The watcher was a fool. Perhaps complacent from the ease of its regular work, it failed to react to her approach, even with her weapon dragging against the ice. It didn’t even stand up until she was right in its face, but by then, it was far too late.

She paralyzed it with a glare and hacked the bladed leg across its neck. The strike was true. Its power bolstered by Assassinate, the crystalline blade cleaved its flesh and stole its head from its body. A fountain of blood erupted from the stump, two separate streams of red and yellow that mixed and mingled as they spilled.

But it wasn’t dead.

A spear of flesh and chitin flew by her face, missing her cheeks but grazing her ear. Five identical strikes followed, each better aimed than the last. But she didn’t dodge. She didn’t deserve to dodge. 

The spines bit into her flesh as she observed the undying behemoth. Its severed head was still moving, its massive eye swivelling and twisting around in its socket.

It turned to her after a brief delay and unleashed a hair-raising squelch. Six beetle-like legs sprouted from the bottom of its mutilated neck and provided the disjointed head with mobility anew. The freak’s body went through a similar process, with a bushel of limbs sprouting from the supposedly fatal injury.

The headless body was the first to attack. It dashed at her with its scythes crossed in front of it in a defensive formation. Its segmented legs were reared, poised to strike. And strike they did. The seven longest blades shot towards her as soon as it closed the distance. They launched a series of wild stabs, but again, Claire simply stood still and endured, idly retaliating as the opportunity was presented.

The legs’ carapace was much softer than she had imagined. Her makeshift bone blades pierced right through their shells and decimated their flesh.

Unlike the hunter, the guard was highly vulnerable. Its motions were hardly refined and its reactions were slow as a snail’s.

The beast retreated as the initial clash drew to a close, but Claire stepped on its foot before it could create any distance between them. She clubbed its knee with her mace and drove a foot into its face. Another blow to its injured joint caused it to fall over, and a third pulverized the bone altogether.

With its leg sufficiently broken, she spun around and raised a hand at the creature’s head—which had leapt at her from what would have been a deafer halfbreed’s blind spot—and pushed it with her magic. It went flying, but not far enough. She wasn’t satisfied until she flung her mace at it and sent it tumbling towards the bridge.

Her imperfect aim only added to the attack’s lethality. The severed skull fell straight into the lava, bursting into flame the moment it made contact. Knowing the beast’s resilience, however, she didn’t relent. She picked up her weaponized leg and thrust it into the creature’s chest, right where its heart should have been.

Log Entry 905
You have slain a level 40 Corrupted Llystletein Watcher.

You have been awarded the following first-kill bonus:
- 3 points of dexterity
- 4 points of strength
- 3 points of vitality

Over and over she gored and smashed, beating it as if it were her father, even after the goddess confirmed its demise.

Log Entry 906
You have leveled up. Your health and mana have been restored and all harmful status effects have been cleansed.

Your racial class, Halfbreed, has reached level 40.

Your primary class, Llystletein Rogue, has reached level 37.

Your secondary class, Llystletein Vector Mage, has reached level 15.

You have gained 12 ability points.

It was only as the exhaustion hit her that she stood up from its corpse. Allowing the blood to trickle down her fingers, Claire collected her things and headed for the chest by the bridge. The container had only a few scant items contained within it. One corner was taken up by a small brown bag featuring a number of strange coins, while the rest was filled with rectangular blocks made of stone. Their purpose was unclear, but she decided to take a few of them with her nonetheless, shoving them in the bag for ease of transport.

New items in tow, she crossed the bridge to find a crater too large for the mountain that contained it. It was equal parts long and wide, a circular basin that doubled as a veritable mess of ice and fire. Half of the stone walls were covered in crystalline sleet, with the rest featuring streams of lava, red hot tears that oozed from gaps in the rock.

The molten rivers were redirected through a central pipe that ran along the edges of the subterranean city. Just like everything else, the conduit was made of ice. And just like everything else, it was completely unaffected when exposed to heat. The tubing showed no signs of melting; there was no steam produced, nor any drops of water dripping from the points of contact.

Bits of icy scaffolding could be seen all over the town, glimmering beneath the light of the stars. The only building that lacked the supportive structures was a glacial pyramid, a triangular construct tall enough to double as the mountain’s summit.

She didn’t need a guide to know that she had finally arrived. The sight that lay before her was Borrok Peak—the destination she was meant to destroy.

“Why am I even doing this stupid quest?” she muttered to herself as she scanned the city. “It doesn’t matter how strong I get. He’ll crush me like a bug.”

