By cross-referencing the dungeons already known to the locals, Levi was able to locate the next in record time.

Destruction Dungeon: Level 2

This dungeon didn't lean as heavily on the scarabs as the first second level dungeon they'd delved, but it went all in on gremlins. They weren't significantly stronger than the level 1 varieties, but they came in proper swarms rather than the single or two or three from the level 1 dungeons.

Flomper was in her element against the weak foes, diving in and out of the stone, trapping gremlins by a foot for long enough to trip them up and disrupt their attacks. Centoo formed himself into a curved wall of slashing centipede legs that shredded anything getting too near, while Skarm used him as a fortress from which to jump down on his hapless cousins. Slashing and goring with claws and horn, Skarm was all but untouchable. He still took his fair share of gashes across his lavender hide, but he'd learned to ignore such things long ago, continuing to fight on without regard for his injuries. After dying and being revived, Skarm had become both more reckless and more restrained. He took fewer major risks, but against something like this he flung himself into the battle unreservedly.

Levi kept an eye on his minions' health, slicing any gremlin to slip past their lines in half with his shortsword, but mostly picking them off with his new stone-enhanced manabow. Or, trying to, at least. He wasn't a very good shot yet, still used to the curving arcs of his thrown blade-slash style attacks, but by the end he managed to hit his targets more often than he missed, and even hit them where he was aiming once or twice.

Gordon used his own bow to moderate effect. His arrows were less penetrating and much less damaging than Levi's stone-enhanced ones, but they still managed to disrupt and distract their gremlin assailants. The dungeon also didn't have any traps to speak of, unless 'even more gremlins hiding in the ceiling' counted as a trap.

Overall, the delve went quite well and they reached the boss room without major incident.

They stood outside the door to the final challenge, peering in to the seemingly empty room beyond.

“No one in sight,” Levi mused. “That’s a bad sign. Any time you can’t be sure of what the boss is, you should assume the worst. From what I’ve seen in the area, I think the locals have been skipping bosses a bit more than is safe. It's likely to be another Essence."

"Essence?"

"Ah, you weren't there for that fight, were you." Levi briefly explained the concept, a boss going unfought for long enough accumulated more and more pure power from its dungeon, and eventually stopped being a set creature at all, but became an amalgamous goo that contained the potential for every type of monster its parent dungeon could spawn.

"Eventually,” Levi concluded, “they'll become so strong they can leave the dungeon entirely and roam the world in search of something to fight. I don’t think we need to worry about that for another month yet, though. It’s likely to be constrained to the dungeon at present."

"Do you think we can take it?"

"I’ve already killed one once, though it was a close thing. If you’d rather stay outside, I'll go alone. If I’m right and it is an Essence again, it's going to be very dangerous."

"I'm not leaving you to fight something like that alone," Gordon said, aghast. "I would've stopped you the first time if I'd known something like that was possible."

Levi insisted they rest until the entire team was fully restored, then a half hour more until he could revive Cen. Against a normal boss, he might be willing to go in a bit low, but against an Essence they would need every drop of their available resources.

"Last chance," Levi said, glancing back at Gordon. "Once we're inside, there's no backing out." He started toward the doorway.

Gordon followed without hesitation. "I know, we've done this before."

“Not like this, you haven’t.”

Gordon didn’t back off. They walked into the boss room together, Cen, Centoo, Skarm, and Flomper close beside them. The door slid down and sealed them in.

Levi waited with his back to the door, expecting a swarm of scarabs, or an army of gremlins, something to soften them up before the Essence itself arrived, but nothing came. He stepped cautiously forward, looking around at the walls, the floor, the unusually dim ceiling...

"Oh."

The entire ceiling disattached itself and slammed to the ground with a sizzling squelch, this Essence even larger than the first. Levi barely managed to jump back before it collided with the ground, leaving only a bare foot of space around the edges of the room. It had spread itself out thin, barely a few inches thick. Its gleaming orange bulk hissed as it rolled across the stone, as deadly as ever.

Level 2++

(Destruction Essence)

Health 100%

Levi could easily imagine a party of the gamers walking into the middle of the room, looking around… only to be dropped on by this monster, completely trapped beneath its corrosive body. It would have drawn slowly inward, trapping them and melting them to nothing. Anger flared. He'd fought monsters seeking to consume humanity for too long to let something like this stand.

