Perilous Research
The sacrifice is the load-bearing clause; the two cards are what you collect for performing it. For two mana at instant speed this draws two and then demands you give up a permanent, and in the right shell that demand is the second thing you wanted, not a tax. It cashes in something that has already done its job or is about to be answered for free: a token, a creature locked into a losing combat, an enchantment whose trigger has resolved, a Saga on its final chapter. Because the action is sacrifice rather than destroy, it slips past indestructible and reaches your own permanents on your terms, which is why it doubles as a way to bury a creature in the graveyard or dodge an opponent's removal while the cards arrive in the same breath. It is a self-sacrifice outlet that pays you instead of charging you, a narrower and stranger axis than "draw two" suggests. The friction is ownership: you want a permanent worth surrendering, since with only Perilous Research itself on the battlefield you must sacrifice it and net fewer cards than the plainest cantrips. But nobody runs this for the floor. It belongs to decks already built to profit from things leaving the battlefield, where the forced sacrifice is the point and the two cards are the reward.



