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Alex had Glint kill 3 Corpse Pokers, 4 Corpse Burrowers, and 2 woody, humanoid creatures called Root Fiends on his own. He considered bonding with one of the Root Fiends, which had been high Novice monsters, but was in no rush to choose one when he still had more chances to recruit something more interesting. The Root Fiends hadn\'t been particularly impressive.

Claire killed a similar number of monsters herself, including several new ones that they hadn\'t seen before, but none of them caught his eye as particularly interesting. The monsters on the outskirts of town simply weren\'t as much of a threat as they once had been.

They didn\'t interfere in each other\'s fights to avoid lowering the challenge to such an insignificant level that they didn\'t get a reward for it. That did mean Alex didn\'t get any souls for the monsters that Claire defeated, as he hadn\'t participated in the fight, but he wasn\'t bothered by that.

Thus far, aside from the Initiate level Riftwarped Block-Eater Centipede that had greeted them at the entrance of the Mirrorlands, none of the monsters they\'d fought had been strong enough for him to truly want its soul.

Just fighting a single monster in the mid-Initiate levels would be more than enough to make up for everything he\'d given up and then some.

The problem was finding that monster. They\'d grown past the absolute bottom of the food chain that dwelled within the Mirrorlands. That was an achievement in and of itself, but it meant they had to push deeper into the city in search of more appropriate opponents.

Alex and Claire drew to a stop under the shadow of an apartment building that floated far above. Chunks of the building had fallen away and frozen halfway to the ground, suspended almost like a garden path trailing through the sky.

What had once been a restaurant sat beneath the apartment. Nearly half of it had been ripped to pieces by a bleached tree that grew out of its center. Alabaster roots jutted up from the ground with chunks of masonry impaled upon their tips. Agonized faces pressed against the rough bark from within, forever frozen in their attempts to escape. The roof of the restaurant hung about ten feet above the rest of the building. It was held in place by the gray-leafed branches of the tree that bore through it like worms.

Alex and Claire ducked into the restaurant, taking care to avoid the strange tree, to get out of view of the street. It was cover — but only relative cover. Nowhere in the Mirrorlands was ever truly safe.

"We\'re pretty deep in, now," Claire whispered. "How long have we been walking? About an hour?"

"Something like that," Alex whispered back. His gaze alternated between the tree behind them and the street. A crackle of energy overhead announced the presence of a City-Eater Centipede passing by. They both fell silent until the monster vanished into a portal once more.

An eerie wind blew through the Mirrorlands. It howled as it passed through the holes in the destroyed buildings and rustled the leaves of the enormous trees that permeated the city. Even though this was far from Alex\'s first time in the Mirrorlands, he wasn\'t any less on edge than he had been before.

Everything about the warped world screamed danger to his senses. It was uncanny in every way that it could have been, and primal human instincts struggled to convince his adrenaline-riddled brain to panic.

Minutes ticked by.

Alex summoned Spark and told the Echo Wraith to watch the white tree behind them so he could keep his focus on the street.

The wind continued to howl, and the rustle of the leaves grew so loud that it resembled a rumbling thunderstorm. It was so intense that Alex almost didn\'t hear the car-sized spider crawling across the face of a building across from them.

The crunch of the spider\'s pointed legs driving into the sheer wall of the building as it raced across its surface was muted by the wind, but that did nothing to stop Alex\'s eyes from working. He drew in a surprised breath, but his attention wasn\'t on the monster\'s size, nor was it on its size.

It was on its face.

Where there should have been the head of an arachnid, there was instead the face of a young girl. It was grotesquely sized to match the rest of the monster\'s body, but the proportions and appearance were unmistakable. Long blonde hair hung around her — its — face, whipping behind the spider in the wind.

The illusion of humanity was broken by the monster\'s eyes. They were empty and sunken, two shriveled empty sockets devoid of sight so that it could be spared the agony of witnessing its own vile form.

Barrow Puppeteer (Initiate 3)

"I hate it," Claire whispered.

"Me too," Alex muttered back, not taking his eyes off the monster. The spider had frozen in the middle of the building.

Even as the wind started to die down and the rustle of the leaves relented in its assault, the spider didn\'t make so much as a noise. It remained frozen in place. The monster was waiting for something.

"Alex?"

"Yeah?"

"Don\'t bond that thing," Claire said.

