"There, are you happy now?"

Gayle Jackson: Level 1

(Fighter)

She all but threw the sword back to Levi, chest heaving as she turned away looking both furious and distinctly unwell. Levi caught and sheathed the sword, unsure of what to do as she stalked across the field toward the entrance and disappeared back into the real world.

"You shouldn't have forced the issue," Cassandra hissed. "I could have convinced her. Now she'll feel wronged and never cooperate."

The unbound dilophosaur continued to hiss and claw angrily at the air; Gayle's attack had injured it, but not killed it. Levi gave Cen a nod, and the centipede quickly slashed down and put an end to its thrashing. "I saw an opportunity and I took it. Now she's Awakened. That's all we needed."

"I could have convinced her to be a medic and actually helped," Irene said. She didn't sound quite as accusatory as her sister, but she certainly sounded disappointed. "Now she's going to march straight home and never enter a dungeon again just to spite you."

"That doesn't bother me. I don't want to dictate her life. I just want as many people to have the chance to live as possible. When the fight starts, she'll have that much better chance to survive. If she's injured or trapped in a collapsed building, having health that can regenerate could save her from things she wouldn't be able to deal with without it. That's good enough for me."

"But her chances would be even better if she were higher than level 1," Cassandra growled. "And you just closed that door for at least until the invasion."

"Should I try to talk to her?" Irene asked.

Cassandra scoffed. "No! That's the last thing we should do. Let her sit and stew for a bit, she’ll calm down before long. It'll do more good than anything else. I'm sure she'll come up with something incredibly petty to wreak vengeance for the slight, but for now we're best off leaving her alone."

"You won't be getting anything this Christmas, I bet." Irene was clearly trying to lighten the mood, but the words came out as a weary sigh.

"That's fine," Levi said. "I wasn't counting on having her." If he was perfectly honest with himself, he'd not expected to have anyone but Irene and Peter, and maybe not even them. He'd almost resigned himself to fighting alone forever, at one point. Gordon was a surprise; Laurence even more so. He'd done his best for Gayle and if it wasn't enough, if she wasn't grateful, he'd not let it burden his conscience. He'd too many burdens already.

Cassandra strode off to hunt down the few remaining turkeys, and Levi let her go without comment.

"So, with the family drama out of the way, is now a good time to ask for investment tips?" Laurence asked, cheerily. "Since you're a time traveler and all."

Levi tried to think back, but soon shook his head. "I'm going to be honest, I don't remember much of anything about this year. The invasion overshadowed everything else so dramatically, I wouldn't be able to tell you who wins the election, let alone what investments were hot. Bitcoin?"

"Well, that’s old news. So what can you tell me?"

"Mostly what you already know,” he told Laurence. “Dungeon stuff. Details about the invasion. Demon types, strengths and weaknesses. We have a chart."

"We?” Laurence almost dropped his pencil as he fumbled for a blank page. “Are there more time travelers? Do you have a secret cabal? Can I join?"

"No, 'we' being the people I worked with in the future. I have a copy of their work. I don’t know if there are others whose memories were sent back, but if there are I haven’t met them."

"Anything you know, I'll be wanting."

Levi started to list off the information. Imps, crawlers, hellhounds, abominations, warriors, generals, Lords. "The names are ours. The system can't interpret their type or rank, only gives static when you try. It can give names for the most powerful ones, but if you're close enough to read a named demon's tag you're probably about to die. Over ten years across thousands and thousands of encounters, we have barely a hundred survivor reports. Some we only know the name of because of master scouts observing from miles away, because there's no one who's survived being even close to them.”

Laurence nodded along, scribbling rapidly as Levi described each of the demon types he’d heard of or encountered.

“Imps, hellhounds, and crawlers are the most numerous, by a lot. Imps, warriors, and generals are the closest to human, though they all have that black exoskeleton and emit flame from any exposed skin. Imps are smaller and shorter, tend to wear normal red or yellow flames, and love to throw that fire at anyone or anything in their way. Most imps tend to be about the equivalent of level 25, though I’ve fought ones that would give a level 80 a hard time. Hopefully there won’t be too many of those in the first wave.

