This area was giving me massive Sen's Fortress vibes. Just when I thought I had done everything and defeated the Ulcerated Tree Spirit, I noticed an area that I had to drop down to. I ended up walking into an area where I was ambushed by 2 Grafted Scions on a narrow bridge guarding a pretty sweet talisman (
Erdtree's Favor). I got the talisman, but was immediately destroyed by the Grafted Scions and dropped 20k runes. I wasn't able to recover the runes so was feeling pretty vengeful towards those two pricks. I threw myself at them repeatedly, but always got my ass handed to me. Probably spent like 2 hours dying over and over to those fuckers.
I came up with a strategy I'm pretty damn proud of. I got them to drop from the ceiling as usual and then immediately hopped off the bridge to make a quick getaway. I went back through the mini-dungeon and made my back to where those two were just were just casually farting around. I lured them one at a time into the tunnel with a fire breathing statue and made short work of them. It was such a satisfying feeling to exploit my surroundings like that. I didn't even care that I didn't beat them in a "fair" fight. Fuck that. Throwing two of those dudes at you in such a small space is absolute bullshit - good riddance.