ONE MORE DEMON DOWN!
Or more accurately, three. I learned that I can prevent the second Maneater from coming after me if I stay on the first section of bridge to fight the first one. This was actually easier than it sounded, although that fight is so broken that it was probably mostly down to luck. The first fight, he just stunlocked me to death almost immediately; the second, I forget what went wrong, but the third time, I had swapped out God's Wrath for Second Chance out of spite and ended up not even needing it.
I know it's standard practice to cheese the world tendency system by jumping off the bridge in the Nexus once you've beaten a demon, but my approach has been to spend my body form revivals darkening worlds I've already beaten instead so I can farm them for better loot, especially from crystal lizards. So I spent the first one going back into the Stonefang caves and seeing if I can make myself fire resistant enough to wade through the lava and grab the dragonstone floating there. Figuring I had an extra long health bar, a free ring slot for the ring of flame resistance (since I didn't need the cling ring), and Second Chance in a pinch. Turns out, yes, if you're fast enough and patient enough to clear out the flying bearbugs first, and stay topped off between attempts, there is enough time to grab each one and get back to shore in one piece. So now I have a level 4 dragon longsword.
The Old Monk turned out to be a two-shot boss because on the first attempt, he managed to get be stuck in a corner and was smart enough not to let me out. But yeah, provided you know what you're doing, he's a pushover. I actually died more times to the black-phantom soul flayers on the way up.
And I decided to let Biorr handle the Penetrator for me after all. I mean, I helped a little, but the hard part is finding an opening where there's not a risk of hitting Biorr as well.
One last zone to go, but I did a stupid. I did a sweep of all the newly-opened areas and killed Executioner Miralda. Turns out that's how you drop your world tendency back to neutral. I'm definitely going to need all the help I can get in the final area, especially since I'm planning to go after both dragons before dealing with the king, and the only way to bring it back up to white tendency is to die three more times and drop it down to black, then kill Miralda's ghost and the primeval demon (which is all the way over in 1-3) in one go. Fun.