Levi didn't know what to do, so he stalled by scrolling back up through the message history.

Irene:

Was your credit card stolen? XD

I see we have a large order of sporting goods.

Finally plan on getting in shape?

Irene:

Was your phone stolen too?

Haha

Irene:

Please tell me you didn’t actually get mugged.

You’re okay, right?

Are you there?

Irene:

OMG are you even alive?? Please answer.

Irene:

If you’re a thief, I’ll have you know that’s my husband’s phone and I am not going to let you keep it without a fight.

Irene:

Levi if you’re alive call me

What's wrong

You haven’t texted in two days

His thumb hovered over the text field, but he couldn’t bring himself to press it. Guilt immediately flooded him. He’d tried to keep his family out of this mess as long as possible so they’d be safe and happy until absolutely necessary, but now they were worrying anyway.

What could he say? How could he tell her what he had to tell her?

If he tried to describe their new reality, she’d probably think he’d lost his mind. Or joined a cult. Or both. She'd laugh at him, or try to have him medicated, or at least be endlessly worried for his sanity. She'd certainly not accept it quietly.

But he had to do something.

Levi:

I’m fine.

Sorry to worry you.

Some of the places I’m visiting are underground and don’t get reception.

I didn’t mean to worry you.

I love you.

I’ll be safe, I promise. Please don’t worry. I’m fine.

I love you.

Tell Peter I love him too.

He stopped himself as his vision blurred with tears. Some dam inside him broke, all the grief and relief and uncertainty pouring out in an uncontrollable flood. Gremlin Two hugged his leg in an attempt to comfort him, and he crouched to pat the little guy’s head, hiccuping a laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

His phone plinked at him again. He wiped his eyes, taking a long shaky breath to steady himself, then shoved down any remnants of his minor meltdown and dried his face before looking down.

Irene:

Are you drunk? Where are you?

Almost immediately the phone rang out its nostalgic, familiar musical tones.

Levi’s heart jumped and sped up, panic threatening to overwhelm him.

He wasn’t ready.

What could he say? How could he say it?

If he actually spoke to her, actually heard her voice, then all his planning would be thrown aside. Would he have the strength to turn away again, to continue racing for levels when faced with her very real disappointment?

The demonic threat was coming, but he knew in that moment that if he let down his guard and lost focus, he’d drop everything and run home no matter how bad a long-term plan that would be.

The phone rang again, insistent.

His hand trembled.

Even now, only the worry over how to break the truth to them gave him the strength to hold to his current course.

He'd get there on time, well before the invasion started, in plenty of time to get them somewhere safe. If he let his resolve shatter now, what use would he be to anyone?

The ringing stopped, blessedly, sparing him from making a decision. He switched back to messages.

Levi:

How long until Peter gets back?

Irene:

Don’t think you can dodge the issue. Where are you?

Levi:

Once you pick up Peter, do not come home!!!

It isn’t safe. I’ll meet you at your parents’ place and tell you everything

His uber arrived then, and he quickly hit send, then set the phone to silent.

He’d deal with Irene later, figure out how to explain everything in a way that didn’t sound insane.

He just wasn’t ready yet.

“No pets allowed,” grumbled the driver, leaning across to scowl out at him. “I don’t want your…” he squinted at Gremlin Two. Gremlin Two waved and grinned, showing his too-pointy teeth. The driver recoiled, then tried to cover his fear with bluster. “I don’t want... it making a mess in my car. I’m not sure I want it near my car.”

Levi made a mental note to stick Two in the backpack next time. “He’s very well trained, doesn’t shed, and will sit on my lap the entire time. I promise we won’t cause any damage. And I’ll add an extra tip for the trouble. I’m in a hurry.”

The driver hesitated, then looked down at his phone. It was a long trip; good money. “Fine. Get in.”

Levi did so, holding Gremlin Two on his lap as he’d promised. They drove down 71 at a speed that felt oddly sluggish to Levi. Warriors with high Spirit could sprint faster than this, and the highway just didn’t match up to a charging army.

But the rumble of the car was soothing, and Levi was mentally and physically exhausted. He hadn’t intended to, but before long he fell asleep.

He jerked awake as the car swerved sharply, the horn blaring.

“Sorry, almost missed the exit,” the driver explained. "Stupid trucks wouldn't let me in." Levi didn’t know the roads, only the general area of the dungeon he was heading for, so he couldn’t be sure how close they were. He considered returning to sleep, but adrenaline had already shot through him, making any such relaxation questionable at present.

Two sprawled in his lap, holding Levi’s arm like a pillow, his warm little head tucked between Levi’s chest and elbow as he snored in tiny barely-audible squeaks.

“You’re a weird critter, alright,” Levi murmured fondly. It seemed his disposable name hadn't been enough to prevent him forming an attachment. Oh well. Two had done well by him so far.

Ten minutes later they arrived at the destination Levi had input, selecting a place at random that matched the general vicinity of the Control dungeon. His local knowledge of Ohio was patchy at best; it wasn’t the sort of thing he’d be able to narrow down to the millimeter. It may take another hour or two to locate the dungeon itself.

He paid the driver, inputting a sizable tip, then started the search. He’d arrived in a small town, roads laid out in neat squares, houses spaced with plenty of yard, and several old stone churches down the main drive.

To his surprise, the ping returned something almost at once. He couldn’t be that lucky, could he?

“Hey, can you crawl on all fours?” he asked Gremlin Two. “Pretend to be a cat?”

His minion squeaked indignantly, crossed his arms defiantly, then sighed and got down on his hands and feet, grumbling unintelligibly to himself the whole time.

Levi looked him over critically. It wouldn’t hold up to a close inspection, but at a distance he could probably pass for some kind of slightly abnormal pet with a skin condition. “Can you keep up like that?”

