When the name Pinwheel materialized in the air in bright crimson magical runes, Tami had to admit that panic was beginning to set in.
Falling off a cliff and landing directly in front of an elite monster he probably couldn't beat at full strength, let alone after all of that?
Seriously — making me fight an elite monster alone is a bit much, isn't it?
The Pinwheel had risen into the air, hovering as though charging up something catastrophic. Tami's eyes swept the room frantically for somewhere — anywhere — to take cover.
The room was a small, square chamber.
There was nowhere.
At some point, elite monsters and above in Sein Dungeon had begun arriving with their own exclusive background music. The Pinwheel's theme was something else entirely — a mournful melody threaded through with the whispers of the dead, and combined with the oppressive darkness of the chamber, the atmosphere it created pressed against the mind harder than any direct mental attack.
The Pinwheel let out a shrill screech and unleashed whatever it had been charging.
I'm dead. I'm absolutely dead.
Tami hurled himself sideways with everything he had.
In that fraction of a second, his mind flashed to other elite monsters — the Crucible Knight, for instance. If something like that were bearing down on him, a desperate diving roll wouldn't save him. Some attacks simply didn't care.
If death was coming, death was coming.
BOOM.
A violent explosion erupted behind him. Flames blazed white for an instant as the Pinwheel's enormous fireball scorched an entire section of the chamber wall black.
Tami stared.
A giant fireball.
The kind that detonated on impact.
"…Wait."
His expression shifted.
The look of a man who had braced himself for a verdict and received a parking ticket instead.
That's it?
Another giant fireball followed immediately.
To be fair, it wasn't an ordinary fireball by any measure — the thing was nearly half the size of a grown adult. But at the end of the day…
It was still just a fireball.
This time Tami didn't even bother diving. A simple sidestep handled it. He misjudged the distance slightly and his sleeve caught fire, but that was the extent of the damage.
The Pinwheel kept hurling them.
Tami weaved between the blasts, and a strange thought began to take shape.
Why does this elite monster seem… kind of weak?
The next moment, a sustained stream of flame erupted from the Pinwheel, forcing him to retreat several steps.
He actually sighed with relief.
"Finally, something other than fireballs. I knew an elite monster couldn't only know fireballs."
He widened the distance.
The Pinwheel went straight back to throwing fireballs.
Tami had nothing left to say.
He stood there for a moment, and a thought crept in — slow at first, then with growing conviction.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
He could solo this.
And honestly? It wasn't impossible.
Tami's baseline strength sat at a normal Silver-rank adventurer's level. But the Pinwheel's threat level didn't even compare to several Carthus Warriors fighting together. On top of that, his entire adventuring career had been spent inside Sein Dungeon — and thanks to consistent bonfire leveling, his attributes already exceeded those of an ordinary Silver-rank by a meaningful margin. His danger response and physical endurance had climbed well above the standard too.
There were actually quite a few adventurers like him now. Bed Weekly had even run an article about the phenomenon, giving them a name:
The First Generation of Sein Adventurers.
Tami wove through another wave of flames.
Eventually he found an opening and landed a clean slash.
The Pinwheel screamed.
Its body distorted — and in an instant it reappeared on the opposite side of the chamber.
Tami's eyelids twitched.
Please don't tell me this thing is another Crystal Sage who likes running marathons.
A weak monster that could teleport endlessly was an entirely different problem. The difficulty ceiling on that was not something he wanted to think about.
Fortunately, reality spared him.
The Pinwheel wasn't a marathon runner.
It hadn't been buffed.
Instead it simply, honestly, used a clone ability.
Three identical Pinwheels materialized in the room simultaneously. Anyone who didn't know better might have assumed it was preparing to sacrifice two of them to fuel some enormous torrent spell.
In reality, the creature's combat style was almost refreshingly uncomplicated:
High-frequency fireballs and flamethrowers.
Occasional low-frequency teleportation.
Replacement clones whenever one was destroyed.
Its defenses were also paper-thin — two solid hits were enough to stagger it.
Tami's weapon of choice happened to be a sword and shield. More specifically, a one-handed sword crafted from Zinogre materials, courtesy of Luluwo. A charged shield bash combined with his self-taught Weapon Art —
[Enhanced Impact]
— was enough to stagger the Pinwheel outright. From there, several vicious follow-up slashes could do their work freely.
Fighting amidst the inferno, Tami began to find his rhythm. Then a strategy. Then, almost unconsciously, he started reading the enemy's attack animations and turning them against it — using the shockwaves from exploding fireballs to boost his momentum and close distance faster than the Pinwheel could reposition.
Clone or original body, it didn't matter. If he could reach it, he swung.
If Belto had been watching, he would have praised Tami's combat instincts again without hesitation.
This was natural talent. There was no other word for it. The kid was a genuine prodigy, and whatever lay ahead in his future, it wouldn't be ordinary.
The battle wasn't particularly long — roughly as long as it would take a Crucible Knight to bisect two Stellas.
When the eerie background music finally cut out, the flames filling the chamber died with it.
The Pinwheel's body crumbled into dust.
"It's finally over…"
Tami's entire body was charred black.
He dropped to his knees with a heavy thud, completely spent. Severe burns covered most of his body. The Pinwheel might have been on the weaker end of the elite spectrum, but fighting it completely alone had pushed him right to his limits.
Without his shield, the Pinwheel's devoted adherence to the Church of Five Fireballs would have finished him long ago.
He wasn't a katana user, unfortunately.
If a katana main had been here, they probably would have parried and countered everything flawlessly without taking so much as a scratch.
— crossed out —
Still — a win was a win.
And in this moment, there was only one thing he wanted to say to the version of himself that had assumed the Pinwheel was some terrifying, insurmountable opponent:
Not a powerful enemy.
