Levi charged in, moving faster than the ogre could track, Destruction sword leveled at its chest. The ogre bellowed a challenge and stabbed its sword out at Levi, the two blades clashing in a screech of metal, but Levi's was enhanced with all his second-threshold mana while the ogre's was as mundane as they came. The ogre's blade sheared in half, a curving line scored across its entire length where the two swords collided. It stared in dumb confusion as half its sword toppled off and fell to the ground with a bland clatter.

Levi kept going, batting the jagged half-sword aside as he pushed stamina into his jump, stabbing the Destructive Slash through the ogre's throat and slicing across its chest.

Level 1+

(Cave Ogre)

Health 88%

The ogre had a lot of health, too much for even a major attack like that to do much, and retaliated in a heavy swipe. But Levi wasn't the only one fighting. Centoo and Skarm were behind it, slashing and clawing. Peter ran up and slashed his scythe into the ogre's thigh. Shadevine lunged to entangle its neck, joined a moment later by Plus.

Really, it was almost disappointing. The ogre, despite its high health, dropped to 4% within thirty seconds.

It was enraged now, dealing notable damage to anyone it could reach, but that wouldn’t be enough to save it.

“Ready? Three two…”

Peter and Gordon cast Dismay in sync, then Peter stepped back a moment while Henry darted in to bite its leg. Its health continued to drain to the shadevines, and the centipedes and gremlins got to work. It still took a few seconds to bring it back down, but they outnumbered and overpowered it by a lot. Even if it could probably handle any one of them, it couldn’t handle all of them.

Peter cast Tame.

The first attempt failed, so Gordon jumped in with another Dismay.

The ogre smashed Centoo in the chest, but the centipede was well protected and the blow barely dented his health.

Cen ran up in front of it and began sparkling vehemently, but for now at least the ogre's defences were sufficient to protect it from the daze effect.

The ogre stabbed its broken sword straight toward Levi's chest, but Levi was too quick for it. He caught the blade in a Beast Bite, burning stamina hard to redirect it harmlessly to the side. The ogre may only be level 1 but it was huge and far too strong for him to wrestle without enhancement.

With just a little more mana pushed into the Beastly Shortsword, the ogre’s blade snapped again, sheared in thirds. Levi followed it up with another Destructive Slash across the ogre's arm.

Its health was low enough by now that the attack took its arm clean off below the elbow, and dropped its health to 2%.

Gordon fired off another Dismay, and the slow-acting damage inflicted by various party members continued to wear the ogre down.

As the fight wore on in fits and starts, it got in a few solid hits on various minions - mostly while they held back so as not to kill it - but there were enough of them to cycle in and out and prevent it from ever doing critical damage to anyone.

In all, it took five rounds of Dismay before Peter's attempted Tame took.

At long last their team had an ogre for a minion.

"You'll be Greg," Peter decided, nodding to the ogre.

The ogre, henceforth to be known as Greg, nodded back. Then he walked around the room and collected his severed arm and the four broken pieces of his sword and presented them to Peter.

“Uh, Dad, is there a way to fix these?” Peter asked.

“The arm can probably reattach if he holds it on while he heals.”

Greg promptly did as suggested, as his health slowly began to recover. He stood that way for a long time, while everyone watched - everyone except Irene, who started treating injuries immediately and didn’t seem interested in the ogre’s behavior in the slightest.

Once his health reached 30%, he was able to move the reattached arm again, and placed the pieces of sword back together and stared at them as though expecting them to reattach to each other as well.

“Can we fix his sword too?”

“I’ve never tamed something with a weapon before, so I can’t say.”

“Bring the pieces along anyway, Greg, and we’ll see if we can do anything with them.”

The ogre nodded and stuffed the sword shards into his loincloth. Levi winced and tried not to think about it.

“Treasures?” Peter looked to Levi, then at his nod and smile rushed off to the treasure room at the end. “Aww, boring!”

“Need anything?” Levi asked Irene, and when she shook her head he went to join Peter in the next room. “What’s so disappointing?”

Peter shrugged, shoving the pile of small items toward Levi’s side of the table. He held up a single huge leaf bigger than his head that Levi had to examine to find the name of. Caustic Flatleaf. He shrugged and folded it into his storage pouch. “I’m sure we’ll find a use for it once we unlock crafting.”

The remainder of the pile contained one mana elixir, one stamina elixir, two Destruction tokens and two Destruction power stones. Levi was becoming more and more convinced that he’d triggered some hidden incrementing for abnormal treasure gains, because this was the kind of haul he’d expect from a level 3 dungeon, not a level 1.

He gave Peter the stamina elixir and brought the health one out to Irene - she was still working at healing all the minions injured in the fight.

While they would recover just fine on their own, she was leveling faster by helping them every time; she reached level 6 even as he watched. Levi wouldn’t be surprised if she caught up to him one of these days.

True, it used their restoratives at an accelerated rate, but with the way the dungeons were dropping them now Levi wasn’t too concerned with running out. Another couple months, once they started getting closer to the invasion, they’d need to start stockpiling. Demons didn’t provide any treasure for killing them, and the attack waves would be pretty steady for the whole 24-hour period the portals remained open, so they’d definitely need to save up for that event.

But that was still a long, long way away. For now, the best use of their resources was in increasing their power however possible. Having a high level medic would only be a benefit, and having Irene be stronger would never be a waste of time.

Henry was hissing at Greg, clearly upset, and Greg managed to look apologetic for his role in the damage. He patted the dinosaur gently, but Henry didn’t seem inclined to forgive. He ran around the new ogre in a small circle chirping aggressively.

Levi’s minions were much better behaved, maintaining a patrol in case of strays, or heading outside once they were fully healed. It took another five minutes for Irene to finish, then she stood up with a smile.

“All done. I’m really liking the new abilities.”

“Make things easier?”

She nodded. “A lot easier. I wish I could upgrade them all.”

“Another four levels and you can.”

“Assuming there’s nothing better on offer at the time.”

Levi put an arm around her. “I’m so glad you’re handling this all well.”

Irene laughed, grinning up at him with mischief in her eyes. “I grew up with Cas. If you think this is the weirdest thing I’ve had to do, then you don’t know her very well. I don’t doubt that, even if you’d kept this all to yourself, she would have found it out sooner or later and dragged me in too.”

“Not soon enough,” Levi murmured. In the other lifetime, none of them had Awakened before their untimely deaths. He would have noticed if his family suddenly had level tags over their heads, it was conspicuous enough it would have come up.

His expression must have changed, the haunting memories visible, because Irene leaned up to kiss his cheek gently. “Don’t think about that too much. It’s okay. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Levi nodded, but couldn’t shake off the feeling of fragility and dread so easily. If he wasn't able to prevent it from happening again...

“Where to next?” Irene asked, clearly hoping to distract him. “Somewhere fun?”

Levi managed a faint smile. “Fire dungeon. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the ingredients for the Summoner class upgrade item, so we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the coming months.”

“That does sound exciting.”

“Just watch out for the magma, or it could get a bit too exciting.”