With nearly everyone in the team dead, as seemed to be happening more and more when they tried to tame bosses, they camped out for the day in the Control dungeon's final treasure room.

Forced to sit still with nowhere to go for once, Levi once again hauled out his accumulated crafting supplies to keep chipping away at the crafting paths he had access to. Reaching level 25 was only one half, after all. Unless he could craft the Summoner class evolution item by then, it wouldn't matter.

But as he was searching through his crafting supplies, something came up that he'd almost forgotten about in the bustle of daily action.

Unbound Dungeon Seed (Unique)

The soul of an unborn dungeon

Saturation: 5000/5000

Alignment: None

Please provide an alignment to guide your Dungeon Seed

Progress to deployment: 1/2

He'd been planning to wait until he had the Control essence that Laurence had been going to collect, but he'd already received a Control essence from one of the Control dungeons in his loop.

Was there any reason to wait? Adding an element wasn't the end of the world, it wasn't going to set itself up right then and there, surely. Most things required more triggering than that.

Levi pulled out the vial of Control essence, tall and thin, just the right size and shape for the oblong Seed to fit into. He stared into it, feeling oddly anxious about what he was about to do, then dropped the Dungeon Seed into the vial.

He wasn't sure what he expected, but the reaction was immediate and dramatic. The seed shone faintly golden, the glob of Control goo vanishing as it was sucked into the crystalline seed like water into a dry sponge.

Then, the liquid no longer holding it up, the crystal fell to the bottom of the vial with a ringing plink. It retained its yellow coloration, but the glow had subsided, leaving it sparkling and glinting but only with reflected light.

Breath held, he stared down at it.

Unbound Dungeon Seed (Unique)

The soul of an unborn dungeon

Saturation: 5000/5000

Alignment: Control

Progress to deployment: 2/2

Would you like to deploy your dungeon at this time?

Curiosity urged him to confirm it on the spot, but held himself back. As tempting as it was to accept the deployment option and see what happened, he wasn't going to do that while inside another dungeon. Or until he knew exactly where he wanted his dungeon to be located.

He tipped the newly-recolored seed into his hand and rolled it back and forth, feeling the slick tingle of its highly compressed mana buzzing against his fingertips. Eager to be used. Ready and waiting.

But he wasn't ready to deploy it just yet. Something else was nagging at the back of his mind. He closed his hand over the seed and scrolled through the crafting window.

In their downtime he’d made a start on several of the crafting paths, though never more than one or two, but even that was enough to recognize certain patterns. Things he’d half-forgotten with potions, with other items.

There were combinations that could be done even once a recipe was 'complete'. There were times that a finished product became a component in something more. Or... times when you could straight up overpower something by shoving more tokens into it. Many advanced metals were a combination of base ores with elemental tokens. Most advanced elixirs required base elixirs compounded and refined as ingredients.

Ordinary magical plant seeds could be overcharged.

Could a dungeon seed do the same?

He took out his vial of Destruction essence.

For a long time he'd assumed that elements were completely distinct things, with no possibility of them overlapping or combining. Layered on top of each other, yes, but always distinct. But now he had the Convergence Array to prove it was possible, didn't he?

If elemental tokens could be combined into a two-element or hybrid-element powerstone... what was to stop a Dungeon Seed from picking up some extra elements as well?

He smiled faintly at his own eagerness. It was rather strange to get this excited over something so simple, but there was a certain allure to breaking the rules.

If it turned out to be a one-only and Destruction overwrote the Control... well, lesson learned, and Laurence would be bringing him a replacement Control essence anyway.

If not…

Levi dropped the Dungeon Seed into the Destruction essence vial. It floated in the viscous liquid for a moment, then... slurped it up. For a moment it glowed both yellow and orange, then the seed fell to the bottom of the vial with a faint clink.

Levi picked it up and stared into it.

It shimmered, seeming to shift between yellow and orange with each tilt of a facet, with every variance of the light. He knew it had worked even before the message appeared.

Unbound Dungeon Seed (Unique)

The soul of an unborn dungeon

Saturation: 5000/10000

Please provide mana to saturate your Dungeon Seed

Alignment: Control, Destruction

Progress to deployment: 1/2

Levi laughed aloud as his world realigned. Maybe this was as much power as he could possibly cram into the Seed, but maybe it wasn't. This was clearly a peak item. He wasn't going to waste it by accepting limitations without testing them thoroughly.

He needed another elemental essence.

Unfortunately, those were a very rare drop. He'd only gotten the one so far, despite running this loop several times now. Levi added his available mana to the Seed, now that its capacity had doubled it was time to start charging it up again.

Then he got back to the boring work.

He chopped caustic flatleaf into tiny shreds and combined it with powdered gremlin horn in an elixir base, creating a thick orange sludge that could be applied to a weapon to add Destruction damage.

He ground a Control token into glittering dust and folded it into a sticky mass of angereel venom that gelled into a flat disc, a simple trap that would solidify when compressed, slowing whoever stepped on it for the second it took them to break free.

Once he'd unlocked as many of the available recipes as he could with the supplies he had to hand, he stowed away the rest and went to check the rest of the dungeon. A couple more mirror sprites had respawned, but Levi was wise to their tricks and without backup they were no match for him.

Then he returned to the end room, pulled out the dungeon seed, added some more mana to it, and put it away.

"You want to run on ahead with those two?" Gordon asked, seeing Levi's restlessness. "I'll be fine here."

"Yeah, I think I do. If you don't mind?"

Gordon pulled a book on flexibility exercises out of his bag. "Been carrying this around for long enough, may as well put it to work."

"Yoga? Good idea."

"I mean it this time, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it right."

"Good man. I'll leave you to it then. Lash? Iris?"

Iris dropped down from where she'd been hovering by the ceiling, but Lash was nowhere to be seen.

Levi checked his minion list, and, yes, Lash was alive and well, just... not waiting where Levi had left him.

"LASH!"

Iris tapped Levi's shoulder with one wispy tendril, then waved toward the rest of the dungeon.

"So he just went wandering around on his own, did he?"

Iris bobbed up and down in clear agreement.

"And here I thought we could go a day without any of you getting notions." Levi sighed and went looking for his wayward minion.

Iris bobbed ahead of him, tendrils swooshing to either side like a ponytail on a runner, almost... smugly? Was she happy to be getting Lash in trouble?

They eventually found their giant eye monster lurking down a glittterling-infested side route, crouched low to the ground with his flat whiplike tendrils raised over his eye like a cat ready to pounce.

"Lash--" Levi started, but before he could finish a tendril whipped out and snagged a glitterling just starting to emerge from its hive, slamming the creature into the floor and then battering it with three more tendrils. It immediately fell limp.

Lash bounded up, hovering beside Levi as though expecting praise, turning from facing Levi, to the dissolving glitterling, to Levi again.

Levi sighed. "Good job, I suppose, but you can't go wandering around on your own. Stay closer to the group, okay?"

Lash waved his tendrils in what might have been agreement... or might have been a dismissive wave.

Levi narrowed his eyes. "I'll be watching you. Come on, time to see what you guys can do."