She had trained her whole life for this moment, yet it still terrified her.

Standing atop the ramparts of Lyonesse, Annie prepared to defend her home city alongside her classmates. Beyond the lake surrounding the city, the cracks had widened, allowing an unnatural frost to sweep across the land.

Jarl Gales and Gwen had organized the defense in two lines; archers first, and mages at the back. The former would assault whoever tried to climb the fortifications with arrows, and the latter would bombard the enemy army with spells. Infantry would stay behind in case the giants managed to open a breach.

Tye and other suppliers moved among the spellcasters, distributing [Mana Potions] in bulk to prevent them from running out of SP during the battle. Gwen oversaw the defenses, reassuring a few soldiers, and then left to survey the defense of the bridge, west of Annie’s current position. Everyone knew that this area was the most important location to protect, and thus the most dangerous, so seeing the Princess of Avalon take the lead pumped everyone up. Even Tye and Takeru, usually both unflappable, seemed mesmerized by Gwen’s presence.

Meanwhile, Annie breathed deeply, trying to calm her anxieties. She knew her spells, she had trained, but her dad and uncle lived in Lyonesse. If she failed here…

“Giants!” an archer called out.

They stepped through the cracks, and onto the opposite shore.

Twenty-foot tall titans with pale skin and blonde hair, wearing armor and wielding weapons of solid, magical ice. Women and men both made up the warband that stepped out of the cracks, howling madly to the four winds. From afar, Annie could have mistaken them from simply oversized humans, different, yet similar to herself.

However, when these colossi looked at the city, and the tiny people on its fortifications, the witch saw something raw and primal in them. A sinister gaze that shook her to the core.

Hunger.

The kind of ravenous hunger one felt, when facing a free buffet.

These creatures were not civilized cousins of humanity. They were the maneaters of legend, and they had come only to feed. In their eyes, Annie saw neither understanding nor pity; if these beasts breached the walls, they would devour everyone inside, from old men to children.

An enormous knight led the giants, reaching twenty-five feet in height and clad in plate armor of solid ice; he wielded a warhammer in one hand and a shield with the other. Two elderly giant witches followed him, covered in mantles of wolf fur and amulets. One looked like a monstrous hag from children tales, an ancient, hunched crone with malicious eyes; while the other was younger and closer to the giants’ leader. His concubine, or his daughter perhaps.

Following them were smaller, but much more numerous bands of greenish trolls, blue, feathered goblins, and deformed ogres with fanged teeth. They wouldn’t threaten the ramparts the way the giants could, but they would overrun the city if let in, devouring its people.

In total, the witch counted two hundred giants, and their smaller servants probably numbered in the thousands. Annie knew they didn’t have to kill them all; only to hold them off until an army from Avalon could flank the creatures and finish them. But she wouldn’t lie, the sight of this otherworldly army made her uneasy.

“Giants from Jotunheim,” Tye said, unimpressed, as he looked over an archer’s shoulder and towards the freezing lake. “Good.”

“You find these odds good?” Takeru snorted, always rough around the edges.

“The weakest [Jotun] is roughly as powerful as a level 27 human,” Annie reminded her alchemist friend. “And divinations said that their leader is level 54.”

“An army from Muspelheim would have been far more terrifying,” Tye shrugged, glancing at another group farther to the east, Laufey and Morgane among them. “Their foot soldiers are a match for knights in their 40s.”

While Annie understood her friend was concerned for his new protegee, she couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous. Once, Tye had been her closest friend and confidant, coaching the young witch in her magical studies; even now, she considered him more of a mentor than her actual teachers at the Academy.

While she had minor noble blood, Annie had earned her entrance at the Academy; her family had fallen on hard times since her grandfather had been stripped of his Jarl position, and she had bought every magical grimoire she had with her own sweat. She had had to work for years to pass the entrance exam, competing with older rivals with private tutors.

Few had believed in her chances at first, but the alchemist had. And for that, she had remained fond of him. Takeru, that evil archer, kept teasing her about her “teacher crush” whenever they came back from the shop, much to her annoyance.

“They brought trolls and goblinoids,” Takeru noted, brandishing his magical bow. “Lots of them.”

“Annie, burn the trolls’ corpses, or there will be no end to them,” Tye advised.

“I know,” she said with a forced smile. “I will do my best.”