Not invincible.
"If only Senior Ais were here… I've already burned through all my healing potions."
His life force flickered like a candle caught in a draft.
His condition kept deteriorating — not fast enough to kill him immediately, but the trajectory wasn't encouraging.
At that moment, the reward for defeating the Pinwheel finally arrived.
But unlike every other drop he had seen, it didn't materialize as a glowing item on the ground. Instead, a streak of flame shot directly into his body.
A message surfaced in his mind at the same time.
[Rite of Kindling]
Choose a bonfire and offer Humanity to it, performing the Kindling Ritual and awakening the power hidden within the flame.
"What is this…?"
Tami's voice came out like a broken bellows — raw, cracked, barely there.
Alongside the Rite of Kindling was a single piece of Humanity.
Up until now, everyone had assumed Humanity was only useful during Endless Rogue content. Nobody had even considered that it might serve a purpose elsewhere.
Kindling, of all things.
At the moment, though, Tami had no energy to spare on questions about what Kindling or hidden power actually meant. He wanted somewhere safe to rest. Preferably somewhere with healing potions. If there happened to be a few jars nearby to smash, so much the better.
He had never wanted a bonfire so badly in his life.
When the Pinwheel died, the sealed door of the chamber swung open.
Tami dragged himself through it on pure mechanical instinct.
Standing still meant dying from his burns. Moving forward at least offered a sliver of hope. He was an adventurer, and an adventurer's purpose was exploration. And even if dying would send him back to a bonfire where he could rest — it would also wipe out every step of progress he had made.
To him, that was worse than pressing on.
The burns kept his consciousness wrapped in a dull haze. He could barely reconstruct how he moved from one passage to the next. Whether he encountered monsters along the way, he couldn't say with any certainty.
He simply staggered forward in a stupor until —
He found the second official bonfire.
Not the hidden one Luluwo's group had discovered. This one sat openly beside the path, impossible to walk past without seeing.
Happiness became something physical.
Strength surged back into his limbs out of nowhere. He stumbled toward it, nearly pitching forward as he conjured a tiny flame through sheer force of habit and tossed it in.
WHOOSH.
The bonfire roared to life.
Bathed in its warmth, his stamina flooded back. His injuries began to close.
"Ahhhh… the fire is so warm…"
The relief was so overwhelming he heard himself moan out loud.
Then he remembered the Rite of Kindling.
He tossed the Humanity into the flame.
The bonfire blazed instantly brighter, hotter, more alive.
Tami shot to his feet.
"My injuries are completely healed — and I feel better than I have in days. Like I've actually slept properly for once!"
In that same moment, understanding poured into his mind.
The Rite of Kindling was a technique developed specifically for bonfires. In the original game, it had increased the number of Estus Flasks received when resting. In this world, however, it had transformed into something considerably more significant.
Its effects now included: instantly restoring injuries and Mental Energy; greatly strengthening mental resilience; and slightly increasing all attributes across the board.
There were limitations, naturally.
A person who acquired the Rite of Kindling could only apply it to a single bonfire. All other bonfires remained ordinary. The chosen bonfire became a special, personalized version — exclusively accessible to the adventurer who had kindled it, and only they could continue offering Humanity to deepen it.
Even after leaving and re-entering the dungeon, the kindling effect persisted. Inside the dungeon, the enhancement lasted until death — after resurrection, it faded unless Humanity was offered again. Outside the dungeon, the duration varied by individual, lasting up to seven days at most.
Repeated offerings also provided a small but permanent increase to mental strength over time.
Humanity obtained from Endless Rogue content couldn't be taken outside, which meant anyone hoping to use the Rite of Kindling would have to rely on what they could find within the Catacombs of Carthus itself. Any monster had an extremely slim chance of dropping it — odds even lower than pulling two SSRs in a ten-roll. Elite monsters, however, guaranteed one piece. Treasure chests, jars, and similar containers offered occasional finds as well.
At first glance, it looked like an enormous gift to adventurers.
Something along the lines of Godrick's Great Rune.
But restoring mental energy and strengthening mental resilience…
No matter how he turned it over in his head…
Wasn't this basically a mechanism designed to squeeze even more labor out of them?
As always:
The adventurers might profit.
But Sein never lost.
That was precisely why the Pinwheel wasn't particularly powerful — strong enough to wall out weaker adventurers, while letting capable ones through to claim the Kindling Ritual as their reward.
"Huh? What's this?"
Tami noticed something hanging from his waist that hadn't been there before.
He unhooked it and turned it over in his hands.
[Estus Flask]
A treasured possession of the Undead, beloved above all else.
Restores stamina and relieves mental fatigue.
Can be replenished at a bonfire.
"Is this… a healing potion?"
He took a cautious sip.
His eyes went wide.
This was not a healing potion.
This was an ultra-high-purity healing potion — the kind that made everything else feel like colored water by comparison. One sip, and every trace of lingering fatigue simply ceased to exist.
Then the implication hit him.
As long as he had Estus Flasks, he could continuously repair the mental damage caused by repeated deaths. Which meant he could keep exploring the dungeon indefinitely — no forced retreats, no hard limits imposed by a deteriorating mind.
One sip restored an enormous amount of both stamina and mental energy. And judging by the bottle, he had roughly twenty sips to work with.
"This is an incredible reward. I love it completely."
Tami could barely contain himself — Luluwo needed to hear about this immediately. These findings would bury anything the Light Eagle Corps had managed to scrape together.
"But how am I supposed to get out of here?"
He stared at the path continuing ahead of him. It didn't appear to offer any alternative.
"If I keep going, I'm not going to walk straight into the boss, am I?"
The concern was real, but his feet were already itching to move —
"Ahhh!"
A sudden scream tore out of the darkness somewhere deep ahead.