They continued onward until they reached the end of the long twisting hallway. Levi instinctively stopped short of the entrance, checking the room for traps.
He spotted the first one easily, a thread of spiderweb-thin wire stretched at about waist height. Gremlins could pass under it without difficulty, but anyone human-size would be practically guaranteed to walk right into it. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Levi had been in enough dungeons not to trust anything. He ducked under the wire and into the room, watching carefully for any monsters.
Despite the differences between dungeons, some trends remained nearly universal. Trap rooms, ambushes, mob rooms, boss rooms. This had the feel of a trap room. But if so, where were the traps?
He found out soon enough. Skarm squeaked a warning just before two more gremlins leaped out at them from hidden alcoves much better concealed than the first.
Levi grabbed the first, using his size against the knee-high creature as he had in the first fight. Skarm engaged the second, the two of them rolling around in a squealing ball of sharp claws as each tried to wrestle the other into a vulnerable position.
Levi took a few claw slashes to his hands and arms before getting a solid grip on the wriggling thing, but finally caught it by its tail and slammed its body against the wall a few times until it stopped moving. Then he dropped it to the floor and spun to help Skarm.
It would have been easier if he'd had his swords. He grimaced at the thought of sticking his bare arms into the snarling gremlin fight, but he didn't want to lose his first minion so soon after taming him.
Grabbing the two gremlins, he yanked them apart and took a quick glance at each, ensuring he knew which one was Skarm before hurling the other one against the wall.
The impact barely fazed it. It bounced to its feet and charged, but Levi was ready. He set Skarm down, took a quick running start, then jumped and slammed his foot down on the incoming gremlin's head, crushing it into the sand. It fell limp, then disintegrated into the floor as the dungeon reclaimed it.
Congratulations, Levi Morrison! You have 1 level available.
Applying to default class.
Tamer level increased to 2.
+5 health, +5 mana, +5 stamina
Though he knew early levels came fast, how fast caught him by surprise. Clarity and power rushed through him as leveling restored all system pools to full. Later levels grew increasingly hard to attain and it had been a long time since he’d been able to enjoy the experience of leveling instead of it coming in the middle of a desperate fight for survival.
He did frown at the meager increases to health, stamina, and mana. Even at the base level, Fighter got a lot more than +5 health per level. Perhaps it would level out with evolutions, but Fighter classes had probably survived the longest for a reason.
Not that he regretted his decision to try something else. He’d already tried Swordsman, and in the end it hadn’t been enough. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
Unassigned Stat Points: 1
Mana remained his most severe limiter, so the point went into Psyche.
Levi Morrison Unassigned Levels: 0 Primary Class: Tamer Tamer Level: 2 Subclass: None Minions: 1/1
Stat Points: 0 Strength: 0 Psyche: 2 Spirit: 0 Health
105/105 Mana
35/35 Stamina
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
55/55 Health Regen
1 /minute Mana Regen
3 /minute
Stamina Regen
1 /minute
He still felt vulnerable, but every improvement helped. He’d definitely want to increase Strength and Spirit to 3 at the very least, as well, if only for the drastically increased regen speeds.
Skarm’s squeak of alarm brought Levi out of his system menus and back to the present.
Another gremlin charged down the hall at full sprint, slender rhino-like horn lowered and ready to stab.
Levi’s hands fumbled at his waist, still expecting to find his manablades waiting there, still expecting this to be the forerunner of an endless tide of the little swarming pack creatures overrunning his position and tearing his allies apart.
Just one. Only level 1. He didn’t need his swords for this.
He positioned himself, waited until the last second, then twisted and jumped aside. As the charging gremlin ran by, he punted it with a solid kick. Its momentum aided the move, sending it flying. It slammed headfirst into the far wall.
Skarm screeched gleefully and jumped on it before it could recover, impaling it through the back of the neck with his horn, then savaging it with his claws until it dropped to the floor and began to fade.
Skarm grinned, showing off his pointy teeth, looking to Levi for approval.
Levi forced a smile and gave a thumbs-up to the little minion. “You did good. Glad to have you on my team.”
