Doyle pauses for a moment, ‘Now, there is just one final thing I want to ask about. What is up with that bit about your soul shell needing repair and your level limit being raised?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Remember, before this I wasn’t just a blank slate. I had a bunch of levels, skills, and paths. I’ve lived longer than civilization has existed on your planet and even if higher does come slower, I was still up there. I can’t really remember as after I broke level one thousand, it really didn’t matter all that much to me and that was quite a while ago.’

Doyle laughs, ‘You definitely don’t act like some elder being.’

Ally rolls her eyes, ‘Anyone who has gone beyond dying by old age will develop some method to live with it. There are countless such ways but the fae as a whole tend towards eternal youth. Of course, some will break the stereotype, but that’s life and free will in general.

‘Fae are relatively similar to dungeons when it comes to this. Most beings with lower ‘i’ immortality tend to always be growing towards being ever more middle-aged. Our races and a few others, like vampires are basically locked to a specific age. This works out alright for some, not so much for others depending on what that age might be.

‘Turned vampires for instance, get locked into the age they are when turned. That could be terrible if the person being turned is way too old or way too young. Another example are the hags. Despite all their strength and magical power, their true form is that of an aged woman.’

Ally draws a breath in through clenched teeth. ‘I hope the hags stay away from this planet for a while. They don’t have to be evil. It, however, doesn’t help that they are closer to how your world’s roleplaying games portray them and not how the more classic myths do. Connected to the winter court through the giants, their very existence is a form of curse. So yeah, they don’t have to be evil, but you’re better off assuming they all are.’

Doyle rolls his core to the side, ‘Well, that sucks for them. I’m sure with all the nonsense we’ve got on them here they will show up at some point, but that is just me being pessimistic. Would I have to worry about them?’

Ally bites her thumb as she takes a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘Yes. However, in theory, anyone could be a danger to you with enough power. If someone managed to extend the life of a fruit fly and somehow leveled it up high enough, it could kill you. Hags and a few other entities, however, represent a slightly different form of threat.

‘Curse magic is both the most and least common form of magic. Untrained magic users are constantly causing minor curses. Sometimes by literally just cursing someone. Good thing you can’t just “damn” someone with words, at least not that easily. However, with untamed magic potential, it can cause small amounts of bad luck.

‘Anyone who actually knows how to properly use curse magic will look down on that though and not call it real curse magic. After all, a large part of the craft is making sure the karmic pendulum doesn’t swing back. A curse done by accident or without proper preparation will result in an equal amount of backlash.

‘The snobbish sorts who claim to have mastered curses will use all kinds of vile methods to avoid the backlash. Hags? They are a curse and so can use them in truly dangerous ways. As a dungeon, you personally are quite hard to curse and like everything else in life there are exceptions. Hags are one of them. Even without reaching godhood or becoming a True Immortal, they can develop cross-dimensional curses because their curse is cross-dimensional.

‘Good news? You’re in a universe with a relatively low concentration of them as they really favor the three tyrant’s toys; Summoning, Undead, and Mind Control. That last one is heavily restricted by the system and yet is particularly important because to create more hags, they need to do some really nasty things with sapient mortals. So lacking the ability to mind trick the local populace puts a major crimp in their plans.’

Doyle snorts, ‘Got it, avoid multi-dimensional threats.’

They joke around a bit more after that before settling back into the usual grind, Ally surfing the web and Doyle carving on the sixth floor. This continued until the next day when Jim’s team was ready to head onto what was unknown to them the last floor.

Susan is the first through but even with all her experience the first room of the eight floor causes her pause. While the sixth floor had looked infinitely big, there were trees and such blocking the view. Here? The room was just a large square of grass surrounded by windows that looked out into an infinite space.

With the whole party on the floor, Jim snaps his fingers to get their attention. “This floor? Room? Meh, this area is straightforward enough. In theory. We can see all the enemies, a lot of kobolds and goats. Up there? A staircase that must lead somewhere, but I’m sure we’re all more curious about what is quote unquote outside.”

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Susan nods, “Certainly, in fact, I say we check that out first. Normally I would be all for clearing the room of hostiles before searching it, but I don’t want to be caught by surprise if something is coming our way from outer there. For all we know, there could be a flock of gryphons waiting to break in and attack.”

Jim sighs, “Zach, whip up something sturdy and rope-like to hold on to Susan with. I wouldn’t want to have to figure out a way to save her if that window bursts open and sucks her out or something grabs her. It would be a nasty place for one of those assassin vines to be hiding.”

