Things were progressing smoothly down in the Grand Dungeon’s depths. A month or so had passed since Garry the pirate arrived at Necron, and Victor and his merry band were making significant progress. As he had suspected, the main threat of the arctic floors was the immense distance it took to traverse and the extreme climate. I suspect the dungeon didn’t spawn any monsters on those floors on purpose, so delvers had no way to acquire food. Unfortunately for the dungeon, there was a limit on how strong monsters could become, so sometimes, Mother Nature was the only way to defeat something.

Victor realized that if the dragons hadn’t been chasing them, there was a high chance Genus would have died from starvation. Luckily, Alice would have survived the arctic either way since she became a mana body, and Victor could probably survive in space, let alone some frozen wasteland. But if I didn’t have millions of stat points saved up from the previous floors, I could have died, too. That was a disturbing thought, so he vowed to save as many points as possible.

In the distance was a spire of ice that dominated the flat landscape like an overlord’s throne. Unfortunately, Victor had no idea what the next floor had in store as they were traveling way faster than Wiggles, so he couldn’t send him on ahead to scout like he had on the other floors.

“Wake up.” Victor spoke for the first time in days as the flying platform drew near the ice spire. “We have arrived.”

Genus opened an eye, raised his neck, and let out an impressive yawn that lasted a full minute. Then, after licking his lips, he spotted the ice spire and grinned.

Out of the three, Genus had suffered the most. He had resorted to cannibalism and had to constantly cycle his mana to survive the constant sub-zero temperatures since he was a cold-blooded creature.

The door to the hut creaked open, and Alice emerged. She stretched, a habit that likely remained from when she was human, and looked around sleepily. “Oh,” was all she said as the platform began its descent to the tower’s entrance.

“How long did I sleep?” Alice asked as the platform touched down on the ice.

“Weeks? Maybe months? No idea.” Victor had stopped keeping track long ago. His perception of time had changed ever since he acquired his new form. Without the sweet embrace of sleep to help pass the time, his brain operated on a completely different scale.

“Huh.” Alice fixed her messy hair. “Now that I think about it…time has no meaning to me anymore.”

Genus hummed. “It must be difficult to come to terms with becoming an immortal…assuming your race is?”

Alice honestly had no clue. Records and legends that she doubted more and more every day suggested that high humans had very long but not infinite life spans. But am I a high human? My race doesn’t say that. All it says are question marks and lists my body type as a Darkness Mana Body. The System also said my life span had drastically increased… So she pondered to herself as the group got ready to finally step foot on the sixty-first floor.

The zombie dragons landed, snuck their wings under the wooden platform, and carried it on their backs as they walked into the tower’s inviting entrance. Unfortunately, due to the tower’s weird pressure that stopped flying, they couldn’t simply fly inside, so everyone, even Victor, was reduced to walking, although Netherborne were incapable of walking and instead floated a foot off the ground.

They descended the same mystical steps for a few hours through an encapsulated void. Few words were exchanged as they all enjoyed the rhythmic drum of the zombie dragons’ feet. In moments like these, Victor was grateful the undead he created had far higher intelligence than the undead he knew of in other novels or video games. Remembering his homeland, he wondered, How is Terry doing on Earth? Maybe he could send me some entertainment through our link somehow? I would be willing to shell out a few million stat points for an internet connection.

However, now was not the time to contact Terry. When Victor reached the bottom of the dungeon and completed whatever trial awaited him, only then would he waste so many points on useless things like Terry and a phone connection. Other than soothing his boredom, knowing the affairs of Earth were of no concern to him at the moment.

Victor was distracted from his thoughts as the exit came into view. As always, Wiggles, slithering in front of them, went first, as Victor had designated him as the party’s scout. After a few minutes, Victor had confirmed through a conversation with the titanic earthworm what the floor entailed, and it was both good and bad news.

“Good news, this floor should be effortless for me to deal with,” Victor said.

Genus let out a long sigh. “And the bad news?”

“It’s insects for dinner…”

Genus spat to the side in disgust, and Alice threw up her hands and walked back to her hut. “If anyone needs me, I will be sleeping. No way I’m dealing with that.”

“Hold on. Your Hellfire will be very useful here and net you an unfathomable amount of experience points. At least fight for a few hours a day.” Victor wanted to ensure Alice gained as many levels as possible during their descent. Sure, his Annihilating Aura would be insanely effective here, but he wouldn’t manage to kill every single insect, especially those too high level for his aura spell to deal with.

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“You just want to focus on your project on the surface and have me do all the work,” Alice refuted. She knew that Victor had been busy dealing with things on the surface, and he couldn’t attend to Necron if he was busy keeping swarms of insects from the floating platform.

Victor hated to admit it, but she was partially correct. The surface affairs had picked up steam recently with people from the Empire and Eshnar discovering the toll roads. He was still unsure if they had been officially allowed or disclosed to the public, but traffic had picked up the pace, and the money was rolling in.

Who knew owning a town was so much fun, especially when he didn’t have to do anything, and it was all handled by his subordinates? It’s an elaborate video game for me to pass the time with. With both Genus and Alice sleeping the months away, Victor was left alone with his own thoughts for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and that was insane, so managing the town helped keep his mind off thoughts such as, What if I am still alive on Earth?

