Levi tucked Skarm under one arm and broke into a run, jumping the puddles of destructive goo on the floor and dodging away from the largest globs of corrosive on the walls. Each quivering orange bulb burst in a spray of heavy goo as he came close, but his calculated route kept him just out of range. The ooze splashed off the walls and floor right behind him, never quite reaching him.
Unfortunately, his calculated route couldn’t prevent his stamina from running out again. Stamina allowed him to push past the usual human limits, providing a buffer against hurting himself with extreme feats and boosting his physical capabilities, but he’d forgotten just how unused to running and fighting his normal pre-leveling body had been. Even a basic run like this drained stamina at an unsustainable rate.
Halfway down the corridor he lost the unnatural speed that allowed him to evade every burst of rusty goo. A moment later he was splashed with the nasty stuff, a damage-over-time effect dropping his effective health regen to -2.
No point in stopping now. He kept running, though noticeably slower. By the time he reached the end, Skarm was squirming and whining, trying to flick the corrosive goo off his leg, while Levi’s own health was dropping by 7 a minute. He actually felt out of breath, gasping, heart racing, his untrained younger body unable to keep up with his demands.
There was no time to stop and recover, though. The moment they left the corridor’s gauntlet, three gremlins leaped out with heads lowered to charge.
Levi dropped Skarm and shifted into a fighting stance. This was the kind of thing he expected from a dungeon; underhanded tricks layered atop more underhanded tricks.
Even as weak level 1 mobs, the gremlins could be dangerous as a swarm. In his current condition, he wasn’t sure he’d be capable of fighting off all three alone, at least not without sustaining severe injuries in the process. Fortunately, Levi wasn’t alone. He grabbed a gremlin in each hand while Skarm jumped forward with a screech to engage the third.
With both hands full, Levi couldn’t pin the gremlins down like he usually did in one-on-one fights. They flailed wildly, their long-fingered claw hands scoring deep gashes across his arms as they did their best to hurt him in any way they could.
Enough of that. He smashed the gremlins’ skulls together with an echoing crack.
That wasn’t enough to stop them. They kept clawing, drawing blood with increasingly deep gouges.
Growling in irritation, Levi slammed them together again harder, then tossed them into the corrosive sludge of the trap maze behind him. Dungeon creatures generally had a resistance to their own damage type, but they weren’t entirely immune.
One landed with a limp splash and began to dissolve back into the dungeon immediately, already dead. The second gremlin wobbled dizzily as it got to its feet in the puddle of deadly goo, then keeled over face first with a splash before it disappeared as well.
Levi turned his attention back to the third gremlin as Skarm squeaked in triumph. His minion stood grinning with his pointy little teeth bared, both hands raised in victory, and one foot on a corpse that faded as Levi watched. No intervention required, problem solved.
Skarm has reached level 2!
Skarm has 1 stat point available.
Levi observed the gremlin’s celebration for a moment, then looked over Skarm’s sheet, focusing on each stat before making a selection. Gremlins had very different leveling ratios than humans, it appeared.
First, he hadn’t gained any class bonuses. Levi would gain 5 each of health, mana, and stamina with each Tamer level he applied, plus an additional 5 for a point placed in any of the three stats.
Skarm’s level had automatically applied to Horned Gremlin, but the species level provided no inherent bonuses, and instead of a flat 5, the amount of each expendable resource he’d gain varied with each stat type.
Strength Psyche Spirit Initial Health Initial Mana Initial Stamina
+5 Health, +1 H-Regen
Stolen novel; please report.
+3 Mana, +0.5 M-Regen +10 Stamina, +1 S-Regen 50 0 50
Each of the three stats also subtly influenced associated abilities beyond the numbers and pools: Strength made you tougher and faster, Psyche made it easier to spot details and analyze situations, and Spirit helped protect against disease and reduced the need for rest. Beyond that, the interaction between system and reality was fuzzy at the edges.
Injuries were still injuries, but having more Strength made them less likely to kill or cripple. Superhuman feats of strength or dexterity could be accomplished with a sufficient Spirit stat, and Psyche made learning and casting spells almost simple — something not innate to humans in any way.
It'd be a complete waste to try to boost Skarm’s Psyche stat. Gremlins were infamously terrible at using magic. That left Strength or Spirit. Strength would make him harder to hurt, but Levi didn’t plan on making Skarm a tank in the long run, though it might be a good idea to throw a point or two in Strength at some point to up the health regen.
Skarm was small and nimble and would be best utilized with hit-and-run tactics rather than dragged-out fights. With this skew of stats, gremlins were obviously meant to be ambush fighters or swarm strikers. So, Spirit then.
Name: Skarm Type: Horned Gremlin Level: 2 Strength: 0 Psyche: 0 Spirit: 2 Health: 50/50
(+1/min) Mana: 0/0
(+1/min) Stamina: 70/70
(+3/min) Abilities: None
Only a few minutes had passed, so Levi’s stamina had only recovered a handful of points. He considered delaying, but his health continued ticking down steadily with the aftereffects of the dungeon’s attacks.
He needed to find a treasure room soon. There should be restoratives there, along with more mundane but equally useful rewards: power stones, crafting materials, convenient accessories, and occasionally even armor or weapons.
“Skarm, time to go.”
Skarm jumped up and down once, baring his sharp little teeth in a feral grin, then took the lead. He understood his role as scout by now and crouched as he walked, head swiveling and eyes flicking alertly in all directions. Levi followed, no less alert.
But the dungeon continued to disappoint. One more gremlin ambush, and then they reached the end of the subterranean detour. A set of stairs, rough-hewn and covered with the same ubiquitous sand, led upward.
Levi and Skarm advanced cautiously, but the steps didn’t collapse beneath them and no enemies leaped out to knock them back. A single tripwire stretched across the middle step, but Skarm stomped on it until it broke. Nothing happened, so it hadn't been a trap trigger, only a mundane attempt to make them fall down the stairs.
The door at the top was locked, a bar on the inside held in place by one of those interminable puzzle tile setups. Levi stared at the oddly carved tiles for several tense minutes, mentally rearranging them until he found the right sequence, intensely aware of his health dropping every few seconds. Then he spent another four infuriating minutes sliding the pieces around until the bar was free to slip open.
He unlatched the bar and pushed the door open. The room beyond contained a single stone table, roughly waist height, with a collection of items illuminated by a ray of very convincing fake sunlight emanating from above.
“Ah, finally.”
The treasure room.
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