If this were an ordinary dungeon run, the boss room door would have sealed, locking Levi and his team into a battle with what was likely to be an even bigger and more deadly foe - but at the same time, it would have locked out the angry horde of monsters hot on their heels.

Alas, this boss had been cleared recently enough that the door remained unsealed.

The angry horde of monsters crowded in right after them without so much as slowing. Lash did his best to block the entrance with his body, but that wouldn't hold them for more than a few seconds at most.

Skarm arrived a moment later and lay about the enemies with his claws, doing only fractional damage against the much-stronger enemies but at least providing a minor distraction.

Becca's health rapidly dropped. She was in the thick of it, and without enough mana to teleport free she reached zero before she could extricate herself, her name going grey as she fell.

Levi cursed and stabbed at the webbing tangling his legs together with his Destruction sword, severing the strands. Crackle was already buzzing anxiously beside the portal to advance to the second level.

A portal to a dungeon’s second floor could be differentiated from the exit portal by both shape and location. The exit portal would be at the back of the treasure room, a simple shimmer of impossible light filling a plain rectangular doorway.

The portal upwards, however, would be set off to one side or the other within the boss room once it had been cleared, and it would mimic the outside gate of the dungeon very closely in style. In the case of this particular Beast dungeon, the advancement portal appeared to be made of the raised claws of two dinosaurs, interlaced across the top and curving down into the ground at the bottom, disappearing into the stone of the arch in between.

Levi didn't have time to pause to admire the architecture. He grabbed Lash by one tendril, Skarm by a shoulder, and ran for the portal. He jumped across a ravine and onto a lower tier, then scrambled up a short cliff wall toward the portal, immensely glad he didn't have to fight anything here. The multi-level design of the boss room would be an absolute pain as a battlefield. Too many shelves for people to ambush from, too many cracks to fall in if you lost your positioning for even a moment.

Several blows impacted his back until Lash shifted position to shield him and instead the soul-seeker's health began dropping rapidly. It had already been below 30%. But they had only had to cross this last room and they'd be safe. Even if monsters would pursue across multiple rooms, it would take extraordinary circumstances for them to intrude on a different floor.

They reached the portal with Lash hovering at 11%, and Skarm at 22 health remaining.

Levi hurtled through, half expecting the monsters to defy convention and pursue him anyway. Blessedly, they did not.

That still left them with the entirety of the second floor ahead of them, and even Crackle seemed to agree they needed a break. In lieu of rushing on ahead, the scarab settled down on Levi's head.

Levi himself couldn't relax.

This first room was a dusty and dry plain of cracked mud, flat and open with nowhere to hide, until it abruptly bulged upward in three low hills toward the opposite edge of the huge room.

Unlike the first floor's opening room, it didn't have much in the way of variety. Just thirty or so of the spikysaurs, roaming in a thundering and intimidating pack.

Nope, nope nope nope, nope. As much as he'd love to grab one or twenty of those to take home to Peter, he knew a lost cause when he saw one. He was in no condition to fight one of these, let alone thirty. If Levi and his tiny escort were noticed, they were as good as dead.

Levi stood as still as he could, remaining as close to the portal as possible without stepping back through it.

Skarm's regeneration was pulling its weight, the gremlin's health and stamina refilling at rates Levi could only envy.

The twelve seconds Levi had to wait for each individual health point felt even more interminable while Skarm's ticked steadily upward without taking even two seconds between increases.

He couldn't help but wonder if there was some way to obtain that ability for himself, some hidden loophole in the system that would allow anyone to use the gremlin's racial power for stat increases. He needed Theo. Or Laurence, perhaps.

Then again, for all the rumors he'd heard over the years, stealing abilities from monster species had never come up in any credible company. And however much it felt like Levi was innovating and blazing new ground, he felt certain that everything he was discovering now had already been learned and lost in the past timeline. Probably more than once.

