Access to a long list of Arcana that increased his movement speed meant that now that he was properly motivated, Hirrus practically flew down the streets of Inoha. It was the early hours of the morning, with the sky just starting to light up with pre-dawn light. The streets were empty, giving him the freedom to get to the river unmolested and start his way down the south bank of the river.

As he reached the inside of the city’s inner walls, he found himself slowing down. He was running along the south bank of the river in the northern part of the Lamp Borough.

One of the buildings he was running past would eventually be the Last of the Strong’s manor. He would have to keep an eye out.

Some of the buildings were obviously shops, or smaller homes. But every building that looked like a large mansion or a decorated tower was potentially them.

A part of him wanted to start going door to door demanding answers.

But he had other matters to concern himself with.

More important than the idea that every building he walked by could be the stronghold of his enemy, every figure he saw walking the streets ahead of him could have been Orlina. According to Barin, she would be a terrifying combatant. Hirrus could only hope that she wouldn’t catch him off-guard.

Anyone on the street who didn’t turn away down a side street before reaching him could be her.

And considering how ridiculously nonthreatening Clive’s outfit had appeared - and the illusion that had hid the actual armor it had turned out to be - he couldn’t trust anyone.

Any guard, any merchant, any laborer, they could all have been her, choosing to appear in common garb rather than in the jarring mishmash he’d long since come to associate with adventurers.

Of course, he needn’t have worried. Barin had told him that she was likely to be angry and looking for a fight.

When their eyes met, they knew each other instantly.

She stopped in the street ahead of him, and he stopped in turn.

Orlina was wearing black leather armor composed of a thick brigandine. Hirrus had seen its like a dozen times before, but this one was covered with a matte finish that dulled its shine. She wore a pair of matching bracers, chausses, and greaves.

Under the armor, covering the skin between the pieces, she wore a simple-looking purple shirt and brown trousers. She had long dark hair, pulled back in a rough ponytail that left two locks dangling in the front to frame her face. It drew attention to her dark eyes and angular features.

True to Barin’s warning, she had a look of pure fury etched across every line of her face, and as she sneered, the pure hate on display almost cut through Hirrus' courage to his heart.

Almost.

Instead, he smiled.

It wasn’t a nice smile.

“You’re wearing Oskar’s gear,” she said through gritted teeth.

Hirrus only smiled wider. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“At my home, where you butchered my friends?” Orlina snarled. “Yes, I just came from there, in fact.”

“How about at Yenon? Where you and your ilk butchered mine?”

Orlina let out a bark of laughter, and let her sneer curl into a smirk. Hirrus could hear a soft pop from the knuckle of one hand as her fists clenched.

She was trying to put on a face for him, but he saw right through it.

No matter what she said or did, her whole body thrummed with rage directed at him with such focus he could almost feel it like a physical pressure.

“Yeah, I was at Yenon,” she said, finally unclenching her teeth. “More than that, I oversaw the whole thing. I killed all your friends and destroyed your home, and you know what?” She took a sudden step forward towards him. “I’d do it again. And on Tuesday after maintenance, I will! The first time, it was for the achievement, but now?” She paused, and her sneer turned cold. “Now it’s just for you. Just so that the next time you pop up and think you can fight us, I’ll be ready to enjoy the extraordinary pleasure of ripping your head off with my bare fucking hands!”

On some level, when Barin told him that Orlina was the Last of the Strong’s field general, he’d assumed that she had some vital part to play in what had happened to Yenon. But hearing it like this, from her own lips, with the vicious threat to do it again, brought his own roaring rage right to the surface to meet hers.

He found himself eagerly welcoming it when she lunged at him, weapon raised.

She wielded a short sword with a blade that was nearly eighteen inches long, edged on one side with an angled chisel tip. The weapon itself was beautifully made, with a pitch-black pearl the size of an eyeball set into the blade right above the hilt.

Her attack was fueled by her rage rather than tactical acumen, and Hirrus managed to weave under the clumsy swing.

She was fast, however, and the light weapon whipped back across before he could even get his own axe ready.