“Annie, you are the most promising offensive mage I have seen,” the shopkeeper flattered her. “Your best is beyond exceptional.”

The witch’s cheeks reddened a bit and answered with a thankful smile. Tye moved to join the ‘summoning corp,’ a group of twenty spellcasters who would only focus on bringing reinforcements behind the ramparts. Lady Yseult led the effort.

“That is so cute,” Takeru teased Annie. “You should have invited him for tea after the battle.”

“Shut up, you meanie,” Annie replied, preparing her own spells. “[Star Power], [Fire Up], [Chain Spell].”

Damage spells have been empowered for ten minutes.

+30 percent to [Fire] spells.

You can cast the same spell twice in a single action.

With a voice brimming with power, Lady Yseult prayed to her god, Balder the Beautiful, and he answered. A winged creature of pure silver appeared in response, a naked, waif-thin woman of great elegance with hair as long as her body; her golden eyes provided a reassuring light, calming Annie’s nerves.

“[Lesser Elemental Summoning],” Tye cast a spell afterward, four creatures manifesting around him. A serpentine beast of pure water; a humanoid of burning bright flames; a living mini-twister; and a titan of stone. In contrast with Lady Yseult’s graceful angel, the elementals all looked vicious, violent, and out for blood.

Still, Annie was relieved to have them on their side.

On the shore, the giant witches cast spells of their own, slowly freezing the lake so their fellow monsters could walk on them and reach the ramparts. The leader left with half the army towards the bridge, which the City Watch had already started pulling underwater.

“Fire!” a commander shouted, archers unloading their arrows at the incoming army. Takeru’s own weapon shone bright with purple energies, before unleashing an arrow of searing light. The projectile pierced a giant’s ankle and continued its course after going through his flesh. The titan tripped over, collapsing into the lake.

“[Comet]!” Annie cast her most powerful spell, twice in a row, while other mages unloading a rain of projectiles. “[Comet]!”

Answering the call of her magic, two fiery stones fell from the sky, one pulverizing a troll band and the other blasting away half a giant’s face.

While powerful, the [Comet] spell cost a lot of SP; casting it twice depleted most of her reserves. She immediately drank a mana potion, to prepare herself to cast it again, as her comrades continued to unleash bolts of lightning, poisoned arrows, or spikes of stone. The winged servants of Lady Yseult carried summoned creatures over the ramparts, to bring the fight to the enemy.

The oldest giant witch, who faced this side of the fortification, responded to the magical barrage with one of her own. Joining her hands, she sang in an alien, incomprehensible tongue, and then fired a rain of icy spears from her fingers. The projectiles skewered defenders unlucky enough to be in their path and even made the stone fortifications tremble upon contact.

Annie briefly whistled to herself and prepared to hold her ground for the rest of the day.

They had separated her from Gwen, these madmen.

Morgane could barely restrain her frustration, as she cast fire spells over the ramparts alongside her useless classmates and the even more useless locals. A meaningless, degrading task, while the princess and the Jarl would get the lion’s share of the glory by fighting the giants’ leader.

She loathed being away from her half-sister, especially at a time like this.

As a secret bastard of the king—and one with a sordid history like her own—Morgane had very few ways to get ahead in life; her trueborn sister being one of them. Her elder half-brother Arthur was a dimwit surrounded by sycophants, and immune to her charms to boot; he needed neither allies nor fame, being promised the throne simply by virtue of his birth. While his ambitious sister…

Morgane had worked years on worming her way into Gwen’s inner circle, as a confidant and her right-hand woman. She had pushed away those who threatened her position, secured a powerbase of her own, and done everything she could to make her sister dependant on her; the witch fashioned herself as the secret puppet master behind the princess, who would rule vicariously through her once she had pushed her brother out of the way.

But the princess had slipped farther and farther away from Morgane’s grasp, in ways that worried her. Staying in this dumpster of a city was a complete waste of time—not to mention the dangerous, wicked sorcerer dwelling underground—but still, Gwen refused to explain her obsession with its dungeon. She had even started to ‘forget’ about inviting her sister to some important political meetings.

Morgane had to regain control, and for that, she needed Gwen in sight at all times.

But what could she do? Her own unit had been deployed below the ramparts, closer to the city’s houses than the frontlines. She didn’t even see where her projectiles landed, a diviner using advanced magical scans to guide them from safety. It was the least risky place in a siege, but also the less gratifying. Morgane wouldn’t be able to show herself, nor her contribution.

