Levi eased the paper free from its hiding place and spread it out on the table. Another dungeon map, this one less detailed, with three destinations marked on it. It felt almost unfair to look over it and immediately recognize the locations they represented. Even as vague dots, the dungeon maps he’d memorized in the distant future could easily be lined up to this.

The three marked destinations were arranged roughly in a triangle around his current location. One in New York, not far from Lake Erie, one in Michigan, and one near Lexington.

His fragment said 1 of 3, which made him wonder what the fourth location held. Or perhaps he wasn’t supposed to visit all three, but to choose one.

No way of knowing. It would be a several-hours trip to each, even with a car. He considered renting instead of continuing to drain his family’s account with uber fees, but it had been so long since he’d driven anything, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to avoid making a mistake. Or getting lost. Maps were one thing in his head, but on a street level it was easier to backtrack on foot than in a car limited to designated lanes.

He pulled out the phone. The battery icon flashed at him in warning as he quickly brought up the uber app and selected his destination.

Eventually, as he absorbed more mana and became more fully integrated into the system-ruled reality, he’d start shorting out things like the phone on contact, his ambient power gumming up the micro circuits and bricking the device. His days of zipping around freely were numbered. So… best to start with the furthest one, so he could at least not be backtracking once he was stuck walking.

He put in the request for a trip to New York, then mentally dove back into the system to try and locate the requirements for Revive. It would probably be a while before anyone willing to make such a long trip showed up.

Alas, the search proved futile. If Revive existed it was buried somewhere deeper than what he could find. Which, to be fair, there were a lot of things hidden in there that he’d never found. After a while, trying to wrangle the system only gave him a splitting headache.

The mental strain of maintaining the interface and navigating through its unintuitive maze of pages could best be compared with the difficulty of trying to cross-reference a comprehensive dictionary and encyclopedia. Without an index. When neither was alphabetized but instead arranged by the whim of a particularly eccentric cat who had shredded and reassembled the books. That came close to the frustration levels of trying to maneuver through the innately alien mental interface.

Even after years of use, it still baffled him regularly. Well-worn tracks and familiar commands came to him readily, but once leaving the familiar behind the system remained as inscrutable as ever.

He found a treatise on the farming profession, complete with crafting recipes for basic elixirs. Very helpful, in theory, but he didn’t have months to sit around growing things. The recipes would likewise be useless for the time being. Mana-filled plants were not native to Earth and their seeds could only be obtained as dungeon loot.

It may end up useful in future, so he did mentally bookmark it in case the Seed Fragment ended up being something he'd want to grow.

He located a handful of wind mage spells which may be useful later, planning to come back to them once he reached the first threshold and had some ability points to spend.

Drift

Glide through the air or descend at a safe velocity.

(Unlock: 2 ability points)

Air Blade

Fire a focused slash of superdense wind to slice a distant target.

(Unlock: 2 ability points)

Gust

Fire a short-range wide area burst of sharpened wind, dealing area damage.

(Unlock: 2 ability points)

He wasn’t sure any of them would be useful enough to justify the cost. All cross-class abilities. Taking any of them would eat into his precious few ability points at double the rate of neutral or class abilities.

He did find the sub abilities for Tame, but that was the closest he came to anything relevant.

Tame: Threshold Increase (0/5)

Tame ability can be used on creatures whose health is 1% higher.

(Upgrade: 1 ability point)

Tame: Second Chance (0/5)

Subsequent Tame attempts require 10% less mana and stamina to cast.

(Upgrade: 1 ability point)

That second option made him suspect there was something up with Tame. A 10% cost decrease was less than a single point of mana/stamina, since Tame only cost 5 of each. It might have a variable cost increase hidden somewhere that he wasn't aware of, otherwise there was little purpose to this upgrade existing at all.

When his driver finally showed up, Levi was exhausted both mentally and physically. He hadn't needed a full night's sleep in a long time but now that he was back to an ordinary low-level his stamina and health weren't quite enough to fully override biological requirements yet.

He couldn't remember the last time he slept properly for a full night. In the future/past timeline, it had been a constant fight for so long that any sleep was in minutes or hours snatched between the endless attacks by the conquering demonic forces. The demons swept across the globe, pushing back the human defenses bit by bit until... the end, they'd won.

