Claire’s body warmed as the yeti fell limp. The comforting heat started from her core and spread through her body each time her heart beat. The ice encasing her left arm melted. The blue-black skin underneath was restored and the opposite limb was snapped back into place. There was no pain, even as the scattered fragments that made up her broken ribs wriggled through her flesh, returned to their rightful positions, and painlessly pieced themselves back together. For a moment, a very brief moment, it no longer hurt to breathe, but the freezing winds soon restored the status quo.

“I hate winter. Why does it have to be so cold?”

A series of begrudging groans escaped her as she waded over to the yeti’s corpse. Only the beast’s legs were in a remotely harvestable state. The rest of its pelt had been ruined by her lacklustre attacks.

She slashed at one of the girthy limbs with her remaining dagger, but even in death, the fur was too thick to pierce. Looking up, however, provided a quick solution. The monster’s crystalline horn was awfully sharp, and a few blows from her mace saw it immediately removed.

Handling the almost rock-like spike proved surprisingly difficult. It would slip out of her grasp if she didn’t hold it tight and its handleless, double-edged form made it impossible for her to grip it without cutting herself. Permanently solving the problem required making the shiv a shaft, but her magic served as an effective bandaid in the meantime.

Claire detached one of its legs and used it to sheath the horn before returning to the monster’s abode, where she was pleasantly surprised by the still-burning flame. The severed limb was heavy, so she left it outside and took a seat by the flame. Only then, after stretching her tired body, did she refer to her log.

The goddess had droned on and on about something or other when the furry cyclops fell, but Claire had failed to pay attention.

There were a few notable entries. Her skills had improved, her Vector Mage class had gained ten levels, and her authority had apparently unlocked a new dish. And while all that was certainly interesting, her eyes remained fixed on a pair of particularly outstanding notes.

Log Entry 806
You have slain a level 37 Iceborn Llystletein Watcher.

You have been awarded the following first-kill bonus:
- 6 points of agility
- 9 points of conjuring
- 1 point of dexterity
- 5 points of spirit
- 2 points of strength
- 6 points of vitality

She furrowed her brow as she double-checked its level and race. It made no sense. It was far below the bird, with barely half as many numbers and zero ascensions to its name, and yet, it had been much harder to kill. She was confident that the yeti could have completely destroyed the raven in a head-on fight.

The modifiers attached to its race were just as strange. If it was explicitly denoted as a Llystletein species, then that could only mean that everything else she had killed was not. But curious as she was, she soon saw the question dismissed. There was no point. She lacked the necessary knowledge to arrive at a meaningful conclusion.

Log Entry 816
Achievement Unlocked — Master of Cadrian Diplomacy

You have somehow managed to transform a peaceful cultural exchange into a display of barbarism and violence. The makings of a true Cadrian diplomat run through your veins.

“What are you talking about, Box?” she asked with a tilt of the head. “I was clearly the victim.” The innocent facade remained for a solid three seconds before it was twisted into a smile. She couldn’t deny it. Goading the foolish and hot-blooded was certainly the Cadrian way. “It’s not my fault it was so effective.”

With a yawn running its course, she dragged a tree into the fire and moved to the room’s far corner, where she curled up under a mountain of furs. Her consciousness grew hazy as she prepared to sleep, but the land of dreams eluded her.

Her eyes shot wide open. A sudden wave of lucidity splashed over her like a bucket of cold water.

“You killed it,” complained a familiar voice.

“Shouldersnake?” she groaned. “What is it this time?”

“I wanted to kill it.”

“And it’s dead. What’s your point?”

“My point, Claire, is that you’re not letting me kill things!”

“Okay. Not my problem.”

“You know what else would’ve been not your problem?” The snake paused dramatically to scratch the underside of its chin with its tail. “Oh, I know! The watcher! Wow!”

“I don’t care.” Claire rolled her eyes.

“Well, I do!”

The rogue shot the scaly apparition the most unamused stare she could muster while putting on a display of lifting her hand to her shoulder.

“Ladies, ladies, ladies!” But a third voice, identical to the other two, joined the conversation before she could wave her self-proclaimed guardian spirit away. Trumpets blared and feathers fell from the sky like pieces of confetti. The display was accompanied by a tiny red carpet that appeared in front of her and extended to her empty shoulder. Down the aisle came a palm-sized pony with a disproportionately large head, a body half as long, and four tiny legs, each a third the length of its neck. “This is no time for such pointless quarrelling! We must stand united, especially in moments of great crisis.”

“Oh, great... You’re back.” Claire sighed.

“Where the hell have you been this past week?” asked the snake.

“I was busy, of course.”

“Maybe you should have stayed busy. We don’t want you here,” hissed the danger noodle.

