"Huh, would you look at that." Levi stared at his level notification and laughed aloud. "Turns out you can level without leaving home. Maybe I should start sending out multiple teams more often."

The idea started small but quickly expanded, as he realized the potential. He could send a minion escort with smaller groups of new Awakened, better ensure their safety, and be passively increasing his own army's strength as well as his personal level all at the same time.

He could even theoretically send out groups of minions on their own, to clear dungeons for him. Becca or the centipedes might have a hard time collecting the treasures at the end, but Skarm or Two had proper hands and could easily manage it.

"This can't be that easy," he mused. "Otherwise someone would have been doing it already."

Then again... he did know some Summoners from the earlier years, and they'd all been pretty high level, seemed to always be hanging around wherever there were people to show off to and alcohol to drink. The two he remembered most clearly - not very clearly at all - had also been prone to exaggerations and wildly overconfident. Which was likely why they hadn’t survived.

Maybe his potential strategy wasn't farfetched at all. Maybe it was standard procedure with Tamers and Summoners.

Between himself, Peter, and Gordon, they could... they could start a real movement here.

Well. First, he had a shiny new threshold level to assign.

He had new options for his class, for one thing. He was already leaning toward improving Pack Leader, but now that he knew he could use minions and gain benefits even with them a good distance away, increasing the quantity seemed more appealing than ever. It might be a good idea to grab a cooldown reduction for Revive too, though; more minions and more fights meant more chance of losing them, and he didn’t want to be stuck with half his team out of commission for days on end again.

But before he got ahead of himself, he should at least look at the new options.

Tamer Abilities

Avatar

Perceive the world through the senses of a chosen minion

(Only one minion at a time can be designated as Avatar.)

Empower

Your minion is granted a 10% boost to all attributes for 1 minute

(Must be touching minion to activate)

Dismay

Decrease a creature’s resistance to mental abilities by 5%

(Can only be used on creatures with less than 5% health remaining. Target regains 10% of its maximum health.)

Conduit

10% of Tamer’s experience is instead echoed to all active minions

Empower and Dismay were the same as last time, even occupying the same positions visually as they had at first, while Revive and Pack Leader had been replaced by Avatar and Conduit.

Avatar could be useful if he did end up splitting the party regularly, to check in on the other group, but he wasn't sure if it had the kind of immediate utility that improving his existing abilities did.

Was it really more valuable to occasionally look through one of his minion's eyes than to have even more minions? Perhaps if he wanted to use a minion to scout someplace he couldn't observe personally, or if it was someone who couldn't properly convey back a report about his findings... but those seemed unlikely enough not to waste a precious ability point on it.

Conduit was... interesting. It had potential as a balancing force among his minions; for instance, since he'd just gained experience from Cen and Becca's exploits, while Skarm and Two had been at home not fighting anything, if he took Conduit then a tenth of whatever experience he'd gained would go to all his minions, not just those directly involved in the fighting.

But, again, it seemed most valuable for fringe cases. A tenth of his experience was not that significant of a quantity; they could go clear a basic dungeon themselves quickly enough and more than match the amount.

Maybe he'd change his mind once Pack Leader was maxed out and no longer a factor, but right now more minions seemed like pretty much unmistakably the best option.

He put two in, watching the bonus slot move from 'every four levels' to 'every three levels' and then 'every two levels'. Since bonus slots were on even levels and base minion slots on odd ones, that meant he could get a new minion every single level. He could push Pack Leader to max and double up on odd levels, but he'd already gone from 1 free minion slot to 4.

Adding a bunch of new minions at level 1 or 2 meant they'd be vulnerable, and more likely to need reviving.

He put the last ability point into Revive, lowering the cooldown from 24 hours to 12.

The next upgrade would bring it down to 6, if he decided it was necessary in future, but 12 should be good enough for now. They were in a temporary easy zone right now, with their team outmatching most dungeons. Once the dungeons started reaching levels 3, 4, and especially 5, the power balance would flip back and leave them outmatched again.

