"What is it?" Gordon asked. "You seem pleased."

Levi looked down at the item he'd been carrying. In the excitement of evolving his title, he'd entirely forgotten to identify it.

If he'd thought the day couldn't get any better, he was quickly proven to be wrong.

Versatile Power Array, Ultra Rare

Power stone: 0/1

Upgrade slots: 0/4

Active Tracing: 0/5

"It's a power array." Levi barely kept his voice from trembling with awe. This was the kind of treasure he expected from secret maps, and the Seed Fragments had thus far been underwhelming. But this? "These are incredibly rare."

"What does it do?"

"It can be added to any item and turns it into a..." he looked over the shape of it, just to be sure he wasn't mistaken, shaking his head in disbelief.

The round central section would hold a power stone, then the four narrower slits arranged two on each side would each hold a token to shift the power of each additional ability. Base tracings hung from each section, ready to be put in place.

"Five mode." Levi stared down at the ultra-rare object with reverence. "I've never even seen a five slot item, let alone owned one. I think this time around I'm going to need to learn crafting properly. I don't think I trust anyone else with doing it right."

"What does that mean, five slots, five mode?"

"You know how my bow makes stone-empowered missiles, and my sword can bite things?"

"Yeah."

"Most items have only one ability, while rarer ones can have two or even three. My best sword in the first timeline was tri-modal. It could expand, shift into a shield, or throw an arc. With this, I could make a sword that does all those, and keep Beast Bite, and add something new too. Maybe lightning. Or ice. It doesn't have to be a sword. It's a versatile, so I could make armor with different protection modes, for various types of environments. The possibilities are endless."

He tucked the array into his storage belt for now, mind spinning with possibilities.

"You wanted to get a destruction scarab next?" Gordon asked.

Levi shook his head. "Neither of us has a slot free, and I've got a new title I'm dying to try out. Let's go back to the looted dungeon."

When they arrived back where Gordon had parked the car, their problem became immediately obvious.

They couldn't fit everyone.

Becca could probably fit in the back seat, barely, but there was no way they could cram both centipedes into the trunk.

Levi turned to Becca. "Can you teleport someone with you, or is it just you?"

The big cat tilted her head to one side.

"You're not sure?"

Becca nodded, then started rubbing her head up against the side of the car.

"Can you try taking me?" Levi knelt and put his arms around her neck, holding tightly. The cat blinked away, leaving him slightly overbalanced as the weight he'd been leaning against vanished.

Levi looked between the centipedes and Gordon, then shrugged. "Guess Becca and I'll run. I'll meet you there."

"It's almost an hour drive."

"I know how to stamina drag. Running without wearing out was an essential skill where I was trained." He patted Becca's neck. "We'll probably get there before you do."

Gordon laughed. "You're on. Quick, everyone load up."

Cen and Centoo took their usual places in the car, while Levi took off running at a steady sustainable pace. Becca kept up easily, looking like a black-furred jaguar out for a casual run. Any time she ran low on stamina, she sat down to rest a few minutes, then teleported in quick hops to catch up to Levi again. After the first time this happened, he stopped thinking about it and continued running.

His increased stamina regen meant he could run at slightly above his human maximum limit at a steady pace without tiring, the slow steady pull of energy keeping him refreshed and empowered.

He sent out a few mana pings to be sure he was heading in the right general direction, but now that they'd been driving around the area for a few days he was pretty familiar with the route.

By the time he arrived, Gordon was already parked a few blocks away, looking smug. Levi had taken a straighter direct route, but he'd yet to reach the point where he could outrun cars again yet.

"Too bad we didn't bet anything on the outcome," Gordon said, rolling the window down. "We going in now?"

"Let me check first. If it's already been cleared today, there's no point."

"Ten four." Gordon gave some approximation of a salute and rolled the window back up.

"Wait here," Levi told the cat, who proceeded to ignore him like all cats are apt to do, and followed Levi as casually as if they weren't a massive spectacle.

Levi considered making an issue of it, but decided he didn't care enough to bother. If Becca was that curious about the dungeon, then he wouldn't deny her.

He slipped inside long enough to verify that its beginning room was fully stocked with gremlins - at least until Becca ran out and ate them all - before stepping outside to wave for Gordon and company to join him.

They ran through the dungeon with such ease that Levi nearly felt bad. Becca was fast and deadly accurate, and with the centipedes to back her up, they cleared the dungeon in record time.

Becca has reached level 3!

Becca has 1 stat point available.

Her low stamina was the main drawback, but he certainly wasn't going to waste stat points at a 1-1 ratio. He put her point into Psyche, bringing her mana up to 130 and adding a fourth teleport to her arsenal.

Cen has reached level 5!

Stone Centipede threshold 1 attained.

Evolution threshold advancement progress: 1/2

Cen has 1 stat point available.

Cen has 3 ability points available.

Since Cen had taken up most of the tanking for the group, Levi gave him two points in Petrify, and another into Dazzle. The best defence was being able to stop your opponents from fighting at all, and Stone Centipedes had a duo of crowd control options he was eager to see in person. Cen immediately started showing off by activating Dazzle unexpectedly whenever Centoo happened to glance his way. The stunning effect worked surprisingly well against Centoo, which immediately brought Gordon's use of Dismay as a healing option vividly to Levi's mind. Several hours had passed, was the effect permanent? Would Centoo be mentally vulnerable forever? Or would it fade with time?

Levi had them stop and return to an empty room to run some tests. With a baseline of ten seconds of Cen using Dazzle, Centoo ended up stunned four out of five times, though only once in the first five seconds. Trying the same effect against Frosty, Flomper, and Becca, they were entirely untroubled by it. Levi ran the same test another half dozen times with Becca specifically, as she'd been hit with Dismay repeatedly, but Centoo was the only one being dazzled.

Levi sighed, finally giving up. "You'll just have to be careful not to catch Centoo in the line of fire when it's an actual fight."

Cen sparkled maliciously. Centoo smacked him. Cen sparkled even brighter.

"I don't care what you do in your free time, but as long as we're in a dungeon, I want you to behave. You're getting to be as bad as the gremlins."

Cen looked properly ashamed, while Centoo seemed to dismiss the discussion entirely and crawled up one wall to look down at them.

But even the centipedes bickering couldn't bring Levi's good mood down for long. "Come on, let's get this dungeon finished and see what kind of loot we get."

The boss was not an Essence this time, thankfully, just another goblin shaman with his usual trickery, this time involving Destruction's favourite rusty-corrosive dripping from stalactites overhead into pools that the shaman could then animate with his will.

Levi was looking at everything with new eyes now, eager for his next level so he could start collecting more pluses and bosses. Every advancement brought him one step closer to dominating demons and fighting hellfire with hellfire. He'd seen tamers and summoners with large groups of dangerous creatures in the past, but none had survived past the sixth year of the war. They couldn't keep up with the leveling requirements, fell behind, and were slaughtered in the later waves.

Levi wouldn't let that happen to him.

Once the goblin was dead, the corrosive cleared, and the treasure room opened, Levi headed inside to collect their haul.