> 9 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
>
> Sector Two: Nexus of Singularity
Alistair entered Sector Two with a head of soot-filled hair. A couple times when he had been gathering the husks in massive groups to lemming off into the flames, he had gotten their ashes over his body. Disgusting work, it was.
He paced himself, using as little Dao energy as possible. But even if he had gone all out using the husk immolation method, he still wouldn’t have completed the task quickly. There were simply too many of the sinners, too many bodies to burn. When he had finally finished, he had tossed almost a thousand of them into the flames.
And that wasn’t even all of them—it was the point at which he had felt comfortable wading his way to the golden dot in Tranquil Mind, accounting for the impurity being stronger nearest the end location.
Alistair’s estimation had luckily proved correct, and he calmly made it to the golden dot, which turned out to be a golden ovular portal.
On to the next one—Alistair hoped it would be less tedious.
The moment he stepped through the portal, he fell to the ground.
What the—
Alistair’s body crumpled from the knees down, his face planting into the concrete. It was as if some impossibly strong man was holding his body onto the ground, but his danger sense didn’t alert him to any presence. None of his senses detected any enemy. His surroundings gave no impression of any life.
Gravity. That was the only explanation that sense, and innately what Alistair felt like was happening. Wherever he was, the gravity was dozens of times its normal value. Given his immense physical stats, there was no way gravity only a few times stronger than Earth could make him fall instantly.
Gritting his teeth, Alistair pushed himself onto his knees. His muscles bulged as he pressed against the earth with all his Strength. From his perspective, he felt like he was pushing the Earth away from himself rather than pushing himself above the Earth.
Once he got to his knees, he took a breather. For one bout of exertion, it took an insane amount of Stamina, brining him down to 950 out of 1,043 Stamina. He got a chance to observe his surroundings.
The sector of absurdly high gravity looked like a typical city block, with skyscrapers, crosswalks, and a parking garage on the corner. It was devoid of life, a ghost town that refused to crumble even under the fundamental force’s pull.
Alistair could barely turn his head down to see the map. The golden dot looked to be ten blocks away. Ten whole blocks that he would have to traverse while feeling 50 Gs bearing down on him.
There had to be a trick. Alistair activated [Dash], but the Skill fizzled out. His legs physically couldn’t produce enough force to jump start the Skill.
There was turning himself into a ghost. It would cost him around a sixth of his Ghost Node to travel the two kilometers. Not insignificant, but also not the largest cost. But that wasn’t the issue. When Alistair tried etherealizing himself, he found his legs being dragged underneath the ground.
The gravity had a spiritual aspect that could even affect ghosts.
Well, that goes my only other idea. That left only one other option. Brute force.
Now, he could have stood up and walked. But Alistair was shameless in his pursuit of victory. Why walk when you could crawl?
If only it was a bit more dignified. Alistair began his crawl of shame.
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> 45 minutes after the start of the Grand Dungeon
>
> Sector Two: Nexus of Singularity
Sector One went by in a breeze with George’s glacier, plus Jakk’s control of the flames. They went on an unopposed march straight to the golden portal, where they all fell on their faces.
All except for George. A clone made of ice slammed into the ground, while he stood tall, though grimacing from the immense gravity.
Morgana recognized the ice substitute as Arcanous Devil Spell #5, Subversion Through Ice. An automatic spell that triggered whenever George registered a threat to himself, letting a clone made of ice taking his place while he emerged from the nearest body of water. If there was no body of water…
A streak of light flashed by Morgana’s eyes. An object hit the ground with such blinding speed that a deafening shockwave raced over the seven of them. Concrete and dust flew into the air. Morgana protected herself and her fellow Devil Kings with a wordless Rank C spell that created a shield of rotating air.
She manipulated the Mana, dispersing the debris. Their leader sat in the middle of a cracked crater, dusting off his white suit. His blonde hair never left its frozen state, remaining pristine in its spiky glory.
A small trickle of blood dripped from the corner of his lips, and he stood up with a slight limp.
George conjured up another cigarette, lighting it with his finger and then throwing it away the moment he took a single breath.
Despite the immense g-forces, which were sufficient to keep Morgana glued to the ground even with her struggling with all her might, George stood without falling. She could almost see the gravitational forces pulling him down.
The Shadow Twins made it to their feet. Both men wore black cloaks that completely covered their faces. They were an enigma even to her, only George knowing their full story. As for their stats, they had decent Strength, as well as Monk, their blind hand-to-hand fighter. He also struggled to a standing position, taking what looked to be agonizing seconds rising to their knees and then to their feet.
