As we moved through the complex, I began to wonder. What sort of mind had come up with this design, where did it come from? It was far too complex and, quite frankly, scary to be a product of random chance and the less I thought about the enemies, the better.

At first, we only faced the skelepigs, and the idea that skeletons could be reanimated by magic wasn’t far-fetched. However, after a while, we came across what I could only consider a boss monster, as ridiculous as that idea was in reality. This was no video-game, but then, Road to Purgatory hadn’t been either and there had been boss monsters there.

Either way, we found ourselves facing an abnormally large, undead pig, its size more appropriate for a calf, or maybe a pony. Compared to the previous ones, this one was still fleshy but just thinking about the flesh was enough to twist my stomach. The meat was clearly rotting, the stench strong enough to make me gag and I thought I could see maggots wiggling around at the surface, cursing the brief moment I focused my gaze there.

Moments after Silva entered the large room it was in, the walls started to form a barrier behind Lia, giving Silva virtually no chance to retreat back out, while Lia and I had to choose between retreating and leaving our comrade or staying and fighting. Neither Lia nor I hesitated, both moving forward, while my mind was rapidly considering tactics.

“Stay back,” I commanded, realising that my best shot was an overwhelming initial attack, one that I knew worked incredibly well on zombies. Amusingly, zombies had one major weakness people rarely considered, one that was shared with all fleshy undead. They were cold, or rather room temperature, and yet, their flesh was still moist, in this case even wet enough to rot.

Grinning to myself, my hand danced through the runes while my mind activated overflow, all thoughts fading away as I focused. Astral Power was pouring out of me, filling up the deceptively simple formation, just four Runes of Cold around a single Rune of Water, while my burgeoning Water Magic forced the result into a beam, lancing across the room towards the zombie pig. It was far from powerful enough to become a cutting beam similar to what Kevin had used before, but I lacked the Water Runes associated with movement, and I doubted Hail or Blizzard Runes would play well with Water. It was too big a difference in concept, I would be more likely to get some sort of sleet instead of rapidly moving water.

But in this case, I didn’t care about the impact of the water, I only cared about the massive amounts of heat the supercooled water was ripping from the moist flesh as it soaked the right shoulder and leg of the pig.

The nice thing about magically conjured water was, it didn’t necessarily behave exactly like mundane water, just like conjured ice had its own interesting properties that differed from mundane ice. In this case. I was relatively certain that there was no way for water to be this cold without turning into ice. The same didn’t apply to the moisture in the pigs leg and without any heating, that meant one thing. The shoulder, and much of the leg, froze solid, causing it to stumble when it tried to move. It couldn’t even try some sort of three-legged run, at least not immediately, because the stiff leg stabilised it on the ground. The combination of trying to start barrelling towards us and that stabilisation caused it to tumble, crashing to the floor with a series of cracking sounds.

The fall was enough to break the ice, and in turn, break the flesh and even shatter some of the bones beneath. Or maybe the damage had disrupted the magic keeping the thing in roughly one piece, either way, its leg was utterly destroyed, leaving the beast crippled. It had taken a large chunk of Astral Power from me, but it was well worth it.

“Now you can go for it,” I told my two companions, readying myself to evade, dodge and maybe create a few patches of Ice on the ground, limiting the thing's mobility even further. It didn’t look terribly agile, which was something we could exploit.

Amusingly, Silva didn’t even try to bite into the zombie pig. Instead, she let out a strangely vibrant growl, causing her front paws to emit a strange purple glow that made my nose itch. With those glowing paws, she struck at the creature, causing the undead flesh to wither away, turning into gooey dust. Some sort of divine magic, but I had no idea about the details, though I was curious. It looked quite potent, so studying it sounded like a good idea, at least when I didn’t have to dodge the stumbling carcass.

Lia, on the other hand, had far fewer sensibilities than Silva and I. She managed to expand the claws that normally sheathed her hands into gauntlets that almost came to her elbows, without losing any of the claws sharpness. With those gauntlets she tore into the body, happily using the various openings I managed to create with my Ice.

The fight was still brutal, the zombie pig was able to withstand tremendous amounts of punishment, but ultimately, we managed to bring it down in a pile of mangled flesh.

Once it fell, blue windows opened before me, and a wide smile split my face.

You reached level twenty-nine. Skill increased You increased your skill: Ice Rune Mastery [24/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Water Rune Mastery [7/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Water Magic [7/100]

A level, two points in Water Magic, one in the two Rune Masteries, a wonderful harvest. Though there was another part that had to be harvested, a prospect I wasn’t looking forward to at all. If this was anything like the dungeons I was used to on Mundus, it meant that the zombie pig boss would have loot, likely somewhere in its body. And given that neither Lia nor Silva knew what to look for, I would likely be the one to dig through the rotting flesh in search of treasure.

Luckily, just before I could talk myself into doing something stupid, like trying to use Death Magic to decompose the body and probably hurt myself terribly in the attempt, the body dissolved on its own accord. I wasn’t sure why, but it looked somewhat reminiscent of the process that had dissolved Traveller Bodies when dying on Mundus. Not quite the same, there the land had absorbed the body, here it looked more like the body was absorbed by the entire environment. I wasn’t sure what to think about it, but looking at the three items the dissolution had left behind, I didn’t mind too much.

The first was a meat cleaver, though rather oversized if one wanted to use it in the kitchen. It looked more like an axe, easily capable of chopping through armour and meat alike, than anything one would use to prepare food. At least if one was human.

The next was a necklace of teeth, with two tusks that might have fit on a boar capping the teeth on both sides. It looked a little like a caricature of a native ornament, but that might have just been my opinion.

The last was the most unfortunate. It was a bottle, filled with some mysterious liquid and suspended within the liquid was a pig’s foetus, or at least I hoped it was a pig. I had no idea the distinct characteristics of any foetus, so it could be of pretty much anything. Maybe not an octopus, but that still left a wide variety of options, some of which were… worrying.

Stepping up, I used my Magic Sight, checking for any suspicious curses, before touching them one by one, using the Identify Skill on each.

The foetus was the easiest, the system simply identified it as a ‘Life that never was’, whatever that was supposed to be or whatever it might do. I had no idea but guessed that it might be useful to craft something. Or drink the liquid, but that wasn’t anything I was willing to test.

The necklace was next, and luckily with a bigger, immediate use. It was a Rare necklace, called Boar’s Run, granting the wearer a plus two to Endurance and a passive bonus that reduced damage taken while charging at enemies. After a moment of consideration, I carefully placed it around Silva’s neck, amusing how the two tusks were dangling along her shoulders. It simply was the most useful to her, neither Lia nor I were really charging at our enemies.

The Cleaver on the other hand simply went to Lia. It wasn’t anything tremendously special, simply a melee weapon that counted as an axe, with rather brutal damage values for slashing and bludgeoning damage, with a special ability called amputation, making it easier to lob off limbs. Lia would have to train a lot if she wanted to wield the thing proficiently, but the increase in range might be useful for her. Either way, we had dealt with the thing, and the way forward was open.