Roughly three-quarters of the inhabitants were clearly of the borrokian species. There were hundreds, if not thousands, gathered in the city’s wide open spaces, chattering away with a mix of insectoid buzzes, monkey-like squeaks, and owlish hoots. Another twenty percent or so were at least debatably borroks, with corrupted watchers serving as the perfect example. The bats, wolves, and bears mingled in with the crowd were cut from the same cloth, sporting insect-like features and living in harmony with the freakish cat-bugs.

Only a select few individuals, like the captured centaurs, were completely devoid of any insectoid parts. Oddly enough, the pair was no longer held prisoner. Their restraints had been undone and they were casually trotting down the street alongside their supposed captors. Their humanoid features were conspicuous, but it was their clothing that truly set them apart. They were the only ones wearing garments made of leather and metal. Everyone else was either naked or robed in simple linens, pieces of cloth that covered them from head to toe.

Tearing her eyes from the populace, Claire examined the scene for landmarks. The pyramid stood out right away, but it was not the only notable structure. There was a large, circular building resembling a colosseum situated right beside it. She couldn’t quite see inside, courtesy of its tall walls, but she could hear all sorts of excited roars coming from its direction.

Another obvious point of interest was the strange manor that overlooked the city. It sat on a cliff halfway up one of the walls, with a fence wrapped around it and an inordinate number of corrupted watchers patrolling the premises.

The city’s sights clear in her mind, Claire began by walking down the sloped path that led into the town square. It had been a long time since she had had the chance to freely wander about a settlement. Valencia was often out of range despite existing directly beneath the manor. At home, there was a magical device that facilitated transport up and down, but she was only allowed to descend for formal events. And even then, she would be kept under strict watch. It had been nearly half a year since she last escaped her guards and explored the city unattended.

After hiding her leg-spear just outside of town and confirming that she had over a hundred hours to complete her quest, she set out with a fresh mind. Her dying heart began pounding with excitement. Until she finally got to exploring.

There was little if anything to catch her attention. It was just another boring town with boring things and boring people. Bizarre species aside, she could only note its lack of technology. All the convenient artifacts Valencians took for granted were missing outright.

Given the insects’ primitive, barbaric nature, she had expected there to be criminals wandering the streets and violent brawls around every corner, but the only degenerate she could find was a corrupted watcher passed out in the middle of the road with a swath of empty bottles scattered all around him.

It was not just the lowlives that were missing. Despite seeming to understand the concept of money, hardly any borroks were engaged in the exchange of goods or services. There wasn’t a single shop or stall in sight. Every building was either a residence, a lodge, a warehouse, or a factory.

Claire studied the ugly mutants by eavesdropping on their conversations, only for her efforts to end in vain. They appeared to be communicating with each other through a mix of gestures and miscellaneous noises, but deciphering them proved impossible. She couldn’t grasp it, no matter how long she listened. In the first place, it was ridiculous for a multi-raced city to have its own language. The watchers were unable to make the same noises as the tiny cat-tailed gorilla beetles and vice versa. Their biological differences made it impossible for them to mimic each other’s words. Marish, the common tongue, was the only language that could be spoken by all, albeit not because of the specific sounds involved. Its universality stemmed from the special properties that the gods had conferred upon it.

Any creature with a language skill could understand the common tongue. Marish would grow alongside every other vernacular until it reached its fifth level—just enough to communicate. It took ten to sound fluent—with only five, the resulting sentences were often broken, primitive, and barbaric, like the watcher’s.

Shaking her head, Claire wandered through the city until she spotted a point of interest along the side of the road. It was a tiny, triangular building with its pointed tip capped by a disproportionate sphere. The ice that went into its construction stood out on account of its colour and opacity; it was much closer to purple than blue, and stained enough that it was difficult to see through.

On the other side of its entrance sat a massive pitfall nearly as wide as a man. There was a ladder running up the side opposite her, illuminated by a soft red glow that came from underground. Its rungs looked difficult for Claire to climb—the individual bars had a full halfbreed’s worth of height between them. Whether anyone would wish to engage in such an activity, however, was questionable at best. A foul, sulphuric scent constantly wafted from within, polluting her nostrils and keeping her forked tongue deep in the back of her throat.

A series of hoots and howls came from behind her as she moved closer to the hole. The complaints were spoken by an elderly borrok with a full beard tucked beneath its thorax. The monster continued to grunt at her for a solid minute; it took half a rant for the elder to finally realize its fault and switch to the standard tongue.

“You, what doing?” he croaked. He narrowed his eyes into a glare and bristled his tail. “Use or no?”

