They reached the end of the first room without incident, stepping into a short hallway. Levi didn’t relax, checking each inch for trip wires or pressure plates. Everything looked clear and safe, apart from a few small sinkholes to trip the unwary. Unless they had to retreat through this hall at speed, the holes were more a nuisance than a threat.
But they did tickle Levi’s memory.
“Cynomis,” he murmured, then raised his voice. “There are burrowers in the immediate vicinity. They could attack from any angle, so be prepared.”
“Did you say ‘Cynomys’ just now?” Gordon asked.
“Yes.”
“As in... prairie dogs?”
Levi’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
Gordon snickered. “So, we’ve got big, scary... prairie dogs in the walls?”
“They have very sharp teeth, and they’re dungeon-enhanced versions. Do not take them lightly.”
“I’m sorry, man, I know this is all serious life and death, but...” Gordon couldn’t hold in his laughter. “Really? Prairie dogs?”
“I’ve gotten in trouble too many times for underestimating a dungeon,” Levi answered grimly. “We’re already down one gremlin. I don’t want to lose anyone for real.”
“I think I can handle a few oversized prairie dogs.”
As if in answer, two cynomis burrowers flew out of the walls, mouths open, big flat front teeth bared to strike.
Gordon wasn’t prepared.
Levi’s sword moved in a blur, slashing one in midair as he pushed mana into the blade. Beast Bite's spectral jaws snapped down, tearing the burrower in two.
The other cynomis collided with Gordon’s shoulder and bit down, tearing through his clothing and flesh. Gordon shrieked and punched the burrower. His blow sent it flying, Gordon’s blood spraying out in an arc behind it.
Levi stabbed down at the burrower, but he was too far away. It had already dived down into the stone floor, leaving nothing but a slightly disrupted mound in its wake.
“Ogh, rrrh, damn.” Gordon clutched his shoulder with clenched jaws. “You weren’t kidding about those teeth.”
Levi shrugged, turning to keep an eye on the walls and ceiling for any disruption that might herald a return of the second burrower. “Even the weakest monsters a dungeon will ever have aren’t trivial.”
“Shouldn’t we be winning easily? I’m level 3, you’re level 5, the dungeon is only level 1. We shouldn’t be having any trouble with it.”
“That’s not how it works. Dungeon levels and human levels are nothing alike. An average level 1 creature, individually, will be weaker than a human. But dungeon monsters scale up fast, and they’re single-minded. You’ll be worrying about your own survival, about your comrades. They’re focused only on tearing you apart any way they can.”
The second cynomis dove from the ceiling over Skarm’s head. Levi shouted a warning just in time. Skarm whipped his head around, skewering the falling cynomis on his sharp horn. The gremlin charged at the wall, driving his horn all the way through the furry burrower’s body and out the other side, then with two swipes of his claws tore the creature apart.
Gordon groaned behind him. “I suppose you’re going to refuse me a potion this time, too?”
“I only have one left, better to save it for an emergency. I should be able to make some basic restorative elixirs once we collect more ingredients, but treasures are so unpredictable it could be a while.”
“You can’t buy the ingredients?”
“No. Mana saturation is a key component of system crafting, and right now nothing outside of dungeons has the necessary saturation to give plants special properties.”
“Is there anything about earth that isn’t going to be inferior compared to these dungeons? Our weapons won’t work, our ingredients aren’t magical enough, what next?”
“Technology will stop working, as long as it’s based on microelectronics. Mana accumulates wherever there's electricity and interferes with it.”
Gordon threw his hands in the air, then winced and grabbed his injured shoulder. “Of course it will! Why not get rid of every possible advantage humanity has against these monsters.”
“If it were easy to win, if it were possible to win, humanity wouldn’t have been wiped out the first time. You know how hard we’ll fight; how creative we’ll be with every possible resource. If there were any way to win with the resources we already had, someone would have found it.” Levi took a deep breath. “That’s why I’m doing all this. Because humanity is the weakest factor here. If I thought sending more people into dungeons to level higher would be enough to win, then I’d be doing that. If I thought we could set up factories to mana-inscribe bullets and tank ammo, then I’d be pursuing that. But if there’s one thing that’s been consistently true, it’s that everything else out there levels faster and grows stronger than us.”
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“You really think your little gremlins are going to be more valuable than training more people like me?”
“I’m not sure about the gremlins specifically, but minions in general? Yes. They’ll be stronger.”
“So, I should become a Tamer, too?”
Levi hesitated, then slowly nodded. “Probably so.”
“And you should include the suggestion front and center on your wiki. So everyone else can do it too.”
“You could be right.”
