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Elation welled in his stomach. He\'d actually done it.

He\'d combined his monsters — and more than that. Alex had combined a Riftwarped monster, getting past the limitation that stopped him from binding them. He still didn\'t know what it was that prevented the connection in the first place.

He suspected he\'d find out at some point, but he was a little preoccupied at the moment. The Riftwarped Devouring Dredge was definitely a successful combination.

Alex finally forced himself to move. He raised a hand, waving it in front of the monster\'s face to see if it would have any reaction. The Dredge didn\'t so much as blink. It remained frozen in place, awaiting a command.

"You wouldn\'t happen to be intelligent, would you?" Alex asked. He still had to make sure — every time he made a stronger monster, there was a chance they would somehow unlock a degree of thought.

He wasn\'t sure what he\'d do in the case that happened, but it didn\'t look like today would be the day. The Dredge didn\'t acknowledge him in the slightest. He may as well not have even been there.

Alex glanced back at his Spatial Mirror. There were still several monster souls within it. He could theoretically continue combining them — but he wasn\'t sure if any of them had any proper synergy with the Dredge as it was now.

Neither the Corpse Burrower nor Poker really lined up with the Dredge, even in its new form. They were just too different, not to mention considerably weaker. The Root Fiends weren\'t all that much stronger than the other monsters and their wooden bodies didn\'t seem like they would mesh particularly well with any of the elements in the Dredge right now.

I think I\'ve got exactly what I need right now. None of the remaining monsters are powerful or interesting enough to need to fuse, so I\'ll save them for snacks to feed to Glint. Hopefully I can get him to evolve on his own pretty soon.

Alex de-activated Harmonious Evolution. Color bloomed across the expanse of his Mind Palace — even though there really wasn\'t all that much color in it beyond the dark lake and the white structures rising around him.

He dismissed the Dredge with a thought. It melted into a stream of gray energy and flew through the air, pouring into the deck at his side.

The preparations were done. He was ready to leave the Mirrorlands and return to Earth once more — and, if he was lucky, he\'d take another Riftwarped monster\'s soul with him on the way out.

Alex pulled himself free of his meditation. His eyes opened to find himself in the Mirrorlands once again. He sat on the ground in the shade of a crumbling building floating far above them.

Claire crouched beside him, her gaze scanning over their surroundings in search of any monsters and a hand resting on the hilt of the katana at her side. She glanced at him as he shifted.

"Did it work?" Claire asked in a hushed whisper.

"Yeah. More than. I used one of my new skills to combine two monsters. We can leave," Alex said, pushing himself up to his feet. "Any signs of that… thing?"

"No," Claire replied. She rose to her feet and sent one last glance in the direction that they\'d come from. "It\'s been around ten minutes. At this point, I think it gave up on us. We got lucky and weren\'t strong enough to be worth chasing. I don\'t think I\'d press my luck, though."

"With you there," Alex said with a nod. "Let\'s head back."

***

They reached the portal a short trip later. With the extra caution they took to make sure they didn\'t draw any attention to themselves while the Forsaken Revenant could still be lurking around somewhere, they didn\'t run into any monsters on the trip back. That was a welcome change. Alex had been expecting to run into something annoying on the way back.

He and Claire left the warped city rising in the distance behind them and made it up to the thin purple fault in the hills. Brilliant blue grass swayed around it in a faint wind that prickled against Alex\'s skin.

Claire drew her katana and readied herself. Spark was still dead, but Alex still had two more monsters to work with. He summoned Glint and his new, unnamed Dredge, with a thought.

Shattering glass announced the Shardwalker\'s arrival as claws carved a rend through reality and Glint stepped out from within it. He came to a stop before Alex, waiting for a command.

The ground to Glint\'s side started to darken. Alex and Claire glanced down at it as thick black sludge started to pour out from beneath the grass, bubbling like boiling oatmeal. The patch of darkness spread out and Claire took a step back as the Dredge\'s enormous form rose up from beneath the ground like it was emerging from within a swamp.

Pointed legs burst from its back, spraying out sludge, and cracked together as they formed into arms that curled over its shoulders. The sharpened claws at the tips of the arms flexed, causing the rest of the arms to undulate.

"Bleed me," Claire breathed, staring at the towering creature in awe. "What the fuck, Alex? This is yours?"

"Hey, it\'s got feelings," Alex said. "Don\'t be mean."

"It does?"

"No." Alex scratched at the back of his neck. "I don\'t think so. Still completely unintelligent. I check every time."

