Deep inside the keep it was a scene out of a fantasy war movie. Dust and the occasional rock or two fell down from the high ceilings and the chandeliers swayed with each impact that shook the massive stone structure. The keep had been made with a method brought to the Dwarves by the Hero Gods who had saved them, a mixture of mortar, random stones, pottery shards and more were formed around a mesh of woven metal rods.

The Hero Gods called it ‘Reinforced Concrete’ and it had served as the ultimate building material for ages. It was only the most venerable structures that would be made of this, then lovingly masked with other types of stone and further covered in runes, statues and other decorative pieces. It was said that a keep made with reinforced concrete was unassailable; that even if the exterior decorations were blown away the material of the Hero Gods would remain unscathed. The runes inscribed on the random stones and shards of earthwork that were embedded within the mixture would protect from anything, or so it was said.

And yet, this did not seem to be anything remotely close to the truth.

The rag-cloaked five-horned monster leveled blast after blast of entropic lightning and emerald flame at the walls of the keep, and with each strike the structure shook from the impact. Each strike carved out not only the decorations and façade, but also chunks of the inner material as well. Even as the defenders tried to fire bolts and bullets at the rat-monster, the creature just stood there and ignored the rounds that disintegrated before even reaching it.

Seemingly bored of using its free hand to heft its magical projectiles, the towering monstrosity lifted its staff high above itself and then rammed it down to the ground. A glowing green fissure formed from where the staff impacted and formed a erratic zig-zag line across the surface, quickly climbing up the wall of the keep and stopping just shy of the roof. From that point, yet more fissures branched out from the main one like a glowing, leafless tree of destruction, and with barely five seconds having passed since the spell began, the fissures expanded, and the wall came tumbling down.

An entire side of the keep was now open to the outside, and if that was not bad enough, the fissures had also spread inside as well, causing entire rooms to collapse and condemn dozens of Dwarves to death by various means. However, while the massive gash in the keep was indeed a huge breach in the defensiveness of the structure, the Rattan forces were still preoccupied with dealing with the stubborn Dwarven resistance. If the towering cloaked horned rat-person would be content to simply chuck spells at them from a distance, Gilder IX thought, then maybe they could devise a way to-

Before he could finish his thought, a pair of figures appeared in his command center, one of them familiar and the other not so much. Morgrim Nobeard was now on the back foot against the human-sized Rattan female he was fighting. As the Royal Guards rushed to aid their fellow Dwarf, Morgrim took the opportunity their sacrifice provided him to chug a few Health and Stamina Potions. The Royal Guards were easily dispatched by the Rattan assassin who wore an outfit made of faces, which did not surprise Morgrim in the least.

“Fucking Mobs. Seems even elite mobs like these ones are still just trash at best.”

With a derisive sneer, Morgrim waited for his cool downs to finish before slinking off into the shadows.

“Morgrim! What are you doing?! Help them! You are a Hero God, are you not?! Save your people from destruction like in the days of legend!” Gilder cried out, trying to bring Dwarf-kind’s last hope to bear. Instead all he heard was mocking laughter and words that chilled him to the bone.

“Why should I? Fighting them was suicidal; why else do you think I didn’t go with my guild to try and face them? Sure, I felt guilty for a bit, after they died and all and didn’t rez. But why should I die in a pointless waste to buy this doomed civilization a bit more time on the clock? You didn’t bother to check their levels, did you? When I started fighting Face-stealer, I didn’t think it would be a problem. I mean, I could solo it in the game! But this… Well, take this. My final present to a doomed man. Have to say, it was fun playing this game, but I am not about to get a permanent Game Over just yet! Ciao, Gilder! Tell my old buddies that I said ‘Hi’!”

A monocle dropped down from above and landed squarely in between the gaps in Gilder’s helmet. His vision blurred for a moment, but then he saw things far more clearly. Everyone in the room had both their level and their name visible for him to see. His gaze followed one person after the next, before he opened his own status to see his own level. He was stronger than all of them, yes. All save the rodent assassin that was carving his people to shreds.

His level was over 200.

Hers was simply put as ‘???’.

From what he knew about levels, he knew that he was fucked. In the world Morgrim had come from, that designation meant that a being was over 50-100 levels above you. In this world, Morgrim had determined that it meant that the foe was over 500 levels above you. Unbeknownst to Gilder IX, Morgrim had been played like a fiddle, toyed around with by a force far beyond his meagre level of 967. When he finally had bothered to check Sqwiik’s level, he realized how deep a hole he was in and wisely decided to flee, even if it meant that the legacy of his Guildmates would be lost to that of a group of Raid Bosses he should have been able to wipe single-handedly.

“Your Highness!”

Gilder was shaken out of his mix of abject terror, disbelief and despair by one of his advisors.

“Your Highness, you must flee! Take the express line, it will-!”

