Levi crossed the empty boss room to the empty treasure room beyond before sitting down, utterly exhausted.

"How much further?"

Crackle buzzed out into the boss room. Levi had to lean out to follow his progress. The scarab landed atop the portal up to the third floor with a satisfied click of his wings.

"That's the last one? Good."

Levi drank his next-to-last health restorative, the new mana restorative from the crafting room, and another stamina restorative to keep his regen focused on his now-emptiest pool.

The stronger elixirs had more dramatic side effects compared to their weaker counterparts; the dizzy rush and sensory whiteout from the mana elixir was more pronounced and lasted longer, a lingering daze and ringing in his ears holding on even after the immediate effects had faded. The health elixir left him lying helpless as though his every muscle had turned to water, barely able to breathe, though thankfully that only lasted a few seconds more than its base form.

Between them Levi's health was fully restored and his mana well over half. Stamina was the slow one, since its restorative only redirected his own internal regeneration rather than directly providing anything, but with over twenty a minute it took less than fifteen minutes to let it recover to full.

As impatient as he was to get on with it, he forced himself to wait the entire duration, then lingered another few minutes once the stamina focus wore off to let his mana regenerate a bit more too.

He'd barely made it through the second floor, and that had been with Lash. The third would be even harder and he was running out of minions.

Something nudged at his back.

Levi frowned. Skarm was idly scratching at the walls and Crackle was still on his head. So what--?

Bump. There it was again. Something poking him from inside his backpack.

It took a moment to remember his newest acquisition. He'd entirely forgotten the fish Skarm insisted he tame back what felt like a very long time ago.

"Alright, fine, you can come out. Let's see what you're good for."

Bladefin emerged. Twelve of him, forming up into a small swarm moving in slow shifting circles.

Levi looked at the flying fishes, then at Skarm, then back at the fish.

"Huh."

Bladefin: Level 11

(Jagged Bladefin)

Strength: 1

Health: 50/50

(+4/min)

Psyche: 8

Mana: 91/204

(+55/min)

Spirit: 2

Stamina: 110/110

(+5/min)

Levi had to double check that he was reading that right. Fifty-five mana per minute, almost one per second, and they were only level eleven?

Skarm crossed his arms and grinned smugly.

"Now you're going to make me wish we had a few more of these."

Bladefin bobbed in midair, then one of him writhed in place for a moment, splitting off into another copy which joined the milling swarm.

"That can't be right--" Levi started, but a moment later one of the other iterations vibrated and duplicated, bringing the total up to fourteen.

"How--"

Shaking off his disbelief, Levi delved deeper into the fish's abilities.

Jagged Bladefin Abilities

Replicate

Tier: 5

Cost: 40 mana

Create a replica of the core creature.

Mana and Stamina are shared between all replicas. Replicas cannot leave the control radius of the core creature. If the core creature is killed, the first replica in hierarchy will become the new core.

Max group size: 16

Blade Flare

Tier: 1

Cost: 25 mana

Extends all fins into a broad arc of jagged blades with high piercing capacity.

This was... quite different from Crackle's ability to duplicate.

Levi flicked back and forth between them a few times, comparing.

Crackle Abilities

Duplicate

Tier: 2

Cost: 50 mana

Create a duplicate of itself. Duplicates share a mana pool, and the mana cost of the duplicate is a sustained upkeep cost until one is killed. (Other resource pools remain distinct.)

As long as one survives, the swarm survives.

Corrosive Claws

Tier: 1

Passive

Even a scratch from a Rust Scarab can leave lingering damage.

On the surface, they both cost roughly the same and did very similar things. But the differences were worth noting.

Crackle had no explicit limit on his duplicates, and each had its own distinct stamina pool. However, he had a different limitation than Bladefin; the fact that the mana cost of a duplicate Crackle couldn't be recovered. Replicate could be recovered from and recast within a minute.

On the one hand, it scaled up the swarm much faster, but on the other it had a hard cap. At tier 5, the ability to replicate was already maxed, so the bladefin swarm would only ever be a group of sixteen or fewer. Whereas if Levi put Crackle's next threshold entirely into Duplicate, it would bring the cost down to 10 mana, which would allow Crackle to match Bladefin for number even without putting any more points into Psyche. If Levi did continue stacking Psyche for the scarab, Crackle could easily be up to twenty or more copies within a few levels.

"So you can only do this a couple more times, then you're done. Got it. That's less terrifying."

The Jagged Bladefins spread out a bit, forming a protective field between Levi and the previous room, its many bristling sharp edges forming a surprisingly effective-looking shield.

"Well, that's... better than nothing." He looked down at Skarm, then back up at the hovering milling swarm of flying fish. "I'm not promising you can stay, but... I'm willing to consider it."

Skarm grinned and did a tiny celebratory dance, the swarm of fish diving down to flow around him in what Levi took to be a gesture of appreciation for his championing of their cause.

They were no Lash, but at the very least they could slow down pursuit. Sixteen fish slamming their spiky bodies into an opponent, he could personally attest, was not ineffective.

But at the same time, the knowledge brought with it its own concerns. The thought of all those swarms of fish he'd been running from actually being only a handful of core creatures was terrifying. He'd been imagining that room must be fully restocked already to have so many monsters in it, but if you could get a hundred fish out of five or six?

"I hate swarms," Levi grumbled.

At least they had no obligation to traverse this level again. He glanced from the portal up to the third floor to the portal back down to the first, which stood beside the advancement portal in a less dramatic frame. The ground floor still contained Becca's body somewhere, so once he thought of a plan to get through the dungeon properly he'd need to backtrack that floor at least to retrieve her.

"Alright, then, back in the bag for now Bladefin. Any you can't fit, try to keep up."

Levi secured Lash's body more tightly to his back, then glanced at his revive cooldown. Still over an hour to go. Even if traversing this floor had felt like an all-day trial, it had taken less than two hours.

He waited a minute while the three remaining outside-Bladefins duplicated to four, then five, hitting the swarm's maximum body count, then stepped into the portal up to level three.

This floor wasn't like the first two, a vast open landscape spreading out below him in every direction, a mountain range if it had been cut off near the peaks and compressed together. The rooms in the floors below had been huge, but this was on another scale entirely. For an unAwakened human it might take days or weeks to trek across.

Four sharp peaks rose throughout the room, one close to the entrance and a bit to the left, the other three grouped together in the far right corner. Numerous lower and rounder peaks filled in the space between, complete with cliffs, shelves, and tumbled rock in narrow shadowy passes.

Just ahead and to the right a low shelf connected the entrance to another, taller mound. Following the ridge line, there was a clear path heading in that direction, curving around the right half of the room, slowly climbing, until it arrived at the three peaks in the far corner.

Judging by the silhouettes Levi could see even from here, that path would be heavily contested by the larger and hungrier variety of dinosaurs wandering the region.

This was it. Somewhere in this vast range, helplessly chained in some cave, were Levi's wife and son. All the fury and fear he'd been suppressing rose back to the surface, ready to explode at any moment.

"You know how to find them?" he demanded of Crackle, his voice almost unrecognizably cold.

The scarab bobbed in timid assent.

"Show me."