It turned out that Hunter had been far too enthusiastic about reaching the Sanctuary before nightfall. First, he had attempted to ascend the mountain so that the distance around it would be shorter. He had been practicing his Covetous Eyes skill and was able to spot a massive horned demon before it found him. Even from a distance, the brute was as large as a bison. It looked like a cherry-skinned minotaur that walked on all fours. Its back half resembled a bovine, while the front half looked like something from a strongman competition. It had limbs that were built for crushing and the musculature to back it up. Hunter’s slim victory against the imp wasn’t enough of a confidence boost for him to take on the monster. 

After that, he descended the mountain until he was almost close to the bottom. He tried to go further, but he found his path blocked by a gray semi-transparent barrier that trapped him on Snodgrass. Behind the barrier, he could see the rest of Crested Butte in a twisted grayscale. He wasn’t sure if the town looked like that or if the border itself was warping his perception. 

Hunter discovered the most chilling aspect of the barrier when he studied it with Covetous Eyes. Twisted facsimiles of faces floated throughout the barrier and opened their mouths in silent screams. It looked like thousands of souls had been spent to erect the protections around the Rift, and now they were suffering for all eternity.

With a shudder, he kept the barrier on his right side and tried to stay as close as possible. At every opportunity, he tried to stay low and use obstructions like trees and boulders to hide him from sight. He even gained a new passive for sneaking for his efforts.

Despite his stealthy travel, he still ran into another two imps before it became dark. Both encounters took him over an hour to defeat each imp, but he developed a strategy for killing them. First, he would sneak up and attack them with his trident. Typically, he had enough brute force to pin them to the ground with his weapon. The first time the imp had been facing up, and he had to steal its focus and trident before blasting it with his Flame of Avarice. 

The process had yielded its own discovery. When Hunter had stolen the second items, his focus and trident had absorbed the stolen equipment. Physically, they grew slightly larger. The manacle on his wrist extended up to his forearm until it stopped just below the muscle on his forearm, while the trident looked less like a children’s toy and grew until it was the length of a baseball bat. 

Their growth seemed to increase their power because the second run-in with an imp was far more manageable. He hit the imp from behind, and the trident went cleanly through the demon’s neck. As a result, Hunter was able to pin his enemy facedown. It prevented the imp from using its screaming attack while removing its physical weapons from the fight.

When Hunter claimed the imps focus and trident and absorbed them into his own, his manacle grew until it was a bracer in its own right. It covered his forearm from his wrist to elbow and provided much-needed protection. In comparison, the trident lengthened until it was shoulder-height. It visibly thickened and became more of a weapon instead of a prop. As a result, Hunter only had to drain his mana once to burn the imp to ash, and he noticed that he was receiving more energy from the greedy embers.

Toward the end of the second battle, night had fallen, and Hunter considered what he needed to do next. His heightened Perception allowed him to see better in low light conditions, but it wasn’t real night vision. He didn’t want to stumble around in the dark, nor did he want to start a fire. The light would reveal him for miles around. Hunter had remembered reading an article that said the unaided human eye could see the light of a candle from thirty miles away. He could only assume that some demons could see it even further than that.

With a goal in mind, he started looking for a hidden place to lay his head. He was bone-tired, but he didn’t want to fall asleep and be surprised by an enemy in the dark. After about an hour of searching, he was able to find a small divot on the side of the mountain. Large boulders blocked most areas from view, and a few skeletal trees nearby provided some cover. 

He used spectral fire to burn away the shadow-colored snow. He kept pouring on the heat until the ground was dry and cracked. It wasn’t much, but it was everything he could ask for in such austere conditions. 

He leaned back against one of the rocks and sighed in relief. He was still high-strung from the day’s activities, but exhaustion was warring against good sense. Now that the adrenaline was fading from his body, sleep threatened to take him. When Hunter closed his eyes for the first time, an overwhelming hunger emanated from his trident. The sensation was so sharp that he was roused to wakefulness.

He gritted his teeth and activated his Cleanse skill. He watched as his mana started to decrease but it the edge of the hunger refused to be softened. Hunter couldn’t figure out what the trident wanted. It was hungry, but it didn’t have the ability to tell him hungry for what. He didn’t care what it wanted; he wasn’t going to go hunting for more imps in the dark. 

Not knowing what else he could do, he deactivated Cleanse. He didn’t want to keep draining his mana if it weren’t going to do anything.

Wait, that’s it. If it’s hungry, then maybe I can feed it mana.

He summoned a Flame of Avarice and let it twinkle above his palm. He tilted the trident until the central point was engulfed by the flame. The sensation of hunger receded, but then Hunter watched as his mana began to rapidly drain away to maintain his flame.