The remainder of the Control dungeon was challenging, as usual for the rapidly-leveling dungeons, but until they reached the final room of its second floor they'd only lost Firelord and Flomper. Well, technically they'd lost Firelord twice, and Frosty once, but after using their revives the others would have to wait.

The mazelike first floor of the dungeon had been pitted with traps and spikes, all concealed or mimicked by the succession of hidden Mirror Sprites who stalked the halls. Angereels lurked in every corner, darting out and dancing just out of reach like overlong fishes swimming through the air. They ranged from white to orange to deep maroon in colour, and each had ghostly golden afterimages following them like a confusing aura of potential movements.

Like everything else in a Control dungeon, their main powers were to sow confusion. The angereel's specialty was goading delvers into a mindless rage and luring them into traps or distracting them from greater dangers.

The best thing to do with angereels was to hit them from a distance, which Firelord had been exceptionally helpful for, but they got to him before he could finish them and charged off in blind pursuit, throwing fireballs that missed and bounced off the ceilings or splashed against the walls. Levi had tried to order him back, but the angereels' emotional manipulation was stronger and the kobold ended up skewered by a dozen spears from a trap, leaving him dead for the second time that dungeon.

Pierce was carrying the kobold's body as they approached the second layer boss room. Unlike the first floor's mazelike layout, the second had been almost unnervingly straightforward. A series of small rooms, each with some traps or monsters, but nothing that proved challenging.

The first floor's boss had been a Phantom Harrier, one of the more annoying but thankfully straightforward of the potential Control creatures: a pure white hawklike bird with bladed wings and the ability to turn briefly invisible. That boss room had been vast, but most of its size had been in height, giving the harrier plenty of room to dive down at Levi and his team.

This second boss room was vast in a different orientation, a surprising change after all the close small rooms of the rest of the second floor. It spread out in a broad triangle, with the entry door on a long side and the exit at the opposite point, looking tiny with distance.

But between them and the exit floated something Levi hadn't seen since his first Control dungeon back when he'd been on his own; a giant golden eye floating silently in the middle of the room, faint ghost-shadow tendrils spread out behind it like a peacock's tail.

Level 5+

(Soul-Seeker)

Health 100%

Glitterlings glinted along the walls, grouped together in clusters pretending to be crystal formations, but Levi was more than wise to their tricks. A quick estimate put their numbers in the hundreds.

Glancing upward... the Soul-Seeker wasn't alone; it had brought a pal. The second giant eye, also level 5, floated close to the ceiling. This one was flanked by a dozen hovering Mirror Sprites, their wings a blur as they held themselves up.

So each of the twin bosses had an entourage. This was starting to feel more like the dungeons he remembered, though still tame in comparison to the twenty-floor-deep level 120 and higher ones.

"Looks like we'll have to be fighting blind for this one. Soul-Seekers have a very powerful mental-manipulation ability, bringing your deepest fears to life, but can only ensnare you if you meet their gaze. Tink, any chance you could interfere with that? Bend the light so we don't make eye contact?"

Tink shrugged and nodded.

"Then give it a try."

"Wish we had Flomper for this." Gordon peered at the giant eyeball floating by the ceiling, well within reach of an attack from the stone surface above.

Frosty clicked her crystalline legs disapprovingly, gesturing with one spidery leg to the ceiling as if to say 'Flomper isn't the only one who can attack from above.'

Shadevine was riding on Frosty's back, in his tiny vine centipede form as usual these days, and Plus was wrapped around her right foreleg. Gordon's shadevine had also reached his threshold since they started grinding here, but opted for Expansion instead of Branching, so Plus was looking a little pudgier and notably longer, wrapped around Frosty's leg three times instead of just one, while Shadevine was lithe and tiny, easy to conceal.

The creatures inside the room hadn't reacted while they stood outside the entrance and watched them but Levi knew the moment they entered the room everything would change, illusions flooding the space and attacks flying.

“It’s too big to fully control the space,” Gordon noted. “Even Pierce can only cover a fraction of it.”

“Then we stay together, defensive formations. Pierce can be a ceiling, Cen, Drok, and Centoo outer walls. Tink, think you can cover Pierce with an illusion between him and the Soul-Seekers so he doesn’t make eye contact?”

