Levi again looked over the lists Laurence had given him. They were a tangible reassurance against his nebulous concerns of how much would be impossible to accomplish, the overwhelmed feeling that had followed him from the start beginning to fade.

The quantity of crafting supplies Laurence had located... this should be enough to keep him going for over a week without stopping. He'd be able to level crafting at an unprecedented speed. Destruction tokens in particular were dramatically undervalued, looked at as curiosities rather than the essential supplies Levi knew them to be.

Even specialty tokens - he'd assumed he'd need to gather everything himself, but Laurence had found a staggering quantity available for practically nothing. Levi's bank account was taking a significant hit, but that didn't matter to him at all. As far as he was concerned, dollars were already worthless numbers, and turning them into tangible value would only be a benefit. Even if it was all going to be used in increasing his crafting level.

There were even two vials of crafting essence. One Destruction, one Control. Levi had to raise his eyebrows at that one - not only had a Control dungeon been delved enough times to level and spawn an Essence, but its Essence had then been cleared? He would love to meet the team that took down a Control Essence. That kind of determination would be incredibly valuable.

“I want this Control essence,” Levi said aloud, tapping the page. “I don’t care what we need to offer.”

If his guess was right about the crafting essence being what was necessary to assign an element to the Dungeon Seed, then Control was a perfect option. He knew that the item to force an evolution from Tamer to Summoner required Control tokens to craft, so if he had his own private dungeon to run over and over it would be an incalculable benefit to his plans.

“Noted.” Laurence wrote a note as he spoke, his new staff tucked under one arm, the spellbook held flat beneath his notebook in the other hand.

The more exotic items were less underpriced - something with a 'Rare' tag would command a higher price even if no one knew what it was, just because people were conditioned to assume rarity equated to value. And in the case of system items... it tended to be true.

“Prioritize tokens and crafting ingredients for now,” Levi said. He didn’t know the recipes for the creation of equivalent items, but he knew that most things of Rare or below could be crafted. The biggest requirement for unlocking a recipe was having the ingredients to use it on hand. You could be a master alchemist, but until you happened to have enough of the correct herbs on hand, you may never even realize that you could make a specific elixir.

A significant number of the listed items were unfamiliar to him. In the first timeline, he'd never put any time into leveling his crafting classes aside from the required basics, so he didn’t have any particular reason to memorize every possible variant of plant or seed or crafting element.

Everyone had to be able to craft emergency items on demand if necessary, but beyond that crafting ingredients went to the highest level crafters.

Some people complained, calling it unfair that the highest skill people continually were handed the means to continue to improve, while those at lower or mid tiers had to finance their own slow progress, often stalling for months unable to progress while those at the highest levels continued to grow faster than they could hope to match, but fairness had no place in a fight for survival. The best crafters could stretch the ingredients the furthest, make better quality products, and do it faster than any three mid-tier crafters. Those with specialist classes could do even more, the powers synergizing with their creation abilities.

Levi wasn't going to switch to a crafting specialist class, he was fully committed to becoming a Summoner and standard crafting classes would be plenty good enough for his purposes without needing to interrupt his combat strength. If he could convince Gayle to level herself to 15, though, she might be a good choice for a dedicated specialist crafter. She didn't seem to care for the fighting part of being Awakened, yet from everything he'd seen she still wanted to aid their efforts.

But all that would only be relevant once he hit level 15 and unlocked the crafting system. Four levels away. So close… but leveling slowed the further you advanced, to the point where it could take months for a single level even when fighting dungeons and demons far above your own strength. With only level 1 and 2 dungeons to clear, his growth would be even more stunted.

All this… talking and trading and waiting, it itched at him, it felt like such a waste of time and energy. He should be out fighting and leveling. He was on a timer, and he wasn’t the one who would be best suited for talking to people.

The thought occurred to him that he could send Cassandra and Irene off to their vacation, then take Peter and Gordon and dive into the nearest viable dungeon loop. Incredibly tempting.

The urge to act was almost overpowering. But as much as he feared being insufficient against the demonic forces of the coming war, he feared breaking his family even more.

He’d lost Irene and Peter once, and it had shattered him into pieces that even now remained jagged within his soul. He could not lose them again. And if that meant taking things slower than he preferred, he’d do it.

He’d do anything.

He had to remind himself of that. The stillness, the inaction, it was all too easy to drown in memory. Too easy for dread to creep up on him before he’d even noticed it.

Easier to keep moving.

He folded the pages, nodded farewell to the distracted Laurence - he was clearly trying to imprint his spell into the spellbook - and returned to his more mundane crafting attempt. They’d be heading south in a couple days, but until then, he was having a hard time thinking of enough busywork to fill the days.

For a few hours he was able to lose himself in the motion, the challenge of figuring out how to create a proper harness for carrying luggage on ogre-back. The leather and wood he had to work with was highly overpriced, according to Cassandra, but he’d asked for it and it had been brought, so he wasn’t going to fuss about finances. Money mattered nothing to him.

Once he felt the collection of straps he'd assembled could be viable, he set out to locate either Drok or Greg.

Peter was sitting in the back yard, talking to Crimson and Henry, while Greg sat nearby, watching. The ogre lifted his head when Levi approached, clearly demonstrating his alertness as a guard.

“Got your harness ready.” Levi held up the new ogre backpack. Greg leaned down so he could strap it on, adjusting the bands to see how well it fit.

It wasn’t quite there yet, he’d need to adjust a few things before the actual trip, but it was closer than the first attempt. He’d not even gotten to ogre-testing with that version, it had fallen apart when he tested the strain.

Peter jumped up the moment he saw Levi. “When can we go to another dungeon?”

“Not right away. Your mom needs a break from the fighting.”

“Oh.” Peter flopped back down to the ground, putting a hand out for Crimson. The small magma snake slithered over to him and coiled up in his hand. “How long until we can go again?”

“Soon.” Truth be told, Levi was as impatient as his son. Every day they didn’t maximize their dungeon use would be another day lost. They had a few months, but that wasn’t so much time that they could frivolously squander it. “I was thinking we could send some of the guys to level without us. How does that sound?”

Peter shrugged. “I guess it’s better than nothing.”

“Greg, Henry? You good to take a trip?”

The dilo hissed and flared his frill in agreement, and Greg nodded slowly.

“Skarm’s arranging the teams. You can go talk to him. Crimson? You want in?”

Crimson raised her head from Peter’s head, flicked her tongue at Levi, then lay back down.

“I think she wants to stay with me.”

“Looks like it.” Levi helped Greg divest himself of the not-quite-finished-after-all ogre harness, then the two minions headed off to the other side of the house to join Levi’s group. “How are you doing?”

Peter shrugged. “A bit boring. I wish being a Tamer didn’t mean I had to give up my computer. I promised my friends I’d message them and now they’ll think I’m ignoring them.”

“Do you have their phone numbers? Landlines use a small enough amount of power that they’ll last longer than mobile devices, so you could still call.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“Then we’ll go visit them in person,” Levi decided. “Once our recruitment drive is done, word can spread on its own, and we can focus on the specific people who matter to us. That includes your friends. We’ll find a dungeon and take them to get Awakened.”

Peter smiled then. “Really?”

“Really. I’ll have to talk to their parents, but I’m sure we can get a trip together.”

“Yes!”

“Just… hang in there a few more weeks.”

“I will. Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re welcome.” Levi smiled, patted his son’s shoulder, and gathered up the ogre harness to take back to his makeshift workshop. Hopefully the third iteration would work better.