One of the walls blew apart and a massive, skull-like mutated rat head took the advisor in its jaws and proceeded to crush and eat him even as he screamed bloody murder. If that wasn’t bad enough, another wall was broken down as a huge mechanical rat-centaur thing wielding a chainsaw-tipped war glaive busted in like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man.

From the back of said mechanical monstrosity jumped a Rattan female that stood high above him, clad in a shiny, albeit blood-and-bile-covered suit of spiked armor with twin falchions at her hips. Said armored Rat-woman was princess-carrying another Rattan female of similar size to herself. Once she landed, she dropped the rat-woman in her arms to the ground, who then proceeded to pull a tiara from her head and cuss out the one that dropped her. There were now four dangerously nasty female rat-people occupying his command center, but their bickering turned to silence as the tapping of a staff echoed through the now deathly quiet keep.

The tapping seemed both far away and dangerously close, and every time it grew louder the pressure and sense of dread in the air heavier. The tapping stopped, and Gilder realized it had been coming from behind the massive set of doors that should have blocked the sou-

The doors blew off their hinges and flew through the air, barely missing both the hideous abomination of flesh and bone and the ungodly machine next to it. In the opening where the doors once stood was a female Rattan. She was…

Gilder smacked himself in his crotch to keep himself sane. There was no way in hell that he was going to fall for a fucking rat! Even with its massive bust and womanly curves and sultry walk and…

He smacked himself again and again, much to the visible disgust of the Five-Clawed Paw.

The horned Rattan female walked up to the self-harming Gilder and gave him a kick to the face, dislodging the monocle and sending him reeling.

A commanding feminine voice that did not sound anything similar to the normal speech patterns of a Rattan boomed out from the one who kicked him, “Seriously? You find us attractive? Are you really that… wait, now I see the reason for your lustful gaze. Let me fix that. No one but our Vermin-King was meant to see that, so you and your kin should bear witness to the truth. In all honesty, He would have despised us if He saw us without this glamour. Now gaze upon us and tremble, brat!”

His gaze once again fell on the leader of the Rattan race, but now he saw something truly horrific. Each one of the Rattan females was shifting between what they had looked like mere moments earlier and their true forms.

The sight that Vaile and so many Dwarves had borne witness to was not the truth. The Five-Clawed Paw had long since grown to be able to use a glamour spell to hide their true appearances, and the Dwarf King now saw what Vaile had not, but the Rattan race did.

His eyes filled with a mixture of horror, disgust, despair and dread as the utterly monstrous creatures in front of him approached. Their faces were once something that only a certain type of person would find hot, but now they looked like something out of a horror movie. There were no breasts of any great size, no feminine curves, no attractive and sultry movements. Just monsters preparing to pounce on their prey. Gilder’s thoughts raced as his mind began to enter panic mode. There was no way something that hideous, that disgusting could possibly exist! The stench, the matter, mangy fur and skin covered in… oh by the Ancestor and Hero Gods, what was he seeing?! They should not be! They could not be! This, this was…!

Gilder IX fainted as they drew too near, his mind unable to process the sheer hideousness of what was in front of him. The leader of the Five-Clawed Paw, Chuu Snowfur, reached out with her gnarled and mangy arm and grasped the Dwarf King in her twisted and boney fingers. Gilder IX’s eyes shifted under his closed lids before his eyes opened wide and glowed a sickening green.

Emerald wisps of mist flowed from Gilder’s eyes, ears, nose and mouth and fused into the matted and mangy fur-covered flesh of the Vermin-Queen. Every memory and thought that filled the dwarf was being gobbled up by the ravenous monstrosity that held him in its grasp. After what seemed like hours, the towering and hideous rat-woman crushed the head of her prey and swallowed the soul of the last king of the Ironheart Kingdom. Gilder IX’s body fell to the ground with a thud and his fluids spilled out from the shattered remnants of his head.

“Was he here?” The raspy and twisted voice from Snikty asked.

“No. This one did not know anything. A useless beard-thing, ruling over yet more useless beard-things. To not even know of something so momentous… Disappointing.”

The Vermin-Queen hissed in anger as she contemplated which Dwarven Kingdom would have her beloved in its clutches. She was sure that it had to be one of the ones farther away. It was what she would do; keep the prize as far away as possible to buy time for… something. She kicked the dead man as if he could feel the pain and then cast a spell to deal with the mess. She had already taken the impotent King’s family alive and unharmed, but that would not be for long. She had plans for the royal family, and they would be given the same treatment as their patriarch in the end.

Of course, she intended for them to be alive as it happened.

A portal appeared under the fallen monarch and whisked him away to a fate that was unbefitting of his stature. The five monsters in the room licked their lips in anticipation of what was to come. After all, it wasn’t everyday they got to eat royalty, both dead AND alive.