Levi pondered the question for long minutes, turning the situation over and over in his head. Should he stay and train, or hurry home as soon as possible? He had a level 1 dungeon all to himself. He could grind it for a few days, power level himself before moving on.

Or he could go back, face the world so far removed from his experience, and rush back to Irene and Peter just as he was. Maybe he could find another baby dungeon and they could level together. After all, what better way to protect those he cared about than to ensure they were strong enough to protect themselves?

But for that, too, he’d need to be strong enough first to ensure their safety in a dungeon. Levi had years of battle instincts hammered into him by relentless conflict. They didn’t.

Skarm’s squeak of alarm brought Levi out of his pondering and back to the present moment.

Another gremlin had decided to stop waiting around for them to reach its ambush point. It had its slender rhino-like horn lowered and aimed at Levi’s chest as it charged down the hall at full sprint.

Levi leapt to his feet. His hands again fumbled at his waist, still expecting to find his manablades waiting there. Then he laughed at himself, and at the tiny creature. He’d been so immersed in thought and memory, he’d forgotten this wasn’t the forerunner of an endless tide of the little swarming pack creatures, wouldn’t be overrunning his position and tearing his allies apart.

Just one. Only level 1.

He positioned himself, waited until the last second, then jumped aside and punted the charging gremlin with a solid kick as it ran by. Its momentum only aided the move, sending it flying. It slammed headfirst into the far wall. Skarm 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 gestured to the hall leading deeper into the dungeon.

“Sure. We’ll finish this dungeon first. But after that… I have a few calls to make.”

Skarm proudly took the lead, clearly reveling in his job as scout. The third room was more mazelike, 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. Anytime 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, it turned out Skarm’s intuition for trap locations was less than perfect. The gremlin stepped around a corner and, with only 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 squeaked in alarm and 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. That meant it was probably safe. Dungeons had some traps to redirect you to more dangerous areas or keep you away from treasure rooms, as well as those intended 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 it was supposed to be ‘don’t come, it’s a trap’ or ‘yes, come save me’ Levi couldn’t discern. He jumped into the pit, skidded on the loose sand when it turned to a slide, then lost his balance as his ankle twisted under him and pain shot up his leg. He tumbled and skidded, flopping out in a heap beside his gremlin, confused by the unexpected injury. His stamina should have protected him from any impact damage from falling, just this morning he was jumping off skyscrapers without a problem.

Levi glanced at his stamina bar. Completely empty. His health had dropped too, but at least this injury didn’t have a lingering bleed on it.

He’d gotten so used to jumping off buildings with casual ease, he’d forgotten that normal humans couldn’t fall more than a few feet without damage. And his health and stamina were only regenerating at one per minute.

“Guess I’ve got a lot to re-learn. And level up again ASAP.”

Skarm made a questioning sound, pointing down the only path forward. Levi stood carefully, leaning against the wall to test his ankle, but apart from pain it didn’t seem to be damaged too badly. His regen would take care of it over time, so he nodded. “There are probably more monsters lurking to ambush us. Stay alert.”

The lighting was faintly dimmer here, but still bright enough to see. It seemed a universal trait of dungeons that they had to remain at least moderately well lit - except Darkness dungeons, but those were few and rare.

The further he walked with nothing going wrong, the more uneasy he 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 himself for his tiny contribution.

Then the passage widened, the pocked holes in the walls now glistening 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 overlarge 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 ran near them, exploding and coating him in the dangerous liquid.

Still, it felt too easy.

Maybe because the last Destruction dungeon he’d traversed 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 around every blind corner, and entire sections where the floor was made of bladed wire capable of slicing through steel. A corrosive corridor, even if it was full of gremlins waiting to jump out and trip him up, just didn’t measure up.

He looked around for any sign of danger, but the corridor appeared inert.

Skarm looked up at him questioningly, gesturing with his head toward the hall ahead.

"Alright, we'll go through. But don't blame me if you get melted."

Levi missed his old heavily-modified sword with its ability to expand into a protective barrier. This was going to hurt.