The dungeon reconfigured itself in real time. The halls moved to and fro, with rooms giving way to long stretches of corridor and doors closing themselves to keep her moving along. The journey was entirely monster-free; she could hear them skittering through the walls, fighting and feasting beyond a few thin layers of rock, but none could approach. The rocky barriers would always get in their way.

The linear path opened into a massive room after some thirty minutes of walking. It was a hundred meters wide with a distant ceiling of an indiscernible height. Long, thick roots draped down from up above, obscuring the chamber’s upper portion. A narrow pathway, roughly two meters across, ran up the side of the cylindrical domain, slowly spiralling up towards a source of natural light.

The monsters in the massive space were noisier than their cave-dwelling counterparts, constantly croaking, squeaking, and barking as they went about their business. She couldn’t see them; they were obscured by the roots and vertical paths, but her ears revealed a few dozen, spread loosely throughout the hall.

Drawing her makeshift spear and clenching it tightly, she took a deep breath and began her ascent. Her gaze remained fixed to the left as she trod through the domain, more cautious of the wall than the pit. It was the gaps in the stone that drew her concern. Within the individual holes, she could see eyes staring back at her. Sometimes, the large, squeaking abominations would attempt to interact, sticking their horrific bone muzzles and clawed feet out from within their gaol.

She was about to strike at one such beast when an aggressive croak suddenly drew her attention to the other side. Turning her head, she found a creature bizarre enough to freeze her in place. Its head looked exactly like that of an adult tadpole; it had large, bulging eyes on either side and a mouth that made up its entire face. Four wooden limbs, each ending in a sucker-tipped root, extended from the centre of its body. They grew directly out of the monster’s stomach, like the stalk of a tree. Brown limbs aside, its colouration was largely as frog-like as its shape suggested; the top half of its body was a muddy green, while the bottom was a pale off-white. But that was where the similarities ended. The monster’s head sported a magnificent pair of antlers. If not for the extra layer of velvet, the sharp jagged objects extending from its skull would have perfectly resembled the makeshift blades strapped to the halfbreed’s thighs. Decorating the frog’s far end was a pudgy tail as long as the rest of its body combined, curled up like a chameleon. Though the feature was certainly eye-catching, it played second fiddle to the six massive, white-feathered wings sprouting from its body. They didn’t look the part, but they were fully functional, allowing the bizarre Llystletein beast to float next to the giant root.

What startled her most was not its appearance but its ability to close the gap undetected. She could hear the soft drumming of its heart if she paid close attention, but its wings were silent as an owl’s.

The misshapen halfbreed and the equally misshapen tree-frog stared at each other blankly, with the amphibian eventually deciding that, as the larger of the two, it had nothing to fear. It leisurely opened its mouth and fired its tongue like a harpoon. As if to compensate for the muscular organ’s sudden extension, the frog’s tail was unfurled and sucked back into its body.

Ducking out of the way, Claire watched as the appendage tore through the wall and splattered the rodent standing behind it. A twinge of fear ran through her spine, but she kept her face neutral as she kicked off the ground and struck the frog’s tongue with the tip of her spear. The springy flesh bent, but her dull blade failed to pierce the muscle. If anything, it was the polearm and not the anuran that was at risk.

The blade was pulled out of her hands and nearly cast into the aether when the monster retracted its tongue; the fleshy appendage was pulled with such force that the frog-shaped vegetable was thrown completely off balance. Another strike came as soon as the flying amphibian straightened out, aimed at the pit of her stomach. She flung herself out of the way, but the flying tree was faster. Its tongue pierced her side, ripping open her stomach with a violent twist.

Searing hot pain raged through her mind as her guts spilled out of her abdomen. She collapsed where she stood, screaming in a pool of blood. It hurt so badly that she felt the urge to give up, to lie in wait for the frog to finish her. But she grit her teeth, clenched her fists, and forced herself back to her feet.

The warlord’s daughter drew a bone dagger and jabbed it into the frog’s tongue before it could retract. She nicked the mucous-covered appendage, drawing a faint hint of blood, but she was too weak to drive her weapon any deeper.

