Levi cast a Mana Ping at full strength, blindly, focused entirely straight ahead, desperately shoving all of his mana into it. It wasn’t a very good attack, but it was the only thing he had at the moment. If it didn't work...

Reality shattered. One moment he hung helpless in the grip of the Demon Lord who’d killed him in another lifetime, the next he struggled in the grip of the biggest eyeball he’d ever seen, ten shadow tentacles reaching out from where the eye should have connected to the rest of a body.

Level 1+

(Soul-Seeker)

Health 89%

The lidless sphere floated in the air before him, too big for him to wrap his arms around if he tried, its golden iris alone bigger than his torso. It had flinched back at the attack he’d fired, breaking their gaze but not releasing him from its shadow tendrils.

He slammed his eyes closed and turned away, pulse racing. Control dungeon. He’d never encountered a Soul-Seeker himself, but he still remembered the stories. From everything he knew, there shouldn't have been something this powerful in a level 1 dungeon. He'd expected glitterlings or perhaps mirror sprites. Soul-Seekers only appeared in dungeons well above level 10.

Weak physically, the danger of the Soul-Seeker was not in the constricting tentacles which it used to strangle its prey, but the paralyzing power of its nightmare gaze. Its eye captured yours, preventing you from looking away, then… well, survivor reports varied. Everything from replaying your worst memories to conjured scenes of your deepest fears, all intended to drive you to despair.

He could personally verify the accuracy of that assessment, now.

He’d managed to disrupt its paralyzing gaze, but it still held him in its shadowy tendrils. He knew its eye would be back upon him by now, so he’d have to fight blind to stand any chance of surviving.

The shadow tendrils wrapped around his chest held his arms tight to his side. He fumbled for his dagger, but though he found the hilt it proved impossible to shift his arm enough to draw it from its sheath.

The Soul-Seeker’s tendrils had some give, but not enough to move freely. Thankfully, that also meant the choking tendril wound around his throat wasn’t preventing him from breathing, just making it more difficult. Its grip really was weak and pathetic at this level.

It had completely disregarded his legs, so he twisted to kick the underside of its massive eyeball. Or where he assumed its eyeball probably was. He kept his eyes tightly closed, unwilling to give it an opening to snare him again with its nightmare paralysis attack.

Too vividly he remembered the feeling of absolute helplessness it had imposed - he even remembered himself making the decision to give up, rage rising up in him at the recollection. Unforgivable. This creature wasn’t allowed to make him give in to despair.

His foot connected with something, so he twisted and kicked harder.

Something caught his leg and jerked him off balance. In a split second decision he went with the motion, hurling himself backward and dropping his full weight onto the shadow tendrils holding him.

Sadly, the Soul-Seeker was stronger than he'd hoped. Instead of dramatically knocking them both to the ground, the maneuver left him hanging from its grip, several inches off the ground.

“Hey, Two, if you’re still around, could you help?”

Something poked at his back, and he heard the gremlin squeak in question.

“Can you reach my dagger?” Levi shifted, trying to move his side down lower, continuing to kick the eye with his free leg for good measure.

Gremlin Two jumped; Levi could hear him hissing as he did, the slap of his feet against he floor, then again. This time he grabbed the handle of the dagger, and Levi felt as it slipped free of its sheath.

“Good! Now cut off some of these tentacle things.”

Gremlin Two made a worried sound.

“Don’t worry if you hit me too, I’m wearing lots of extra layers. Just cut me free.”

One of the Soul-Seeker’s tendrils slapped across his face. Clearly it didn’t like him strategizing with his minion.

Well, Levi didn’t like being slapped in the mouth with a shadow tentacle from a giant eyeball.

He bit it, throwing himself forward in the process, aggressively tearing a chunk of the shadow substance free and spitting it defiantly in the general direction of where he guessed the eye might be. It tightened its grip, another loop slipping around his throat, holding him more firmly.

Something impacted his back, then he heard the slap of Two’s feet on the ground as he landed and jumped again. Levi smiled. If he’d been alone, the Soul-Seeker might have been enough to take him down. No, it would have for certain; only Gremlin Two’s intervention had been enough to remind him that it was an illusion of despair and not reality. There were good reasons that even the strongest wouldn’t brave even a beginner dungeon alone.

The Soul-Seeker twisted violently, as one of Levi’s arms was suddenly free. He reached up until he came in contact with something round and slick, then started clawing at it with his bare hand. His fingernails were too short and even to do much damage, but it made him feel better and probably would drop the evil eyeball by at least a percent or two over time.

Then Levi was falling, the shadow tendrils abruptly releasing him. He hit the ground hard, unprepared for the impact, but adapted quickly. Rolling to his feet, he tilted his head to listen. The Soul-Seeker moved silently, without even the whisper of air to mark its passage, but he could hear Gremlin Two’s hissing breaths.

He could only think of one reason to have been discarded like that. The Soul-Seeker had decided Two was either easier prey, or a more dangerous target that needed to be taken out first.

Levi grinned. Time to show it was wrong on both counts.

The urge to open his eyes and steal a look at the scene was almost overwhelming, but he remembered all too vividly how seamlessly it had entranced him the first time. Some effects bypassed resistances altogether, and some resistances he just didn’t have in sufficient quantity yet in this reverted timeline.

The risk would be too great. With great effort he resisted the temptation and ran forward blind.

“Two, if you’re still conscious, give me a signal.”

There was no response from the gremlin, just the same quick hissing breathing.

Levi made some quick calculations as he ran forward, judging by the direction he’d been thrown, the relative angles, and the sound indicating Two’s location.

Then he jumped, snapping his foot out in a huge, sweeping kick fueled by all the gathered momentum of his run-up.

Something squished beneath his foot, a liquid vibration that absorbed the impact. He bounced off, spinning as he landed, then shifted into a boxing stance and followed up with a rapid flurry of punches against the yielding side of the massive floating eye.

The strangely silent fight in blind darkness made the whole thing feel surreal. Only the sound of Levi’s panting breath and his heartbeat rushing in his ears, the impacts of fists against whatever rubbery surface made up the Soul-Seeker, and Gremlin Two’s faint exhalations broke the quiet.

Tendrils snapped out to constrict around Levi’s arms, holding them in place.

He wasn’t going to stand still for that any more. It was one thing to wrap him up when he was immobilized by horror and trapped in a nightmare illusion. Now? No.

Levi twisted and yanked, jerking the eye thing off balance, then used the anchor point provided by the tendrils holding his arms to pull himself into the air, launching into a flip that slammed him bodily into the side of the eye.

For a moment he slid down its rounded side, feet unable to find purchase on its perfectly spherical body. But though partly intangible, the shadow tendrils were still physically present. One leg caught in the tangle of shadow at the back, from which all its appendages originated.

Levi hissed in triumph and twisted, clamping his leg around the cluster of shadow tendrils like a gymnast. By his calculations, he now hung upside-down beneath the giant eye, facing away from its deadly pupil, in a location it couldn’t possibly turn to look at.

Safe.

Now he just had to figure out how to win.