They returned to the car. Levi looked at the back seat, then at the two eight-foot-long centipedes, Skarm, and Flomper.
“Anyone willing to ride in the trunk?” While they might fit in the body of the car if the seats were removed, he wasn't sure if having giant centipedes visible through the rear windshield would be wise.
Cen obligingly crawled into the trunk, coiling up with his chest plating out, which seemed to be his default comfortable state.
“You going to be okay in there?”
Cen made no complaint.
“Alright. Stoic one, you are.” Levi closed the hatch. Centoo fitted himself along the floor of the car and up onto the back seat, head low enough not to be visible from outside, while Skarm sprawled out on his stomach atop the centipede and Flomper settled between the two front seats.
“If we get many more, I'll need to buy a pickup,” Gordon said, shaking his head at the menagerie stuffed into his car. “Or rent a U-Haul.”
“Might be a good idea.”
“We're only twenty minutes or so from Lexington,” Gordon announced as they set off again.
Levi looked back toward the Stone dungeon they'd left, then down at the map marking his next destination, then closed his eyes to compare them to the mental map of future dungeon locations. “It's in the suburbs,” he said. “I'll direct you once we get closer.”
“And we're planning to march an army of monsters in? It's one thing when it's rural like the last one, but in the middle of a neighborhood?”
“If people ask questions, I'll give them answers,” Levi said firmly, opening the laptop.
He'd finished copying down the basic stats of horned gremlins from Skarm's stat page as they entered the vicinity of their next primary target, so he paused to direct Gordon through the maze of houses and streets.
“Right there.” Levi pointed as his ping returned a very close signal.
“That's someone's backyard!” Gordon hissed. “I don't know about this.”
Levi started inputting the data for stone centipedes, then checked over the horned gremlin page to be sure he wasn’t missing anything, adding details on their Tamer abilities. “Do you want to ask for permission to lead our army of monsters across the yard and into the dungeon?”
Gordon licked his lips, then nodded. “Honestly, yeah. That would make me feel better.”
“And just how do you expect to explain this?”
“I can say we’re paranormal investigators and need access to their backyard for… reasons.”
Levi raised an eyebrow. “You expect to show up spouting obvious nonsense and have people concede like this is a TV show?”
“...It’s surprisingly hard to come up with an excuse for bringing an army of monsters across someone’s land.”
“Which is why I don’t make excuses. Easier to apologize on your way out than fight your way in.”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“And getting the police called on us for raising a ruckus will make it feel better?”
“I’m not going to raise a ruckus, just get permission before tromping across someone’s property.”
“So, if you were at your house, and a stranger came up to ask if they could bring their army of monsters across your yard, you’d give it to them?”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Gordon hesitated. “Well…”
Levi closed the laptop and shook his head. “Not worth the hassle. Ignore the feeling, let’s go.”
“And you’re sure this is important?”
“Yes.”
Gordon nodded to himself and parked the car. He shot one guilty glance back at the house, then opened the trunk to let Cen out. The centipede uncoiled and stretched like he’d just woken from a long nap. Levi opened the back door and the other minions filed out.
“Quit worrying, we’ll be into the dungeon and out of sight in less than a minute. No one’s going to notice.”
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Tom Arlon was working on an impassioned rebuttal to a rival guild's argument for more “equitable” loot distribution when he noticed someone walking by in the direction of the dungeon. Probably Laurence. Good. Tom could double-check the post with him when he finished.
Then he saw another man, and the word “Tamer” above his head caught his eye. He scooted his chair closer to the window and stared down. Neither was Laurence. Or anyone else he recognized.
At first, it seemed like a simple scene. Two men, and several monsters following them. If it were a still frame, Tom would have said it could be from any one of their dungeon delves. But the men weren't fleeing, and the monsters weren't hunting. They were moving together, calm and confident, as though they all belonged.
Also, most of the monsters were creatures Tom had never seen before. The gremlin striding at the first man's side was the only creature that he recognized.
Tamer. Both were classed as Tamer.
He grabbed his phone.
“Hey, Laurence? Have you heard of a Tamer class? Because it looks like there's two of them heading into our dungeon right now.”
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Destruction Dungeon: Level 2
“What should I expect from a level 2 dungeon?” Gordon asked.
“A lot more monsters, a lot more traps. Remember what I said about how humans are always the weakest on the leveling spectrum? This is where you'll see that firsthand. A level 2 dungeon will be more than twice as dangerous as a level 1. Except the boss. They don't scale to the same extent, so it should only be about half again as difficult. And we outlevel it enough...
“It'll be a challenge, but not a whole level of magnitude harder. By the time dungeons hit level 10, we'll want to outnumber them by a lot more. A four-person team is enough to take anything below first threshold, but the numbers necessary for safely traversing higher-level dungeons tend to increase significantly every time.”
“Including the minions, right?”
“Yes, including the minions. They might only count as half, or they might count as more than one. It depends. I've not learned enough about minion classes yet to be sure. But from what I've seen, they tend to scale up somewhere midway between humans and demons. Demons are by far the strongest with the most concentrated power. Monsters and demons can't even be compared. Dungeons rely on quantity over quality for the most part. And we humans are stuck at the bottom without any advantages.”
“So... what should I expect out of this?”
“Events, or rewards?”
“What are we up against?”
“A lot more gremlins, and probably a few other things too. Destruction dungeons love their rust scarabs.” Levi shivered. “I haven’t missed them. We haven’t faced any area attacks yet; they come in swarms and have a concentrated corrosive venom. Mild paralysis side effects.”
“How big are we talking?”
Levi made a loose fist to demonstrate. “Not too big. They'll probably be slow enough to hit at this level. I'm guessing the swarms will only be eight to twenty in size. We might start seeing goblins in another level or two, but I'm not sure if they'll be in this early. I'm guessing we’ll start seeing standard ogres after the level 5 mark, but I’ve only seen them as bosses so far.”
“So mostly gremlins and bugs.”
“Mostly. Yeah. And better traps.”
“I haven't seen any particularly good traps.”
“I'm pretty good at spotting them, so I've kept us away from them. And at level 1, dungeons don't have the resources to go trap crazy.”
“Are we going in?” Gordon shifted uncomfortably, glancing back at the house. “Or standing here awkwardly in plain sight?”
Levi had been holding out the treasure map to the shimmer in the air, waiting for the dungeon name to shift to its enhanced state.
Nothing happened. The map didn’t disappear. The dungeon name didn’t change.
“It’s not activating.” Levi frowned. “This is the right place, I'm certain.”
He pulled the map back and looked at it again.
He was right that this was the place, but wrong in thinking nothing had happened. Something had, just not what he’d expected.
Instead of the map vanishing, the dungeon’s mark on it had.
“I think… someone else might have already found the treasure.”
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