Susan’s eyebrows go up, “I hadn’t thought of that possibility, but yeah, that would suck.”

Sammy laughs and goes, “BaDumTish”.

Zach groans but is quick enough to whip up a very sturdy root. It was pretty long on the surface and instead of just wrapping around Susan; the end grows into a loop so there is no way for it to come undone without breaking. Besides that, there is just as much root under the ground except very split up so it would be silly hard to pull out.

Thus prepared Susan makes her way over to the windows closest to the party. Of course, there isn’t really anything to see out there. Though now that she is closer, she can tell that it really does seem to go on forever with the only thing getting in the way being the atmosphere itself. She tries to get a look above and below and is only partly successful.

That was enough though and she could see what looked like a tower extended down and up infinitely. Well, she assumes so as she can’t see any ground or ceiling. With a sigh, she turns to the group, “Okay, I want you all to hold on to the root and be ready to get through the portal.”

Everyone does and Jim frowns, “What’s wrong?”

Susan laughs, “One of us would have tested this, eventually!” And she smashes one of her daggers into the window with all her strength.

The rest of the party braces, prepared for the worst. Though of all the situations going through their mind, the result was least expected, nothing happened. Sure, the dagger made a hellacious noise when it hit the window. It even had the point get turned a bit. Besides that, though, there wasn’t even a mark on the window.

Susan laughs again, though this time the others can hear a bit of weakness in it. “Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about hitting them then. Anyway, there isn’t anything out there.” And she goes on to explain what it looks like.

Doctor squints at her and frowns, “Don’t do that. I’ve done my best to keep us all alive so I don’t need one of you throwing your life away for no reason. Besides, you didn’t bother to tell us what you saw! If you’re going to be terminally stupid, at least inform us of the situation first.”

Susan shrugs, “I’ve trained with long-range weapons in the past and I could tell there was a good bit of air out there. I figured all that would happen is a very open hole into a very open space. Plus, I kind of wanted to get a better view of what was going on out there.”

Jim shook his head, “That sounds nice, now what was your real reason for doing that? You aren’t the type to self-sacrifice over something so stupid nor are you one to be that impulsive.”

Susan coughs, “Ah, mhmm, ssss. Well. Hmm. I have my reasons?” And she shrugs.

Jim just continues to stare at her.

Susan sighs, “This dungeon is impossible. While in the tutorial I didn’t exactly ask about dungeons all that much, but one of my focuses is on gathering intel. You might have noticed that I would occasionally not show up for a day except maybe for dinner. Some of that was me in the outer ring talking to people.

“Most of that, though, was me heading to the place up river, an absolute bore as they are trying to make everything like it was still pre-system. Anyway, that at least makes things easier for me because they don’t even have the most basic defenses against someone using even peak pre-system human ability. I can basically ghost around even their most secret meeting rooms without a single person noticing me.

“So yeah, I’ve talked to a lot of people. Side note: Ace already knows this, but in case he hasn’t informed you the place up river is in contact with a few other places already. They seem to have been set up as a natural trade hub. We should probably conquer them.”

Jim rubs his forehead, “I don’t quite think we need to go that far. Anyway, yeah, Ace and I have talked about the ridiculousness of those people and the fact we should at least shock them into accepting what has happened.”

Susan shrugs, “If we conquer them we have a trade hub and also we control the checkpoint between us and the rest of the world. From what I understand, your scouts haven’t found any settlements down river from us. We’re the end of the line here.

“Anyway, I’ve been able to talk to quite a few people and have gotten out of them the various questions they asked their guides. Even those who ended up asking the same question were enlightening if they had different guides. But yeah, this dungeon should not be like this. You can’t even explain what is going on by saying it was an awakened dungeon.

“Even those types of dungeons tend to have a more steady progression from floor to floor. Not all this nonsense. Things are changing too quickly and features pop up and vanish with no rhyme or reason. One floor ends up with a magic cliff and then we see nothing like it again. Another floor is randomized and a third has somewhat random monster spawns.

“Then it got worse after the first boss! If anything, you would expect a dungeon to calm down with more floors because they would have used all their tricks already. Here we went from an infinite plain to a foggy abandoned city, and now it looks like we are in an infinite skyscraper!

“I didn’t expect the window to break but I had to try. It doesn’t feel like an illusion but how can the dungeon keep creating such large spaces? This shouldn’t be possible!”

Jim sighs, “So, I’m not going to dance around this too much, but do you have a hard time when reality doesn’t match up with what you expect it to?”

Susan nods.