Levi jumped forward, his health nearing full though it continued to dip as it struggled to deal with the three remaining centipede legs still impaled through him. He didn't have time to pull them out and deal with the resulting health drop at the moment.

Gordon cast Dismay. This was too powerful of a potential ally to pass up.

Two's continued stealth attacks and Skarm's nimble slashing along its back, combined with Maggie's searing fire and Shadevine's subtle drain were enough to drop it by a percent every second or two, but it was still fighting back and their strength was flagging. Two's stamina was almost out, Maggie's mana was running low, and even if it only got occasional hits on the gremlins with its lashing claws and grinding back plates, they were fragile enough that it added up.

But right now Levi himself was the full focus of the infuriated boss's attention. It had correctly identified him as the one responsible for the most harm to it during the fight, and despite having lost close to a dozen legs in the front sections, it merely reared itself up higher and slashed at him with others. It had hundreds and wasn't shy of using them.

Gordon meanwhile had been doing pretty well carving away the legs of the sections by him, but he remained defensive and was focusing on control and evasion rather than damage output. Good. You could learn to attack once you learned to survive.

Of them all, Gordon had sustained fewest injuries. His health was hovering safely around 85%.

Levi had nowhere to go, trapped between the sealed entry door, the narrow walls on either side, and the massive centipede filling almost the entire passage in front and above him. If they killed it now, instead of trying to tame it, he wondered if its falling body would crush him before he could get clear.

But that wasn't the plan. This thing was way too big, way too powerful, and way too valuable to waste by killing it - even if it would probably get most of his minions a level. There would be plenty of time for leveling later. Right now, he wanted this monster to be theirs.

Levi forced himself not to spend his mana or stamina, allowing them to regenerate. Tame would require both to activate. He parried and jumped aside, evading as many attacks as possible, but in such an enclosed space against an enemy with more legs than reasonable, without using mana or stamina he couldn't do more than mitigate the damage. Blades left lines of blood down his arms, his sides, his legs. He avoided anything too deadly, but there was only so much he could do.

Skarm peeked over the centipede's head, squeaking questioningly.

"We've almost got it." Levi waved him away. "Keep going."

Its health dropped, then jumped as Gordon cast another Dismay, then continued to fall. Levi kept a close eye on his own, which was falling much more rapidly. He tried jumping between the walls to get above the centipede's head and away, but its legs slashed him out of the air, leaving him winded and even more injured.

His heartbeat skittered madly in his chest, pulse roaring in his ears. He felt trapped, wanted out, but his will was stronger. He had to wait as long as possible, make his chances as high as they could get.

Gordon cast a third dismay, then a fourth. Maggie hissed in pain, her health dipping to 2% as her mana ran out and the centipede's back plates ground together to crush her. She couldn't keep up the intense heat necessary to melt them away any more.

Levi could do nothing for her. Only fight on, and wait for his chance.

After the fifth Dismay, he couldn't force himself to wait any longer. The moment it dropped into taming range he started casting Tame.

RESISTED

Two, three...

RESISTED RESISTED

Then he was out of mana and stamina again and there was no time to wait for it to regenerate. His health was far too low to outlast it another round.

"Gordon! Can you take it?" Of all of them, Gordon had used the least mana, and he was a Tamer too. This would be their last chance; if it failed, they'd have to just kill it before it killed them all.

Gordon nodded acknowledgement, then cast Tame.

Then he did it again.

This time the centipede stilled, its nametag losing the hostile-creature border.

Levi slumped in relief. He gingerly pulled out the remaining three centipede legs from his torso, one at a time, wincing at the holes they left behind. He sat down and swallowed a second health restorative, then a third when the health struggled to repair the gaping holes through his body.

Gordon ran over. "Are you okay? Do you need a hospital?"

Levi waved him off, pointing at the empty vial. "I'll be fine."

"But you just got stabbed several times! I saw you, running and fighting with those blades right through you... there has to be some internal damage, you could get an infection and die, or--"

"That's not how it works. I'll be good in a minute. Just give the restorative time to work."