Skarm squeaked happily and capered about, then proudly took the lead, clearly reveling in his job as scout. The third room was more maze-like, with a ceiling claustrophobically low. Not low enough that Levi needed to duck, but close enough he felt the urge to. The walls were arrayed in jagged curves sticking out at unusual angles, making navigation a puzzle.
His minion paused, looking first one way, then the next, then back to Levi for confirmation.
“Head left. Keep following that wall.”
Skarm obeyed and Levi edged after him, missing the comfortable weight of a sword in his hand. The sand covering the floor could conceal any number of pressure plates or tripwires, so he carefully walked only in spots that Skarm traversed safely.
Any time the gremlin pranced near a wall or down the center of the room, even if it seemed random and purposeless, Levi followed the same steps exactly.
Unfortunately, Skarm’s intuition for trap locations was less than perfect. The gremlin stepped around a corner and, with a faint squeak of alarm, fell into a pit trap.
“Skarm!” Levi dove forward, landing flat on his stomach as he grabbed for the little creature, but the gremlin’s long, spidery fingers slipped through his hands before he could get a solid grip. Skarm screeched as he slid out of sight in a cascade of falling sand.
Levi peered down after him, hoping there weren’t spikes. The tunnel curved at the bottom, more like a slide than a pit. A good sign. Some dungeon’s traps redirected you to more dangerous areas or tried to keep you away from treasure rooms. This didn’t look like one meant to instantly kill.
“You okay down there? Is it safe?”
Skarm squeaked back something unintelligible, confirming he hadn’t been killed. And while he sounded embarrassed, there was no obvious sound of pain in his voice.
Good enough.
“I’m coming down. Get clear if you can.”
Skarm squeaked rapidly, but whether he meant, “Don’t come, it’s a trap” or “Yes, come save me,” Levi couldn’t tell.
He jumped into the pit, skidded on the loose sand when it turned to a slide, then had to crouch to keep his balance with a quick surge of stamina.
He came out at the bottom to find Skarm already standing by a set of steps leading further downward.
“This has the look of a challenge corridor. There are probably more monsters lurking to ambush us, but it should also have better rewards. Keep an eye out.”
The lighting was dimmer here, but still bright enough to see. Dungeons as a rule were forced to remain at least moderately well lit — except Dark dungeons, but those were few and rare.
The descent leveled off before long, leading into a long twisty tunnel just wide enough for them to walk side by side. Levi wouldn’t have had room if there’d been another human-size person with him. The passage felt close and tight and ominous, subtle vertical twisting making perception vaguely uncertain.
The further they walked without anything going wrong, the more uneasy Levi became. Even for a level 1 dungeon, this was way too tame.
Another lone gremlin leaped out at him, and he stomped it into the ground. Skarm helped finish it off, looking inordinately proud of his tiny contribution.
The passage widened, the pocked holes in the walls now glistened with a thick rust-colored liquid. At first it only pooled or stretched across the countless tiny openings, but further on, the substance started ballooning outward in over-large droplets or oozing sluggishly down the wall leaving gooey trails.
The sandy floor gleamed dully in patches spreading out from the walls to form a precarious zigzag route between what Levi knew would be sticky corrosive patches. The bubbles on the wall would probably expand when he came near them, exploding and coating him in the dangerous liquid.
Still, it felt too easy, maybe because his last Destruction dungeon had included relentless swarms of flesh-eating scarabs everywhere, a seeping acidic gas that drifted on an unseen wind throughout its halls, thundering hordes of war ogres and kalvex around every blind corner, and entire sections where the floor was made of bladed wire capable of slicing through steel. A corrosive corridor, even one full of gremlins waiting to jump out and trip him, didn’t measure up.
He looked around for any sign of danger but, aside from the slow movement of quivering corrosive droplets, the corridor appeared inert.
Skarm looked up at him questioningly, gesturing with his head toward the hall ahead.
“Of course, we're going through.”
Still, Levi missed his future sword with its ability to expand into a protective barrier. This was going to hurt.
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