“Warning: The Saltglass fortress rift has spilled over! I repeat: The Saltglass fortress rift has spilled over!” The panicked yell echoed through the city as the sirens howled, then died down.

  A second later, panicked yelling and screaming filled the air.

  The twins’ first instinct told them to run. The giant looked Epic-tier and if the rift had been breached, more would come.

  But with the monster wrecking the city right in front of them, how could they? On top of that, while their hesitation to help probably hadn’t been the sole reason why this breach had occurred, they couldn’t shake the idea that going right after talking to Elis might have prevented it.

  “[Tricky Flail]!”

  Dusk jumped forward as he shot his skill up and grabbed its trail. Meanwhile, Dawn activated her camouflage skill, dashed to a nearby building, and began climbing it.

  The giant finished clambering up the hole it had made and lifted its hammer, sending salt everywhere. Luckily, it faced away from them, so Dusk used the perfect opportunity to get close and slam his skill down onto its head.

  It clanked, burst with light, and then deflected off the helmet, barely moving the giant’s head.

  “Geh!”

  The skill almost flew right out of Dusk’s hands with how suddenly it reversed momentum. He grabbed it with both hands, growled at his foe, and then pulled the glowing flail to the side for a sideways swing, aiming at the unarmored neck instead.

  But by then, the monster shifted its stance and pulled its mirror shield into the attack’s path. The glowing flail bounced off again.

  “Come on!”

  The giant stepped forward, heaving its hammer while keeping the shield angled toward Dusk’s flail. Another hit of the glowing weapon, another bounce-back by the shield. Despite the glass monster’s size, its quick reflexes never let an attack through.

  Dusk dashed back and around the fountain as the hammer came down, shattering the tiled ground and spraying salt everywhere. Dusk hurried to pull up his new invisible shawl to protect himself from the white powder.

  In the meantime, Dawn had gotten on top of the tilted roof, circled around, and now stood on the monster’s unshielded side with a higher vantage point.

  [Transfrogify]

  She let loose her skill without breaking her invisibility, which caused their foe to not even notice the attack before it poofed and turned into a giant glass frog with a helmet.

  Shockingly, it managed to keep a grip on its armaments even through its momentary confusion, but it was enough for Dawn to pull out her [Tricky Trail] and let it fly.

  As soon as it left her froggy little foot, her camouflage vanished with a snap, signifying that the explosive projectile counted as a hit. At the same time, Dusk used the moment to swing his flail from the opposite direction, splitting the glass frog’s focus.

  To their surprise, the monster managed to reorient itself quickly enough to reflect Dusk’s flail once more and even put its hammer up to guard against Dawn’s pincer attack.

  The flail clanked off the shield.

  The hammer exploded.

  Dawn hopped back to avoid the shower of salt while Dusk kept up his assault.

  Then both the glass frog and Dawn turned back into their original forms and everything went wrong.

  The twins’ vision suddenly shook as a shrill scream reminiscent of breaking glass ripped through every fiber of their being.

  They stumbled but forced themselves to keep standing. Weirdly, because both bodies heard the sonic attack so viscerally, they could perfectly triangulate the source.

  Behind the giant – who had already reformed its salt hammer – stood a small child-sized feminine figure made of glass. She had a glass dress and long glassy hair. Her arms raised high, as if greeting the Sun.

  “Another one!”

  “Drat!”

  Boom.

  Dusk’s flail, which he had failed to keep hold of through the disorientation, slammed into a nearby building and exploded.

  No weapon now.

  Fortunately, reinforcements didn’t come only for the monster side. Right on cue, a sickly green projectile slammed into the giant from behind and exploded into sticky goop, enveloping the giant’s head. Before it could react two more goop bolts struck its hip and arm.

  Another projectile flew at the singer, but before it could hit, she sang, flashed with bright light, and disappeared.

  Dusk backed off and Dawn climbed back down to rejoin her twin as they watched an extremely green woman enter the scene. A thick green robe, a green scepter, a green beret, short green hair, and green skin – The twins immediately realized who this had to be.

  Slime Queen.

  “Get him, girls!”

  The goops covering the giant suddenly grew silly vertical slits for eyes and began visibly chewing on it. The giant struggled but didn’t seem to be able to do much in its situation.

  With Slime Queen here, the twins let out a sigh of relief, but didn’t let down their guard yet. After all, another monster still lurked nearby.

  The twins heard the tinkle of glass behind them and turned around. Their eyes went wide and Dusk immediately threw up his new passive skill to block out the barrage of glass shards sent flying his way, while Dawn stomped to create a barrier made of stone tiles of the street.

  As the glass shards fell away, Dusk took a good look at their assailant. Sure enough, there stood the same feminine figure made of glass, already with her arms raised, probably ready to–

  The twins nearly vomited as another sonic attack hit them and slammed them to the ground. Luckily, the follow-up storm of glass didn’t get through their fortification skills either.

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

  Gritting their teeth, they glared at their foe, thinking of ways to beat a teleporting monster who used sonic attacks.

  All of Dawn’s skills re-sparked then, and she immediately threw her [Tricky Trail] at the singer, despite knowing it likely wouldn’t do much.

  Sure enough, the singer made a gesture, creating a glass shield, and the explosive projectile simply bounced off. Right back at Dawn.

  She squawked and kicked the ground again to shield herself. At the same time, Dusk used his own [Transfrogify] to counter-attack.

  Blinded by Dawn’s glowing attack, the singer didn’t notice it. She turned into a small glassy frog with amazing hair and croaked in surprise. Right as she did, a giant ball of goop flew in from behind them, gained eyes in mid-air, and opened its slimy mouth to devour the defenseless frog.