He knew for an unAwakened there would be a lot more complications from being stabbed through so many vital organs, but the more system thresholds you passed the less vital such internal workings became. Did you really need a stomach or bowels if you didn't need food? With health and recovery so readily available, even a deadly injury to a normal person could be little more than a severe inconvenience to a higher threshold Awakened.

Levi wasn't able to completely shrug off such injuries yet, but with a restorative or two anything could be fixed in minutes.

Instead of try to argue the point further, he looked up at the monstrous centipede, now lying passively in the crevice, stretched out from entrance to exit like a spiky grey red-carpet.

"We're definitely adding this dungeon to the loop."

"What?" Gordon stared at him incredulously. "You want to do this again?"

"Yes. Over and over and over. This is by far the best dungeon in the area. We can level it up to five or even six if we keep coming back. It's perfect."

Gordon slumped back against the wall, staring at the carnage. "We can't do this again."

"We can and we will. Face adversity, remember? Next time, though, we can just kill it."

"Will your little centipedes grow this big someday?" Gordon asked, patting the side of his ridiculously huge monster of a new minion.

Levi shook his head, unsure. "I have no idea." Cen was getting close to his first evolution, and Levi didn't know what to expect.

Humans didn't evolve the same way monsters did. You could evolve your class, but your human nature remained the same. Well, it was upgraded and improved upon by mana absorption and system integration, but they were all just things that made you stronger or sturdier or better able to channel the raw energy of creation and destruction. Not like dungeon monsters, that could drastically change shape and size depending on their level.

"Treasures?" Gordon asked, and Levi got to his feet. "Hope we get something good."

"I think we already did." Levi gestured at the massive centipede, who bobbed his head in agreement.

In addition, they added to their stocks two each of the basic mana and stamina restoratives, three Stone tokens, a blank wand, and a set of eight traced arrows. Unlike ordinary manabow bolts, which were created in the moment, traced arrows compounded the power of the bow's attacks and increased the potential damage substantially. Levi split them between himself and Gordon, though Gordon tried to protest.

"There's always the chance you'll be in a tight spot and need a bit of extra power."

"You're a better aim. They'd be wasted with me."

"Too bad. You're taking them."

Gordon reluctantly clipped them to his manabow.

Levi revived Drok and Gordon revived Flomper, who it turned out had been crushed beneath the now-repentant massive centipede.

Skarm ran over to Centoo and crouched down, prodding him mournfully with one overlong claw, but the smaller centipede didn't move. Skarm looked up at Levi, pleading.

"Sorry, I can't bring him back for another twelve hours."

The new centipede carefully turned himself around, backing out of the crack and into the open central area.

"He can carry the bodies until our revives come off cooldown," Gordon offered.

Drok collected Cen, Centoo, Frosty, Plus, and Maggie's remains, loading them onto the much bigger centipede's back. Looking back over his new passengers, the centipede raised his legs together in a sort of cage to keep anyone from falling off. Plus went in Gordon's pocket instead, his two halves too small to trust to a moving conveyance.

Levi surveyed the much-diminished team as they stepped out of the dungeon and into the outside world, and felt no doubt that they'd made the right choice. True, their fighting power would be diminished for a few more days, but this additional fighter more than made up for it.

It could be lingering traces of the recent exhilaration, but as they set out for the next dungeon Levi was surprised to find that, despite their losses, he felt lighter than he had for a long time. As though the near-death challenge had restored something he'd been missing, leaving him confident and eager to move forward.

Finally he could let go of everything else and run from dungeon to dungeon again, no social obligations, no crushing weight of worry over what anyone would think. No fumbling through awkward situations that he didn't know how to deal with, feeling like an idiot for every failure to do exactly what someone else thought he should do.

He could run straight toward his ultimate goals, resting confident in the fact that his family was working to get word out, and once they were done they'd return to him. They believed him and still loved him even with everything, and when the time came they would fight together.

Right now, he didn’t have to worry about anything for weeks on end except leveling, collecting monsters, and preparing for his advancement into the crafting system. It made him feel more alive than he had in what felt like an eternity. Unrestrained and liberated, triumphant and hopeful.

He'd found his family, shared his knowledge, and now, finally, he could get back to doing what he was good at.