Levi flinched away from the memories, half-formed and nightmarish. He didn't want to think about it at all. He'd rather focus on the present and do what he could to make this time better. The future could take care of itself. And at the present, he needed rest.

He fell asleep to the regular hum of the car, and did not wake until they reached his destination.

"We're here," the driver announced. "I hope you're satisfied with the accommodations?" He winked and gestured at the seat against which Levi had presumably been snoring a moment before.

Levi startled awake, hands going to his swords-- no, he didn't have swords, his shortsword and dagger were stashed in his backpack along with Gremlin Two. He stared at the driver a moment, then his words registered. "Yes. Perfectly acceptable."

"Don't forget your phone." The driver gestured to the charging pad.

Levi grabbed it, fully charged once more. "Thanks." He verified the transaction, pointedly ignoring the 16 missed calls and 20+ unread text notifications, and shoved the phone in his pocket.

Grabbing his backpack a bit too hastily, the jostle awakened Gremlin Two from where he’d been snoring softly. He peeked out, but Levi shook his head that he should stay in for now. At least until their driver was out of sight.

The gas station was one of the few places still open this time of night and there wasn't anyone around except a handful of truckers availing themselves of the amenities.

A minute of jogging away from the main road was enough to ensure they’d not be seen.

“You can come out,” he said, and Gremlin Two immediately unzipped the backpack and jumped down to the ground. He didn’t weigh much, but it was a bit easier without him in there.

For the first ten minutes or so, his minion seemed fascinated by their surroundings. Though there wasn’t a whole lot to set Ohio and New York apart as far as Levi could tell.

He sent out his mana pings, searching the area to narrow down the dungeon's exact location. In this case it wasn't actually in town, but somewhere outside of it in the surrounding countryside.

Long before they actually located it, Gremlin Two grew quite bored with exploring the local fields and instead started tapping at different places on Levi's greaves to make different thud sounds, as though playing the drums. The sturdy leather-like material was rigid or flexible at different points, making a variety of noises when tapped.

Levi wasn't sure if he should find it endearing or annoying. The fact that Gremlin Two had to flat out run to keep pace with Levi’s jogging, and then was also trying to play music on a moving target in the process, was amusing enough to balance out the irritation.

It took three loops of ever-widening circles around their arrival point before he got a response on his ping. Finally. That was the drawback of having a mental map of the whole country - narrowing it down to specifics could be frustratingly time consuming on his own.

Ideally, there'd have been a group of people spread out who could find the right place in half an hour. Dungeon runs were always done with large groups, and the location narrowed down quickly, but he was alone. Gremlin Two didn't know mana ping, and Levi wasn't going to spend four levels putting his points into Psyche just for the gremlin to be able to use one basic spell.

The dungeon waited innocently without any sign of being disturbed or entered before.

Beast Dungeon: Level 1

Levi chuckled. He’d only been in a Beast Dungeon a handful of times, but it had been vastly different from the others. Even Nature dungeons with their lush natural interiors couldn't quite match Beast for sheer cool factor. The one he remembered best had contained herds of mammoths, and whole flocks of massive hunting birds.

At level 1 this one wouldn’t have anything as impressive, but once he leveled and opened up more minion slots he’d definitely be revisiting this one. For now, though, it was only another stepping stone.

“Yep, here we go again."

Levi pressed the treasure map against the glittering rift, and it disintegrated in the same way as the previous one, adding the + to the dungeon's level.

"I hope this doesn't mean it skips everything but the boss again."

But at least a Beast dungeon would have something reasonable, something he could fight properly, like an angry rhino, or a T-Rex. He’d definitely prefer that over a mind-warping nightmare paralysis eyeball.

Control dungeons were quickly moving up the list of most undesirable opponents. Even the Demon Lords were starting to look more reasonable, though some of them were deadly with illusions as well, at least they didn’t have direct edit access to your mind.

It made Levi angry every time he remembered, furious at the usurpation of control. He remembered deciding not to fight. It didn’t feel externally imposed, it felt like his own despair. Even though he knew, absolutely and with full certainty, that it wasn’t. Even though he knew it was just the dungeon messing with him, the memory couldn’t be excised so easily.

He’d have to run the Control dungeon again. Over and over to get the materials he needed. But he was not going in again until he had a much bigger group to back him up.

And the path started here.