“I don’t know what this is,” said Claire.

“This?” The borrok gestured towards the hole. “This toilet.”

Claire slowly looked between the senior and the hole. “Why is there a ladder in the toilet?”

“That normal,” said the borrok. “If no use, then go. Me use.”

The halfbreed nodded and excused herself with her ears held close to her head. As far as she was concerned, the trickling and sizzling that corrupted her mind were mere figments of her imagination.

Escaping the uncomfortable noise took the half-snake to a completely different part of town. The area next to the crater’s wall was effectively a landfill. There were rotting corpses, wooden splinters, and broken weapons extending as far as the eye could see. Even the borroks themselves were much fewer in number, with only the odd individual or two sleeping out on the streets.

“Borroks! If you do not return the Staff of True Ice, then today is the day you die!”

Claire was about to move on when an ear-piercing screech brought her eyes to the sky. Though it was dark, she could easily make the intruders out from the starry backdrop. Their dark ashen bodies were highlighted with a fiery red glow, an inner flame burning brightly within their cores. Their classification was difficult at best. She couldn't tell if they were gargoyles, sea-creatures, or both. Their frames resembled dolphins, but they were clearly made of once-molten stone. Each time they moved, their bodies would undulate, as if to swim through the air. The only wings they possessed were made entirely of flame—if they could be called wings at all. The fiery blobs functioned like halos; they were physically detached from their dorsal fins and floating in the space behind them.

The aquatic creatures opened their mouths and fired pillars of flame, dyeing the city a bright shade of red. Somehow, it worked. Though unaffected by magma, the icy buildings melted before the fire even made contact. It seemed like the citizens would be slaughtered, but the damage they suffered was inconsequential. Not a single bug-monkey fell to the initial assault. Those that were hit, even dead on, were only lightly singed.

Such an attack was typically a formula for panic, terror, and hysteria. But Borrok Peak’s residents didn’t seem to mind that their homes were under attack. Even those awoken by the commotion were so indifferent that they went right back to sleep.

A frosted dome appeared as the lava dolphins launched a third wave of attacks. The fire and ice clashed head-on, but nothing melted. The raging flames were quelled by the frosty defence.

The dolphins remained unflinching. They reared their heads, sucked in deep breaths, and kept up the assault. But they weren’t left to hammer on the protective shield for long. Bats and borroks flew from holes in the bulwark and engaged the fiery cetes head-on.

It was a pitiful spectacle. Both sides fought at a level that left Claire completely and utterly disappointed. All the participants were slow and weak, and neither party appeared capable of inflicting any sort of lasting injury.

The only individual to catch the halfbreed’s eye was a late arrival. It was effectively an anti-borrok. Unlike his freakish counterparts, who had monkey-like faces and beetle-like bodies, the newcomer was a monkey with a beetle’s head. Even its feline features were backwards—its tail grew out of its skull while its ears adorned its rump.

Despite its strange appearance, the bug-cat proved itself a proficient fighter. One of the dolphins would suffer a heavy blow each time it launched itself from the dome or kicked off the crater’s walls.

None of the supposedly aquatic fire elementals fell for good, but they retreated before long, cursing the borroks and threatening to soon return.

From the locals’ air of nonchalance, it was likely a common occurrence. But even so, Claire stood at attention. There was a chance that the anti-borrok was the sentinel.

She followed it when it retreated, albeit from a distance away. She didn’t need line of sight. Tracking provided a fair estimate of its location, and it was slow enough to be incapable of escaping her range.

It didn’t stop until it arrived at the colosseum. The prospect of inspecting the circular landmark had her ears twitching, but seeing it from up close evoked little beyond a wave of disappointment.

Valencia’s gladiator pit was an engineering marvel, a work of art that served as a prodigious architect’s chef-d'oeuvre. The amphitheatre before her, on the other hand, was a boring everyday building without any particularly outstanding features. It barely had any seating; the top row was a scant five levels off the ground, with each ring supporting a few hundred observers at most. And that was it. There weren’t any floating VIP stands, nor did there appear to be any way for the stadium to automagically transform to accommodate a famed fighter’s preferences.

It was simply bland.

And yet, the borroks appeared to adore it.

The arena was one of the few places that was already in the midst of being repaired. Corrupted creatures were working away at the damaged parts with pails of slush in hand. They slathered it all over the broken walls and applied their spells to freeze the concrete substitute in place.