He dropped his stat point into Spirit. Combined with the initial threshold bonuses, he was substantially better equipped to stamina drag if he had to run the whole way. He probably wouldn’t be able to outrace a car just yet but he was definitely much closer. If he cut a straight line instead of following roads… he shouldn’t be too far behind.

Levi Morrison, Secret Seeker + Unassigned Levels: 0 Primary Class: Tamer Tamer Level: 10 Subclass: None Minions: 6/10 Stat Points: 0 Strength: 2 Psyche: 3 Spirit: 5 Health

185/185 Mana

105/105 Stamina

165/165 Health Regen

3 /minute Mana Regen

4 /minute Stamina Regen

6 /minute

Finally his mana was over 100 again! That would help a lot with his fighting style, especially now he had a proper pair of manablades again. Health and Stamina were also looking much better now, a long way from where he'd like them, but he felt less likely to be taken down by a gremlin or ogre. He looked forward to proving it.

Ability Points: 0 Mana Ping Tier: 1 Cost: 10 mana Fire an unfocused burst of mana in all directions, returning location details about mana entities nearby. Tame Tier: 1 Cost: 5 mana

5 stamina Attempt to convert a creature into a minion. Can only be used on creatures with less than 5% health remaining. Mana Push Tier: 1 Cost: (variable) mana Fire a focused burst of mana at a targeted location. Revive Tier: 2 Cost: 50 mana Restore one [Dead] minion to life at 10% of its maximum health

Can only be used once every 12 hours Pack Leader Tier: 4 Cost: None (Passive) Increases minion slots by 1 every two levels.

Everything looked good. Levi glanced again at his four free minion slots, smiling at how much potential rested there in that simple number, then returned his attention to today's agenda.

He was going to grab one of everything he met until he ran out of space, then collate their information and decide who would be worth keeping before doing it again.

The biggest question would be transporting his minions. Centoo and Skarm could keep up easily, thanks to Centoo’s charge ability. Without Cen or Becca to worry about, he could also stuff them and Two in the car with Irene and Peter and Henry, and run solo at least until he started filing out his ranks.

The main drawback for today's run would be the lack of Gordon. Without access to Dismay, Levi would be left with only the standard version of creatures and unable to capture bosses.

But he was also much more emotionally stable by now, and he thought he could unbind most of what he caught without it feeling like a betrayal.

He would never give up his core party, those who’d been with him from the beginning, but at the moment he wanted more information and wasn’t past grabbing some temporary minions to get it.

The Beast dungeon where they’d started the previous night was off in the forest to the east, while the pair of Destruction dungeons he’d cleared with Gordon and Laurence had been north and west from that. Given Laurence’s continued leveling through the night, Levi suspected nothing in that north-eastern section of accessible territory would be refilled yet.

So that left south, where there was a Destruction dungeon, another Destruction dungeon, a Destruction dungeon, and, oh, for a change.... another Destruction dungeon. Though that last one was over two hours away by car, so he should probably stick to one of the first three.

There was the possibility of running across more dungeons that weren’t included in his mental map, clearly a lot more than he knew about had existed during the initial years before being destroyed for one reason or another, but he didn't want to make plans based on maybes.

So, Destruction it would be for now. If he could convince Irene to go on a longer trip, there were some very nice specialty dungeons a couple hours further away - he’d mapped out a nice four day loop they could follow practically indefinitely, including only two Destruction, and one each of Control, Nature, Ice, Beast, and Fire.

But that would require a much larger time commitment than he had to spare at the moment. His first priority, aside from leveling his family, was getting word out to as many people as possible, and he couldn't do that by hiding away and fighting a loop of dungeons for his own gain alone.

After Cassandra had some time to work on convincing Gayle to get on board, once Gordon finished his personal stuff and returned, once Laurence was back from his leveling trip... they needed to make some concrete steps toward getting word out.

Only once Levi was confident that their plan would suffice to prepare the world for the coming invasion would he be ready to take his family and settle in for grinding levels up for the remaining months until the invasion.

Even if diving into a dungeon loop would be the easy answer, he knew he'd never forgive himself if he walked away now.