The spikysaurs trotted in their general direction. Levi tensed, ready to leap backward through the portal if necessary. The entire floor one horde scared him less than this hunting pack.

The pack flowed past, earth trembling beneath their feet, one passing so close its waving spike-club of a tail sliced into Levi's arm, but they didn't turn toward their visitors.

Levi exhaled in shaky relief. At this rate, it would be over a half hour before his health recovered sufficiently to risk another rush through the floor, and he didn't want to wait that long.

"Watch my back," he whispered, as soon as the dinosaurs were safely distant and they gave no sign of turning around to re-investigate.

He only had four health restoratives with him, after he and Gordon had used the vast majority in the fight against the harpies, though two were higher level ones. They had proportionally stronger debilitating side effects while they activated, but they could heal much more than the basic tier ones. Levi swallowed one, bringing his health over halfway back towards full, cutting twenty minutes off his recovery time once he came out of the debilitating weakness brought on by the elixir's potency. His mana and stamina would refill a bit more quickly, but he was used to running them dry regularly.

Lash was another matter. His mana regeneration was very good, but his health regenerated even slower than Levi's. He had a decently high total health, but once it got low it stayed low for far too long.

The dinosaur pack moved off toward the hills to the left, allowing Levi to relax a little more, but now the inaction was starting to get to him. The dungeon runs he'd been involved with in the first timeline, staying still was almost certain death. The fight was a rush from start to finish, racing to get to their targeted monsters and take them down before reinforcements could arrive, racing to get to the next room before the first started to refill behind you. Level 150 dungeons were something entirely different.

Even this dungeon, for all its pressing weight and its dozens or perhaps even hundreds of denizens, was tame by comparison. But Levi was also much more ill equipped this time around. His armor and weapons may have been standard issue mass-produced in the first timeline, but they'd been produced in mass by master crafters at the top of their skill pyramids.

Even the best he could find or create now paled in comparison. He missed his old armor. His old swords. Not that he would give up Beast Bite, he'd grown very fond of and reliant on the ability, but the ability to expand his sword into a shield at need was something he really could use.

His health continued to slowly tick upwards. Skarm was already fully recovered. Lash had barely reached 16% of his total health, though his available mana was over 300 already.

The dinosaurs spread out, fanning through the center of the room in a curve. For a moment, Levi felt absolutely sure that one of them was staring straight at him, but the pack made no move to advance on them.

Then Lash's mana dropped abruptly, and Levi froze. The entire dinosaur pack stopped in their tracks and perked up their heads, tense.

"What did you do?"

Lash's mana dropped again, then continued to drain before bottoming out completely.

One of the dinosaurs turned on the others, its border shifting from hostile to neutral.

Command. Levi had forgotten Lash's other power, mainly because Lash consistently refused to use it on Levi's instruction. Which wasn't entirely wrong. In most situations it was vastly more mana-efficient to completely immobilize a target with his terror gaze than try to take it over. His nightmare eye ability had a much higher success rate in addition to its low mana cost, and Lash only had the single level in Command.

But, while it may be highly situational, and Lash exceptionally stubborn, it seemed he did know a good opportunity when he saw one. The entire pack spun on its no-longer-allied member with a clamor of roaring and scratching.

Crackle jumped off Levi's head and buzzed forward, clearly indicating they should move.

Levi didn't stop to question. The scarab's instincts had been reliable so far. He sprinted forward after Crackle, Lash bobbing behind him, Skarm once again perched on his back.

The squabbling dinosaurs were fully occupied with tearing their traitorous friend apart, Lash's power buying critical seconds. They reached the tunnel to the next room and Levi glanced back to see nothing in pursuit.

Then he turned forward, crossing a hill, and saw the first glint of true hope in the distance.

The midpoint treasure room. Finally, a haven of true safety. There he could properly recover, repair his equipment, and perhaps even perform some quick upgrades.

Two more dinosaur packs roamed the intervening space, but Levi didn't slow.

All he had to do was reach that treasure room and everything would be fine.