This time an ogre. Huge, grinning, club across his neck and a purple loincloth – he looks down as if wondering which end to start me from. Ogre mages mill around nearby, and the first rift ogre is already down.
Three charming fellows at once. Ogres with cleavers raised walk straight into the crowd of riders, in the night rain, right under the colossus and the red pillar. The one in the middle is already marked – let’s get to work.
Serious wounds. The ogres hit exceptionally hard – thigh, calf, chest, belly – and the rift warmaster adds a „deadly hard” to my leg. The whole world covered in blood. The gods still try to save the day: Magranon gives Frantic Charge, Vynora Excel, Fo Willow Spine. I pull back under the trees while my legs still carry me.
Now the warmaster – from the rear, because that’s the angle you see him best from. A huge jackal in gilded scales, a sickle in his paw, blocking out the whole sky.
And the axe does its job: I hit him „deadly hard” in the right paw, and the weapon freezes him on top of that. The character screen shows what all this cost me, and there are already two champion corpses in my backpack.
The warmaster doesn’t let up. He swung wide and slashed everyone in front of him, then started burning me – again and again, second after second. He glows all gold, and to make matters worse the Rift’s healing turret patches him up with regenerating orbs. My axe just glances off his armour.
From the arse end, literally. An ogre mage with a staff in his paw and a purple loincloth stands over me so that all you can see are calves, buttocks and bracers. Not the prettiest view of the evening, but a moment later the young rift ogre mage is down.
It’s all over. The last beasts are down, Rift hearts burn by the altar, and we swap our axes for pickaxes. Rift crystals have sprung up across the field – some only give stone shards, from others I manage to mine a whole crystal. We dig until they crumble.
And the view afterwards. Night, silence, and the whole field all the way to the camp strewn with bodies – ogres, beasts, jackals. It was tough: in an hour of fighting I took over 170 hits, and the log counted over five hundred fallen monsters. Now just butchering – meat, a rift caster heart – and burying the corpses.
Heading home after a hard battle. Bloodwalt on the lead, anchors aweigh and „tr” glides back across the lake. A golden night sky, the mountain reflected in the smooth water, and a crystal and champion corpses in my backpack. Armour to repair, wounds to heal – see you at the next Rift.
