Levi stood a bit straighter, watching tensely as Peter ran forward, closing in on the slime. Henry sprinted back into the fight ahead of him. Peter swapped weapons as he ran, switching out his crossbow for his scythe. He charged into melee range, screaming wordlessly, scythe raised to strike, then slashing down, glowing with Destructive orange light.

The slime took notice. Immediately it turned its attacks back on Peter.

Skarm took a step forward, ready to leap in if necessary.

By now the slime was down to barely a quarter of its health, so Levi remained hopeful that Peter could win without assistance. Crimson had done a lot of damage in her brief stint as frontline fighter.

Between Greg and Henry, its health was falling steadily now, and Peter only accelerated that demise as he swung the scythe down again and again, slashing the slime to pieces as he continued to yell.

Greg's health was dropping below a quarter himself now, but Peter hadn't noticed, entirely consumed by venting his fury on the slime that had killed Crimson.

He only stopped when the slime's health dropped to 3%, then with a voice ragged with grief he whispered, "Dismay."

Levi raised his eyebrows. He wouldn't have anticipated a slime being Peter's next choice of minion. Especially one so slow-moving and generally boring-looking. Greg had the whole intimidation thing going for him, Henry was a dinosaur, and Crimson could spontaneously create magma inside her fangs. Compared to those, a run-of-the-mill nature slime wouldn't fit in.

Yet as Peter doggedly dragged its health down, cast dismay again, drank his other health restorative, then continued his task of making the boss tamable with barely a pause, Levi saw past the child he'd idealized for so long to the warrior Peter was ready and willing to become.

Greg's health reached zero and he fell, but Peter barely spared a glance this time, fully committed to capturing the slime.

When at last he held out his hand and whispered, "I choose you," there seemed to be a vindictiveness joy in the words.

The slime's tag shifted from 'Spitting Slime' to 'Slayer', and Peter stepped back and took a deep, shuddering breath. For a moment he swayed, and Levi thought he might collapse, but with a second deep breath he gathered himself and straightened. Chest heaving, he looked over at Greg, then held out his hand over him as well. "Revive."

The ogre stirred, then got back to his feet. "Carry her," Peter commanded, his voice cracking as he handed Crimson up to Greg.

Then he looked over at Henry, health at 62% and slowly dropping. Levi could see him thinking, calculating, then Peter nodded. "You'll be fine," and there was relief in his voice.

He didn't look back as he led the way into the treasure room.

And as the door opened, Levi finally realized what he’d been feeling earlier as they passed this area in the maze outside.

This dungeon held a secret.

After his experience with the kalvex beneath the Destruction dungeon, Levi was more cautious in his optimism, but he wasn't going to give up the chance to find something special just because of a little risk.

If there was any risk of another dire beast, he would be sure Gordon and Peter left before he faced it. He wasn't going to risk their safety, especially when Irene wasn't around to heal them.

The other treasures were enough to occupy Peter, or at least he pretended as much. Levi suspected he was taking this harder than he let on, but didn't try to force him to admit it.

Two mana elixirs and four stamina, but none of health, and three Nature tokens.

Peter sighed, clearly disappointed.

Levi stepped in quickly. "These tokens are very powerful." He picked up two and handed the third to Peter. "There should be a slot for it in your helmet. Try it out."

Peter did so, clearly reluctant, but the token flared green and fused in place, filling the faint tracing along the helmet's rim with the same color before fading.

"What’s it supposed to do?”

“Activate it and we’ll see.” While every item/token combination had a general trend, there was no way to 100% guarantee an outcome unless you custom crafted the tracings. Sometimes you’d get a resistance, or a shield, or a strike-back. Sometimes it was a flat damage addition, or a special damaging effect. There was a chance the Nature token would add flailing vines to strike enemies nearby, but he'd take that over a Destruction edge any day.

In this case, as Peter ran mana into the helmet for the first time, it lit up and its description changed. Levi noted with relief that it bypassed some of the more aggressive parts of the tracing entirely, and his examination relieved his fears entirely.

Copper Helm (Headgear, Standard)

Abilities: (Uncommon) Nature's Shield

Upgrade Slots: 1/1

A spectral crown of vines appeared, wrapped protectively around the helmet.

“Nice, Uncommon effect, congratulations.”

“What is it?” The glow faded, the vines disappearing as Peter’s attention slipped. He took off the helmet and looked at it, reading the description for himself.

“It’s an extra layer of protection you can activate to block or deflect attacks. It costs mana to keep active, but a full shield ability is one of the best things to have on a helmet. A surprising number of creatures like to target your eyes, and even once you’re able to handle a blade to the face being unable to see is a serious problem. A shield will completely mitigate any such attacks.”

