Levi watched the final showdown with undisguised pride. Skarm rushed out of the hall, dropped into a ready crouch immediately, and waited. Levi could see Charles pause to drink his restoratives, but didn’t say anything. Skarm waited, then when nothing happened looked at Levi uncertainly.

“He’ll be here in a minute.”

Skarm nodded, his grin returning. A moment later, Charles did indeed emerge, but his earlier rage seemed to have vanished. Instead he was calm, determined, and very, very focused.

Charles Warner: Level 4

(Fighter)

Health: 97%

He still moved slower, the scarab venom not easily washed away, but not so much that it gave Skarm the undisputed edge he’d clearly been hoping for.

Levi could tell that Skarm still had the advantage in speed. And the other thing he had which Charles lacked was experience. Skarm had fought in far more dungeons and varied circumstances than the guild leader, his precision of movements clearly in opposition to the clumsy, ungainly slashing of Charles.

In fact, even with weeks or months of a lead on Levi, Charles's combat ability seemed very low. Levi still struggled with his sluggish unresponsive body and lack of sufficient mana and stamina, but even with those restrictions he could have beaten Skarm even at this level easily.

Guess five years of experience fighting against impossible odds is a bigger advantage than I'd realized.

He may have Awakened midway through the leadup period to the invasions, but even with the head start others may have, Levi was closing the gap very quickly. Or overtaking them entirely, in the case of this guild here.

Skarm closed in, diving for Charles's midsection again, but this time Charles was ready. He slammed the pommel of his sword down into Skarm's face with an audible crack.

Skarm's health plummeted as he dropped to the ground, but stabilized at just over half. Charles remained close to full, thanks to the elixirs he'd used.

Charles moved to crush the gremlin beneath his foot, but Skarm rolled aside, ignoring the blood streaming from his crunched face, and screeched a furious warcry.

Levi saw the moment it happened; Skarm ducked under the sword Charles clumsily brought around to block him, crouched, and pushed all his stamina into a single overpowered leap. He flew up, claws extended to rake across Charles's exposed and shocked face as he rocketed up above the man's head. His leap carried him almost to the ceiling, where his outstretched claws caught in the pitted stone just long enough to change the arc of his fall.

Charles's retaliatory swing of his sword passed by just below Skarm's crouched form on the ceiling, then the gremlin pushed off hard and dropped.

Charles leaned away, scrambling to bring his sword up.

Skarm dove headfirst, grabbed Charles by the hair to swung himself around, and drove his horn down into the back of Charles's neck with the full force of his drop.

Charles wasn't even level 5. He didn't have enough health to mitigate such a damaging attack, his weak spots were still weak.

He twitched and collapsed, health dropping fast. Skarm followed up the dive attack with a few claw slashes, just to be sure he brought Charles down to the required 9% health, then stepped back and crossed his arms, still ignoring his own bleeding face and the ugly slash across his back.

The guild stared in disbelief. Levi could see their thoughts plain as day. Their leader had just been knocked out by a single gremlin? How was this possible?

"Anyone have a health restorative?" Levi asked as Charles's health continued dropping. Since Charles used the stamina restorative just before fighting, his health wouldn't start to regenerate for another few minutes, and Skarm hadn't been gentle. Charles probably wouldn't bleed out completely, but it wasn't impossible. The last thing Levi wanted was to actually be responsible for killing someone.

That snapped the watchers out of their shock. Three people hurried forward, and Levi beckoned to Skarm. The gremlin strutted over to him, grinning even as his tiny chest heaved with the exertion. His stamina was fully depleted, slowly beginning to recover.

"Good job," Levi said, nodding in approval. "I'm impressed."

Skarm puffed up his chest and squeaked in acknowledgement of the compliment.

"Now, how about you go collect the others so we can show them how a dungeon is supposed to be done?"

Skarm nodded and scampered off, as the guild members fussed over their downed leader.

One man, though, seemed not to care and walked over to Levi instead. “If we only get one day of asking questions, then I’d rather not waste it,” he said quietly.

Levi glanced at his nametag.

