“I won’t be coming with you.”

Levi Morrison took Gordon’s hand, clasping his arm in respect. “I understand. Thank you. You’ve done more for me than you’ll ever know.”

“I could say the same.”

The two men stood a moment, nodded in acknowledgement, then Levi stepped back.

Beyond his friend stood the little house he’d visited in a past life. Nancy stood on the porch watching them, one hand on the post by the steps, looking fairly dazed. Levi didn’t remember his friend’s wife clearly, more as a concept of a person than the full reality, and something told him now wouldn’t be a good time to try renewing the acquaintanceship.

Perhaps once the world was no longer in danger of imminent invasion.

“Take care of yourself, Gor,” Cassandra said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek and a clap on the shoulder. “If I hear you got yourself killed somehow stupid I’ll hunt you down.”

“No worries, Cass. My team will look out for us.”

Pierce, the massive centipede coiled halfway around the house, raised his oversized head to nod at them in confirmation.

“That won’t always be enough.” Irene stepped closer, giving him a tight but brief farewell hug. “If you need help, send for us. We’ll come if we can.”

Gordon tapped the fist-sized scarab resting on his shoulder. “Will do.” The Crackle copy fluttered his wings then resettled his shell over his round furry body.

Levi’s eyes lingered on the scarab, their only source of communication. “I wish I could do more.”

“You’ve done what you can. More than most. We’ll be fine.”

“And you’re sure you’re good on equipment?”

“I’m good. Thank you.”

Levi turned and walked back to where the rest of the group waited. A dozen other Awakened humans who’d signed on with their upcoming training mission, along with close to a hundred monsters of various types and sizes belonging to the various Tamers.

Something slammed into his shin, making Levi stumble. He looked down to see a white ball of fluff with eight bright teal eyes and thin crystalline legs. One leg carried with a dark translucent purple vine wrapped around it like an ornate bracelet.

Frosty, seeing she’d caught his attention, skittered angrily back and forth between Levi and Gordon.

“You want to come with us?”

The frost spider bounced in excitement, then ran back to Gordon and hid behind his legs.

“We’ve got different lives,” Levi explained gently. “We wouldn’t be able to travel together forever.”

Frosty let out a string of high-pitched distressed hisses. Enough that Plus, the shadevine on her arm, lifted its top end and prodded at her in its best approximation of comforting.

“Go ahead.” Gordon unbound the spider and shadevine, motioning them toward Levi. “I know you love exploring dungeons, and there won’t be many of those around here.”

Frosty started forward, stopped halfway to look back, then ran and jumped onto Gordon’s chest. She skittered up his body, pressing her floofy face against the side of his cheek for a long moment.

Gordon reached up and patted her with a chuckle. “I love you too. Now go save the world. That’s not something you can do from here.”

Frosty snuggled against his neck a moment longer, then hopped down and marched over to Levi with an obvious attempt to restrain her inclination to bounce in excitement. Her eagerness showed clearly anyway.

“Anyone else want to leave with them before it’s too late?” Gordon scanned his other minions.

Sparky, the glittering, settled down on Pierce’s head without hesitation. Pierce reared up slightly, orienting himself in a protective posture around the house. Flomper, the burrowing oversized prairie dog, crossed her furry arms across her chest, head raised disdainfully.

Jayke and Silvie, Gordon’s harpies from the group they’d captured back in the Lightning dungeon, exchanged screeching and gesturing with each other, then turned to Levi’s half of the flock to continue the conversation.

Elmire Huntington the Third, Gordon’s only gremlin, thumped himself on the chest and waved back toward the house.

Storm, Levi’s harpy leader, gestured to the flock and made a slashing motion with one wing, dividing Levi’s four in half. Silvie nodded and flew toward Gordon and Levi, Storm, Harpy 1, and Harpy 2 following.

She gestured between the two base level harpies, waving them toward Gordon, then tapped her own chest and pointed a wing toward Levi’s contingent.

“I think she wants to trade herself out for the two little guys?” Levi shrugged. “I’m fine with it, if Gordon is. Storm and Silvie have their combination attack sequence, so it makes sense to keep the set together.”