“What are you thinking?”
Morgana’s head would have whipped toward her boss, but obviously, she was plastered to the ground. Thankfully, he wasn’t taking to her. Based on the way their auras faltered, she assumed he was speaking to the Shadow Twins and Monk.
Not once had she ever heard George raise his voice. Not once. He always spoke with complete calm, almost emotionless. He had been that way since she met him in those dank chambers where her blood became black and her soul damned to a true end. And he didn’t speak loudly here, either. But in that moment, Morgana thought she heard a tinge of… humor?
“E-excuse me-e, sir?” a Shadow Twin asked, his voice unsteady and warped by the gravity.
George looked at the three of them with his pale blue pools of fire. “Were you planning on walking from here to the next portal? That would be two kilometers in this gravity. You can barely stand. You’ve probably spent at least a third of your Stamina on that.”
“Apologies, master,” Monk said, always prim and proper. By his voice, he sounded like he was withstanding the gravitational field better than the twins. “I think Sixth, Seventh, and I stood up because we trusted in you so much. We know how you always come up with something.”
What disgusting flattery, Morgana chuckled to herself. Does Monk really have that little shame? Even though he was their leader, she would never debase herself like that before any man or woman or devil or god. She supposed as the second most powerful, she was afforded slightly more liberties in that regard.
George did not answer the blind man, instead posing another of their number a question. “Heavyset, what do you think?”
Morgana felt the presence of the woman behind her. The large woman was true to her name and possibly had the highest body fat percentage of any human on the planet after the hardships of the initiation and the introduction of the Pathfinder AI made even the most sedentary glutton fit as an Olympic athlete.
To Morgana’s surprise, she waddled forward into view, each step cracking the ground with her weight.
Heavyset was by far the weakest of the Devil Kings, and Morgana had to admit that it was entertaining to torment the lady. She was easy pickings, let’s be honest. All her power did was make the other Devil King’s faster and the opponent’s slower. Useful for a team, but the Devil Kings were already overwhelmingly strong.
The gravity subsided. Morgana felt it weaken enough that even with her 200 Strength she could bring herself to her knees. It was still crushing, but not unbearably so.
“Do not underestimate the Thirteenth,” George said. “Did you even realize that her powers are to control gravity?”
Morgana felt her face turn red. Heavyset looked at the rest of them with a sheepish grin, like she was happy to contribute to the team for once.
George let out a breath of chilling cold, freezing the ground in front of them in a sheet of slippery ice. He turned to Morgana, his fire laying her naked under all her built-up defenses. “Use that spell and help Heavyset. We will advance in thirty minutes.”
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> Sector Three: The Endless Menagerie
Alistair stood on top of a pile of corpses the size of his headquarters back in his capital. The moment he stepped foot in the sector, a thousand beasts of innumerable species assaulted him from all directions.
This was the dance he knew best, the thrill of combat. Except, the slaughter wasn’t exciting. The beasts weren’t a challenge from him. The problem was that there were too many of them.
No matter how many he slaughtered, more took their place. He drew on their life force, gaining an extra 3 Endurance that wouldn’t take into effect because of the lock on his attributes.
He supposed that the sector was a boon in some ways. The beasts served as fuel for the evolution of his bloodline, which he needed to unlock his Attributes, or get to level 60.
After fourteen hours of punches, kicks, elbows, knees, and even some biting, courtesy of Mad Brutus, the portal to the next sector finally appeared after he defeated an enormous spider that dwarfed elephants. By that point, he was so exhausted that he considered using his finishing Skill, just to get a much needed respite.
In the end, he resorted to trickery—hiding behind dead beasts and using the Ghost Node to conceal himself while he attacked each leg one-by-one until he finished the arachnid off with a [Blood Hand] to the eyes.
Alistair gave himself three minutes to rest before he stepped through the golden portal. His enemies were certainly doing the Grand Dungeon as well, and he couldn’t afford to stay behind.
> Time so far: 29 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
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> Sector Three: The Endless Menagerie
Morgana spoke the name of her only Rank 1 spell. Unlike her master, she had not progressed down the Dao of Magic enough to use Rank 1 spells more than twice every thirteen hours.