  Unfortunately, being turned into a frog apparently didn’t stop the monster from using her teleport. She opened her froggy mouth to sing a single note, flashed with light and disappeared right before the slime landed with a squelch.

  A moment later, a slimy head poked out of the top of the slime, snapped around in a specific direction, and yelled, “Got you, bitch!”

  A hand holding the slimy scepter emerged as well, pointed at the top of a building – where the singer now stood, the twins belatedly realized – and shot out a dark green whip of oozing acid.

  The teleporting monster once again put up a shield of glass to casually block the acidic whip, while gesturing with her other hand at the ground in front of the twins.

  They tensed and hurried out of the way, just in time to witness all the scattered glass shards in the neighborhood move in unison.

  “Ow!”

  Dawn stepped on a particularly sharp one as it slid under her foot, and the twins made a snap decision to have Dusk grab her in a princess carry. He also bundled up his surprisingly extendable invisible shawl around his own feet to protect himself. Doing that with an actual shawl would have been a recipe for falling on his face, but the solid yet immaterial nature of the skill made this work.

  “No, fuck off! Stop spawning more of them!”

  But Slime Queen’s enraged yell couldn’t stop all the glass from converging together and growing into another one of the glass giants, complete with its shield and helmet. A moment later, it materialized a salt hammer out of thin air and faced the twins.

  A chill went down their spines.

  That teleporting one created those Epic-tier giants?! What the hell?!

  “Mushy! Kate! Gooey! Protect those two! And you get out! I can’t protect you while fighting an Elite!”

  An Elite?!

  They didn’t need to be told twice. Before the giant could get close to them, they booked it.

  As promised, the so-called Mushy, Kate, and Gooey – identical-looking slimes – emerged from where they had finished chewing on the first giant’s body and lunged at the new one.

  Unfortunately, the glass monster didn’t let them get close this time and swung its hammer right as the slimes leaped into the air at it. It crashed into two of the slimes with a loud squelch and deflected the last one as it hit the top of the hammer head. The impacted slimes shriveled up and turned into a gross mess of salty goop as they landed.

  “Mushy! Gooey! No! You bastard! Wha– No! Get back here!”

  The giant slime with Slime Queen poking out of it hopped and disappeared around the corner, chasing after the teleporting Elite, while the twins were left with Kate and the giant. Part of them wanted to avenge Mushy and Gooey despite barely knowing them, but the wiser part of them won out and they kept running.

  While they had a moment, they snapped out their [Healing Light]s and healed Dawn’s foot, allowing her to run on her own.

  Their escape route took them up one of the bridges, the hope being that a higher vantage point would make it harder for the monster to reach them.

  It didn’t take long to hear the painful squelch behind them as Kate died as well. From then on, it was only a matter of minutes before the titan caught up and cornered them near a broken elevator going up.

  No choice. They had to fight it. But at least most of their skills had re-sparked by this point.

  Dusk brought out his flail as Dawn jumped behind him to take cover.

  The flail slammed into the mirror shield and the monster countered with an overhead strike with its hammer, which Dusk dodged by backing off. Though not far enough to dodge the explosion of salt that showered him. And since he hadn’t focused on deflecting it with his invisible barrier, it flew right into his eyes and mouth.

  He sputtered and coughed, which gave the glass titan enough time to raise its hammer again.

  Dawn’s eyes went wide and she quickly reached for her [Branching Rampart] and stomped the ground, creating a protective barrier between her twin and the mass of salt careening toward him.

  Dusk, seeing how he couldn’t dodge it completely, instead huddled behind his [Iridion’s Shawl] in anticipation.

  The hammer tore through Dawn’s barrier and slammed into Dusk, sending him and his flail flying.

  Dawn nearly keeled over from the phantom pain, but managed to keep standing and activated her [Cliffhide Fist] to hide from their foe.

  Meanwhile, Dusk landed in the wrecked elevator as pain exploded across his back and legs. A moment later, his [Tricky Flail] exploded nearby.

  Without his new passive, he would probably have been a bloody stain right now. He couldn’t take another hit.

  But the giant didn’t hesitate and raised its hammer again. Thinking on her feet and slightly panicking now, Dawn pulled out [Tricky Trail] and aimed it at the monster’s legs, away from both the mirror and the hammer.

  From this close, and the giant not being in frog form this time, the [Cliffhide Fist]-empowered projectile impacted the glass appendages and shattered them, causing the colossal humanoid to falter in its strike and tumble to the ground.

  Dawn used the chance to dash over to her twin, who struggled to move through all the pain. Both hurriedly pulled out their re-sparked [Healing Light]s and used them in unison as Dawn reached her twin.

  As soon as the skills finished their work, Dusk hurried to stand up.

  “Ow! Shit…”

  Unfortunately, even with quadruple the power, an Uncommon skill still couldn’t heal him completely if he’d broken something. And from the feeling in his leg, he had.

  It was Dawn’s turn to pick Dusk up and run the heck away. Though with how much the surrounding buildings had been wrecked, and with her inability to climb because of her cargo, that proved very difficult indeed.

  At least being legless severely hampered the giant’s mobility, buying more time. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t catch up to them eventually.

  That proved doubly true when their vision rippled as the shatterglass scream ripped through the city again and they tumbled to the ground with a groan.

  Their heads hurt. Both from all the sonic attacks and from using so many skills in quick succession, not to mention crafting that passive right before this had happened. But they couldn’t let it bother them.

  Though the giant reforming its legs using salt instead of glass did bother them very much.

  They gritted their teeth as they saw no easy way out with how surrounded by wreckage they were.

  So instead, Dusk brought out his freshly re-sparked [Tricky Flail] and prepared for a fight.

  “You’re my ride,” he informed his twin.

  “And you’re my weapon,” she shot back.

  ““Let’s get him!””