Realising her failure, Claire grabbed the femur-shaped club off her back and scrounged up all the strength her legs could muster. She pounced like a cat, flying through the air with her prey in her sights. The tree monster retracted its tongue and flapped its wings, but it was too late.

The halfbreed’s club landed right between its eyes and broke through its skull. The anuran bird flailed its limbs in panic, but it was unable to shake her before they plummeted to the ground. She stabbed, smashed, bit, and kicked, a stream of attacks that continued for as long as the amphibian dared to struggle.

Log Entry 484

You have slain a level 18 Toadem Sprout.

You have been awarded the following first-kill bonus:

- 1 point of dexterity

- 1 point of strength

Log Entry 485

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

Your primary class, Rogue, has reached level 2.

You have gained 1 ability point.

With its demise followed an immediate restoration of the halfbreed’s flesh. Her gaping wounds closed, but the pain never receded. The ache in her side persisted, even as she checked her status and confirmed that the level-up had refilled her health. Her eyes were still teary, her breath was still ragged, and she wanted to vomit. Her mouth was filled with the taste of blood, a mix of hers and the wooden corpse’s.

Log Entry 486

You have acquired the unclassed Club Mastery and Rogue-specific Dagger Mastery skills.

Looking up at the bloodstained roots, some thirty metres in the air, the halfbreed silently thanked her mother for her inbuilt resistance to fall damage and collected her weapons. To her dismay, one of her daggers had snapped amid her assault. She was certain that the horns on the frog’s head could have served the same purpose, but they were unsalvageable. Both had shattered when she beat them with her femur-shaped club.

The three weapons that remained felt more familiar in her hands. A pair of new skills had appeared in her status, but she didn’t bother checking them in detail.

“I’m going to be honest. You handled that a lot better than I thought you would.” The usual annoying voice came from her shoulder, its speaker soon manifesting in all but a physical form.

Pressing a hand to her abdomen, where her dress lay in tatters, the half-reptilian slowly shook her head. “It almost killed me.”

“Almost, yeah,” said the snake. “You see, that’s the thing. I thought we were goners.”

Another head shake. “I’m not dying to some stupid frog. Not after escaping Father.”

She pushed herself to her feet, holstered her weapons, and resumed the trek. The next leg of her journey went smoothly but similarly; she slowly climbed up the cylinder, slaying the various monsters whose paths she happened to cross. The winged tree-frogs, or toadem sprouts, as they were horribly dubbed by the system, were the most common foes, with the giant rodents skittering through the walls following closely in number. The skull-faced, blade-tailed beavers were easy prey, both for Claire and the winged amphibians that served as their natural predators.

Luckily, the monsters didn’t enjoy hunting in groups. Both types were entirely solitary, attacking only one at a time. Even then, she struggled. The first frog was one of her smoother kills. The next few broke her arms, scrambled her guts, smashed her legs, and even dared to tear off her ears. Still, cursed by her father’s tenacity, she came out on top.

The frogs were not nearly as durable as the osteog, and better yet, they were unable to put up any meaningful resistance with their tongues already extended. She only had to jump on them before their weapons could retract.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She focused on using her club at first; the weapon grew more familiar to her with every few executions, and she learned by the fifth that it was possible to eliminate a frog with a single, well-placed strike between the eyes, but she eventually shifted to using her spear and her dagger. The giant femur was certainly the most effective weapon, but she didn’t know how long it would last and the easily harvested frog antlers were in far greater abundance.

The shift in paradigm only slowed her down at first. She quickly learned the locations of her enemies’ vitals and even acquired the Spear Mastery skill upon determining the angles she needed to reach them. The only annoyance was the need to jump off the platform with every frog-related altercation. She eventually learned to eliminate them mid-tackle and grab onto the roots, but only after her ninth kill.

“This would be much easier if I could fly.” The complaint was muttered after her seventeenth. Swinging from a massive hanging root, she moved back to the path with a dead frog in tow and broke off its antlers with a nearby stone. She took a moment to strip the velvet before tossing her half-broken blades and strapping its replacements to her thighs.

