The treasure room added another stamina and two health restoratives, finally, as well as another greatsword, a bundle of arrows, - which he split between himself and Gordon, - and a tracing. This item would flawlessly transfer its tracing onto any object, but it was also much more restrictive than true crafting. Levi recognized it as a basic reinforcement. It would top out at around level fifteen, so he’d be selling it rather than try to use it.

“Where’s Flomper?”

“I have her body.” Levi had quietly collected Flomper’s remains, what little remained in the wake of the Destruction Essence, while Gordon wasn’t paying attention and stashed it securely. For all his words, the habits of protecting anyone who didn’t have to be involved from the full extent of this reality were strong. “I’ll revive her as soon as my cooldown comes off.”

He'd not expected Revive to show up for Flomper, given her connection was to Gordon and not to him, but the ability showed the countdown exactly as it did for his own minions. He surmised that the ability at least carried over between party members, if not universally. It could be very useful in future, having two people able to revive each others' minions freely, but he could tell now wasn't the time to give Gordon leveling advice.

Gordon looked around at the complete absence of carnage, a lost look on his face, then followed Levi’s urging to exit without speaking again.

The trip to Dungeon 4 was quiet and uneventful.

They met Levi’s trade partner in the first room, which had already been cleared. The stranger waiting for them reacted immediately when he saw the centipedes, shifting into a somewhat sloppy combat stance and pointing his spear at them.

Kaden Verinski: Level 4

(Fighter)

"What is this?" Kaden demanded.

"Stand down,” Levi ordered. “They're my minions, no danger to you."

Kaden didn't relax. "That's impossible. No one can tame monsters."

Levi waved a hand. "Cen, Centoo, back off a bit." They did as commanded, coiling up beside the door in as docile a way as two eight-foot stone-plated centipedes could. Skarm hopped off and strutted over to Levi's side, looking for all the world like a tiny bodyguard.

Kaden watched them warily with clear astonishment.

Levi laid out the agreed-upon items he'd brought. "For your Ice token."

The fighter relaxed, inspected the items, then tossed Levi the token. "What else do you have?" he asked curiously, peering at Levi's bulging backpack.

"Everything's listed on the website." Well, except the new items from the last dungeon. “I also have a greatsword and a reinforcement tracing.”

"Can I see?"

Levi shrugged and held up the items.

Kaden seemed particularly interested in the tracing fragment. "I have a Destruction token too," he offered.

"I have plenty of those."

Kaden grimaced. "Yeah, everyone has them. Not sure what good they are."

Levi smiled. "Ah, I can tell you that. They're usable in crafting, in upgrading power armor and weapons, and in triggering certain explosive traps."

"Crafting and upgrading are the same, aren't they?"

"No. Crafting is creating new items. Everything you guys have been doing so far has been upgrading."

“Is there anything you’ll take for it?”

“Restorative elixirs?”

Kaden wavered, but shook his head. “I don’t have many and need all I have.”

“Understandable. Do you have any plants or ingredients?”

“No.”

Levi returned the tracing to his bag, and the eyes of the fighter followed.

Skarm took a half step forward, grinning and flexing his gleaming sharp claws.

Kaden took half a step back. “You’re sure they’re safe?”

“Absolutely. I am their dungeon now.”

He stared at Levi in astonishment. “You’re a dungeon? What kind of things can you make? Is that why you have so much treasure?”

“Not like that.” Really? They’ll disbelieve the existence of a Tamer class, but take someone claiming to be a dungeon at face value? “More their lives are sustained by me and centered around me. If I unbound them, they’d likely go feral and attack anyone in sight, then disappear into nothing once their innate mana ran out. But as long as they stay connected to me, they’ll be loyal and unwavering.”

Skarm glared up at Levi with clear affront.

“If you’re saying you’d be loyal even unbound, then that’s not a hypothesis I’m eager to test,” Levi muttered to him quietly. “Neither of us knows what would happen, and I do know that you’d end up dissolving sooner or later.”

Skarm narrowed his eyes, squeaking something indecipherable, and stomped his foot.

“You’re not loyal solely because your life depends on me continuing to sustain your existence?”

Skarm nodded.

“That’s true,” Levi said thoughtfully.

The gremlin began to smile.

“It’s also because I’ve bound your will with magic,” Levi stage-whispered.

Skarm scowled.

“So how do I become a dungeon too?” asked Kaden.

“I’ve posted the steps for becoming a Tamer on the wiki. Basically, you’ll have to force a dungeon creature to submit to you, then devolve your original class and start over.”

“It’s worth it,” Gordon put in. “Tamer is so much better than Fighter.”

Kaden seemed to consider it a moment, his eyes flicking to the pair of Stone Centipedes by the door, then to Skarm standing boldly in front of Levi.

“You say you know how to do it?”

Levi considered leaving him to his own devices, but he didn’t like the idea of sending someone off into danger. He knew he couldn’t actually protect everyone in the world, but he could at least watch the back of anyone in his vicinity long enough to get them started on a better path. “I can show you.”

