It didn’t take long for Alex and Claire to realize something might have been wrong, and it took a few hours to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

There wasn’t a single monster on the mountainside. It was completely barren — but that wasn’t to say it hadn’t been warped. The mountain was every bit as twisted as the rest of the Mirrorlands.

Trees curved in odd paths, forming around the sloping path that led up to the peak of the mountain. Rocks had been arranged and packed down in a way that resembled a road, many of them floating mid-air or merged unnaturally with a tree trunk.

Islands large enough to house several trees cast shadows over Alex and Claire as they passed beneath them, but despite it all, there wasn’t a single sign of hostile life. That should have been reassuring.

Instead, all it did was set Alex’s hair on end to the point where he almost completely forgot about just how thirsty he was getting. There weren’t even any City-Eaters in the air above them.

There was only the path — and the storm in the distance.

“You reckon there’s a reason this place is abandoned? If even the monsters are smart enough to avoid it, I get the inkling that there might be,” Claire muttered to Alex, keeping her voice low as if speaking louder than a whisper would bring the sky crashing down on top of them.

“I think we’re going to find out soon enough,” Alex whispered back. “At this point, there’s no path but forward — unless you’ve got a better idea as to how we’re going to get out of here?”

Claire shook her head, and so they pressed on. It wasn’t long before the exact time of how long they’d been walking was lost to Alex. His legs burned and his throat turned so dry that it hurt.

It had definitely been hours. Exactly how many, Alex wasn’t sure. His body definitely wasn’t pleased with him, but the mere idea of stopping made him grimace. If the way out of the Mirrorlands really was so close, then he refused to rest until it was within his grasp.

The walk was the first time he’d had to properly think since the apocalypse had formerly started, and Alex found his thoughts drifting to exactly how the System worked — and how he could best take advantage of it to continue growing.

Challenge was an abstract concept. It had to be constrained by something. If it wasn’t, the optimal way to grow would probably be crippling oneself and then fighting a bunch of miserably weak monsters.

Sure, the fights would eventually get easier as someone grew used to fighting the monsters and figured out their styles, but then they could just move onto a different kind of weak monster.

Alex doubted the System would have overseen that. If he had to guess, the challenge was some sort of percentage multiplier. The System still had to follow the laws of physics to some degree — and energy didn’t come from nowhere. That meant it was probably coming from the monsters he killed.

But I’m obviously not getting every single level that something has when I kill it. So my best guess is that I get a percentage of a monster’s power when it dies, and that percentage is based off how difficult the fight was. It almost certainly caps out at a certain point and the System takes the rest of the energy to do… well, whatever it is the System does.

In the end, intentionally making fights more difficult against weaker monsters would give him a boost for the future, but it was a terrible long-term strategy. The optimal strategy would be to be seeking out the strongest monsters, which would have the highest amounts of potential energy to take from in the first place.

So if there’s the possibility, it’s always better to look for a difficult fight rather than make a difficult fight. Anyone can get killed at any point. Intentionally weakening myself will inevitably catch up to me and fuck me over if I keep at it forever.

But right now, that risk is worth it. I need every extra scrap of power I can get to give myself a lead, and I can only work with the monsters I’m up against. I can stop and focus on finding real threats once I’ve got that lead solidified.

Alex was still lost in thought when a shadow passed overhead.

A City-Eater Centipede?

His eyes jerked up as fear gripped his chest — but it was not a centipede that he found.

It was an enormous silver ship — or possibly a squid. Huge tendrils trailed through the air behind it, their tips ending in spaded points. The massive vessel came to a needlelike point at its tip, where glistening coils of purple and red smoke broke and curled past its sides. Sections of pulsing purple flesh were exposed between gaps of the ship’s metallic exterior. Ripples ran through it, causing it to inflate and deflate like a lung.

For the briefest of instants, a name shimmered to life above the ship.

Disruptor [Starfallen Family]

Then the ship vanished as if it had never been there.

Alex gaped up at the sky.

“Did you see that?”

“For a moment,” Claire replied. “Did you?”

“Just a glimpse,” Alex replied, rubbing at his eyes. “Do you know what the Starfallen family is?”

“No. Never heard of them. You think it’s going to come back?”

Alex looked back up to the sky, then shook his head. “No idea. I don’t think I want to stick around to find out. That thing did not look friendly.”