“Finally hoping to take after Father, are we?” asked her imaginary pet snake. “I mean, I’d like us to have a nice pair of feathery wings too, but you admitting it? Didn’t think I’d live to see the day.”

“I will never take after him,” she said, her voice a low growl. “Leave me alone already. Go bother your imaginary friend or something instead.”

“I’d rather not,” said the aptly named Shouldersnake. “Now’s not a good time. You know how she gets, every once in a while.”

“I wish I didn’t." Claire clenched her fists as she retraced her steps. She was getting close to the top. The sunlight, which had started as a subtle glow, was bright enough that she had to avert her eyes whenever it shone on her face.

She didn’t know exactly how long she had been walking, but she suspected a few hours had passed at least. Her legs were tired, and the stains on her blood-crusted clothes had already dried out completely. Her dress was wholly ruined, but there was nothing to be done. Her maids were gone, perhaps even slain by her intentional failure.

“I want to go home.” She clenched her fists and stiffened up her face as she fought back the tears in her eyes.

“Why? So they can try sacrificing you again?” Asked Shouldersnake.

Claire bit her lips as her shoulders started to tremble. “Why can’t I just wake up in bed and find out that all this was just a bad dream?”

“Because it isn’t.”

“Shut up.” The halfbreed started moving again, slowly, with her eyes over the edge of the platform. Shouldersnake was right. There was nowhere for her to return. Not with her father choosing to offer her as tribute.

Shaking her head, Claire picked up the pace and continued on her way. Her mind kept wandering back to the dim, musty room where he had announced her fate, so she distracted herself by looking over her status.

She had made a fair bit of progress. Both the frogs and the beavers had provided first-time kill bonuses that directly bolstered her ability scores, as well as plenty of experience for her to grow. Her racial class had only leveled three times—rogue had taken the lion’s share. Dagger Mastery aside, it was still devoid of skills, but it had at least granted a few extra ability points. Her configuration wasn’t ideal; she was set up to be a mage, but without any spells to cast, her prided conjuring stat was outright wasted. Spirit was in a similar boat, but at the very least, it also bolstered her resistance to magic, giving her an edge against any would-be casters.

Claire continued pondering her ability scores for another twenty minutes before finally arriving at the top of the spiral. Her feet quickened as the doorway drew closer, but they froze as she rounded the corner. What awaited her was not the sunlit expanse she had imagined but a room carved inside a massive tree. Its centre was hollow, transformed into a pond rife with insects and lilypads. A ladder and a door sat on each side, leading in and out of the arena. For a moment, something orange appeared just outside the stadium, but it vanished before she could ascertain its presence.

Ears raised curiously above her head, the halfbreed stepped into the room and descended the ladder. When she entered the water, she found that the murky mess only went as far up as her waist. Frankly, it was filthy, but her biggest complaint stemmed from the mud settled at the bottom. She hated the way it entered the cracks between her neatly layered scales. It was a problem that only affected a few select parts of her body—while the silvery blue protectors were scattered sporadically across her frame, several large patches lined the places where her feet touched the ground.

She half expected the doors to slam shut and for a powerful monster to ambush her as she crossed the halfway point. But while such an event would surely have happened in a bard’s retelling, the halfbreed was left alone and allowed to progress until her ears started to twitch. Focusing on her sense of hearing, she confirmed that there was something, multiple somethings, approaching. The incoming threats were still a fair distance away, but the ever-growing volume of their footsteps confirmed they were headed straight for her location.

Claire narrowed her eyes and, after looking around the room for anything to use as cover, dove under the water just prior to their arrival. She considered calling out for help, but threw the idea out as she recalled that they owed her no goodwill. There was no telling what a group of ruffians would do upon spotting a fair maiden in a torn-up dress.

