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. As he’d anticipated, they started bursting as he neared, but his calculated route kept him just out of reach. The ooze splashed off the walls and floor just behind him, never quite reaching him.

Unfortunately, his calculated route couldn’t prevent his minimally-recovered stamina 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. By the time he reached the end, Skarm was squirming and whining, trying to flick the corrosive goo off its leg, while Levi’s own health was dropping by 7 a minute.

The moment they left the corridor’s gauntlet, three gremlins leapt out with heads lowered to charge.

Levi felt his pulse speed up as adrenaline flooded his body. He dropped Skarm and shifted into a fighting stance. This was more the kind of thing he expected from a dungeon: underhanded tricks layered atop more underhanded tricks.

Even as weak level 1 mobs, the gremlins couldn’t be underestimated as a swarm. Fortunately, Levi wasn’t alone. He grabbed one in each hand while Skarm jumped forward with a screech to engage the third.

With only one hand to restrain each of them, Levi couldn’t pin them down like he usually did in the one-on-one fights, and their long-fingered claw hands scored deep gashes across his arms as they flailed to hurt him in any way they could.

Instead, he smashed their 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 back into the corrosive sludge of the trap maze behind him.

The bodies hit the ground wetly. One vanished back into the dungeon immediately, already dead. The second gremlin wobbled dizzily as it got to its feet unsteadily in the puddle of deadly goo, then keeled over face first with a final splash before it disappeared as well.

Levi turned his attention back to the third just as Skarm squeaked in triumph. His minion stood with one foot on a corpse that faded even as Levi watched, both hands raised in victory.

Skarm has reached level 2!

Skarm has 1 stat point available.

Levi considered Skarm for a moment, standing grinning with his pointy little teeth bared, hands waving in victory. While he knew a lot about dungeons, leveling, future events, and the system in general, he’d never done any deep research on Tamers or Summoners. They were classes he was aware of, but not ones whose full loadouts he’d memorized.

He looked over Skarm’s sheet, focusing in 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 an extra 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 it appeared that offered no inherent bonuses, and instead of a flat 5 the amount he gained varied with each stat type.

Strength: +5 Health, +1 H-Regen Psyche: +3 Mana, +0.5 M-Regen Spirit: +10 Stamina, +1 S-Regen

Each of the three stats also subtly influenced associated abilities quite outside 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 looked like it'd be a complete waste to try to boost Skarm’s Psyche stat, which made sense. 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 in hit-and-run rather than dragged out fights. The skew of stats made it obvious that gremlins were meant to be ambush fighters or swarm strikers. So, Spirit then.

He assigned the point, and navigated through the system to find Skarm's full sheet, which looked exactly as Levi had expected.

Skarm Unassigned Levels: N/A Stat Points: 0 Ability Points: 0 Primary Type: Horned Gremlin Horned Gremlin Level: 2 Subtype: None Strength: 0 Health: 50 Health Regen: 1 /minute Psyche: 0 Mana: 0 Mana Regen: 1 /minute Spirit: 2 Stamina: 70 Stamina Regen: 3 /minute Abilities: None

Only a few minutes had passed, so his 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 like 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. Skarm 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 only a single one again, then they reached the end of the subterranean detour. A set of stairs led upward, rough-hewn and covered with the same ubiquitous sand.

Levi and Skarm advanced cautiously, but the steps didn’t collapse beneath them and no enemies leapt out to knock them back. There was a single tripwire stretched across the middle step to trip them up, but Skarm stomped on it until it broke. Nothing happened, so it hadn't even been a trap trigger, just a mundane attempt to make them fall down the stairs.

The door at the top was locked, a bar on the inside that was 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 an arrangement that would work, intensely aware of his health dropping every few seconds. Then he spent another four infuriating minutes sliding the pieces around like a tile puzzle 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.

Levi heaved a great sigh of relief. “Ah, finally.”

The treasure room.