At least… She thought it was the safest place.

As if a godly sign of divine disfavor, a summoning circle manifested right in the middle of Morgane’s unit, a monster immediately teleporting through.

The creature tossed two mages away as it manifested; Morgane thought it resembled a giant snowflake on a first look, except with vicious spikes at its edges, and a ghostly purple eye at its core. The being radiated an unnatural cold, freezing the pavement and even people solid.

“The giants!” That weakling peasant, Laufey, panicked. “The giants’ mages summoned a monster in our midst!”

“[Permascan]!” a spellcaster cast on the creature, to reveal its weaknesses to everyone.

Infernal Ice Elemental

Level 41

The creature was too powerful for the spell to reveal anything more, and immediately opened hostilities by skewering a classmate with a spike of ice. Morgane never bothered to remember his name, since he had been from a minor family, but the sight of his blood sprayed all over the ground disturbed her to the core.

Morgane cast a fire spell on the monster, but the creature’s freezing aura extinguished her flames; neither did her fellow classmates manage to even dent the abomination, who started impaling people left and right. The monster’s spikes carried the corpses as it kept moving, like a morbid trophy collection.

Images of the dungeon, of Lamor’s murder, flashed to Morgane’s mind. Her legs stopped obeying her at the sight of the carnage.

“Away!” Laufey grabbed Morgane’s shoulder, getting her out of her trance. “We have to get away!”

The Academy student followed the shopkeeper as she moved towards the city’s houses, away from the battlefield and the monster. Morgane would have called that girl a coward, but the failure of her own spell had shaken her confidence. She couldn’t hurt that creature, even by targeting its weakness.

Yes… maybe it was better to hide and let the others weaken it. Morgane would have the time to prepare, and then swoop in once the creature was weakened to claim the kill. That was what she kept telling herself, as Laufey led them through a nearby alley too small for the monster to go through.

“What a terrifying creature, don’t you think?” Laufey said, moving behind Morgane to check on the alley’s corner, in case the beast had followed. “That ice elemental. I had never seen one like that where I came from.”

“I imagine,” Morgane replied with sarcasm, annoyed by her presence. If she could position her in the path of the elemental and get rid of her...

“I wish he had let me sculpt it though. I would have made it far more beautiful.”

Morgane froze. “He?”

A ghastly specter of pure shadows emerged from the pavement on the other end of the alley, blocking both women’s path. Morgane panicked, worrying that the undead from the dungeon had risen to exploit the chaos. “[Fire Bla—”

Morgane never finished her spell.

She felt the knife on her back, the blade slipping between her ribs and through her heart.

She wanted to scream, but Laufey put a hand on her mouth and muffled the sound, smiling blissfully as she deepened the wound. For a second, the girl’s features blurred, revealing the frighteningly serene face of a dark elf.

“It is okay,” the traitor said, lasciviously kissing Morgane on the neck as she twisted the knife. The shadow specter meanwhile, observed the scene, waiting. “Shush, it is alright. I am here for you.”

She said it with a vicious kind of affection, rejoicing in her victim’s life slipping away in her arms.

Morgane should have died there, her body going cold and her mind passing out from the lack of blood… but instead, something kept her awake. A poison pumped by the dagger into her bloodstream, a foreign liquid invading every inch of her body.

Warning: you have contracted an alchemically-enhanced form of [Vampirism].

If you die under the effect of the disease, your soul will be sent to [Helhe—

Morgane’s vision blurred before she could finish reading, but it didn’t matter. She knew what happened to those dying of disease, and she had never found any god worth worshiping.

She wanted to scream in fear of her fate, but the… the monster’s hold was too strong.

As Morgane’s life quickly left her body, the shadow entity finally moved, revealing wings and horns. The shadow entered her chest, and through it, her very soul. As her soul slipped away into Hel’s grasp, the noble felt something else take over her flesh, hollowing her from within. Something inhuman, and deeply malicious.

You have been possessed by a [Shadow Fiend].

“What beautiful curves you had,” a voice echoed in Morgane’s mind—her voice—“I would have preferred a virgin, but you are attractive enough for my tastes… oh, the things I will do with my body.”

Such were the last things Morgane Sieglinde heard before her soul left Midgard for the sinister darkness of Helheim.

Her short life had ended… but her torment had only begun.