group like a living shadow — anyone slowing even slightly got swallowed by a pillar of flame shooting skyward.
Why had the running even started in the first place?
Originally, escaping Vordt. Somewhere along the way, though, they'd accumulated an ever-growing trail of additional monsters.
Stopping wasn't an option anymore even if they wanted it.
Buildings blurred past on either side.
Fingri lifted his head and scanned ahead. Through the driving snow, a church's faint silhouette resolved into view.
"Is that the Darkmoon covenant church the Onion Knight mentioned?"
Hope, finally.
He turned to the others.
"I'll hold the rear! Everyone else — straight for that church, don't stop for anything!"
"Fingri, I'm staying too!"
Nobody was willing to leave him behind.
Fingri smiled.
Then holstered his weapon.
"Alright then — we all run together."