The swing was wild again and he barely managed to tip his head back far enough to avoid her strike turning the side of his face into a red ruin.

As soon as he had time to react, his axe was in hand, sweeping upwards. Orlina had already demonstrated that she was lightning-fast on her feet, and so he couldn’t be surprised when she leaped back out of the path of his strike.

She landed with her weapon raised and leveled at him, glaring at him over the tip of the blade.

He glared back at her, raising his own weapon.

Orlina’s blade was still clean, unbloodied and glittering in the flickering light of the streetlamps.

Hirrus hadn’t had the chance to stop and do any maintenance on his stolen blade. The glowing blue crescent of ice was fouled by the blood of those he’d faced.

The very friends whose deaths had enraged her.

“You’re a monster,” Hirrus said. “You’ve kept your blade clean, but there’s still blood all over you. How much of that blood are you even aware of?”

“Me? The monster?” Orlina snapped out a sarcastic laugh. “That’s rich, coming from a literal monster.”

Hirrus lunged forward this time, leading with a low feint and then redirecting the weapon up to a high swing. Orlina fell for the feint, twisting to avoid the low blow and taking the higher swing right across her upper arm. The blade bit through the purple shirt and then skated across the front of her armor, leaving a deep gash that cut through the black matte coating leaving a brown line stained with blood.

The attack did just shy of six thousand damage, and Hirrus expected her to reel back from it.

But she didn’t react.

Or, at least, not in the way he expected.

Orlina didn’t fall back, but surged forward with a cackle. Her blade shimmered through the air with almost an ethereal quality, first swinging at his arm in an obvious feint before she reversed her grip and slashed at his face. He leaned back to let the blow sweep past his face, but she was fast, and after the edge swept past his nose, the chisel tip of the blade was driven into his collarbone before he even knew it had changed direction.

The blade lanced deep into him, and he was aware that it was a critical hit, dealing three thousand four hundred and twenty five damage.

Hirrus tried to back away and get some space. He’d obviously come up on top for that exchange, but Orlina’s aggression didn’t abate. She followed his retreat and her blade lashed out at his face again. Once more, as soon as he avoided receiving a cut across his jawline, he felt his own blood hot on his skin, this time running down his arm as a deep cut opened on his bicep for one thousand six hundred and eighty seven damage.

There was no pause for breath before her next strike. Above all else, Orlina was relentless.

Her blade swept in at his face once more, this time the chisel tip lancing for his eye. As he ducked aside from the blow he slammed his own axe into her side. The straight edge of the blade grazed his temple, but not with enough force to break skin. In return, he pelted another five thousand hundred and twenty-seven damage into her ribs.

A sensation of furious satisfaction roared up his arms at the feeling of her armor giving way under the blow, parting the skin and flesh beneath, even if it was only an inch.

The only thing that seemed to drive her away was physical force, and the power behind his blow bodily shoved her back. She seemed to recover oddly fast for someone who, by Hirrus' estimations, had just been stripped of more than half of her hit points in the space of seconds.

Orlina was visibly bloodied, even just from the two blows he’d landed, but her demeanor wasn’t frightened or even resigned.

She had a visible hunger in her eyes.

With the smallest flick of her wrist his blood on her sword spattered across the street at her feet.

She wanted more, however. He could see it in the grin she wore.

With his own rage burbling up in his chest, he felt the same.

“Come on, then,” Orlina said, sneering, “you think you’re a threat to me? You’re like a little baby. I’ve killed your king. I kill your king for fun once a week. What are you going to do to me?”

“What did you do to King Bors?”

Orlin rolled her eyes. “Not that king. The Darkwater Monarch.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

Orlina snarled, but he could see a blossom of confusion in her eyes.

Hirrus had, in fact, heard the name of the Darkwater Monarch before. It was featured in the buffs and debuffs around his transformation effect. He would have to, at some point, try and discover who they were and how they were connected to him.

But for right now, he had bigger matters before him.

Before he could resume crossing steel, Orlina’s body flushed with green energy. An Arcana.

When it faded, her wounds had closed.

“Ready to try again, monster?” Orlina asked, her lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.