Pierce the super-massive centipede may be fast, but he was not stealthy. He increased the overall speed of the procession to the point where Levi could actually move at a decent pace without worrying about leaving anyone behind, but the destruction he caused in passing made Maggie look downright sneaky.

Maggie left a trail of wilted grass or softened pavement in her wake, which was one thing. But as much trouble as it had been shepherding the ogres carefully through cities, Pierce was…

Well, after the first eight cars he totaled, Levi rerouted their path to avoid towns entirely for the remainder of their trip. It did extend their travel times yet again, but the convenience of a fifty-foot centipede conveyance for slower minions and luggage more than made up for it. Gordon could even nap on Pierce's back without slowing him down, which let them travel all night without stopping.

Frosty split her time between running on her own and resting on Pierce’s head, her new favourite conveyance. Cen and Centoo pushed themselves to keep up, seeming unwilling to concede that Pierce was in any way superior to them. Levi never caught them hitching a ride once, even as they drained their stamina to nothing repeatedly.

Maggie preferred to slither along on her own for a time, then she’d join the others on Pierce when she was tired, draping herself around his neck like a giant snake scarf. Levi thought it was rather cute, if a bit unexpected, how much she seemed to be showing off and finding excuses to get close to him.

As the team cleared dungeon after dungeon in a steady rhythm, Levi grew less concerned with tracking individual levels, instead opting to deal with them in batches before the higher leveled dungeons. One more point here or there wasn't going to make a major difference against a level 2 dungeon, but could be the difference between success and failure in a higher level one. Since his own regens were decent now, he decided to focus his own ability points on Psyche to bring his mana up, since that seemed to be the pool holding him back more often than not.

Gordon reached level 10 not long into their leveling loop. Levi was mildly curious about his options, which turned out to be different than Levi's as anticipated.

Each of the four initial ability choices was the start of its own branch, unlocking later abilities in the chain after the earlier ones. Levi had remained highly focused on maxing his minion slots so far, and he'd yet to take any of the second tier abilities.

"Pack Leader," Gordon read aloud.

"I know that one." Levi added it to the system database anyway. Laurence and Cassandra would probably want confirmation that ability options remained even if unchosen at first.

"Know Your Enemy."

"That's a new one."

"It gives a bonus against any enemy so long as I've tamed one of their type in the past."

"What kind of bonus? Combat? Taming?"

"It doesn't specify." Gordon frowned pensively, then shrugged and moved on. "Empower and Conduit. So same as you."

"Seems so."

Gordon stared at the screen before him, invisible to Levi, eyes flicking back and forth as he considered his options. "I'm taking Empower," he finally said. "You've got quantity covered, so I'm going to go for quality."

"Quality, right..."

Gordon followed Levi's eyes, then his expression firmed. "I know you're weirdly hung up on Flomper, but she's a valuable member of the team."

"I didn't say anything."

Gordon scoffed, but moved on. "Pierce is pretty dangerous already, and if we need an even bigger boost, now we can get it. Besides, we know abilities work on other tamers' creatures too, so I can boost your ogre as well."

"No argument, you make a valid point." And more variety was never a bad thing. The more abilities they had access to, the more flexible their team would be as a whole.

"I'm also increasing Dismay again. Something tells me you're not planning to slow down on the boss-grabbing."

Levi chuckled. "You're not wrong there."

"And Revive." They hadn't gone a day without losing at least one or two minions since starting this loop. Though the easy dungeons were trivial and posed no danger, enough of their creatures were lower level that it would only take a few stray hits in a boss fight in a level 3 or 4 dungeon to take Tink or Frosty out.

They hadn't had another fight like the one against Pierce; without trying to tame bosses they were generally able to end fights before losing more than one.

Their group was large enough that the loss of one or two - or even two or three - didn't have a huge impact on their combat capability, but it did put those minions behind the leveling curve. And the more it happened, the more it would add up, and the further behind they'd remain. It was a vicious cycle. One that could be prevented if they had enough revives available.

"Sounds good."

Not long after, everyone else started hitting their thresholds as well, starting with Cen.

