"Tink, you're up."

Tink saluted and flew out through the portal, his wings a blur.

Levi waited several seconds as the sprite's mana dropped until it stabilized, indicating the illusion was safely in place outside.

"No time like the present."

His new sabercat got the hint and sprang toward the exit portal, ramping up toward full sprint.

While Tink's visual adjustments should be sufficient to shield Levi from notice by the human Awakened outside, dungeon monsters had much more acute mana senses. Ordinarily, basic masking would be enough to conceal a low level Awakened presence from that extra sense, but there would be no hiding the Destruction essence glowing from his hand like a magical beacon.

Levi ducked and leaned forward, streamlining himself as much as possible against the cat's back. He wasn't sure how long this chase would continue. Any tiny advantage could be essential.

Then they were through.

Levi had forgotten how brightly-lit the compound was, and he'd also lost track of time. It was near dawn now, the sky starting to pale at the edges but no sunlight showing itself yet. But aside from reorienting to spotlights and nighttime, something else demanded his attention immediately. Namely, the veritable ocean of faster creatures milling about waiting for him. Mainly sabercats and kalvex, but he did see the occasional dire-turkey as well.

Bolts of blue light from one of the watchtowers flew into the ranks of the waiting monsters, but they didn't seem to care. They had eyes only for Levi, rushing in at him with renewed vehemence the moment he emerged.

So if he wanted them to take care of the rest of the guards out here, he'd have to give them a little encouragement.

Even as he scanned the area and formed thoughts, his sabercat was already in motion, rushing at the wall of oncoming attackers full speed. Before Levi had time to even consider the consequences, his cat jumped into the air, colliding with an approaching roc-lobster and driving its claws deep into its chest.

The lobster-bird screeched and grabbed for them, its talons and pincers all raised to grasp. With a burst of stamina, Levi's sabercat leaped off the creature, using it as a launch point to soar high over the furious creatures below. Immediately the horde rounded on them in pursuit.

He hadn't made it halfway to the outer compound walls before the building set around the dungeon popped out of the ground and went flying. The structure spun a slow half turn, before crashing to the ground a good thirty feet further away in a crumpled pile with a metallic clatter.

Levi glanced back. The first tyrannosaur had emerged, roaring its challenge as it joined the hunt and thundered after him.

The ground shook. A moment later the huge dinosaur was joined by a second, then a third, then another whole pack of kalvex.

Levi felt much more vulnerable on a tiny low-to-the-ground cat mount than he had being able to fly overhead on his lobsteroc.

Nothing to be done. He'd committed to this course of action and he had a job to do.

Instead of taking off in a straight line as far away from the monsters as possible, he first guided his mount in a circle around the compound, keeping to its stable pace and only drawing on stamina when absolutely necessary to evade a bite or a claw.

To their credit, the Awakened on guard poured attacks into the horde of monsters from every direction, dropping about one in five of the monsters even as they continued pouring out of the dungeon gate. Despite their increasingly desperate circumstances, no answering rush of reinforcements appeared from any of the other buildings. Everyone not on the doomed dungeon-clearing team must already be on the watchtowers.

Levi allowed himself no regret as he circumnavigated the compound in widening circles, keeping just ahead of the monsters in his wake as they crushed the structures and trampled the fence like the steel structures were made of cardboard. He couldn't afford to mourn them. Only act.

His mount was forced to lean more heavily on stamina as they looped around a second time, the fliers closing the distance and lobster claws of titanic proportions snapping just behind them, kalvex rushing to cut them off.

A pole fell over with a crash, the light flickering briefly as its angle was thrown askew. Levi wasn't even sure how they still had floodlights with this much mana in the air.

The village surrounding the compound was dim in comparison, hard to make anything out in the pre-dawn. He didn't see any sign of Javier, so he could only hope the man had succeeded in evacuating at least some of the civilians. This was going to be messy, there was no way around it.

He kept going until there were no signs of further resistance, no more manablades or glow of armor, no more arrows of light firing into the monster horde.

Levi turned his mount and they took off at full sprint straight out into the desert.

He just had to stay ahead of them long enough for the rest of his Destruction essence infusion to fade, and he couldn't do that in the cramped confines of the compound. Nor by running around and around in the village - even if he were willing to be so wantonly destructive.

Once the Destruction essence wore off the monsters' rage would end. They'd lose interest in hunting Levi so vehemently, rampage over, and split up and wander about like dungeon monsters normally did when stranded away from their home dungeon. They'd eventually dissolve into nothing, but that would take a few days and they could do a lot of damage to anything and anyone in their vicinity during those few days.

But outside the dungeon on the open ground, Levi had the advantage. Between keeping his mount stocked with stamina restoratives and his own overwhelming destructive capabilities, they were able to outrun or evade all but the fastest of their pursuers. Those who caught up to them anyway found out firsthand how dangerous an Awakened human wielding pure Destruction could be.

At first, it required his full attention to stay aboard his new mount as they raced ahead of the thunderous army of monsters closely pursuing them, but as the chase wore on he adapted to the movement and grew more comfortable with the bounding gait of his sabercat.

If they'd remained trapped in the close confines of a dungeon, he'd have been cornered and killed readily. If not for the stamina restoratives he kept feeding his new cat to keep its regeneration high, they'd have been run down long before the destructive power faded.

They ran as dawn brightened the sky, then ran some more as daylight heated the air and sent heat shimmers warping the light. More than once they had to change route to avoid running their pursuit into towns, but as with the harpies back in the lightning dungeon, the ability to use restorative elixirs tipped the scale slowly but inexorably to Levi's advantage.

He ended up using another three stamina restoratives for his cat as each wore off, before finally their pursuit began to fall behind. Then, not long after, he felt the last remnants of the Destruction power fade away. The monsters behind them began to split up and spread out, clumps of them drifted off in pursuit of wild animals or just tired of chasing someone who continually kept ahead of them.

Levi cheered to the sky as he steered his sabercat in a wide arc to circle around the now-aimless monsters, careful to keep out of their range. Now that he didn't have the unnatural boost of the Destruction essence, they were back to being a deadly threat he had to avoid at all costs.

It had worked. Against all odds, he had found the way through to victory.

He leaned close over his mount and they raced back to where his family waited.