“An extra flying scout to keep an eye out, sounds fine to me.” Gordon unbound Silvie, as Levi did the same with Harpy 1 and Harpy 2. The re-taming didn’t require injuring anyone, as the minions attempted no resistance. “But you two are going to need proper names. How about… Robin and Raven.”

The newly-named harpies screeched happily, then went to join Jayke where he sat on the roof.

Silvie tucked a wing through Storm’s, the two screeching softly to each other.

“Anyone else want to stay here?” Levi asked, giving his own team the option now. At least those who were present. Peter and his team were still out on their dungeon run, and Levi had sent Bladefin, Drok, and Diego to help watch over him.

Ward looked at Elmire, the two gremlins exchanging silent hand gestures, but neither made a move to switch owners even though they’d been tamed at the same time from the same dungeon.

“Then that’s that. One more stop to grab a few things from home, then we’re on to the kalvex.”

Levi gave one last look at the man who’d been his anchor through the early chaos of his return to the past, then raised a hand in farewell. “Goodbye Gordon. Give my best wishes to Nancy and Robert, will you?”

“Will do. Be safe out there.”

“We’ll do our best.”

Levi rejoined the crowd, leading the way down the road and away. He’d always known that Gordon had his own life, that Levi couldn’t keep dragging him around from place to place forever, but the parting still brought a surprising ache to his chest.

He subtly brushed away a tear, diverting his attention to the system.

Things had been busy lately, but there were a couple important decisions he’d been mulling over. Deciding on them should be enough of a distraction.

He’d reached level 20 with the team-split experience trickling in, which meant another set of ability points to assign.

The thing holding him back most of anything was how much time his minions spent being dead. Before anything else, he put his first two points directly into Revive. That brought the cooldown time from six hours down to 90 minutes and maxed the skill. As much as he’d love for his Revive to be stronger when he did use it, especially if he had to try emergency reviving someone in combat, restoring more of the team beforehand so they could recover their full health first would be the more efficient choice in the long term.

That decision taken care of, he scanned through the base class options.

Avatar... he'd several times wished he had the ability to look through his minions' eyes. That was going on the shortlist.

Empower... Peter was using it to good effect, but Levi wasn't sure if it would be suitable for his own fighting style. It would never be something he regretted taking, but not something that stood out to him particularly much as a must-have either.

Dismay. Always a solid option, but they had several others on the team who had the ability already. The situations where Levi would need to have it personally were few and far between.

Which brought him to the one new option on the list: Life Beacon. The thought of being a mobile regeneration hotspot for his minions was immediately enticing. It could have benefits both in-combat and while traveling, especially as his minions grew higher level and their ability to fully recover between fights took longer and longer. Shortlist, but there was still one other ability that he kept coming back to.

Conduit. He'd already put two points into it, and seen impressive returns. His own leveling may be slower as a result, but he'd still gotten two levels from the whole escape chaos, so it wasn't as bad as he'd initially feared.

Moving it up to 30%, or 40%... it was very tempting. Currently, dungeons leveled faster than his minions did, but that might not have to be the case. Despite his initial reticence, he had to admit Laurence had a point in assessing Conduit as a game-changer.

Avatar, Life Beacon, Conduit. All good options, but he only had two ability points left.

He briefly scanned through the list of minion species upgrades, but he’d been gradually going through them over the past few days and come to the conclusion that none of them provided as much benefit as something universal. They were cheaper for him than for the minions, but he could always tame another gremlin or shadevine or whichever type if he wanted to specialize.

And as much as he hesitated to make any choice that would delay his advancement to Summoner... leveling his minions at a more reliable rate, cross-leveling, the chance to get full benefit from splitting the group... yeah. Conduit.

He assigned his other two points there, then confirmed the choice. Decision made, for good or ill. He'd chosen Tamer for the minions, not for the personal strength. He still had a month and a half before it mattered.

By the time the invasion started, he'd be ready.

Then the town came into sight in the distance, and his attempts to distract himself scattered away. As much as he tried not to think about it, he already felt his body tensing. He did his best to breathe deep and slow, bracing himself for the next stop.

Home.

Something told him it wouldn’t be nearly as easy as saying goodbye had been.