Minions Name Lvl Type Str Psy Spirit Health Mana Stamina Harpy 1 9 Steelfeather Harpy 6 0 3 800/800

(+24/min) 0/0

(+2/min) 175/175

(+10/min) Harpy 2 9 Steelfeather Harpy 4 0 5 600/600

(+18/min) 0/0

(+2/min) 235/235

(+14/min) Harpy 3 9 Steelfeather Harpy 5 0 4 700/700

(+21/min) 0/0

(+2/min) 205/205

(+12/min) Harpy 4 9 Steelfeather Harpy 4 2 3 600/600

(+18/min) 2/2

(+3/min) 175/175

(+10/min)

"No wonder they gave us so much trouble."

None of them had less than 600 health, putting them far ahead of any other minions. Levi did not at all regret filling five slots with them, and if there'd been another flock readily to hand he'd probably have kept going.

Unsurprisingly, the boss - he'd ended up with the darker one, while Gordon took the silver (and promptly named it Silvie) - had significantly better stats than the base version.

Storm: Level 9

(Steelfeather Harpy +)

Strength: 4

Health: 730/730

(+24/min)

Psyche: 3

Mana: 3/3

(+3/min)

Spirit: 2

Stamina: 210/210

(+20/min)

Levi sighed when he saw the Psyche points assigned to Storm. One problem of capturing creatures with randomly pre-assigned stats was that sometimes they had very inefficient loadouts.

He spent a few minutes collating the details on first the base harpy, then the plus version for his archive.

Strength: +100 Health, +3 H-Regen Psyche: +1 Mana, +0.5 M-Regen Spirit: +30 Stamina, +2 S-Regen Strength: +120 Health, +4 H-Regen Psyche: +1 Mana, +0.5 M-Regen Spirit: +30 Stamina, +5 S-Regen

Well. That definitely explained why it took such a long time to bring them down to taming range. Their health gains were insane. One strength point gave a full hundred health. For a non-plus. That was double what Drok, a plus ogre received. Ten times what a human received.

And then the bosses, besides getting 120 health per strength point, also had ridiculous stamina regen rates.

Since they were all above their first threshold, each of the harpies also had a handful of ability points pre-assigned.

The standard harpies all had identical builds, which made sense. None of them had displayed unique or distinctive powers apart from the bosses.

Harpy Abilities

Current

Tier: 1

Passive

Cost: Variable stamina

Activates your inner storm.

Power can be focused to any part of your body at need.

Feather Arc

Tier: 2

Cost: 25 stamina

A sweeping slash of the wing, throwing bladed feathers in an arc.

Thrown feathers are temporary and will disappear when no longer needed.

Basic lightning, basic ranged attack. Not bad. He did look forward to seeing what their options were when they hit level 10. So close...

Storm Abilities

Focused Feathers

Cost: 25 stamina

Hurls a cluster of bladed feathers at a single target.

Thrown feathers are temporary and will disappear when no longer needed.

Storm Trail

Cost: variable stamina

Build up power in your wake, forming into a nascent storm.

Power compounds until formation is complete, then gradually diminishes over time.

Can be forcefully discharged of its assembled energy at once.

Levi spent more time considering Storm's powers, especially Storm Trail. Its potential as a barrier was something he hadn't considered. The dungeon had only been using it to discharge, but if his harpy could paint a wall of storm lightning? He could think of plenty of ways that could be useful.

"You've got a Revive coming off cooldown soon, yeah?" Gordon asked.

"An hour and a half or so."

"We could revive Pierce and carry the others."

Levi considered. They'd ordinarily wait until they had at least most of the team revived before tackling another dungeon, but with the entire flock of harpies ready to go... between them and Stunner, against a non-Lightning dungeon? They could probably handle it without a problem.

"Yeah, sounds good."

He could work on crafting some more in the meantime.

The first two or three recipes in each line had been simple, possible with purely combining existing dungeon-provided ingredients, but once he'd gotten past the first few they started asking for more specific preparation methods. The tutorial section was over, and he wasn't sure how to proceed.

Levi headed over to the table and pulled out a gremlin horn. The crafting recipe clearly indicated a 'gremlin horn base section', but he'd only ever received gremlin horns in the full or powdered varieties. It seemed as though he had to figure this out before getting on with the actual crafting.