“Oh, how very bashful you are, my dear friend,” said the horse, with a laugh.

“More like we both hate you.”

“Please, we all know that there is no way you could possibly hate someone as intelligent and beautiful as I.”

The contest of words droned on in the background, but Claire paid it no mind. Its volume fell each time the speaker changed, each time her consciousness took a step closer to the void.

“Well, we do. Now get out of here, you stupid pony. I’m trying to talk to Claire.”

“Why, that is perfect. Then you may do so in my noble presence.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. God, you’re such a stupid donkey.”

Like leaves in the wind, the voices drifted, further and further away.

“I am no donkey, my dear fellow shoulder beast, and I am fully aware that you know this to be true.”

“Where do I even start with you?” groaned the serpent.

“With worship, of cour...”

“Abs... no…”

Before long, they faded completely, leaving her with peace, quiet, and an overhead view of the mansion that had once been her home.

One step at a time, she descended through the clouds, walking across an invisible staircase as she closed in on her former abode.

Casting her gaze over the horizon provided a familiar set of sights, landmarks she was almost starting to miss. The Langgbjern Mountains lay to the north. Though the occasional city dotted the range’s base, her former countrymen laid no claim to the cordillera itself. No one did. They were too hazardous, filled with all sorts of creatures whose paths no soldier dared to cross.

To the east, there was an ocean, a glimmering sea that split Mara’s people and monsters in twain. Brave merchants and adventurers would sometimes traverse it, braving the risky trip between the continents of Pria and Vaughn. But though the land masses were ultimately their destinations, it was not necessarily they that made the journeys worthwhile. Countless societies thrived at the ocean’s various depths, a series of warring states whose rulers knew of nothing but greed and glory. And yet, the Ryllian Sea was known not for its barbarism but rather its luxurious cuisine. The states produced the world’s most accomplished chefs, one of which was the manor’s very own Amereth, a once masterless warrior turned confectioner extraordinaire.

Talihir lay to the south. The rainforest was vast, spanning over a thousand kilometres in every direction and sporting an impressive two score and seventeen distinct territories. Only one of them was under Cadrian control. Now serving under the Eleven-Horned King, the land of the gorgons was a place of freedom no longer, its traditions shackled by the masters that ruled it from the sky.

Beyond the great wood, further south of Primrose’s Boundless Grove and the divine sapling it contained, was an empty unblessed desert, a land that had supposedly incurred the wrath of the gods.

Finally, she cast her gaze westward. The mage knew that many a nation lay beyond the plains, but Cadria was all that extended as far as the eye could see. The grasslands that the people grazed were abundant and fruitful. Golden hills upon golden hills, interrupted only by the occasional river, city, or forest. It was a bountiful land, a paradise that could not be maintained without frequent excessive force.

The superpower’s expansive military was always occupied, be it with repelling foreign nationals, exploring lands untamed, or recovering riches long lost to time. At the end of the day, they were all tasks that fell upon the need for might and magic. There existed not a single wealthy household without its own private army. The more successful a man was, the greater his forces. And that was precisely why House Augustus was home to Cadria’s finest warriors, outranked only by those in service to the crown.

But that was something Claire cared little about. She didn’t even glance at the heavily armoured men sparring in the courtyard. She was focused on the roof, where her younger self was sitting with her legs dangling and her eyes rested upon the biggest tree in the garden.

The halfbreed smiled. It was a day she remembered vividly. In due time, she would choose to jump. And though she closed the gap and stopped herself from plummeting to her supposed doom, her father wound up scolding her regardless. Her mother, on the other hand, lectured her father instead. The purple-scaled lamia never did quite seem to believe that falling was capable of causing significant harm. To prove her point, she had even once thoughtlessly leapt to the city below.

Realizing that the dream was a rare opportunity to see her mother’s face, Claire climbed onto one of the mansion’s southerly verandas and entered through an open glass door. She waltzed straight out of the guest room and through the hallway. Without any strange distortions to disturb her. The corridor didn’t mysteriously extend, nor did she suddenly lose her nerve.

But she was denied.

The world crumbled when she reached her destination. The warm afternoon darkened into an eerie, silent night as the ceiling was blown away. The stars were missing. The moon was missing. The sky was missing. There were no clouds to hide the heavens. They simply didn’t exist.

When she lowered her eyes, she found that the hallway had vanished. In its place was the room of purification—the inner chamber attached to the ritual hall—where she stood dressed in full ceremonial garb. Her body was washed and subsequently dried. Her hair was combed and her dress was straightened.

The door beyond the tips of her fingers led not to her mother’s chambers, but the place where she would die. The place where her father would do nothing but celebrate as she laid her life on the table. Where even her tutor, the woman that had come closest to her heart, would cast her aside like a meaningless pawn.