The group proceeded silently, not saying a word until they entered the room. Two of the three were humanoid, with their tiny rounded ears and their long clawed arms revealing them as werebears. The last member was of the same species, but he was in his combat mode. His frame was entirely ursine, and he held a priest’s staff in his trembling hands. All three were lightly armoured. They wore well-polished breastplates and carried well-made weapons upon their backs.

“That’s weird. Isn’t there supposed to be a boss here?” asked the smallest member.

“If you ask me, it’s better that it’s gone. Saves us the trouble,” said the girl.

“Maybe Gurd took care of it,” said the giant bear in a jarringly timid voice. “If we’re lucky, he might still be alive.”

“Oh, shut your trap already,” said the girl. “Gurdy’s alive. He always makes it out alive.” She took an unsteady breath. “Now let’s hurry up and drag him back to the citadel before he gets too caught up in that damned celestial’s schemes.” She leapt into the pond as she spoke. And though the bow on her back implicated her as the party’s scout, she marched past the hidden halfbreed without a shred of suspicion. Her comrades followed right behind her, their mouths sealed by the awkward silence as they trod through the mud.

Claire didn’t dare breathe until they were out the other door. Sticking only her nose out of the water, she waited for another hundred counts before dragging herself out of the muddy pond and climbing the ladder. The soak had removed some of the blood from her clothes. She considered washing out the rest, but the most experience she had with the endeavour was assigning the task to a maid, and they were too destroyed for it to be worth the time. She settled instead for rinsing off the mud with a stream of water with her face twisted into a frown.

“Well, that was a missed opportunity and a half,” complained Shouldersnake, as she appeared in her usual spot. The phantom serpent heaved an exaggerated sigh, undulating its body as if to shrug a pair of nonexistent shoulders. “That was free experience. They didn’t suspect a thing.”

“Not everything is about killing people.”

“It wasn’t. But it is now,” said the phantom serpent. “We’re going to need every last bit of strength we can get if we want to survive. And you know just as well as I do that people give more experience than monsters.”

Claire didn’t reply. She was frozen, her eyes turned out the door. What awaited beyond the boundary was a splatter of greens and browns. She had already seen a few bits and pieces of the biome during her climb and subsequent shower, but stepping into it revealed a realm beyond her expectations. No longer was she within a cavern with stone walls visible on all sides. The canvas before her painted a meadow, a wetland, and a forest all at once. The vegetation reminded her of a beautiful untamed field. The grasses that filled it were as high up as her waist. Their flowers, featuring crowns of all different shapes and sizes, were in full bloom, open wide to entice her approach. Both the threshes of edible greens and the beautiful blossoms gently swayed in the wind whenever it blew. Even though they were almost entirely submerged.

A dark, murky liquid coated the arresting plain. Thick reeds littered the water, their dark browns a stark contrast to the bright dyes that coloured the sunbathing perennials. They were accompanied by lotuses, whose dark green leaves and pink petals danced as they had in the pond to her rear.

It was an odd scene. Never before had Claire imagined an environment that was half-meadow, half-marsh, let alone one where the two contrasting concepts were so seamlessly integrated. But even that bizarre fusion paled when compared to the nonsensical expanse that was the forest. The upside-down jungle of a forest.

The trees grew not from the wetland but a second layer of soil and foliage several dozen meters in the air. The tallest individuals had their canopies reach so far that they nearly touched the marshy meadow—well within reach of the halfbreed’s grasp. Somehow, when the wind blew, the leaves and fruits growing from their branches fell not towards the ground but rather the dirt from which the trees extended.

It was not just the flora for which gravity was reversed. There were birds perched amongst the branches, squirrels bounding up the trees, and even the occasional deer dashing across the forest, all with their feet pointed towards its floor. She had to look off in the distance to find the sky. The thin layer of blue seemed fictitious at best, but the associated concept functioned in full force. The sun goddess was in her place in the sky, shining her rays upon the realm’s mortals through the artificial enclosure.

Still ignoring the snake’s rambling, Claire exited the hollow tree and stepped onto a piece of dry land. She started to suspect, as she gazed upon the trial grounds, that the bards’ and playwrights’ tales may not have been as exaggerated and absurd as she had always assumed.