Tim can't tell determine blood sugar with his power, but he can recognize someone who's gassed out.  He's going to award the patient two of his last four granola bars and a miraculously-unpunctured water bottle, then see how the patient feels about a piggyback.

Does a piggyback mean he can slump onto Tim's shoulder and be mostly dead weight?

If he's not actively screaming or kicking, Tim doesn't care.  Well, he cares a little, he has to spare a bit of power in case of errant knives.  But aside from that, it's just another day walking through a cloud of Far Too Many Knives.

... This path is actually pretty treacherous.  He opts to skip parts of it via superstrength-assisted leap.  Hopefully the vic is too asleep for that.

He is awake enough to make a terrified moaning noise!

Shoot.  I hoped he'd be asleep for this bit.  "Sorry, sir, we're almost there.  Don't want to walk down that slope.  You're alright, I've got you..."  He'll keep up a meaningless stream of Reassuring Noises until the poor fella relaxes or they get to the portal, whichever comes first.

Cricket has to shove him a few times but the vic has his eyes closed and barely reacts to that part, at least.

Small mercies.  Very small, at that.  Tim feels vaguely guilty about having napped and been fed delicious fresh-ordered food in the metaphorical(sometimes literal) lap of a very pretty girl just a few hours previously.  But Carol had been right: you can't save anybody if you pass out from low blood sugar or exhaustion.  He shoves the guilt into the back of his mind.

If his eyes aren't playing tricks on him, that's the portal coming up over the next rise.  Probably.  It's a 4D dungeon, he could be wrong.

He has now traversed the bit of the dungeon with the portal in it a bunch of times and it is not a coincidence that he'd be right about this one.

Time to turn right around as soon as that guy can be got to the medics and go get the last one.

About-FACE!  Forward, MARCH!  He wants to put a little pep in his step, but that would be silly to do because he still has to shovel five goddamn mountaintops for a core that may or may not be there.

... hm.  There's an idea.  "Er, Cricket?  If your wings are tired, you're welcome to my shoulder, sir.  Or I could carry you.  If you prefer."  Possibly this is a mistake but he's been doing an awful lot of work.

"Your publicly documented backlash is literally exhaustion, you fool."

"I also have superstrength that I'm not using for anything.  It'd be like carrying a paperback.  Offer's open, take it if you want."

Cricket lands on his shoulder.

Yessssssssss!!!!  Shoulderwingcat!!!  He WINS this dungeon!!!

The last victim can walk and even climb but has some cuts on his hands from having tried to catch a knife a couple hours back. It objected. Cricket rolls his eyes.

Well, he can have just a little bit of bonus recovery.  Just a smidge, in case of accidents or rolled ankles.  Tim privately is of the opinion that Cricket's disdain is somewhat cute but Cricket would probably be singing a different tune if he weren't functionally invulnerable to knives.

Cricket would not be here if he weren't functionally invulnerable to knives. The victims were getting completely ignored by the knives and this guy tried to grab one, the loon.

Back to the portal.

And is Tim's shovel ready? Is Tim, or does he need another break?

Tim's about as ready as he's going to be, if the scanner is there.  He's got another two hours of this in him before he's going to need a break, probably.

To preserve the scanner from Far Too Many Knives, he utilizes a field-expedient method to offset the scanner from his body.

Which is to say, he duct-tapes it to a stick.

The logistics guy winces around the eyes when he sees duct tape going on a fairly expensive piece of specialized equipment.  But when you think about it, every piece of equipment that comes out of a dungeon is a bonus, really.  You plan around having written off about 20% of whatever you send into any given dungeon, and if you get more back it's a nice bonus.  Especially when this many knives are in the picture,

Once more into the breach.

The core itself is likely to be four dimensional, extending across several if not all layers, so his guess is that it will be on a mountain that didn't have any vics on it. This one's closest.

Well, he supposes he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter.  It's a little awkward, carrying a snow shovel AND a Scanner Onna Stick.  But you can make up for bad posture with enough superstrength, and he needs that to survive the knives anyway.

Does Cricket make his way back to Tim's shoulder?  It won't change anything except Tim's mood, but when you're tasked with shoveling off mountain peaks, an improved mood is nothing to sneer at.

Cricket is digging! Sometimes he appears to be materializing snow out of nowhere to fling out of the hole he's pawing open, presumably from other layers.

"You think you've got a line on something, Cricket?"  If he does, no point trying to search for something with the scanner.

"I thought so but I am getting less convinced."

"Yessir."  He'll gingerly turn the scanner on, during a break in the Knifeswarm, and try searching for anything that looks like a potential dungeon core.

He's not...seeing anything that looks core-ish, although for all he knows the core could look like a literal fancy rock.

"Should I haul you kata from here to get a look from more layers?"