Levi knew the traps and monsters inside and out. Destruction was the most common dungeon type, making up over 60% of all known dungeons. He knew exactly what to expect. He was entirely prepared.

But as the world twisted and warped around him, depositing him in some pocket space tucked into the wrinkles of reality, he still felt an instinctive jolt of near-panic.

He knew intellectually that this dungeon was level 1 and posed only a minimal threat to him, but the twisting sensation of actually passing into it brought back a flood of memory. The last time he’d entered a dungeon, his squad had lost all but three of his friends.

Levi’s throat felt dry and his heart raced. Old instincts rose in him - to check his equipment, to hold a formation, to be ready for death at any moment - and his eyes instinctively darted around the room, taking everything in at once.

The entry chamber was empty, a sandy cave with pocked stone walls, dimly illuminated by the omnipresent sourceless light unique to dungeons. Once the dungeon had claimed a few victims’ lives, the room would begin to fill with scattered bones and skulls, but for now it lay pristine and clean. It unnerved him seeing it so empty, as foreign as seeing happy people and grass unspoiled by war.

By the end, the few remaining dungeons had become deadly, desperate trials. They were undertaken as a training method of last resort, in huge groups where fewer than half those who braved the dungeon’s depths would survive, but it was the only way to gain power quickly enough to stand a chance against the invaders.

Skarm prodded him gently, head tilted in question.

“I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”

Levi had survived, but not easily and not without his share of scars. He was one of the very, very few. Too many friends and allies had died to these things. But they were the best way to level up fast. Perhaps the only way. And so they’d entered and fought desperately, time and again.

He shook off the memories. This wasn’t a level 150 dungeon that could kill him in a single moment’s carelessness, this was a brand new baby dungeon. Level 1. Even unarmed, Levi should be able to handle it.

And he needed to. His health was dropping. Without a restoration potion he wasn’t sure he’d survive. That would be an ignominious end to his miraculous second chance: bleeding out from a basic stab by a level 1 gremlin.

He stepped forward. Sand shifted under his feet, but the layer wasn’t deep enough to provide any impediment. No two dungeons were the same - no two visits to a given dungeon were exactly the same, though they tended to remain largely recognizable - but there were general trends that Levi knew to be on the lookout for.

Skarm pointed to a small indentation by the wall, then at itself.

“Yes, I know you lived here.” Levi’s voice came out grimmer than he’d hoped. He was too tense to summon any levity. “Your job was to lure in visitors and you did it admirably.”

Two paths led off the main entrance, a wide one straight ahead, and a narrower crack to the right. Levi knew both led to similar traps and monsters, the ‘hidden’ path only there to lull those who thought they were cunning into arrogance - and stupidity.

Fighting in close confines would be too risky. He didn’t have a weapon yet and it would be foolish to trap himself without an easy retreat.

“We’ll go straight ahead. Walk ahead of me, and let me know if you see anything.”

Skarm hopped eagerly down the main path and Levi followed.

His health continued to drop, though it had slowed to -3/minute, and his mana had recovered to 2/10. Two mana wouldn’t even be enough to trigger a weapon shift, and it’d only power a dagger for a few seconds.

Well, he didn’t have a mana weapon yet, so it didn’t really matter at the moment.

Skarm squeaked quietly, bouncing in place, and Levi crouched to see what he was pointing at. Another gremlin lurked in a cavity about halfway up the wall, only its spiked snout visible, easily mistaken for part of the wall.

Seeing it had been spotted, the lurking gremlin abandoned its ambush and pounced. Levi sprang forward and snatched it midair. One flailing claw scored a line across his forearm, then he slammed the beast to the ground. Dizzied, it flailed, but it was tiny and weak. As easily as he’d subdued Skarm, Levi flipped the tiny creature over and held it still. Perhaps more easily, now that he’d better accustomed himself to the feebleness of his just-Awakened body.

Skarm ran forward, claws bared, head lowered, ready to finish it off.

Levi shook his head. “Wait.”

Skarm obediently came to a stop, his spiny tail twitching eagerly.

Levi addressed the squirming gremlin on the ground. “If you don’t submit to me, I’ll kill you.”

The gremlin resisted for nearly a minute, then slumped.

Minion limit full.

Horned Gremlin cannot be tamed.

Levi had seen Tamers and Summoners with dozens of minions, so he knew 1 couldn’t be a hard limit. It took a few false tries to navigate to his Minion Registry, but he had enough experience using the system’s unintuitive layout not to be discouraged. It always felt more like traversing a mental maze than navigating an interface, one in which the walls and ceiling swapped places and shifted about unpredictably.

Instead of navigating to, say, ‘abilities - spells - elemental, fire - fireball’ you would instead navigate to ‘environmental damage - desert survival tips - other causes of burns - fireball’. The system contained almost all anyone could imagine or hope for. The hard part was figuring out how to access it. You could scroll through a thousand pages on environmental survival, and only a handful of them would end in anything useful.

