Even Victor was starting to fear Alice. And that was a good thing. He wanted her to be self-sufficient without his constant protection in the future since, sometimes, he would need her to solve an issue, or he might be off somewhere else. I would say Alice is a weak point of mine…but keeping her alive is much more important than anyone else to me at the moment. Which is a rather sad thing to realize if I think about it…

Victor silently floated beside Alice as she annihilated everything in her path. However, he toggled on his Annihilating Aura while Alice slept and used Consume on everything she killed. Exp just didn’t seem to have much effect on him compared to the massive benefits it brought her, so it was better she got some more levels.

They were making their way through the thirtieth floor at a record speed. Victor didn’t know how far Alice’s various skills had leveled, but she even slept with her Float skill running and had zero issues zooming around and even keeping up with Genus.

The first floor of the Grand Dungeon had been an endless meadow. The following nine were country-size graveyards overflowing with hordes of undead that reeked of dark attribute mana like a foul stench. Then came the ten ocean floors, followed by ten desert biomes of various sand colors ranging from a dull gray to a vibrant purple. A part of Victor really enjoyed those floors due to the unique scenery he had never witnessed on Earth. If not for the dragons finally beginning their chase and Alice’s protests at having to eat more sandworms, he would have loved staying a little longer and enjoying the lava beaches.

But to be fair…the thirtieth floor was no better than those previous floors. Endless tunnels and caverns of volcanic rock filled with strange lizards and bats the size of houses attacked them from the shadows and crevices without hesitation like a mindless mob.

“Thank god for Wiggles,” Genus muttered as he flew alongside the pair. “If not for this tunnel he made us, it would take years to navigate this place.” Victor didn’t reply but silently nodded. He had sent Wiggles on ahead while they rested on the desert floors, and the undead earthworm had created a path between each floor’s tower. But even with this direct tunnel, it still took a day or so to traverse the immense caves.

Victor decided to remain invisible most of the time, but he showed himself to Genus and told him his name was Victor a few floors ago after Alice accidentally let his name slip. Alice, however, had no issue with keeping track of him despite his Stealth with her Void Eye skill. Victor hadn’t thought about the skill before, but it held deep connotations. Before, he had absolute faith in his Stealth skill, but if somehow another person had a similar skill as Alice, he would be discovered before he could attack. But on the flip side, Alice can spot any other void creatures and let me know about them before they kill me…assuming there are any other void creatures on the mortal plane and they aren’t all just lurking below. Victor thought back to the phrase “ignorance is bliss.” Seeing what crept below the world’s surface made everything on the surface seem insignificant. He had only caught a glimpse of a fellow void creature, that weird eldritch whale that swam below his cage, and just from that short interaction, he knew that whale could eat Hyveth Arcspace as if she was a mere slug. Currently, Hyveth is the strongest thing I have witnessed on this planet, but now that I think about it, she was living outside the dragon’s main stronghold. Was she an outcast or just not powerful enough to be allowed near the dungeon? Again another question was added to his growing list of concerns.

Victor was broken from his train of thought as something massive smashed through the tunnel wall. It was a cursed mixture between a bat and a fire lizard. It stood around Genus’s height, with red scales and leathery bat wings. However, unlike Genus, its head was that of a bat with a small mouth and beady black eyes.

“Ugly fucker!” Alice shouted as she clapped her hands together. A hairline crack in the world that shouldn’t be possible manifested, and the creature was cut cleanly in half down the middle, and the two halves fell apart with a thud. Victor got a perfect view of the creature’s anatomy as he felt a small amount of himself vanish. He casually cast Consume, and that lost part of himself reappeared.

“You know,” Genus gulped as the group flew over the corpse, “that shouldn’t be possible, right?”

“Hmmm?” Alice innocently hummed a pleasant tune. “Whatever do you mean, mighty dragon?” She turned to him and grinned, which was rather sinister, with her void Mana Shield coating her skin and leaving only her eyes and mouth visible. “Scared? Of little old me? How cute.”

“Don’t mess with me. I have lived a long time, and not even my mother could just clap her hands and erase something from existence! Only a god-like entity can do that, and I’ve watched you over the past few weeks. Although your growth has been impressive, it shouldn’t allow you to do something a thousand-year-old dragon could only dream of.”