They picked up their pace. As they walked, Alex ran his thoughts on the System’s energy distribution methods by Claire, who seemed agreeable to the direction he was taking them. There was no way to actually verify his theories at the moment, so they slipped into silence.

Neither of them said a word over the next few hours as they drew closer to the peak of the mountain. With their increased proximity to it, Alex could actually make out the peak itself.

There was a large outcropping just beneath the churning storm, surrounded by a ring of jutting, spiked rocks that almost resembled a crown at the top of the mountain. He couldn’t tell what was beyond them, but it was so high up that it literally brushed the crackling purple energy.

If there’s any way out of the Mirrorlands, then it’s got to be this. The only question is if we can actually pass through it.

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The winding path wrapped around the peak of the mountain, then finally arrived at its final bend. A knot clenched Alex’s stomach as they rounded it and stepped onto a straight stretch that led up to the crown.

The smell of electricity had grown a hundred times stronger, joined by something in between honey and cinnamon that seemed to be coming from a large patch of brilliant blue grass covering the top of the mountain.

Dark purple cracks shimmered in the air at the far side of the rock formation, arcs of energy crackling around them. There was no doubt about it. It was the exact same color as the portal that had sucked him into the Mirrorlands in the first place.

There was just one problem.

Sitting between him and the way out of the Mirrorlands was a towering, red skinned demon. It was humanoid and easily ten feet tall, even with its legs crossed in a yogi pose beneath it.

A wide menacing grin of straight teeth stretched across its face and two curved tusks protruding from the corners of its mouth. The skin on its face was smooth and glossy, almost reminiscent of an Oni mask. That comparison was only made stronger by a pair of huge horns that jutted out of the top of its head. Flowing hair like pure white gossamer rose to frame its face, suspended in the air by an intangible wind.

??? (???)

The nameless demon sat before the crackling storm, but it wasn’t a guardian.

It was a prisoner.

Enormous shackles bound the monster from almost every direction. Each link was several feet wide and covered in flowing designs and patterns that burned with faint white light. They were secured to the ground by massive white stones that were scattered throughout the mountain’s crown.

Alex and Claire both froze in place. The demon’s glowing eyes were staring straight at them, but it made no move to so much as acknowledge their presence.

“You know what?” Claire whispered. “I think I figured out why the rest of the mountain is empty.”

“It’s bound,” Alex muttered back. “We can get around it.”

“Can we?” Claire asked. “It’s right in the middle of the way and those chains aren’t all completely tight. It could definitely reach us if we try to sneak past.”

She was right. Alex shifted from foot to foot, ready to throw himself to the side and avoid an attack at a moment’s notice — not that he suspected he had even the slightest chance of avoiding any form of blow made by the huge monster. It was such a high level that he couldn’t even see what it was.

Those chains are definitely some kind of magic. Are they enough to keep the demon from attacking us? I can’t tell if it just doesn’t give a shit that we’re here or if it’s biding its time until we get closer.

Someone definitely bound that thing here on purpose. That doesn’t speak well for the chances of it being willing to let us stroll right past.

“If you drink enough of my blood, do you grow wings?”

Claire let out a muted snort. “I wish. No.”

“Damn,” Alex muttered. He studied the jutting rocks that made up the sides of the crown. The wind around them howled, but there was a chance they could try to make their way around the demon by climbing onto the rocks.

Claire followed his gaze and immediately shook her head. “Those winds are being cut by the rocks right now. If we climb that, we’ll get blown right off. You think we can use the forest strategy again?”

Alex squinted at the demon. It still hadn’t moved once. If it hadn’t been identified by the system as a living being, he might have started to suspect that it was just an incredibly realistic statue.

“Only one way to find out,” Alex said. “Glint, walk over to the spatial cracks but stay as close to the rocks at the edges as you can. Be cautious and attempt to avoid making too much noise.”

Glint set off without an instant of hesitation. His summoned companion edged his way along the very corner of the stones, slipping one foot in front of the other like a dancer, pressing his side to the jagged rocks and making his way toward the beckoning energy across the platform.

Now that I think about it, this isn’t the most effective test. The only thing this might actually prove is that the demon doesn’t kill literally everything that passes it. If it’s intelligent, it could let Glint by and then just wait for us to follow to kill us.