Claire’s target began aiding in the repairs as soon as it arrived on the scene. It was effectively a gopher; all of its time was spent moving buckets between the workers and the building’s storage unit. Looking around, she found that it was by no means unique. There were dozens of its kind running errands of all sorts, but she continued to follow it, even as it moved on to another part of town.

It took three hours of stalking for Claire to finally arrive at the not-sentinel’s humble abode. It lived in the city’s outskirts, on the side of town opposite the manor. The buildings that populated the suburb were of a shorter make, with scaffolding that barely left the ground. The neighbourhood was located by one of the crater’s far edges, but it didn’t reach all the way to the stone wall. A river of magma, roughly twenty meters across, stopped it from extending any further.

There was a decent stretch of land on the lavaway’s far shore. It was large enough to be usable, but the borroks hadn’t built anything on the other side. The molten stream stemmed from a natural source, a crack in a faraway wall further fed by a series of icy pipes.

Glancing around and triple-checking her surroundings, Claire confirmed that her target was the only one in the immediate vicinity. The neighbouring houses were empty and devoid of life, but it wasn’t as if they weren’t lived-in. There were bits and pieces of shed fur just about everywhere, and it was clearly fresh. The gentle winds blew the clippings away from the homes and into the magma, where they were incinerated and taken into the flow.

Slowly and silently, she crept towards the anti-borrok’s house with a hand on her dagger. She couldn’t tell if it was already asleep, but she highly doubted that it would be able to see her given that it was covering its eyes with its hands. The creature’s chest was moving up and down, but she couldn’t hear its breath. The only clue she had was its heartbeat, which gradually slowed with the passage of time. She didn’t close the final ten meters until she was certain that its internal drum had settled into a steady rhythm.

Standing above it, she took a moment to look at her target from up close. If it weren’t curled up, the bug-faced monkey would have stood at roughly three-quarters her height, with its head making up a good third of its body. Unlike the watcher, which had a bluish-white coat, the half-primate’s patchy fur was a deep shade of brown.

Her hands tightening around the weapons, she went right for the half-insect’s vitals. Her dagger shot toward the beast’s heart. The short, quicksilver-coated weapon was thrust between the creature’s ribs and twisted into its chest. A second soarspore-coated blade was rammed into its throat. She tore through the fibres holding its neck together, over and over, as it woke up with a hysteric screech.

A kick to the gut dislodged her from her mounted position. She was winded by the blow, but she managed to twist her sword down its gullet as she was blown away.

The bug was unbothered by the wound across its neck. In fact, it was responsible for completing its head’s removal—legs sprung from its neck and pushed the bloody monkey body away. It was a bizarre, horrifying sight, but as stricken as she was by her morbid curiosity, Claire knew better than to sit around. She froze her prey in place with Paralyzing Gaze and threw her mace across the room. The projectile smashed the insect’s face back into its body as it made contact, its speed and power boosted by a vectored spell. The coin-filled bag was next. She bashed the leather sack over the creature’s head and let its heavy contents do the work.

A knee followed as the bag tore at the seams. She drove it into one of the beetle’s massive, yellow eyes before targeting the other with her fist. Amber blood erupted from the organs like yolk from a crushed egg. It coated her cloak, dying it in its vile stench.

With an irritated click of the tongue, the rogue reached down the cat-bug’s throat and retrieved her sword. All the blood and fat covering it made it hard to grip. Still, the weapon served its purpose.

Nine additional stabs to the face ended the battle for good. The fifth cost her the antler, but she didn’t care. The frog bone was readily replaced by the insect’s freshly broken horn.

Like all the other borroks, her target swelled up as the reaper took it in its grasp, but Claire was ready. She kicked its body out the window she had and magicked it into another house before it went off. The explosion was much louder than usual, but she paid it no mind.

Log Entry 909
You have slain a level 39 Borrok Warrior.

You have been awarded the following first-kill bonus:
- 1 point of agility
- 4 points of dexterity
- 7 points of strength

Log Entry 910
You have leveled up. Your health and mana have been restored and all harmful status effects have been cleansed.

Your primary class, Llystletein Rogue, has reached level 38.

You have gained 6 ability points.

Cleaning her face of the bug’s yellow blood, Claire breathed a small sigh and leaned against a wall. The moment of respite lasted until her ears perked up, alerted to a distant rumbling.

Confused, the halfbreed climbed atop the building’s roof to get a better look at its source, only to freeze in place as she found herself face-to-face with a full-on stampede. There was a veritable legion of townsfolk: borroks, corrupted watchers, warriors, bats, wolves, and bears. Every type of insectoid she had seen within the settlement was mingled into a messy bloodthirsty wave headed straight for her location.