"Right," Claire said, craning her neck back to look up at the monster. Her face twisted in a grimace as she spotted the huge maw running down the center of its body. "Creepy. What\'s its name?"

"Er… what about Princess?"

Claire stared at Alex. She looked from him to the monster, then back to him. "Princess? Really?"

"I mean, think about it. I say my monster\'s names sometimes in a fight. Who\'s going to expect the lumbering sludge creature to be called Princess? Besides, it follows Pitbull rules."

"It follows what now?"

"Pitbull rules." Alex scratched at the side of his chin. "It\'s like when someone has a pretty intimidating breed of dog called a pitbull and they name it Brutalizer. It sounds scary, but the dog always ends up being the sweetest dog you\'ve ever met. But when the pitbull is called something like Cupcake or Princess, it always lives off a diet of toddler faces."

"Right," Claire said, drawing out the word and squinting at Alex like he\'d been dropped on his head. "Well, it\'s your monster."

"So she is," Alex confirmed. "How do you like that name, Princess? Is it good?"

The Dredge didn\'t respond.

Alex was pretty sure that didn\'t count as consent, but he was starting to get the idea that Princess was not particularly talkative. If the monster ever decided she didn\'t like her new name, then he would change it. Until then, Princess she would be.

"Right," Alex said. "Glint, Princess, I want to see what you\'re capable of. Kill the shit out of whatever shows up. Focus on survival. Princess — your job is to absorb any attacks and keep our opponent\'s attention off Glint, me, and Claire. Try to lock it down and damage it if possible, but do not prioritize offense over defense."

"I\'ll let your summons take this one so you can test them out," Claire said. "But you\'ve got to give me a cool fight next time if you don\'t end up needing my help."

"Thanks," Alex said with an appreciative nod. He strode past his monsters and up to the awaiting portal. He lifted his hands, drawing on Riftwalk and pressing his hands into the line as power flooded through him.

He dug his fingers into the purple energy and pulled. The crackling energy resisted him, but he was surprised to find it gave way easily.

With a loud ripping noise, the portal tore open. A disk of spinning purple energy took form before him and a black sheen enveloped its face like a plane of tinted glass. Alex rapped his fingers against it, but it was as hard as steel. They\'d been blocked off.

What sounded like a loud zipper tore through the air above them. Alex and Claire both skipped back as a familiar-looking bundle of chitinous legs tumbled down from a portal to land with a rattling crash on the hillside beside them.

The legs shot out, digging into the ground as the monster unfurled and rapidly righted itself. It had a crablike body with two, long, swaying eyes upon chitinous stalks. Five legs extended from each side of its hard-shelled body, which was lined from top to bottom with spines.

A purple name burned in the air above the monster\'s head, identifying it as the first Riftwarped monster they\'d ever fought.

Riftwarped Crawler (Initiate 1)

The Crawler let out a chittering hiss and burst into motion, legs slamming into the ground like a dozen drums going off at once. It charged toward Alex — and Princess slammed into it like a freight train.

Sludge splattered across the ground as the huge Dredge drove its weight down into the Riftwarped Crawler and slammed it into the ground. Several loud cracks split the air as some of the monster\'s legs were shattered beneath it.

The Crawler screamed and hissed, trying to rip itself free, but Princess\'s body glommed onto the crab and held fast, completely locking it in place. The huge mouth on the center of her body split open and bit down on the crawler\'s shell.

The shell crunched. Dark blood sprayed from the crab as it screamed and thrashed. Its claws snapped at Princess, carving through her sludgy body. Thick black fluid splattered from her to the ground, but the damage was nowhere near significant.

While Princess held the crab down, Glint advanced toward it. He waited for the right moment, watching the flailing limbs until an opportunity presented itself, then burst into motion.

His large claws plunged into the top of the crab\'s shell and punched through its carapace like nothing was there. Glint yanked them down. The shell barely even made a sound as he carved it apart.

The Riftwarped Crawler\'s limbs collapsed to the ground. Power trickled into Alex.

Silence ruled over the clearing, broken only by the drip of blood from Glint\'s claws to the ground below and the crunch of Princess\' chewing.

Alex and Claire stared at the two summoned monsters in disbelief.

And, in that moment, it struck Alex that they hadn\'t just gotten lucky in avoiding monsters on their trip back through the city.

The reason they hadn\'t been attacked wasn\'t because the monsters had all been preoccupied. There were no monsters in the alleys they\'d gone through because the monsters that used them to avoid stronger enemies had vacated the area.

Alex and Claire had become the threat.