Over their countless runs of Destruction dungeons, he'd ended up with five boxes of the powdered gremlin horn, and another seven of the actual horns themselves. That had sounded like a lot, until he sat down to process it into usable parts and realized he had no idea where to start.

'Base section', the recipe said. The lumpy part at the bottom, presumably.

The entire horn was a dark grey material, sharpened to a blade at the top, smooth and ridged at the bottom. It could almost be a weapon in its own right, if the base were a little longer. As it was, even with the three indentations, it would be difficult to grip.

He was hesitant to vandalize one of their few ingredients, old habits of never tampering with dungeon loot rising up. But this wasn't a militia-run mandatory training dungeon, this was his own chance to learn something for himself.

"It's fine. We can always get more." He didn't sound convinced even to himself, but Two nudged his arm toward the knife and grinned encouragingly, his sharp pointed teeth not diminishing the expression in the least. "Are gremlin teeth an ingredient too? You'd think they would be."

Skarm, sitting on the table at the opposite end from him, crossed his arms and glared pointedly down at the horn.

"Okay, okay, I'm not delaying. I'll just... dissect this thing."

Levi set his knife against the horn and sliced it lengthwise from tip to base, shearing the horn into two identical sections. The horn curved up in a solid blade section, but toward the bottom was a thick lump, then it broadened out into three hollow segments. Levi frowned at them, the size and shape oddly familiar. He pulled out a dungeon token and slid it into one half, fitting perfectly. Then two more, and pushed the two halves together. It closed over the tokens perfectly.

"You have slots for dungeon tokens inside your horns?" Levi asked, frowning at his minions. "Why? How?"

Skarm leaned over, prodding at the horn. The tokens fit so snugly that it took a bit of effort to pull the two halves apart again. Then Skarm felt at his own head, a puzzled expression on his face. The three token-sized hollows were below where the horn emerged from his flesh, embedded into his skull. The gremlin eventually shrugged.

"Yeah, I'm not sure we can do anything about it, but it seems a waste to leave them empty..." Levi frowned at his gremlins contemplatively. If you could upgrade weapons and equipment by stuffing them full of dungeon tokens, why not the same with minions? Especially if they had perfectly-sized slots built in. But... they weren't exactly accessible, and he wasn't eager to risk maiming his oldest minions just to see if they could power up their horns.

Two nudged Levi's hand back toward the horn. "Right, stay focused. Thanks."

He removed the dungeon tokens from the horn, then mentally flicked through the recipe instructions. Gremlin horn base section. He looked back at the horn. It certainly seemed to have three sections at its base. It would be simple enough to separate them from the inside, but he somehow doubted that a halved section would do.

Instead, he turned both halves over with the flat side against the table, practicing finding the right spot where he could shear off a full section with its flat base and hollow center but not cut into the next section.

He wasn't very good at estimating, and ended up cutting either too far into the hollow section or too far into the thick disc separating them. By the time he finished with his first horn, he'd butchered it into several partial rings and half sections. Nothing usable, but he'd not expected anything usable from this first one. But from the looks of it, he'd need more than one practice horn before he was ready to do it right.

Levi gathered up the scraps and dropped them in his carved-block-of-stone makeshift mortar to crush up into powder later.

He wasn't ready to try on a full horn, so he sliced another one in half lengthwise to double his chances to get it right. The indentations on the outside didn't line up with the hollows on the inside, but rather he'd need to cut about a third of the way up between them. It ended up taking another horn and a half of practice before he could get it just right, but on the second half of the third horn he managed to make all three cuts perfectly.

Now to try it for real, on a full horn that would try to roll around instead of being securely anchored.

Skarm reached over and grabbed the horn by the blade, holding it securely against the table, and Levi nodded his thanks. He got two perfect sections from that one, and the third only a little too thick, taking part of the connection to the blade with it, requiring him to shave off the top to get at the hollow section below, which ended up with a bit of a ragged edge.

"Gremlin horn base sections, done."

It was only one step to one ingredient, yet Levi felt strangely triumphant to see the finished pieces after all that practice.

Even if he made a bit of a mess along the way, he could do this.