Two glared up at him.

“I’ll take that as a yes. We should get you a fur costume at some point, or maybe a dog sweater. Could pretend you’re my chihuahua.” Levi chuckled, shook his head, then started walking toward the mana source he’d detected. One advantage of people actually living here still were the neatly kept lawns. No one had time to mow during the apocalypse, so he was used to forcing his way through overgrown tangles that hadn’t been tended in half a decade. He could get used to this.

A few stores were scattered here and there in the center of town, but there wasn’t much of a business district, more a brief pause for a drug store and a couple supermarket or fast food places, a tiny plaza, then back to churches and houses.

There weren’t a lot of people out and about, nothing compared to the city at least, but he still got more than a few odd looks. He supposed he deserved them, hiking around with his legs bare below the knee and three layers of jacket in the middle of July. He certainly wasn’t going to abandon the closest thing he had to armor for a little discomfort.

The unfamiliar surrounds left him feeling intensely disoriented. It was one thing to have a mental map of the state, another to actually follow roads full of people and moving cars and intact houses. He'd thought he got used to it in the city, but seeing it here felt unfamiliar and wrong all over again.

He pinged a second time, then adjusted his course to close the distance. He felt strange walking through this little town, people peering at him through their blinds as he hurried across their yards.

Past a small two-story building standing on its own, then a low building right in the path of the ping, across the road from yet another church. He hurried past it, checked again, and turned in surprise. It pointed straight at the building.

Of course it made some sense. Statistically, you couldn’t drop thousands of dungeons randomly across the country without at least one or two of them ending up hitting an already-occupied space. But it made Levi uneasy.

Gremlin Two butted his head against Levi’s leg, his sharp horn just shy of breaking skin.

“I think this is it,” he said slowly with a pensive frown. Something felt wrong here. His instincts were on edge.

Two bumped into him again. He looked down. The gremlin hissed with dissatisfaction.

“Ah.” Levi looked around, but they were the only people out and about in this part of town. “Yeah, you can stand up now.”

Gremlin Two did not stand up, but sat down and started scrubbing his hands against his chest with an expression of disgust.

“We’ve all got to make sacrifices if we’re going to win this.” He turned his attention back to the building in front of him.

It seemed to be a private business, a few cars parked in the small lot, but the lights were off and the windows dark.

He moved around the building to another angle and cast another mana ping. The first two hadn’t lied, a huge mana source was coming from right inside the building.

Levi approached the door and knocked firmly, not wanting to resort to breaking and entering unless necessary.

Something told him it would be necessary.

He waited, knocked again, peered into all the windows, but there was no sign of movement from within.

“I don’t suppose you know how to pick a lock?” he asked the gremlin without much hope. His preferred method tended to be a manablade through the deadbolt, but without a power stone in his dagger that method was unavailable at the moment.

Gremlin Two looked at him flatly, then reached up toward the doorknob, jumping twice to indicate his inability to even reach it, then shrugged and crossed his arms.

Levi sighed. “I’m sorry I have to ask you to pretend to be a cat, but it’s going to happen again. You can’t hold a grudge over it forever.”

Gremlin Two grinned in a way that made Levi shake his head.

“Sure, you can if you really want to. But it’s counter-productive.”

He half-heartedly tugged at the door. To his surprise it opened immediately.

Levi’s heart started racing, adrenaline shooting through him as his sense of something being wrong skyrocketed.

“That’s not normal,” he said, voice low. “Stay close.”

He drew his dagger, wishing he had a power stone so he could light it up. He could force mana into it manually, but the power stone regulated the drain to make it feasible. To power it without the stone would use all his mana in seconds.

The very ordinary entry area opened into a very ordinary waiting room. Levi took a single step forward, then stopped as the hovering shimmer, thick and warping like oily heat, registered in his vision.

Destruction Dungeon: Level 6

“This isn’t the right place.” He stepped quickly back, then closed his eyes and concentrated. The nearest Destruction dungeon to his destination… was significantly further north. There was a Fire dungeon near the Control one, but this…

He opened his eyes. “Out. I need to check something.”

They returned to the bright outdoors, where Levi pulled out the treasure map and looked it over again. He’d largely dismissed it at the time, more focused on figuring out the destination than matching up everything, but now he looked closer there was an extra dungeon here.

Something present now which hadn’t survived to the future. This destruction dungeon had been destroyed before the creation of the map he’d memorized.

Once he thought about it, it was easy to could guess why. It was already at level 6, so it had probably sucked in dozens of people, probably hundreds. Depending on how long they’d remained inside and how much damage they'd done, it made sense that this dungeon made enough of a splash to be hunted down early, before the protections were put in place.

On the one hand, this could be a great opportunity to level fast. A level 6 dungeon would provide a much greater experience benefit than running through level 1s again and again.

But on the other hand, dungeons were never meant to be faced solo. He was already barely surviving against level 1 bosses, and dungeons scaled up fast. Anything above level 5 would be idiotic to try to clear until he was better equipped and higher level himself.

He looked down at the map again. It seemed he’d come too far north, he needed to head further south for the Control dungeon where the map led him. Then he looked back at the dark entryway, the faint glimmer in the air the only betrayal of its deadly trap.

“Damn it.”

He couldn’t pass up this opportunity any more than he could ignore the map.

But right now... he'd be a fool to dive into something like this without at least one or two more minions. Soloing level 1 dungeons was hard enough, and those had only tiny gremlins he could physically dominate with hardly an effort. He pulled the door shut, silently apologizing to anyone who was tricked into the dungeon in the meantime. For a moment he considered trying to write a warning on the door, but could think of nothing that wouldn't be immediately dismissed as graffiti or a prank. "We'll be back," he promised, then pulled out his phone to request another ride.