Her heart pounded.

Her breath was stuck in her throat.

The trembling extended all the way down to her toes.

But she couldn’t stop herself from opening the door.

That was when the world broke again. Shattering like glass, the scene crumbled into a million pieces that left her standing above the clouds on a bright and sunny day.

She slowly raised a hand to her face and rubbed it free of salt before looking towards the familiar man before her. There was only one of him and he looked much older, perhaps even past his prime. A full-length greying beard grew from his face, and his frame was twice as bulky as it had been in on every other day. His clothing was different as well. Gone were the multicoloured, art-stained shirts and the grainy blue pants, replaced by a loose linen cloth wrapped around his waist.

The grim look on his face changed to one of surprise when she walked up beside him. He raised his hands to his chin and pulled at his beard whilst patting his body with his other hand. The man didn’t calm until everything suddenly reverted to its usual state. Clouds were replaced with tiles and walls while his frame turned tiny and translucent. His facial hair receded and his wrinkles vanished while his skirt reverted to its usual fare.

Strange.

A bunch of silent words left his mouth, summarized in her mind as a single piece of glowing white text. He wandered about for a bit afterwards, pacing back and forth with a hand scratching his head before suddenly lighting up and smacking a fist into his palm.

One snap later, everything changed again, all at once. The scene shifted to what she presumed was the man’s living room, where his less astral form was situated with its hands atop the rectangular artifact once more.

Log Entry 817
Detect Vector Magic has reached level 11.

A copy of his device appeared right in front of her, the image-projecting box lighting up to feature another imperceptible mirage. There was something different about it this time, but unable to see it in any detail, she couldn’t quite make out what that something happened to be.

When the man’s physical form took action, he inputted into his mysterious wand a set of commands different from the ones he had shown her previously. The illustration didn’t grab its foe this time, nor did it smash said foe into the ground neck first. But it did still jump. After leaping into the air, the representation started to dash, back and forth, without the use of any sort of foothold. Somehow, its height remained constant following each set of inputs, as if gravity suddenly ceased to apply.

Log Entry 818
Unarmed Combat Mastery has reached level 7.

Good.

Rambling happily, the man inserted himself between the halfbreed and the art-filled box right as the goddess announced the acquisition.

Next time. Real.

And then, with a clap of his hands, he was gone, room, spirit, world and all.

Claire was left alone. There was a brief moment where the world was embroiled in darkness, but a flutter of the eyelids and a brief gust of wind returned her to reality. The bonfire had died down to a soothing ember, but the cave was still warm. There was a fresh coat of snow lying just beyond the entrance, covering up her tracks and all traces of the fight. The thick, woolly blankets were so warm and toasty that she nearly fell asleep again. It took another chilling breeze to shake the snake free of her grogginess.

She hadn’t the faintest clue as to how much time had passed, but she felt surprisingly well-rested. When she looked outdoors, she found the moon still high in the sky with her gargantuan pointed hat fluttering in the evening breeze.

Stretching, the halfbreed grabbed a dagger and looked for the yeti’s leg, only to find that its shape had shifted. What had once been a functional limb had transformed into a lump of ice with a meaty core. It would likely thaw if she fed the fire, but there was no reason to sit around.

The nap had reminded her that there were other pelts at her disposal. The pile she had slept in contained seven distinct pieces of fur, all of which had already been processed and treated on her behalf. The size and texture were eerily close to that of the watcher’s; between the eye in the spilled soup and the various scattered skeletons lying about, Claire had long concluded that the monster was a cannibal. And given its uniform stock, perhaps even one that dined exclusively on its own kind.

Fashioning the skins into something usable was more painful than she would have liked. She hadn’t brought her sewing kit with her, and the gorilla had not been kind enough to leave any such tools behind. With no string or yarn anywhere to be found, she was limited to designs featuring ribbons to be knotted.

It seemed easy in theory. She just had to leave a few extraneous bits when she cut out a cloak so that she could keep it fastened in place, and being three times her size, the skins easily facilitated such an endeavour. Still, she couldn’t help but feel as if she was being wasteful. Each ribbon she crafted rendered a large chunk of the remaining material unusable and messing up was effectively the norm. The only tool she had that was capable of cutting through the fur was the watcher’s horn, and using it was a chore. The blade was stuck inside the frozen leg and refused to be removed—she had to manipulate the whole meter-long object for each and every cut.

Without a ruler or measuring tape, her first attempt resulted in an abject failure. It was too small to fit her, even though she could have sworn that she had made it twice as wide as her shoulders. 