"Absolutely no plans of it," Alex replied with a grimace. There definitely would have been a certain intimidation factor that came with showing up to a fight with a monster like that, but this was one of those things that he suspected would be far better served as a snack to Glint or Spark.

The Barrow Puppeteer looks like an ambush predator anyway. What I need right now is something with some real survivability. A frontline. Well, that or a ranged monster. Both would be great. I\'ve already got Glint for pure damage output.

Another minute ticked by. Alex was just about to suggest they attempt to attack the Barrow Puppeteer when the spider suddenly flung itself from the side of the building. It plummeted down, crashing onto the top of a building to the side of their hiding spot.

There was a wet snik, followed by silence. Neither Alex nor Claire moved a muscle. They watched the rooftop in silence, waiting for the monster to re-emerge. Their patience was rewarded several long seconds later when the Barrow Puppeteer crawled back over the side of the building, descending to the ground with a limp, headless body made of wood clutched to its chest with two of its eight legs.

All guises of humanity had vanished from the monster. Black blood coated its face, which had split apart down the center to reveal rows of sharp, yellowed fangs. The burrower\'s face had split apart along its center line. Gummy, gray lips ran all the way back through the girl\'s ears and disappeared behind her long hair. Loud crunching noises echoed from the monster and its entire body undulated as it chewed, crunching down on the remains of what seemed to be a Root Fiend\'s head.

"Effective," Claire whispered.

Alex nodded in mute agreement. There hadn\'t even been a fight. If this Root Fiend had been anything like the ones he\'d fought earlier that day, it had been something around high-Novice tier.

"I\'m going to go for it," Alex said as the Burrower came to a stop in the shadow of a building and started to eat the rest of its meal. "This is the best time to attack. Maybe not the most challenge in killing a monster mid-meal, but I think it\'ll put up a pretty damn good fight regardless. Also, I kind of just want that thing dead."

"Tell me about it," Claire said. She readied her katana and gave Alex a nod. "I\'ll back you up. I\'m more worried about another one of those monsters dropping down on us out of nowhere than I am the one that\'s eating."

Alex nodded in agreement, then looked to Spark. "You\'re lookout. Keep watch for any monsters in the area that might be drawn to the fight. Interfere and delay them for as long as possible if they spot us."

The Echo Wraith made no indication to show it had understood Alex\'s command, but he knew that it had.

Alex and Claire started forth with Glint at their side. They crept along the edge of the nearest building, avoiding any open areas, and made their way toward the bulbous abdomen of the Barrow Puppeteer. Loud crunches continued to echo out from the monster\'s jaws as it ate, blissfully unaware of their approach.

They stopped about a building away from their target. Alex glanced down at Glint.

I wonder… can I use my Qi to empower Glint after he\'s already been summoned?

Now seemed like a pretty good time to find out. It wasn\'t exactly quiet, but he highly doubted they\'d be able to actually creep up the entire way to the monster. It would hear them coming long before then. If they were going to get noticed, it was better that it happened while they were at full strength.

"Get ready," Alex whispered.

Claire\'s grip on her katana tightened and black veins carved down her arm, flowing into her wrist. She lowered her stance and gave him a curt nod.

Alex extended a hand and carefully placed it on Glint\'s clammy gray shoulder between two razor sharp shards of glass. He drew on the warm energy stored within himself and pushed it free, driving it out through his finger and into the monster.

Arcs of purple Qi crackled within the mirror shards covering Glint\'s body. They forked out, expanding within the confines of the shards, until they\'d filled every piece completely. The Shardwalker\'s eyes shifted from yellow to purple and power gathered around him, buzzing into the air and hissing as it burned into the ground at his clawed feet.

"Go," Alex hissed.

Glint\'s claws carved through the air, rending it with the sound of shattering glass. Matching fault lines, full of buzzing purple energy, appeared in the air above the Barrow Puppeteer.

And then three things happened in such rapid succession that they may as well all have been at once.

The Barrow Puppeteer\'s head jerked up with a hiss and it spun in their direction, legs clicking as they struck the paved ground.

Glint launched himself through the portal and slammed down on top of the grotesque spider to rip it to shreds.

The wall of the building to their side exploded. A burly, eight-foot tall humanoid mass of coagulated black sludge lurched out bearing a featureless bone-white mask with two empty eyes and a flat slit for a mouth where its face should have been — and it headed straight toward Alex and Claire.

Blacktongue Dredge (Initiate 6)