That would be a whole lot of effort to kill something that it shouldn’t see as anything more than a bug. It’s probably more likely that it’ll either be completely passive or —

A ripple passed through the chains and a crack split the air in its wake, and only once both had passed did Alex realize that Glint was dead. The Shardwalker’s remains disintegrated into a stream of energy that flowed back over to the box resting at Alex’s side.

Alex dove behind a rock and Claire hit the ground beside him a second later. When nothing happened, he poked his head out to look at the demon once more.

It hadn’t budged from its spot. It remained in place, staring at them with its glowing eyes, a mocking grin stretched across its lips. If it wasn’t for the faint sway in the chains holding the monster down, it would have been impossible to tell that it had even moved.

“Bleeding hell,” Claire breathed. “Okay. I don’t think we can stroll past it normally. Is Glint okay?”

“No. He’s dead, but he’ll get over it,” Alex said. He swallowed. “It actively chose to do that. No clue if it was a warning or it just likes killing things, but we might have to turn to alternative measures.”

“That sounds great. What are those?” Claire asked. “Because I’m flat out of ideas. The thing is right in the middle of the way.”

“Maybe the wind isn’t that bad?” Alex approached the edge of the spiked rocks. Claire watched with concern as he pulled himself up, then stuck his hand out between the spines and into the open air to feel how strong the wind was.

A violent gale slammed into his arm almost instantly, nearly slamming it straight into the wall. Alex just barely managed to yank his hand back before it was impaled on one of the many jutting stones, but he still got a small cut for his troubles.

He cursed and shook his hand off. “Okay. You were right about that. We’re not climbing around it. We’d get ripped to shreds.”

They fell silent and looked back to the demon. It matched their gaze — or rather, it just stared. Alex wasn’t sure if it was looking at them or past them. There was no reason for them to even register on its radar other than a mild form of amusement. It was probably pretty boring being chained up on the top of a desolate mountain.

Huh. That’s a thought.

Alex’s head tilted askew and Claire sent him a curious glance. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking. There are probably two possible reasons this thing would have killed Glint. Either it’s somehow bound to defend the storm, or it’s just bored and has nothing else to do. It’s not like any of us would pose a challenge to it no matter how chained it is.”

“That’s true,” Claire allowed. “Are you thinking we can just… give it something else to do?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“Right. Treat the massive terrifying demon like it’s a stupid baby that won’t stop bothering its parents,” Claire said with a dry laugh. “Couldn’t possibly go wrong. It seems like a sound enough idea. What in the bleeding hell do we give it, though? I don’t see a toy anywhere.”

That was definitely the crux of the matter. A few minutes ago, he would have suggested Glint. It was pretty clear that wouldn’t work. It had taken the demon less than a second to kill the Shardwalker.

“I have an idea,” Claire said.

Alex looked to her. “What is it?”

“What if we somehow lured a City-Eater over here? Something big enough that this guy is actually distracted.”

“Now that’s an idea,” Alex said with a grin. “But how are we going to outrun it? They can teleport and move pretty quickly for something their size. If we actually managed to get their attention, I don’t think we’d even get a chance to lure it anywhere.”

“Damn it. Good point.” Claire’s nose scrunched and she pursed her lips, blowing out a breath. Her eyes flicked down to his cut arm. “Are you going to eat that? You’re distracting me.”

It was Alex’s turn to sigh. At least one of them could eat. He held his arm out to her.

“Thanks,” Claire said once she’d finished. She definitely eyed the cut for a moment longer than she had to, but didn’t try to drink any more. “Unfortunately, I am not feeling enlightened.”

“Unless drinking more of my blood is going to make your brain bigger, I’m keeping the rest of it.”

“Fair enough.”

They joined the demon in its silence. There was always the option of giving up and heading back down the mountain, but that was the equivalent of giving up and dying. The spatial rift behind the monster was their best chance of getting out of the Mirrorlands.

Alex nudged a rock with his foot. Then he paused.

“Did you get a good idea?” Claire asked.

Alex picked the rock up and tossed it in his palm. “I’m not sure it qualifies as good, but I got an idea.”

Claire looked from the rock to the demon. Her eyes widened. “You can’t be—”

Alex threw his rock.