Peter nodded, but didn’t seem as enthused. His eyes kept drifting to Crimson’s limp form in Greg’s big hand.

“Do you want me to revive her?”

Peter shook his head. “I’ll take care of her myself.”

“Good. Now, are you ready to go over the fight?”

“Sure.”

“What would you say were your strongest points?”

"I don't know. I don't think I did very well overall. We should have all teamed up on it from the start. Trying to stay spread out wasn't any help and we did less damage than we could have. I'm more accurate and able to do more damage with the scythe than with the crossbow. Crimson is high attack but low defence, and I should have protected her better. We'll do better next time."

Slayer finally made his way into the treasure room, his movement making slugs seem fast.

"What would you say your weakest points were?"

"I'm too used to having Mom around to heal everyone. I should have conserved the potions for when it mattered more."

"Is that all?"

Peter shrugged. "We won, and you didn't need to help, so... yeah, I guess."

"Then I'll point out one thing I noticed. Toward the beginning of the battle, you had a firm idea of where everyone was and what they were doing. As soon as Henry got injured, though, you dropped that wider view entirely. From that point on you were only focused on one thing at a time. Healing Henry. Saving Crimson. Beating Slayer. You stopped paying attention to Greg, so you didn't notice when he was in danger."

"What use would it have been? I'd already used my potions by then."

"That's irrelevant. You should be paying attention no matter what's going on."

Peter sighed dejectedly. "Alright, I'll try."

Levi put a hand on his shoulder. "Good. Can you go collect Gordon and the others?"

Peter nodded and trudged off.

Levi turned his attention to the treasure room itself. As vine-covered as the boss room, only the usual stone slab upon which their normal dungeon rewards had rested stood out from the greenery. He circled the room quickly, hoping to discover the secret before the others returned. Skarm circled the opposite direction, checking the walls. Levi was still poking at the floor when Skarm squeaked in triumph. Levi turned to find he'd tugged a section of vine aside to show a small tunnel hidden behind it.

"Can you check it out for me?" Levi could go through if he tried, but he'd have to crawl and trusted Skarm to handle anything that might be lurking in there better than he would on his hands and knees.

Skarm saluted and scampered inside. A moment later he returned, with a small green knife.

Natureblade, Very Rare

Abilities: (Innate) Toxic Touch

Upgrade Slots: 0/2

Charge: 1000/1000

Levi turned it over, the blade seeming to vibrate with power, as if the whole thing were a power stone.

He didn't hesitate to follow his instincts and slip one of his many Destruction tokens into an open slot. The blade immediately gained a faint orange tinge, even though he wasn't actively running mana to it.

Natureblade, Very Rare

Abilities: (Innate) Toxic Touch, (Uncommon) Destructive Aura

Upgrade Slots: 1/2

Charge: 999/1000

Levi handed it to Skarm, and saw no difference in the blade's appearance. "Try chopping one of those vines."

Skarm did so, and the vine fell away, its ends appearing shriveled and burnt. So the nature and destruction effects worked even for a creature with no usable mana.

The charge again only decreased by 1.

He almost couldn't believe it. A self-powered blade?

He accepted it back from Skarm and pushed mana into it. The charge counter ticked back up until it reached 1000/1000, but nothing else changed. The edge grew no stronger, or the power any thicker.

It was tempting to shove another token in, but he needed to conserve his specialty tokens until he had a final count back from Laurence's trading. He still didn't know how many he'd need for crafting his Summoner upgrade and that took absolute priority. Adding another Destruction ability would only do so much.

"What do you have there?" Gordon asked, walking around Slayer who was slowly making his way deeper into the room.

Levi glanced at Skarm, who pouted, but nodded. "A new knife for Two, looks like." He handed the weapon to the gremlin. While it would be a good backup weapon for any of them, as they were all Tamers it would be of much greater utility with the stealth attacker than sitting around on someone's belt.

Two took it, grinning, and slashed it through the air a few times. He poked at the blade, hissing when it burned his finger, then tried stabbing the leaves on the ground. They shriveled up in a fairly satisfying display of corrosion and toxicity combined to deadly effect.

Levi could only imagine the kind of damage that could do to a living creature.

"It needs to be recharged after use, but with a thousand slashes on it that shouldn't be a problem. You can refill it between fights."

Two nodded eagerly, hugging the knife with a grin. His mana dropped, replenishing that in the knife, and Levi's minor concerns that it would prove impractical for him evaporated.

"I think that's everything here. Let's get back on the road." Levi glanced at Slayer, who was still valiantly trying to reach the middle of the treasure room. “Drok, carry the slime.”