“Go!” Levi threw his hand out.

The green-and-black energy in his palm had grown to a fever pitch. It bubbled and boiled on his palm, barely contained. When he finally gave it permission to escape, it blasted off toward the slime at speed, in one thick bolt of green-black energy. The bolt slammed into the slime and sunk into it. It dissipated. Black and green threads bit into the slime, spreading throughout its entire body.

The slime lunged at Levi, slamming itself down. Levi threw himself to the side, barely dodging the wall of slime. He scrambled to his feet and fled, watching the slime over his shoulder. “Is that all? Come on.”

The green and black threads grew wider, into veins. As they spread, the slime’s body corroded from the inside out. Grey dust shook out of the hole the bolt had carved on its way in. The slender veins thickened, reaching the slime’s surface. Grey dust spouted out of those holes as well. The slime chased after Levi, but slower. It leaked dust with every step, its body corroding out from under it.

“Hahaha, hell yeah. That’s what I’m talking about!” Levi charged in. He pummeled the weakened slime with the Armalgam’s help. Under their combined fists, the slime collapsed, falling to nothing.

Letting out a breath, Levi backed away. He shook out his aching knuckles. Before he could even say anything, gold light washed over his hands.

He looked up sharply. “Hey, Colin. It’s not a serious wound. Don’t injure yourself for that kind of thing.”

“Still, I don’t want you to be hurt,” Colin said.

“The man has to level up somehow,” Isa butted in.

“Yeah, and I support that, and he can, once we get him another pair of gloves so he doesn’t chew his hands up every time he heals someone.” Levi crossed to Colin and passed him enough energy to heal his hands. He took a deep breath, expecting to replenish his mana, but very little flowed in.

Levi raised his brows. Huh. He looked at his hand, the one that he’d used to cast the corruption bolt. It gathered the resentment of the dead and let him use it offensively, but it seemed that also meant it gathered all the cold mana in the area. If he used that spell, he’d wipe out his chances to recover mana from the same area.

There was plenty of death in the dungeon, so he wasn’t too worried about it now, but it was something to keep in mind. He closed his hand and turned back to the others. “What now?”

Isa pointed. “Now we use the shortcut.”

Following her finger upward, Levi found himself staring at the backlit outline of the other end of the pitfall trap in the ceiling. He nodded. “Right, but how? I mean, I had a plan when I jumped down, but that plan involved the Spinal Cord, which I had to use to save all our lives, in case you forgot. Now I don’t have a rope anymore, and I don’t have a plan, either.”

“I can turn into bats and fly away,” Isa said.

“Can bats lift the pitfall door?” Levi asked.

“Smoke, then.”

“You can turn into smoke?” he asked, flabbergasted.

She shrugged. “Only for a short time. I can’t do anything else while I’m smoke, and I can’t use it consecutively or in high winds, or any wind, really… but yes, I can turn into smoke.”

“Damn. You really are a whole-ass vampire. Go on. Turn into smoke, then. Get us a rope and come back,” Levi said.

Isa saluted. She stared upward, toward the cracks. Her body dissolved from the head to the toes, dissipating into her-colored smoke. When she had completely become smoke, she surged upward and poured through the cracks in the ceiling, vanishing into the dungeon beyond.

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“And now we wait,” Levi said. He looked around them. Without the slime to menace them, there was nothing in the space. It was a featureless stone box. There wasn’t even anything on the ground, since the foul feeder had dissolved everything it came in contact with. Flesh, bones, clothes, even gear, it had completely absorbed them all.

He sighed. “Where’s the loot? A dungeon without loot is sad.”

Colin lifted his staff. He turned it in a circle in the air, summoning a ball of light. Levi gave him a look, but the spell didn’t appear to have injured Colin’s hands. Colin shook his head. “We’re still on the first floor of the dungeon. Any loot would have been picked clean long ago. We need to go deeper, way deeper, if we want to find real loot. Or fight some secret boss no one’s ever been able to beat.”

“What did we just do? Does that not count as a secret boss?” Levi asked, gesturing around them.