Before it could recombine fully into its more mobile upright slime form, he ran at it, manablade glowing, and started slashing off bits from the leading edge nearest him. In its fully stretched out form, the Essence couldn't move quickly, but the sliced pieces could. Each formed into an Essence Scarab + and started attacking either Levi or Gordon. Skarm and the centipedes jumped into motion, and Levi sliced as quickly as he could, working to keep the pieces small and not risk spawning any kalvex.

This time, with two extra party members and full forewarning of what they'd be facing, the team was able to deal with the enhanced scarabs with relative ease. Levi started moving up to larger pieces, aiming for gremlin sized, but carefully. Before he could perfect his system, the Essence finished drawing itself up, raising its bulk as tall as Levi's chest, and half again as wide, then surged forward like an overfull mill run.

"Heads up!" Levi shouted as it immediately surged toward Gordon. "Don't let it touch you!" He slashed out at the Essence, hoping to attract its attention, but it seemed to have recognized the vulnerability of its target and refused to be diverted from its attack.

Levi cursed. Gordon wasn't fast enough to dodge, his body even less well prepared for this kind of thing than Levi's own. At least Levi had years of knowledge of how to move in combat and could use system stamina to overdraw his physical strength, Gordon hadn't even trained to do that much. He threw himself between Gordon and the Essence, slicing it clean in two as it flowed toward them.

The Essence parted around his blade, the smaller half forming into an immense, oversized ogre while the other half recoiled and reformed into its glob form before pursuing Gordon again.

Level 2+

(Essence Ogre)

Health 100%

Levi cursed vehemently. The ogre towered over him, its hide dark and thick, muscles bulging as it lunged for him with massive fists ready to crush him flat. He'd have to hope Gordon could stay ahead of the Essence on his own now, because this thing could smear any one of them into the ground without pause.

Levi ran at the ogre head on, straining at his stamina to evade its telegraphed but too-fast swing, then ducked under its legs and stabbed up to hamstring it as he twisted and attacked again from the rear.

Level 2+

(Essence Ogre)

Health 98%

It stumbled, but didn't collapse, its body strong enough to absorb the slash without actually folding. It jumped and pivoted, stomping too close to Levi for comfort, arms swinging around as it crouched and roared.

Cen's health dipped sharply, and Levi caught a glimpse of the centipede slashing out with half of his legs at the Essence as it surged up against his protected plates, interposing himself between the glob of the boss and Gordon. Good. Cen could handle Gordon’s protection.

There was no time for further observation, his own deadly battle demanded his full attention.

The ogre twisted around and slammed its fists down at Levi, who had never been more thankful for choosing to increase his stamina regen. At this rate he'd need it far sooner than he preferred.

Skarm jumped at the ogre, impaling it through the chest with his horn, then slashing violently with both clawed hands until the ogre grabbed him and hurled him against the ceiling. Skarm hit with a crack, health dropping drastically, then dropped like a rock. Centoo crossed the room in a blur, extending his body upward to catch the crumpled and falling Skarm before he could splat against the ground.

Level 2+

(Essence Ogre)

Health 92%

The ogre took advantage of this distraction to stomp hard on Centoo's back, crunching chitin and snapping legs. Centoo let out a pained shriek, but maintained his focus on protecting Skarm first, before retaliating with myriad legs slashing into the ogre's big, ugly body.

Gordon and Cen were in no better a position. Flomper was currently hiding somewhere, unable to do anything against the Essence, and Cen was heavily damaged by the Essence's corrosive presence and sluggish from all the stings of the scarabs building up. Gordon was doing his best with his sword, chopping at the Essence in quick bursts before fleeing, and Cen continued valiantly trying to mop up the resulting creatures, but as before the quantity of Essence creatures was growing at a faster rate than Levi's team could take them down.

The ogre was really putting a kink in his plans. It took all his attention to keep it busy, and even then only with Skarm and Centoo's help. None of them had time to deal with the increasing swarms of scarabs or the gremlins beginning to attack at their legs, beyond the occasional swat or kick. Insufficient against the enhanced strength essence creatures.

Level 2+

(Essence Ogre)

Health 87%

The ogre was bleeding now, or the Essence-monster equivalent, from dozens of cuts from Levi's sword, Skarm's initial attack, and Centoo's flashing bladed legs as they continued to slice into the bulky monster steadily in rhythm. Centoo ran around the ogre in circles, slashing and slicing but staying out of reach whenever the ogre tried to grab or stomp.

Fortunately, this kept the ogre from trying to finish off Centoo or Skarm.

Unfortunately, this left it to fully focus its attention on Levi himself.