"So you knew this was what we were going up against?" Trivian hissed, storming over to Ren. He wanted to shout and be aggressive, but he also was painfully aware that being too loud might attract the things attention, which left him whisper shouting and stomping as quietly as possible.

It completely ruined any kind of intimidation that he was going for. Not that the antlered Druid was ever intimidating to begin with.

"Yes. What about it? I warned you this would be dangerous, did I not?" Ren answered matter-of-factly, giving a sarcastic and condescending smirk at Trivian’s quiet anger act.

"Dangerous is one thing. But you knew that thing spits acid. You knew that, and you gave us these!" He hissed lowly, tugging at the bullet proof vest he was wearing over his regular clothing.

"What is this supposed to do against acid like that?!"

"Then give it back." Ren spat back monotonously.

"W-what?"

"If you don’t want it, or don’t think it will help. Then give it back and you can go down there without it burdening you. Who knows, it might help you dodge better." Ren said with a condescending, fake smile as he held his hand out towards Trivian.

The two stayed like that for a few seconds, before Ren raised his eyebrow and make a grabbing motion.

"Well? What are you waiting for? You don’t want it, so hand it over already so we can get to it."

"Well... No... I just..." Trivian stuttered, tightening his grip on the straps of his vest as he took a step back.

Ren was about to push a little more before Valerie interrupted with a heavy sigh.

"Will you two just shut up. Gods, I’m trying to concentrate here. Corpse face, leave him alone. Figg, stop complaining. We’ve got what we can. If you don’t like it, try to improve for next time. Because there will be a next time, or there would be, if you would let me concentrate."

Ren scoffed, turning to Valerie to make another witty and overly sarcastic comment, but he was quickly drawn to silence by what he was seeing.

Lines of mana drew themselves into the air, forming a complex and rapidly growing magic circle. Valerie was waving her hands, her finger tips glowing as she drew even more runes and sent them into the circle which was starting to thrum with its even increasing power.

It wasn’t just the runes that Valerie was concentrating on, but all of the minute details that came with it. She was constantly adjusting and calculating the distance, fine tuning the damage level so that she didn’t nearly blast herself like last time, re-adjusting flight speed to go along with the distance and much much more.

Any pathetically small or seemingly innocuous detail that needed to be specified, lest the universe leave it up to interpretation and simply make a random guess itself, that was everything that Valerie had to include. Yes, even that the fire should be hot.

What stunned Ren was not the complexity of it all, that was left for Trivian and the others to gawk at. What had Ren speechless, was that he had never seen such magic in all of his time. After everything he had been through, everything he had fought. Never in his life had he seen something simply writing their own spells.

It was simply... insane. So it was no wonder that it belonged to this girl. Not only that, it was also incredibly bright, considering it was a spell composed of nearly a hundred glowing, compound runes. One would have to be blind not to notice, and this thing had wonderful eyesight.

An eye sprouted from the middle of creatures face as it ate. It’s eyeball swivelled around, immediately locking onto the glowing runes that were flooding the quarry with the power of a second level mage.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it could smell the putrid, wretched stench of Divinity lurking around a few of them.

It unfolded its mouth wide open and let out a high pitched, layered screech that drilled directly into the brain of all those heard it, as well as drowned out the sound of Valerie clicking her fingers.

The runic circle that she had drawn burst into flames and rapidly melted into those flames. The flames swirled together, pulling themselves into a small ball of flames the size of a golf ball, the heat of which scorched the air around it before it finally burst forward.

It rocketed through the air in a second, leaving an orange streak across the skies and into observers eyes from the light, as it landed right in the open mouth of this horrible creature.

KRAKOOOOM!

The air shook and the earth rumbled beneath their feet, threatening to shatter as it withstood the force of the deafening explosion. Those who had not been at the Monument of Power for Valerie’s demonstration stumbled back in shock, their eyes wide with horror as the fiery explosion filled nearly all of their vision.

Save for the small section reserved for Valerie’s silhouette, painted black by the orange light of destruction, as the searing winds played with her hair and was immediately chilled by the cold, calculating glare in her eyes.

Her eyes shifted, turning that cold and murderous glare back to them, which sent a shiver down their spines before her brow creased in annoyance.

"What are you waiting for? We need to move and get down there while it’s still off balance."

"W-what? You mean that things not dead? After that?!" Trivian stuttered, his eyes still lingering on the mountainous column of black smoke billowing into the air.

"Heh, We would never be that lucky. No... That would be far too easy." Valerie muttered with a half-hearted chuckle, before gripping her cane tight and stepping off of the ledge, with Beans leaping off right behind her.

Valerie plummeted, enjoying the wind whipping through her hair for a few seconds, before she lifted her arm and channelled her bloodline.

Her cane caught in the air, hitting against a cushion of magnetism, as she quickly slowed until she was floating down slowly with only her cane keeping her aloft.