If Kaden had realized how close he was to a threshold level, he'd probably have refused. But Levi could see him wavering, and finally nodded. "If you can help me, I'll do it. I'd rather be a beastmaster than a fighter anyway."

"Tamer. Beastmaster is another class altogether."

“You never mentioned the Beastmaster class,” Gordon said. “Only Summoner. Is it another evolution from Tamer?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a list of these somewhere?”

Levi shrugged. “I haven’t been focusing on classes. Monster info and how to survive dungeons, and trying to get word out about the demons seem more important.”

Gordon shook his head. “More important in the long run, maybe, but right now is the time when people are making the sort of decisions that will define their lives. If I hadn’t asked, you’d have let me go on being a Fighter.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Fighter. It’s a good class. High survivability.”

“But it won’t be the best class for everyone.”

Kaden interrupted. “Is there a mage class?”

“Well, yes, but that requires the participation of someone already Awakened and past the second threshold to unlock.”

“What about healer?”

“Requires medical knowledge and a group over the third threshold.”

“Druid?”

“An advanced class evolution from Tamer.”

“Shapeshifter?”

“Evolution from Scout.”

“How do you get Scout?”

“Remain undetected in the close presence of monsters for… an hour? Two? Something like that.”

“What other cool options are there?”

Levi spread his arms. “A lot? We’ve only scratched the surface. It’s been theorized that every class has between two and five evolutions, and each advanced class probably has another set of its own. But the number of people who’ve reached the second evolution is minimal. Some say there’s a third, but it’s never been satisfactorily proven.”

Kaden and Gordon were both giving him confused looks. Or, no, Gordon looked concerned.

“Who do you hang around with?” Kaden asked, sounding overawed. “No one in our network is past level 6.”

Levi paused to decide on his story before answering. He didn’t want to outright lie, but he wasn’t willing to risk revealing the whole truth to any strangers until he was sure of his own and his family’s safety. Having Irene and Peter kidnapped by someone who wanted to blackmail him for knowledge of the future would be a nightmare scenario. Until he could be sure they couldn’t be used against him, and he was strong enough to handle anything the unscrupulous could bring against him, he’d have to keep his time-traveler status on the down-low.

“I was involved with a military group for a time. Several of them were much stronger than me, and I picked up a few things.”

“I knew the military was involved.” Kaden looked pleased with himself.

Levi didn’t bother correcting him. The more he thought he was right, the less he’d think about the inconsistencies in Levi’s honest but deceptive answer.

“Did you still want to become a Tamer?” he asked. “I can watch your back and guide you through it. You shouldn’t attempt it on your own.”

“I don’t know, I’d really like the sound of Shapeshifter.”

“It’s an expensive class and slow to level. Because you’ll spend a lot of time absorbing monsters for their abilities instead of killing them, you’ll gain experience much slower than everyone else,” Levi warned. “You’ll have to put in a lot more work to stay relevant and not be left behind. It’s certainly not an easy choice.”

“I didn’t join a secret group fighting life or death battles in honest-to-god dungeons because I’m looking for the easy choices in life,” Kaden retorted. “How do I get shapeshifter?”

Levi thought back, trying to piece together all the rumors he’d heard over the years into a cohesive tutorial.

“You’ll need to reach level 25 minimum as a Scout, first, then use an evolution orb to evolve it into Shapeshifter. The recipe isn’t common knowledge, but it involves a lot of monster parts so you’ll want to start saving any of those you find from now on. Then you, unless I’ve been misinformed, have to eat any monsters you want to shapeshift into.”

This was the sort of uncomfortable territory that he wouldn’t ordinarily tell the public at large, but if Kaden was going to make an informed decision about his entire future build, he had to know.

“It usually takes a dozen or so consumed monsters to start integrating their forms," Levi continued, "sometimes much more. They start to break down as soon as they’re killed, so best practice is to eat them alive. Speeds up the process a lot, I’ve heard.”

Gordon’s look of concern intensified, and Kaden looked unsure. “Won’t eating dungeon monsters make you sick?”

“No. They’re nutritionally inert. Neither beneficial nor detrimental, unless you’ve got an absorptive class like Shapeshifter to translate between the foreign mana-based material and your body. Then you can reap some benefits from it.”

For a while, they’d been a fad diet; eat mana creatures at one or two meals a day instead of food, lose weight as they temporarily tricked your body into thinking you weren’t starving. Then the second invasion pretty much destroyed any semblance of normalcy that had been regained with the introduction of magic and monsters, and that was that.

It had also been theorized that someone past the twentieth threshold might be sufficiently composed of mana themselves to begin metabolizing consumed monsters directly, but that was another thing that had never been tested or proven.

"I'm not sure if I want to do that," Kaden muttered uncertainly.

"I wouldn't either. Monsters are disgusting, and shapeshifting is only so useful. It's slow and when you're stuck against something capable of beating whatever form you have on, you'll go down as easily as anyone else."

Kaden nodded. "After all, with Tamer, I can have all the monsters, not just one at a time, and that seems like a better way than eating them.”

“Good choice. Let’s go.”