Unfortunately, that thought remained dormant at the back of his mind like a ticking time bomb. Yet he knew he would eventually discover the truth through Terry or another source.

“All right, sure, maybe I want to work on Necron, but—” Victor was cut off as Wiggles sent him a wave of distress. He quickly focused on his favorite pet and found he was completely swarmed. Without waiting, he floated through the tower’s exit and examined the new floor.

It was a mixture of black mud, bodies of stagnant brown water, and small islands of plants connected by natural decaying wooden bridges. Victor obviously couldn’t smell, but he had visited a similar-looking biome back on Earth for a school geography project and had struggled to keep down his lunch due to the stench.

The stagnant pools of murky water with swarms of fist-size flies mating above them rippled as the ground shook. The awful sound of wet sludge slapping together was followed by an eruption as Wiggles’s titanic head emerged in the far distance with hundreds of earthworms latched onto his scales like leeches. They wiggled like brown tentacles as they gnawed on his armored plates. Wiggles violently twisted his body and slammed back down in an attempt to crush the vermin, but the vibrations seemed to attract more earthworms to latch on and replace their comrades.

“The ground is alive,” Genus noted as he gazed at the land with his rainbow eyes. “Anything that tries to cross this floor by land won’t make it very far.”

Alice pointed to the sky. “The air is no better. Look at those things; the sky is practically black due to how many there are.”

Sure enough, the sky was blanketed by a raging storm of flies varying in size from a fist to the size of a large dog. Wiggles erupted from the ground again, but this time, his neon-green flesh glowed and secreted a sludge that coated his skin like a wax that seemed to burn the mouths of the earthworms.

“Seems Wiggles is fine as always,” Victor remarked. That undead pet of his was by far his best investment so far. Not even the dragons he had in his employ could compare. “Right, let’s get a move on. Hopefully, this floor is smaller than the others.”

Victor still needed more data to be sure, but he suspected the dungeon had a limited budget of mana to expend per floor. The more extreme the conditions, the more mana was required. Same with the number of monsters. Fewer monsters, less mana. More monsters, less severe conditions. It was a trade-off, as with anything in this world. But as we get closer to the lowest floor, the amount of mana the dungeon has available to invest in each floor seems to be increasing. From first glance, this floor has repeated the harsh environment tactic with only insects for food and stagnant water that is undrinkable without magic.

Sadly for the dungeon, swarm tactics were the least optimal way to deal with a Netherborne. With every kill, Victor would only grow in power and increase his army. Which was precisely his game plan. None of the other floors allowed me to amass a large amount of usable undead. The graveyard floor had weak skeletons, the desert had slugs, the ocean floor had creatures useless out of the water, the caves had some strong creatures, but I used them to distract the dragons chasing us, and finally, the Fleshtree floor had…trees. They can’t exactly move.

Metaphorically cracking his knuckles, it was time to get to work. Victor mentally directed the undead dragons to resume flying operations. Since Wiggles couldn’t go on ahead to scout out the tower, Victor had to guess where the next tower would be…or did he? It seems the dungeon uses the towers to move mana from one floor to another, so following the flow of mana will guide me.

With the flying platform in the air, he floated in front of it and watched as the withering mass of dog-size flies spotted fresh meat in the form of Alice standing defiantly with her arms crossed below her chest and her mana shield coating her in black armor.

As the swarm loomed, the buzzing became deafening, and like a living tsunami, the wave of flies overwhelmed the sky and encircled them on all sides. As the ring of flies rapidly condensed around the unamused Alice, Victor toggled on his kill switch.

Annihilating Aura pulsed like a tide of extinction. The flies that hit the invisible wave of death mana had their bodies eradicated from the inside out as they rapidly decayed and tumbled from the sky.

Like hail, flies rained on the mud land below, and Victor watched in slight disgust as the ground wiggled with python-size earthworms that eagerly awaited their falling meal.

But before the flies touched down, Victor cast the most extensive Raise Undead spell ever. His domain over life and death took over the world, and the flies had a breath of life reignited in them as the spell fought to rebuild every single one.

Some eagerly awaiting earthworms detected a shift in their prey’s behavior and retreated under the mud. But the less observant ones found themselves being grabbed by claws the size of human hands and dragged into the sky to be devoured by a swarm of flesh-hungry undead.

The consumed earthworms were then reconstructed as another Raise Undead spell pulsed out. Like a harbinger of destruction, Victor commanded his swarm like a composer. He could hardly contain himself as he cast Consume and his lifeforce almost doubled as a sea of souls swirled up to provide life to the void creature.

As Victor thought he had dealt with them all, another swarm appeared on the horizon. But this time, Alice had both her hands ready. She hovered into the sky as a purplish ball of hellfire rapidly expanded before her. Once the swarm was close enough, she spread out her hands, and the ball exploded into a blaze that cascaded across the sky and engulfed the swarm.

The chorus of exploding flies like popcorn and the sickening smell of burned insects wafted over, but Alice had a grin as she inspected a screen only she could see. It seemed this floor would be incredibly beneficial to both of them…and they were only just getting started.