If every human could come to battle with their own personal army, that would put a dent in the invaders’ forces. But the plan wasn’t without drawbacks. There was a reason why hardly any Tamers had survived the first time.
“There won’t be enough time or resources for everyone to evolve to Summoner. And Tamer is physically one of the weakest classes. Even unevolved, Fighter gives better stat gains. The Tamer class is very bad for direct conflict. There’s a reason the average Fighter survived when most other classes didn’t. It’ll only get increasingly dangerous to try taming things without any levels to your name.”
The thought of newcomers trying to subdue higher-level creatures and getting themselves slaughtered wholesale flickered across Levi’s mind. He would hold out on deciding what to share and how much emphasis to give it.
“So how do I go about it?” Gordon's voice brought Levi's attention back to the moment. By now Gordon's health regeneration had begun to seal the shoulder wound, leaving it raw but no longer bleeding.
“Easy enough. Next time a cynomis jumps at you, grab it and subdue it. Once it’s absolutely helpless, keep it that way until it submits to you, and you’ll unlock Tamer as a class. You can devolve your Fighter levels if you want Tamer as your primary, or you can take Tamer as a subclass. If you do choose to subclass, I recommend keeping it very low.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Devolving your class means you lose all benefits of those levels and have to start over at the beginning. The new class would become the main class. A subclass provides all primary class effects, but does not increase health, stamina, or mana for any levels assigned to it. It’s always better to have a single class that you evolve higher and higher, unless you absolutely need to have the benefits of a secondary subclass.”
“What if I make the burrower submit and then don’t put any levels into Tamer?”
“You won’t have control over your minion’s leveling, and it won’t be bound to you. You won’t be able to revive it if it dies, and... I’m honestly not sure how it would work. Can non-minion classes have minions? Your minion might unbind itself over time, or it might not remain substantial once leaving the dungeon without a direct connection to you to maintain it. I haven’t heard of any non-minion classes successfully keeping dungeon creatures as pets. Monsters taken from dungeons without being bound usually disappear after a few days.”
“Hmm.” Gordon continued to stare at the blank air where his interface hovered. “If Tamer is such a bad class for stats, couldn’t I keep Fighter as a primary and use Tamer as a secondary? If Fighter is the one I’ll get health and everything from, then I’ll end up with more over time than if I switched.”
“Yes, you can. But you only gain those benefits for levels you apply to Fighter. If you’re using Tamer as a secondary class, you’ll lose out on a lot of personal power. If you have more than a third as many subclass levels as main class levels, you’ll be losing even more than if you didn’t bother having Fighter as your main class at all.”
“Okay…” Gordon looked slightly dazed. “Just pretend I didn’t follow any of that.”
Levi tried to think how to simplify it further. The system was inherently convoluted, but this shouldn’t be too hard to explain. “Alright. Say you have two people who each have two levels. One is a Fighter with a Tamer subclass, the other is a Tamer with a Fighter subclass. The Fighter gets 5 to mana and stamina and 10 to health each level, while the Tamer gets 5 to each. But only for their main class, so at level 2 the Tamer still has only +5 to each, since his Fighter subclass level doesn’t contribute to it.”
“What good is a Fighter subclass if it doesn’t even get you bonus health?”
“You gain access to the Fighter abilities and attack bonuses.”
“Tamer seems like a better subclass all around, then.”
“Yes. But, it’s an even better main class. If you take two other people who each have two levels, one a pure Fighter, one a pure Tamer, then at level 2 the Tamer will have 10 to each resource, while the fighter will have 10 mana and stamina and 20 health. So even at level 2, a pure Tamer will outdo the Fighter with a subclass.”
“Wait, why does the Fighter have less now?”
“The subclass doesn’t contribute toward your health, mana, or stamina pools.” Levi scratched a simple grid onto the floor.
Tamer 1 + Fighter 1 5, 5, 5 Fighter 1 + Tamer 1 10, 5, 5 Fighter 2 20, 10, 10 Tamer 2 10, 10, 10
“The difference only gets more dramatic the higher you level. If all you’re doing is putting one level into Tamer for the class unlocks, then putting everything else into Fighter, it could be viable. But if you want to level Tamer at all, the benefits of subclassing quickly fall behind the loss in resources. One Tamer level is only enough for a single minion, and you’d need a lot more than that to make it worth the tradeoff.”
“So how many minions are you expecting to have?”
Levi smiled. “Just with the abilities I know about and can access right now, I should have over seventy minions at level 50.”
Gordon’s eyes widened dramatically. “Okay, you’ve convinced me. Tamer it is. How do I reset my levels?”
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