Eventually, he found what he wanted.

Minions 1 of 1 Name Level Type Strength Psyche Spirit Health Mana Stamina Skarm 1 Horned Gremlin 0 0 1 50/50

(+1/min) 0/0

(+1/min) 60/60

(+2/min)

Skarm's name expanded when he mentally hovered on it, showing him all the details he'd not been able to find by examining the creature himself.

Skarm Unassigned Levels: N/A Stat Points: 0 Ability Points: 0 Primary Type: Horned Gremlin Horned Gremlin Level: 1 Subtype: None Strength: 0 Health: 50 Health Regen: 1 /minute Psyche: 0 Mana: 0 Mana Regen: 1 /minute Spirit: 1 Stamina: 60 Stamina Regen: 2 /minute

Not much that wasn't in the minion overview, at least until Skarm earned some abilities or otherwise did something to distinguish himself.

Levi focused on the minion limit, querying about increases. The system resisted, but he pushed through and found the formula.

Minion limit (base) = 1/2 Tamer level

No point keeping this gremlin around that long, then.

“Sorry, it’s your unlucky day.”

Levi shifted his grip and crushed the dungeon monster’s throat. A moment later its body dissolved into the sandy floor without so much as a stain left behind.

“You have permission to kill anything we meet until I say otherwise,” he instructed Skarm. “Now let’s keep moving.”

They continued onward until they reached the end of the long twisting hallway. Levi instinctively stopped just short of the entrance, checking the room for any traps.

He spotted the first easily, a thread of spiderweb-thin wire stretched at about waist height. Gremlins could pass under it without difficulty, but anyone human sized would be practically guaranteed to walk right into it. Most people would assume it was just spiderweb, but he’d been in enough dungeons not to trust anything. He ducked under it and into the room, watching carefully for any monsters.

Despite the differences between dungeons, some trends remained near-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, as Skarm squeaked a warning just before two more gremlins leapt 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 position of vulnerability.

Levi took a few claw slashes to the 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 vulnerable 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, then hurled the second 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 and 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.

“Verify.”

If he didn't verify, it would apply anyway in a minute, or he could cancel it before then. But verifying was faster.

Tamer level increased to 2.

+5 health, +5 mana, +5 stamina

He’d almost forgotten the rush of clarity and power when leveling restored all pools to full. Later levels grew increasingly hard to attain and it had been years since he’d been able to simply enjoy the experience instead of it happening 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 health than that. Perhaps it would level out with evolutions, but he had to admit there was probably a reason Fighter was the predominant class of those who’d survived the longest.

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: 2

That's right, he’d never decided where to put his initial point. Well, right now his biggest limiter looked to be mana, so he put both points into Psyche.

Strength: 0 Health: 105 Health Regen: 1 /minute Psyche: 2 Mana: 35 Mana Regen: 3 /minute Spirit: 0 Stamina: 55 Stamina Regen: 1 /minute

He still felt incredibly vulnerable compared to what he was used to, but it was a start. He’d definitely want to increase Strength and Spirit to 3 as well, at the very least, if only for the drastically increased regen speeds.

He started down the hallway, then paused to consider his next move.

His injury was no longer an issue. He could leave now if he wanted, restored to perfect health. Or… he could keep going and perhaps find a weapon and some potions to help him level in future.

He had… somewhere between two and four months, depending on what day it was. He knew the date of the demon invasion - everyone knew it, it had been global news. Not the sort of thing anyone forgot. Like 9/11, 10/24 was seared into the memory of everyone who’d survived it. Which meant just him now.

Levi sat down, head in his hands as the real weight of responsibility slammed into him. For the first time since returning to the past, he had the time and space to actually stop and think about what this all meant.

He’d gone back in time! How could that be possible? Was it just him? He couldn’t remember anything that could have led to this. Just the usual skirmishes and reinforcement, tense waiting and flashes of unbearable violence and grief, retreat, reinforce, wait, fight, do it again tomorrow…

That had been his life. For… how many years exactly, he’d long since lost track. Four, at least. Six, perhaps. Since losing his family, he’d thrown himself into the fight with reckless vehemence.

They’d been pushed back again and again, corralled into increasingly smaller areas by the invading demons until only one city had remained human-controlled. All the Demon Lords arrayed against them, the faltering armies of Earth prepared for their last stand.

The helpless fury Levi felt at the look of absolute emptiness in the face of a stranger without the levels to fight or any reason left to hope, just waiting for his demise as he watched Levi and the other warriors hurry off to the front.

Blood, death.

Then… green. Waking up in the park, ten years in the past.

Did it really matter how or why? He had a second chance, and he wasn’t going to waste it. He never wanted to see that kind of hopelessness again.

His only question was what to do first.