Cloak number two suffered from a similar lack of function. It was more or less the right size, but the sole ribbon built into its collar was too weak to hold the heavy garment in place. Cloaks three, four, and five ended up misshapen or otherwise dysfunctional, with only the sixth coming out right. It was just the right size and its fancy, six-ribbon design held tightly enough to keep it from slipping off.

It didn’t exactly accommodate her ears, but she had decided to live with the dysfunction. A quick test with one of her failures had confirmed that the fluffers would quickly wind up freezing if she cut slits into the sides of the hood. Likewise, the same applied if there was too much empty space in the area around her head.

Next, the rogue made a mitten, or at least a cut of fur that was somewhat capable of serving the function. The rectangular blob of hair and skin was wrapped around everything from the bottom of her wrist to the tips of her fingers and bound on both the left and right.

It was clearly the sort of equipment that completely decimated her dexterity, but it remained a better choice than losing her fingers to the cold. Moreover, the outfit provided at least some degree of defence. As she had learned firsthand, watcher fur was tough enough to resist a half-baked blade.

Once the hand protector was complete, Claire moved on to a much simpler task and cut a scarf from an otherwise ruined pelt. And with that, she was done. She had completely destroyed most of the materials, but she was satisfied with the results.

All that was left was to invest her ability points. Rogue had started giving twice as many since its mutation, and Llystletein Vector Mage gave another two times that. With the latter class at its thirteenth level, it had generated a whole forty-eight points all by itself.

In total, she had sixty-two to spend and no idea what to do. The fight with the watcher had proven that she was lacking in terms of raw strength, but she also felt as if the difficulty was also a function of her subpar speed and dexterity. Neither ability score had been able to put its full potential on display, thanks to the lethargy that came with the wintry environment.

Even spirit was starting to tempt her. Her last two fights had involved monsters with magic, and their spells had proven powerful enough to completely shatter her defences. Likewise, conjuring had returned to relevance. Any investment therein would improve the efficacy of her already useful magic.

“What do you two think?” Stuck at an impasse, the halfbreed reluctantly addressed the pair that had silently accompanied her all morning.

“She has finally acknowledged us, Shouldersnake. What say you, my friend? Shall we deign to offer a response?”

“There’s no point. She won’t summon us even if we do.”

“Fine, strength it is,” grumbled Claire.

“Wait, wait! Hold your shoulderhorses, damn it!” shouted the snake. “Look, I know you’re just doing that because it’s basically the opposite of conjuring, but how about we sit down and carefully talk this through?”

“Oh, now you want to talk.” Claire rolled her eyes.

“Do not mind us, Claire. It was but a mere jest, thought out with the sole purpose of eliciting a reaction,” said Shoudlerhorse.

“Yeah, that,” said the serpent. “So I’m just going to remind you what Father always used to say. The more you spend and the stronger you are, the harder it gets to level.”

“I don’t care what Father thinks,” said Claire. She immediately invested all her points into strength.

“Of course you don’t.” The snake sighed.

It was commonly known that the system computed relative risk and spat out an appropriate reward. To leave points unspent was to artificially raise the difficulty of a given encounter. Claire, however, was too concerned with her continued survival to bother maximizing her gains.

“But I think you should, from now on,” said the snake. “The faster we level, the faster we get our ascensions, and the faster we can stand up to Father.”

Claire bit her lips. It was a good point. She was going to need to get a lot stronger if she wanted to best an aspect.

“Or perhaps you can consider walking a different path,” said Shoulderhorse. “If we ignore our ascensions, we can enjoy our days buried in gourmet meals. And oh what a pleasure that would be.”

“I wish I was that simple, sometimes,” grumbled Shouldersnake.

“You are,” said Claire. “All you care about is murder.”

“It’s the ultimate pleasure,” said the serpent, as it bobbed its head. “And killing things is one of the only ways to ascend.”

“But look at all the effort it requires! I would not say that it is worth it, dear friend,” said Shoulderhorse.

“The point of life is ascension, Pony. Get that through your head,” said Shouldersnake.

“No, no, no, my friend, you are getting it all wrong. The point of life is to enjoy all the pleasures it has to offer, to eat, to sleep, and to indulge yourself in all sorts of depravity. That is our purpose.”

“Can you shut up? Both of you.” Claire checked over her belongings as she grumbled. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Only if you promise you’ll let me kill something,” said Shouldersnake.

“I will consider it once we have had breakfast,” said Shoulderhorse. “It has been too long since you’ve indulged in a treat, and I have just been dying to experience it vicariously. I’d like it even more if you were to summon me and allow me to partake in it myself, however.”

“Right. Good point. I need to eat.”

Activating her authority skill, Claire summoned a basket of stale provisions and reluctantly fueled herself for the long road ahead.