“It wasn’t a boss, it was a punishment. We just happened to beat it, but no one expected us to,” Colin argued.

Levi sighed. He shook his head. “The thing is, it would have had loot, but it dissolved it all. It was the nature of the beast, I suppose.” Levi sat down and leaned back, staring at the sky. “What do you think this dungeon was, originally? Was it something? Some kind of underground bunker gone horribly wrong? Or is it that darkness is drawn to darkness? In caverns beneath the earth, where the sun doesn’t shine, dark magic accumulates until it forms monsters and traps…”

Colin shook his head. “No idea. We should ask Isa when she gets back. She’s been here longer. She might know.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point.”

A quiet squelch caught Levi’s ear. He sat up. “Did you hear that?”

Colin glanced over. “Hear what?”

Levi climbed to his feet. He paced toward the squelching quietly, pausing to listen between each step. His shadow preceded him, lit from behind by Colin’s light orb. He gestured, using Shadow Manipulation to pull his shadow to the side.

A tiny lump of brown slime squelched its way across the room. It looked around, lost.

Colin jolted. “Kill it!”

Levi tsked at him. “Colin, come on. It’s just a baby.”

Squinting, Colin took a closer look.

The little lump of slime tilted. It was only about a handful in all, barely more than a jar of jelly. It wobbled toward them, as uncertain as a toddler taking its first steps.

“Oh.” Colin let out a breath. “It scared me!”

“Hey, while we’re waiting, why don’t we make a new friend? Give it some healing light,” Levi suggested.

Colin looked at him like he was insane. “I’m not injuring myself for that.”

Levi grabbed his cloak and tore two strips off its end. Taking Colin’s hands, he bound them in the strips of cloth. “How’s that?”

Turning his hands over, Colin shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that works.” He held out his staff and cast a thin stream of gold on the tiny slime.

The slime jolted. It scooted toward the light, then puddled down. It reminded Levi of a cat in the sun, splaying out to absorb maximum rays.

He cooed. “Look at how cute it is!”

“It’ll still eat you if you touch it,” Colin warned him.

“Yeah, I know, but I can still appreciate the cuteness.” Levi tilted his head back and forth. “I wish we could take it with us.”

“It’s not that cute.”

“Cute? Don’t be ridiculous. Yes, it’s cute, but I don’t just want it for its cuteness. This thing is crazy useful. A slime that can dissolve anything? Imagine. We get stuck in a cell? We dissolve the lock. We get cuffed? Dissolve the cuffs. We have a body we don’t want? Dissolve the body.”

At first, Colin was skeptical, but as Levi argued, he raised his brows and nodded along. “You’re right.”

“Don’t say it in such a shocked voice,” Levi muttered. He reached into his pack and poked the slime with a tiny scrap of dried meat. The slime perked up and stuck out a tiny stubby arm, taking the meat from him and dissolving it away. “If only there was a way to tame the slime…”

Overhead, the pitfall doors banged open. Levi looked up. “Isa, are you—”

Three bodies tumbled down. They hit the ground with wet thumps. Three familiar faces gazed up at them, pale in death, but nonetheless recognizable. Piri, Mae, and Roan. All of them bloodied, throats slit, backs stabbed.

Colin ran for the doors, eyes flashing with anger. Levi caught his arm and held him back. Meeting Colin’s eyes, he shook his head. Not yet. He swept his hand, calling shadow over them. From within the darkness, he tilted his head, getting a look at who had tossed the trio down here.

The black-dressed members of the Death Cult stood at the top of the pitfall trap, already walking away. Only the one who’d tried to push Levi over remained at the lip, looking down. He sneered, pleased with himself. “That’s what those fakers deserve.”

“Come on, Sean. There’s four more fakers to kill,” another cultist called over his shoulder.

With one final sneer, Sean retreated. The doors swung shut.

Levi released Colin. With another wave of his hand, he dismissed the shadow. Darkly, he chuckled. “I was going to leave you guys for later, but someone just volunteered to be on the top of the kill list.”