“Shard of Madness.” She expelled almost half her nue in a single sentence, along with a healthy amount of glass affinity Mana. Unlike George, she did not employ only a single affinity. As far as she understood the ways of mages, which to be fair was very little, they were considered some of the more versatile types of Classes. She had over five types in her core, along with several more in Skills that converted her core Mana affinities in the meridians.
A single pink shard of glass appeared underneath a similarly colored magical array in the sky. The shard multiplied and fractured while it floated until it covered the entire battlefield.
The madness came next. All the beasts that saw their twisted reflections in the glass turned on each other. They became even more bloodlusted beasts than they already were, wildly biting and swiping and striking each other as the echoes of madness encompassed the entire menagerie of beasts.
Her allies looked down, knowing what to do when it came to her most powerful spell.
A few of the strongest of the beasts were unaffected by the Shard of Madness, but even the giant spider could not hold up to thousands of the little ones mobbing her.
All Morgana had to do was keep the shard active. The drain on her resources was minimal—the main cost was creating the cursed object. Still, the waves of beasts were endless. Morgana wouldn’t have been surprised if a hundred thousand beast corpses were lying on the grassland plains after they were done three hours later.
With the dead of the arachnid, a golden portal appeared. On to the next.
> Time so far: 4 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
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> 31 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
>
> Sector Four: The Vale of Wrathful Wraiths
“Thank goodness,” Alistair said, wiping sweat off his brow as he reached the golden portal at the end of the mist-filled valley.
Wraiths. Wraiths! Finally, he had a sector that meshed well with his abilities. With his [Ghost Whispers] and Dao of the Ghost, Alistair confidently blended in and simply walked among the wraiths.
If only they’ll all be that easy. Alistair shook his head and jumped into the next sector.
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> Sector Four: The Vale of Wrathful Wraiths
Jakk watched with undisguised confusion as his boss commended the Shadow Twins, offering them a puff of his cigarette, which they both refused graciously. “To combine your shadows with Morgana’s sacrifices to emulate the aura of a wraith is something I did not think of.”
Those wraiths were the bane of their existence for the first two hours they attempted the sector. They were rebuffed in every way possible. Jakk believed in his master’s capability to destroy them with brute force, but he wished to save his Rank 1 spells. None of their other abilities made a dent until one of the Shadow Twins had that ingenious idea.
“Alistair will make quick work of this one,” George said, stepping through the glowing oval. “We must redouble our efforts for Sector Five.”
> Time so far: 8 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
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> 31 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
>
> Sector Five: The Frostbound Expanse
Alistair got one whiff of the next sector, feeling the wrath of a blizzard so thick he couldn’t see one meter in front of him. “Oh, fuck off.”
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> 3 days, 13 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
>
> Sector Nine: Partentho
The last three sectors took up the bulk of their time. Still, they reached the portal to Sector Nine sector in just about three days, preserving their resources well. Unfortunately, their progression slowed to a halt with the sector, so far having spent 13 hours on “Partentho.”
Partentho was nothing like the other sectors. It was a battle of wits and strategy, taking place on an enormous hexagonal grid.
They played as a group versus the mysterious Gamemaster, a man who wore an all-white mask covering his entire face along with sunglasses. Each member of the Devil Kings took on a different type of piece.
One of the Shadow Twins was the Red Bishop, the other the Blue Bishop. Jakk was the Torturer, Morgana the Witch, Hephaestus the Smith, Monk the Fighter, and Heavyset the Defender. On the other hand, George took up the piece that was not a piece, the Commander.
From his high vantage point, he controlled the broad strokes of his side, though individual decision making was up to the respective players.
The Devil Kings against the Gamemaster.
The hexagonal board was not a simple two-dimensional board like most game back on Earth, being split into multiple layers, forming a three-dimensional interface. Using advance augmented reality technology, George assumed, the players really became their pieces, and controlled them on every board.
That didn’t even include the advanced aspects of the game that he did not fully grasp, such as moving from board to board and the one time travel point he could use.
“Oh, what a wonderful move,” the Gamemaster commentated, like he had during the entire period. “You’ve almost got me in Zeitsbonne.”
Zeitsbonne, George understood in the untranslated jargon of Partentho, was the equivalent of checkmate. There were two forms of victory in Partentho, he had learned in his ten hours of play. The first and most common was Sieg-Gesat, where you reduced the Commander’s hit points to zero. The second, Zeitsbonne, was apparently considered the more elegant of the two, and happened when you reduced your opponent’s potential Commander moves to zero.
“It seems so.”