Laurence Haynes: Level 4

(Fighter)

“Fair enough. What do you want to know?”

Laurence had a pencil and notebook out, ready to take notes. “You’ve already posted the class requirements for obtaining Tamer on the wiki, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your application hinted that you know requirements for other classes too. Is that true?”

Levi nodded.

“Can you share those?”

“Classes in general are obtained through interacting with system creatures, such as dungeon monsters. Fighter requires fighting one hand-to-hand, whether armed or unarmed. Ranger requires fighting one from a distance, as with a rock or bow… or gun. Mage requires fighting one with magic. Those are the three base classes—“

“Wait, wait, go back to that. Magic? You can be a proper mage? How?”

“Usually, the Mage class is only obtainable once you’ve already been Awakened and have a higher level mage to teach you a spell. Non-system humans can’t use magic, so most mages either reset their levels later on or use it as a secondary class.”

That led into a discussion on how to reset levels, and then how to level, and Levi quickly realized that all the system knowledge he’d been taking for granted - frustrating and difficult as it was - was ridiculously far advanced compared to the average human at this time.

They hadn’t even figured out how to assign their stat points. If not for the system's prompting, they wouldn't even know how to assign levels.

Levi had been using terminology he assumed everyone would be familiar with, but even dumbing it down as far as he could, he’d been assuming far too high a level of familiarity with the system. His training had taken place four years after system integration, and by that point knowledge had become widespread.

He’d never thought about how much of that four years worth of knowledge was accumulated by happenstance and blind luck.

Using the system was always initially unintuitive, but once you got used to the particular twists and leaps of the system’s architecture you could make your way through it. Not easily or well. It still sometimes threw every convention you thought you knew about it out the window, or locked things behind obscure requirements and then never notified you if you met them or not, but it was better than ‘the alert says I have four stat points, what are they and how do I use them’.

Then the conversation died as everyone went suddenly quiet. Levi turned to look.

Skarm, now looking none the worse for wear, rode in perched atop Centoo, who was walking at a steady measured pace and clicking his clawed legs in perfect sync with Cen, who walked beside him. Becca prowled along on Skarm’s other side, Gremlin Two standing on her back, while Frosty pranced proudly along on the other side of Cen.

Levi had to admit, they looked intimidating. He grinned and waved. “Doom Raiders, meet my team. That’s Frosty, Cen, Centoo, Skarm, Two, and Becca. Shadevine and Plus are also around somewhere, but they’re a bit shy.”

“I want one!” shouted the teal-haired girl. “How do I get my own monster army?”

Levi smiled, and began explaining the process again.

By the time he finished, Charles was awake and scowling. Levi smiled and held out his hand for the framework.

“After you give them everything they want,” Charles said. “I won’t have you running off with it and leaving us high and dry.”

“If I wanted to run off with it, I could have taken it from your body while you were unconscious. The fact that I’m still here at all is only because I want to help you all be as well-prepared as possible.”

“Easy for you to say. I’ll give it to you tomorrow night.” Charles glared at the minions blocking his way, then walked around them to leave the dungeon while trying to pretend he hadn’t been inconvenienced.

“You don’t want to stay?” Laurence asked.

“I’ve got other things to attend to. You have fun. Let me know what you find out.” And with that, he stepped out of the dungeon.

“Alright, then,” Laurence said, shrugging. “I’ve got a lot of questions. You good with that?”

Levi nodded. “I’m at your disposal.”

“Then let’s go back to what you were saying about classes. Is Tamer a subclass of Mage?”

“No, Tamer is the start of its own branch. Fighter, Ranger, and Mage are each aligned with one of the three core attributes. Medic, Scout, and Tamer gain fewer bonuses but provide distinct special abilities of their own. And each branches out into countless advanced classes later on.”

What followed was several hours of discussion which really helped Levi clarify the level on which most ‘RL Gamers’ were operating, as well as insight into the kind of things he should be leading with in future to be of actual help. It was a bit embarrassing how far over their heads he was thinking, how much he needed to simplify just to be comprehensible.

It would be an uphill battle, preparing everyone for the coming invasion, but at least now he knew where to start.