“Okay, okay, relax, old man.” Alice had spent a few weeks conversing with the golden dragon, and they had gotten closer alongside her improved relationship with Victor. She even agreed to help Genus on his quest to reclaim the dragon throne. It all sounded rather grand and exciting. Also, she was never one to turn down free experience points for those that defied her. Victor called her a battle junky, but she preferred the term Pink Demon. Or at least that’s what Genus had been calling her.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Alice decided to humor the dragon as they continued their monotonous task of flying down a straight tunnel for a thousand miles. “You may not know much about human magic or the System.” She chuckled. “And neither do I, to be honest, but I have found some interesting things recently.” She summoned some mana to her hand and watched it dance along her palm. “We are told the System is everything; it’s what gives us magic and the ability to command the will of the world. But obviously, that’s horse shit. You and Victor can use magic without the System’s intervention.”

“But I have the System, just a very lackluster version compared to you,” Victor countered from the shadows.

Alice turned toward where he was with her Void Eye, which she kept active as much as possible. “You told me your System doesn’t upgrade your skills when they reach level ten?”

“Should they?” Victor checked his list of skills. Almost all of them had reached level ten, but nothing had changed.

“Yes.” Alice nodded. “Or at least mine do. This makes me suspect that your version of the System is basically pointless. You also told me that gaining levels and exp doesn’t unlock any new skills or classes like mine. So that begs the question, why? Why do you have a System in the first place,” she then pointed at Genus, “when Genus doesn’t? No offense, but in our terms, you are both creatures, monsters, whatever you want to call it. The System was invented to give us weaker races a chance to fight against you two with magic. What it lets us do, however, is not real magic.

“Let me demonstrate,” she said as she summoned a beautiful orange Fireball. “The System upgraded this skill when I hit level ten, but I can still use the original spell. Anyway, that’s not important. What is this flame made of?” she asked and looked between her two students.

“Mana,” Genus replied. “Perfect mana, might I add. Although, of course, when I breathe flames, it comes from my body, so the mana has some impurities…but that fireball is near perfect.”

“Exactly, it is made of mana.” Alice then seamlessly changed the fireball into a javelin of crystal-blue ice. “Now?”

“Still mana,” Genus said. “And perfect again.”

Alice nodded. “Okay, and if I now infuse more of my mana to make this a void element attack, what happens?” Mana surged down her arm, and her blessings and class warped that mana to take on the void element.

Genus’s rainbow eyes shifted as he tracked the mana change and frowned. “It’s still pure mana, nothing like the feeling I got from the spell you used earlier.”

“I knew it!” she exclaimed as she canceled out the spell with a mere thought. “The System just manipulates pure mana into something like fire, ice, or, in this case, void. Now, this raises some questions. Such as, why not let humans use all elements? Why do we need a blessing from spirits or classes? Anyway, I am getting off-topic. Genus, you asked how I could clap that fire lizard bat thing to the next life?”

Genus nodded.

“Because I used actual magic and not just artificially manipulated mana. Void magic has the property of deleting anything it comes in contact with. Now I’m not one hundred percent sure, but the fake void magic provided by the System constructed from mana shouldn’t be able to replicate what I did. But…”

Alice waggled her finger. “The System has to honor my class’s feature, True Damage, which lets me ignore magical defenses, so here’s my theory. When I use the new skill I gained recently with my new class, that lets me channel real void magic through Victor and combine it with True Damage. The System intervenes and ensures my void magic ignores magical defense. How?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s helpful.”

“Are there any restrictions to that spell?” Genus had a slight fear in his voice. Skills and spells that could ignore magical defenses weren’t unheard of, but an attack that ignored magical defense and deleted anything it touched? How could he survive such a thing? He was a rather large target, after all…

Alice grinned, tore her sights away from Genus, and kept flying down the tunnel. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she shouted back jokingly. “But a girl never reveals her secrets.”

Victor watched her fly away and thought deeply about what she said. If the System was all a lie, was there a way for him to train his skills? Dragons slept in mana-rich areas to grow in power. Did he have to consume more? No. Consuming never gave me any power-ups. Actually, now that I think about it. Why can’t I use void magic? Only Shadow Magic X is listed in my skills list, but no Void Magic?

“What would happen if I just tried to use it?”