I spread my wings, trying to catch myself as I fell, but they weren't responding correctly. Or perhaps it was the air that wasn't responding correctly; I was having to fight to breathe. Despite taking deep, rapid breaths, I felt like I was suffocating, and my skin and lungs were burning. Was there no oxygen down here? What was there instead?

With repeated, desperate flaps, I managed to slow my descent enough to land safely, but I was going to need to adjust my earlier opinion that I'd be able to get back up without a suicide. Or perhaps suicide wouldn't be necessary; my skin didn't just feel like it was burning, but an inspection revealed a rapidly developing red rash, spreading as I watched. Combined with my breathlessness, I doubted I could survive here for long.

The ground I'd landed on was strange, too. It didn't seem to be any sort of stone—cold to the touch, but completely smooth, with no texture. It reminded me a lot of the black dragon's lair, except that this was more unkempt. The black dragon didn't have giant rents in his floor making the place untidy.

New skill gained: Mana toxicity tolerance

Most living creatures require water to live, but that doesn't mean they can't drown. The same applies to mana, and even the most powerful arch-mage will still burn if trapped in a dense ocean of magic. This skill will slightly reduce the damage of a mana overload.

Oh, so that was what was up with the air? Given how far down I'd travelled, with each floor being hundreds of metres in height at least, it was surprising that teleporting from one end to the other didn't pop my ears. There should be a significant pressure differential. Besides, doesn't carbon dioxide sink? I wasn't too hot on physics, but I wouldn't have been surprised if I had breathing difficulties down here due to changes in the air makeup. That shouldn't have stopped me flying, though. Magical shenanigans must keep the air breathable and the pressure equalised, but now that same magic was drowning me.

Mana toxicity tolerance advanced to level 2

The rash was still spreading, and my skin was starting to blister. Breathing was continuing to get harder, leaving me gasping. Still, at least I was growing resistant. A few more trips down here, and I'd probably be fine. I needed to use whatever time I had left to start my exploration, and preferably find a shrine.

From the air, I hadn't seen any features other than the fissures. As best as I could judge, I'd fallen a couple of kilometres, so I wouldn't have seen anything small from the stairs. While falling, I'd mostly been concerned with my desire to not be falling, rather than sightseeing, so it was possible I'd missed something, but from where I was at ground level, I failed to see anything. I flapped my wings and jumped, barely making it a metre into the air, which didn't expand my range of view much.

Mana toxicity tolerance advanced to level 3

I was fairly close to one of the rents. Did I have enough time to visit it?

I stumbled towards it, panting for breath and wondering if my lungs were in the same state as my skin. Perceive mana showed me a fountain of the stuff was shooting up from the rift, so they must be the source of the toxic densities around here. Of course, that meant getting close to one was going to be even more skin-searing than where I was.

Not that I'd get the chance to experience it. A coughing fit revealed that, yes, my lungs were in as bad condition as my skin, which now looked like I'd received third degree burns to large swaths of my body. My legs gave way and I fell face first into the pool of blood I'd just hacked up.

Mana toxicity tolerance advanced to level 4

Well, floor six was an interesting one, I thought as I respawned. No monsters that I'd seen, but nothing else either. Just a single, massive expanse with a bunch of gaping wounds cut into it, through which endless quantities of mana were spilling.

And a new resistance skill. So, like the obsessive skill chaser that I was, I headed straight back down there.

"Guess we won't be seeing you again then," said the guard as I flashed my permit at him and he waved me past.

That caused me to stop short. "That's exactly what you said the last time I went down here, and you've just seen me again."

The guard looked at me in confusion, before suddenly freezing up. Really? Again? And his partner didn't even react.

"Does that happen often?" I asked him.

"Does what happen?" he answered, looking around and failing to spot anything unusual.

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Hopefully, the fact that I'd frozen up two of them in the past couple of hours was nothing more than coincidence, and it wasn't a sign that the world was degrading further. But now I had a choice of skills to train. Should I continue down the stairs or wait for the dragon to do another freaky darkness attack and get me more void nullification?

Not that I had any say in the matter, because this time it was me that the darkness pooled around, tendrils rising up and cocooning me. They soon dissipated, leaving me once more in the presence of the dragon.

"Would you please stop doing that? Fixing it is annoying," he growled.

"Sorry. So, stop pointing out logical inconsistencies to demons, because it breaks them. Got it."

The dragon sighed, the force of it blowing me back a few paces. "Your progress has been impressive, and I see you're already exploring this place's final floor. Beware of the rifts. Fall into one of them, and you will never return, immortal or not."