“Difficult man to please, are we?” the Gamemaster said. “Accept gifts wherever you find them.”
George simply grunted at that, conjuring his twentieth cigarette of the match. He blew out a gorgeous patchwork of sculpted snow over the board, depicting the mesmerizing mathematical patterns that naturally arose from the formation of ice crystals.
It didn’t take long for the Gamemaster to make his move, choosing one of the three available options. George pounced immediately, ending the game with a final attack from Morgana, destroying his last refuge.
“Congratulations on the victory, George Moulin! In your first foray into the wonderful game of Partentho, you and your people have come out victorious! You may now step forward and enter the final sector.”
The Gamemaster and the various boards disappeared, replaced by an infinite black void. A single doorway of golden light appeared.
The Iceman looked back on the first hours of the initiation. No, before the initiation. The man he once was. Diligent, focused, and punctual. A man that no one put in a bad word of, a reliable and filial son that always kept up a smile. And a killer.
He was never caught. It was impossible—the police were too easy to fool when you weren’t a blathering idiot. His victims disappeared without a trace. There were no fingerprints, no witnesses, no geographic continuity, no victim profile. The police didn’t even know he existed, let alone the public—that was how cleanly he operated.
Perhaps that was why he was chosen to be the leader of the Devil Kings. George drew out a heavy breath. That all seemed so far away now. The twin Daos of Ice and Magic reverberated deep with in his spirit.
Did he regret those murders? George couldn’t say. What he did know was that it all felt so pointless now.
That song he used to like played in his head. What was the ugliest part of his body? Surely it was his mind, like it said.
The Devil Kings celebrated with raucous cheers. Of course. They had spent the better part of a day playing a single game, and everyone was exhausted.
“You almost fucking ruined it, Monk,” Morgana said with language that betrayed her feminine elegance. “What was that attack near the end?”
The blind fighter pretended not to hear her, walking in lockstep with his leader toward the portal.
“You’re blind, not deaf. Don’t be a baby,” Morgana teased as she followed after them.
Jakk was the last one through, taking a long look at the darkness. “That was more fun than I would’ve thought,” he said, when he thought no one was listening.
The Gamemaster was always listening.
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> 11 days, 5 hours after the start of the Grand Dungeon
>
> Sector Nine: Partentho
“Clean sweep! Let’s go!” Alistair and Dev’rox high-fived as they absolutely trounced the Gamemaster. It might have helped that his ghost partner was a hundred thousand years old. And as it turned out, a major fan of Partentho.
“Now do you understand why I’m such a fan of this game?” Dev’rox asked. “Partentho is the most popular game in the entire multiverse for reason.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Alistair said. “You’re pretty good.”
“Ah, I’m nothing compared to the greats.”
The Gamemaster began to fade as Alistair reduced his Commander piece to zero hit points. Sieg-Gesat, it was called. Alistair and Dev’rox had systematically reduced all of the Gamemaster’s holdings on every board to nothing, finally surrounding his crown jewel. Thanks to the imp’s knowledge of the game, it had only taken two hours.
The masked man who had been their opponent for the last few hours gave Alistair a disgusted look. “Cheater,” he said with a mouth full of spite, and then faded to black, along with everything else.
“Don’t take his words too harshly, Alistair,” Dev’rox said, patting his host on the back. Alistair was glad to report that the imp had fully recovered over the course of the Grand Dungeon. Alistair braved several sectors alone—the Frostbound Expanse took two days to traverse in the unbelievable cold that even affected him through Mammothskin Raiment. Sector Eight, the Maze of Light, was even longer, taking place in a subterranean labyrinth full of deadly lasers and changing pathways. But when he needed help the most, against the mysterious Gamemaster of Sector Nine, Dev’rox was there for him.
“He doesn’t understand how righteous you are,” Alistair joked. “You’re so above board that it thinks you’re a cheater because of an overflow error.”
“I hope I wasn’t supposed to understand that,” Dev’rox said. “I have a feeling it’s one of those things that Alexandra would make fun of you for.’
“Your adaptation to Earth culture is scary at times. If I visit your family in the Asura Hell, will that happen to me?”
Dev’rox snorted. “Zalarik the Wise would like you, I think. My best friend Zyron would probably hate you.”
They both understood that their more quippy conversation today was due to events that were better left unsaid. Despite the levity, Alistair did not falter in his drive in the slightest. He stepped through the portal, ready for whatever Sector Ten would bring.