Tink nodded, pointing to Pierce and Drok, then shrugging as he waved his hand to the others.

“So two is the most he can guarantee, the rest of us will have to go blind.” If there were a way to be sure where the soul-seekers were facing, they could trade off watching and calling out directions, but having only two people capable of speaking - well, three if you counted Drok, but his instructions tended to be… unclear - limited their options. And also meant between the two Soul-Seekers they could both be taken out at once if they slipped up.

“That may work against the glitterlings, but what about the sprites? If they stay out of reach we’ll have no reference even if—”

Frosty’s claws clinked on the polished marble of the floor as she drew herself up to her full two-foot height.

“Alright, then you’re on sprite-hunting duty.”

“And Frosty?” She turned to Levi, still looking a bit defiant. “Try to get a shadevine on each of the Soul-Seekers while you’re up there. They’re the biggest threat and will be hardest to deal with.”

Two drew his knife. Skarm took his battle position atop Centoo. Levi and Gordon stood together as their minions formed a protective circle around them, Pierce twisting himself around so his heavily plated underside was up and his back formed a protective arch over their formation, coiling around again so he could walk forward with his front half, looking somewhat like a giant corkscrew with far too many legs.

They advanced together carefully, practicing moving as a unit, but one advantage to having a direct connection with their minions meant that it was much easier to coordinate.

Unfortunately, things started to go wrong the moment they stepped into the boss room.

Pierce was the first impacted, suddenly thrashing around wildly, scattering the party and almost killing Skarm before he suddenly flopped down, not moving. Drok let out a deep groaning wail that Levi had never heard before.

Something buzzed nearby and Levi struck out at it, his Beast Bite connecting and grounding it. He brought his Destruction sword around in a powerful slash, then continued to pulse mana through both weapons until the attacker stopped struggling.

He wanted so badly to sneak a glance, try to get some idea of what was happening. He knew Cen and Skarm's health had stabilized, Two was uninjured and lurking around a good distance away from the chaos, but Drok's health was falling fast as he continued to make that deep pained roar that never seemed to stop.

Glitterlings buzzed close by; Levi jumped into motion to slash them from the air before they could reach him.

"Tink? What's happening? Any progress?"

Tink hummed down, tapping Levi's arm urgently, then flew up and physically imposed himself in front of Levi's face, tapping his forehead.

Levi cautiously opened his eyes as Tink guided where to turn his head safely. Light seemed to twist and warp as Tink fought the enemy sprites for control of the area, but at least the area directly around Levi settled into stability as Tink's mana plummeted.

He saw the problem at once. The two Soul-Seekers hovered low, each fully focused on one of his minions. Despite the warping of light before Pierce and Drok's faces, whatever power connected their eyes to the Soul-Seekers' terrible gaze remained fully in effect. It must not rely on physical sight, but some mana-based optical attack.

Pierce lay still, head lolling listlessly to one side as he stared fixedly up at the Soul-Seeker slowly closing in, ignoring the dozens of glitterlings gleefully sparking at every vulnerable point across his massive body. His health was under half and falling steadily.

Drok crouched on one knee, hands clutched to his head, emitting that terrible endless shriek. The second Soul-Seeker had already closed the distance and had its shadow tendrils gripping his shoulders and arms to hold him still while five of its Mirror Sprites stabbed away at the ogre. He was doing better than Pierce, but only due to having fewer assailants.

Cen lashed out blindly at a swarm of glitterlings assailing him. Skarm and Centoo were fighting a sprite Skarm had managed to snag. Skarm's insane regen was showing its value, already his health crept steadily back upwards despite the severe damage Pierce had done in his initial rampage.

Two was skulking around the room, closing in on the second giant floating eye, but he was past the range of where Tink had claimed control over the light so Levi couldn't actually see him, just knew he was there.

More of the glitterling swarm came after Levi, but this time he could see them coming as well as hear, so he sliced through them with relative ease. A few required two hits, but most of the glitterlings' danger came from their dazzling aura and intense light nova abilities, not their ability to tank damage.

An instant later, Tink's hold over the area began to waver, rifts opening where there was floor, floor appearing over rifts, enemies disappearing or multiplying in dizzying array, reality warping at the edges as his mana finally ran out and the enemy sprites' illusions once again fully claimed the area.