“Hellhounds are similarly destructive, though their fire is a deeper red and they breathe it out in short bursts. One thing you should know about demon fire is that it’s solid and sticky. It doesn’t go out immediately if there’s no fuel, just keeps burning and rolling around until it finds something to consume. They do go out eventually, but it’s closer to days than hours. If you’re hit by it directly…” Levi sighed heavily. “It’s not pretty. Hellhounds act more instinctually, and are less wantonly destructive, but they’re much faster and if they get it in their heads to hunt you there’s no escaping them. Imps at least can be distracted or get bored. Hellhounds will chase you relentlessly, and in my experience tend to catch up to you sooner rather than later.”

“When you say hellhound, are they like dogs?”

“Roughly. They’re definitely wolf-like in shape, though—”

“I think we’re ready to go,” Cassandra interrupted, returning from cleaning up the last of the monsters. She distributed the handful of restoratives she’d collected from the treasure piles, and had a bow slung over her shoulder now. Levi offered her a Dark power stone for it, which she accepted eagerly, giving the bow a faint limn of purple-tinted shadow.

Irene had rejoined Peter and Gordon, Henry had leveled up - as had Peter and Irene.

It was already dark as they stepped out of the dungeon, probably close to midnight. Gayle hadn't returned, but no one seemed to expect her to have done so, and they had no way of knowing if she’d found her way back to the campground safely. They’d be walking for another hour, through the trees in the dark, but they were flanked by the centipedes and Henry and Becca and Frosty, and he doubted any bear would come close with the amount of noise and sheer predator power they possessed.

The others had their phones out almost in unison, flashlights flicking on. Peter remained absorbed with Henry, keeping up a running commentary to Irene and Gordon who walked on either side of him and his dinosaur.

Cassandra gravitated toward Levi and Laurence, her earlier anger seemingly forgotten. “So I’ve been thinking about this whole invasion thing…”

“We were just discussing that,” Laurence told her.

“If we only have a few months, we need to make plans now. Who are we going to bring in? How much can we afford to share? And what should our next steps be?”

"I think we need to tell as many people as possible," Levi said. “The problem the first time was that not enough people were able to fight until it was too late.”

"We can't tell the whole world, and we need to prioritize our own progress.” Laurence flipped through his notes one-handed, his phone light aimed at the notebook instead of the ground. “We could always try to tell the government…they would probably be the best option for getting people leveled. Nothing like military precision to maximize a resource."

“I don’t want to get involved in anything to do with the military or government,” Levi said firmly.

“Yeah,” Cassandra agreed. “We can get word out covertly, but don’t do anything to make too big a splash. They have plenty of dungeons, there's no need to give them more. They'll do what they'll do and we want to save some for the rest of us."

"Are they still seizing dungeons?” Levi asked. “I'd heard about that happening sometimes, but I thought it was only a few. This is an ongoing thing?"

"Yeah. Some of the first people who found dungeons posted about them on too-public sites, and soon found their dungeons appropriated by military forces."

"I didn't hear anything," Laurence put in. “You must have really done the research.”

“My brother-in-law disappeared off the face of the earth with a cryptic message about monsters, of course I did the research.” Cassandra’s eyes flicked to Levi with a hint of irritation, but she shook her head and returned quickly to topic. "Your little Doom Raider site flew under the radar, but if you'd gotten much more attention I wouldn't be surprised if your wiki turned into a beacon for the government to seize your dungeons too."

Levi felt suddenly grateful that he'd not gotten around to sending out a complete map of dungeon locations. "So we can't risk telling anyone directly?"

"There's plenty of ways around it," Laurence said, already thinking. "Only describe how to locate dungeons, not where they are. Tell people to form their own groups and do so quietly. Emphasize printing out information and obtaining physical copies of anything they'll want. Warn of an upcoming EMP."

"That won't be enough. We'll still have people unprepared when the invasion starts."

"There is no way to prepare everyone," Cassandra said. “I’ll find out how and where we can spread information quietly, if you’re sure you want to try to go wide, but the more people we tell the higher chance that someone in the government finds out. You can’t have it both ways. What matters more to you?”

Levi fell silent for a long moment, trying to decide. He did not want to risk any danger to himself or his family due to his knowledge. As much as he wanted to save everyone he possibly could… he couldn’t deny that his wife and son came first. And if there were any chance of his spreading information causing them to become targets…

“Privacy is more important. Get the word out as wide as you can without it being traceable back to us. If there’s even a hint of trouble… pull out.”

It wouldn’t be what he’d hoped, but he wasn’t naive enough to believe that people would magically decide to cooperate without the danger staring them in the face.

After the first wave, humanity would come together. The loyalty and solidarity he remembered would return. That would be when he could bring his knowledge safely to light. But right now… his family's safety came first.