Okay... Given my condition, and the way I'd flopped forward uncontrollably when I'd succumbed to mana poisoning, it was a good job I wasn't looking down into one of the rifts at the time. But that raised more questions, even if I ignored him calling it the 'final' floor. "Then why aren't you telling me to dive into one? You want to get rid of me forever, so wouldn't me falling into one be perfect?"

The dragon growled quietly before answering. "I won't risk something seeing you fall in, and climbing back out to see where you came from."

And again, that just raised more questions. "Whatever is down there?"

"The Void. The rifts are holes in the world. I've already told you that the holy sword is the anchor that pins this world in place, and you've noticed that the further you get from it, the more the edges of the world fray. Floor six is the final floor, not because of design, but because at that distance the world unravels completely. Still, there is much you can learn down there. But, beware of the Void. Do not let Them see you."

Oh. Crap. "One of them... already has," I said, recalling the burning eye, growing ever larger as I fell towards it. And that voice...

The dragon's head snapped up and his eyes narrowed. "Then let us hope that It did not find you interesting," he said, continuing to stare for some time. "Fortunately, I see no mark on you. Perhaps you were lucky, or perhaps you were not. Regardless, it is one more reason for me to want you gone from this world as rapidly as possible. Make no attempt to repeat whatever you did to attract Their attention."

Putting aside whatever it was that was living in the Void—and from the way the dragon spoke it definitely needed the capital letter—it confirmed that things were getting worse on lower floors. I hadn't made the link to the location of the holy sword, whatever the dragon thought, but it seemed logical. But there was one more question I'd wanted to ask, that I'd been wondering ever since I'd first noticed how screwed up the abyss was.

"Why do you want to stay here? Why not leave yourself? As you said, this far down the world is rather... frayed. Unrealistic. That city hardly seems worth ruling."

The dragon snorted again. "Spoken by one who has never needed to rule. Ask one of your human kings if they would prefer their subjects to have minds and wills of their own, or be mindless sheep. Now, return to your exploration. I've almost completed the method to remove you from this place, so concentrate on improving your personal power. Or on rescuing those who want to leave, should that be your desire."

The dragon's shadow magic once again pooled beneath me, teleporting me back to the abyss. The tendrils had reached as high as my chest before the obvious question finally occurred to me.

"How do you know what human kings are like?"

Alas, the spell snapped closed before he answered, dissipating moments later and depositing me back at the shrine.

That dragon had implicitly indicated an ability to spy on any location in this world, but had shown a possibility of misinterpretation. My assumption was that he could hear my speech, but not my thoughts. I hadn't been talking about human rulers to anyone. He wasn't just self-aware, but had knowledge that he shouldn't.

And there was no getting around the fact he was Void-ish. And not a demon. Did something already crawl through those rifts? But he called the red dragon his brother, and he hadn't been all voidy.

That black dragon still had his secrets, but I couldn't see anything they changed, so I put them aside. If he was already close to a way to get me out of here, then I needed to resume my training. But rather than heading straight to the staircase down, I first visited the alchemists.

Healing potions were a staple in almost any RPG, and with my arena winnings, I could afford a few. They weren't vital for training, given that I could always respawn, but I was interested in how effective they were. Perhaps, when I returned to shouty-mage's world, I could stockpile them in my item box.

I splashed out on three, as well as a mana potion, before heading back to the staircase.

"Guess we won't be seeing you again then," said the guard as I walked past.

"You never know," I replied. "I might benefit from some sort of miracle."

The second guard snorted, but at least didn't call me an overconfident poor sod again. Once more I made my way down the stupidly long set of stairs and dived through the bottom into the strange, mana filled air. Again, I felt the burning as the excessive mana scorched my flesh, falling to the floor in a barely controlled descent. This time, I did manage to keep an eye out for new features, and caught sight of something a few kilometres out. A patch of grey in the otherwise yellow and purple expanse. I did my best to glide towards it, doing better than last time, but I must have only managed a few hundred metres of flight before hitting the floor.

Mana toxicity tolerance advanced to level 5

I may not have made the flight, but this time I had health potions to help me. Could I gain enough tolerance levels to make it to whatever I'd seen without needing another respawn? I sat down, keeping an eye on my skin and health bar, doing my best to keep breathing normally and ignore the suffocating feeling I was experiencing.

Mana toxicity tolerance advanced to level 6

Suffocation tolerance advanced to level 6