Cen has reached level 10!

Stone Centipede threshold 2 attained.

Evolution threshold advancement progress: 2/2

Evolve to Steel Centipede

Evolve to Clay Centipede Evolve to Crystal Centipede Combined Evolution (No other evolutions available)

Cen has 1 stat point available.

Cen has 3 ability points available.

Levi dove into Cen's ability options first, the easier choice to make.

Stone Centipede Abilities

Overwhelm

Increased speed and damage when charging an enemy.

Fortify

Defence is significantly enhanced while immobile.

To Dust

All special attacks gain a small chance to destabilize the impacted area.

Envenom

Can inflict a slow-acting venom by bite or claw. There were also upgrades available to his existing skills, Petrify and Dazzle, which together formed the core of Cen's current attack style. Petrify was already at 2, so Levi increased Dazzle to match, bringing its strength up notably.

Overwhelm and Fortify remained useful options, but neither was particularly well suited to Cen specifically.

The two new options, however, both added additional power to existing attack options. To Dust would add a damage component to Dazzle, in addition to Petrify's freeze component, while Envenom would allow Cen to deal longer-lasting damage even when out of mana.

Levi assigned a point to each.

His stats... were confusing. Levi had to double check that he wasn't seeing things when he compared Cen's to Centoo's. They weren't that different, but Cen's stats had shown a huge jump between level 9 and 10.

Cen: Level 10

Stone Centipede

Strength: 5

Health: 215/215

(+8/min)

Psyche: 1

Mana: 65/65

(+4/min)

Spirit: 3

Stamina: 155/155

(+6/min) Centoo: Level 9

Stone Centipede

Strength: 6

Health: 160/160

(+8/min)

Psyche: 0

Mana: 30/30

(+2/min)

Spirit: 3

Stamina: 85/85

(+5/min)

Centoo had more Strength, yet Cen's health was 55 higher. Levi mentally scrolled back through the levelup notification, but there was no indication given on Cen's advancement that anything had changed so drastically.

He made a mental note to track Centoo's progress more carefully, copied down his current stats, and assigned Cen's stat point to Psyche. Now that his Dazzle ability was even more powerful, it would be good to let him use it more often. Especially since his health seemed to be well in hand already.

Then... nothing more to do to put it off. Evolution options. Levi searched deep for those, hesitant to make such a major decision without more information.

[Steel Centipede: This evolution focuses on defence and stability. It is more resistant to all types of damage and can even partially absorb magical attacks. Its main drawback is decreased speed and lowered flexibility.]

[Clay Centipede: This evolution focuses on malleability and flexibility. It is more resistant to physical damage and can absorb impacts with ease. Its main drawback is an increased vulnerability to certain magical attacks, notably fire or electrical.]

[Crystal Centipede: This evolution focuses on offense and inflicting debuffs on enemies. It is fast and highly focused, with bonuses to both physical and mental attacks, but less able to withstand damage of all types.]

'Combined Evolution' remained unavailable. Though he tried quite a few different ways of approaching the button to get more information, no further details were forthcoming.

He'd never heard of a combined evolution before. It wasn't a thing that happened with classes, though he did remember seeing the option (also unavailable) when evolving his title.

If species evolutions were anything like class evolutions, he could take some time to think about it without slowing down Cen's progress. Any changes were retroactive to a degree - things like increasing mana pools were universally applied regardless of the level - and he could probably wait around nine levels before he'd need to worry about the system automatically evolving Cen into something without Levi's input.

He couldn't quite bring himself to commit to any one evolution just yet. While each would be useful in its way, none felt exactly right.

Crystal was tempting for the increase to attacks; Cen already used Dazzle, and going crystal would amplify that already useful ability to new heights. But the increased vulnerability that came with it worried him.

Steel would be better for defence, but Cen was already one of the more average speed creatures. Slowing him further would delay everyone.

And Clay... it may objectively have the fewest drawbacks, but would malleability really be as powerful an advantage as either of the others?

His thoughts hovered again over the unavailable 'combined' button. He couldn't help but feel it could be something much better, if he could only figure out how to unlock it.