You are entering the World Dungeon The Great Below

The ruins of a once-thriving civilization that are now only inhabited by monsters, demons, and the forgotten.

Requirements:

None

Warning! You are entering a World Dungeon

The creation of a world dungeon is a rare occurrence in the multiverse. Their danger levels vary wildly across their breadth. You will not receive a warning when entering more dangerous sections of a World Dungeon. Proceed with caution.

Octavius frowned as he read and reread the messages before dismissing them. He hadn't been expecting the Great Below to be a dungeon, much less a World Dungeon, whatever that was. The good news was that the dungeon didn't seem to have any goal, requirements, or any other thing that would require him to do something.

Does the name World Dungeon mean that these tunnels cover the entire planet? he wondered, Because that'd be... well, that'd be rather incredible. Then again, it says World Dungeon rather than Dungeon World.

Shaking his head, he dismissed the thought. It wasn't as though the size of the dungeon mattered to him at the moment. In fact, the fact that the Great Below was a dungeon didn't change much. He was still going to explore, try to find thralls, and hopefully get his hands on a few levels and some good loot.

His cloak swayed in the air currents that flowed down the tunnel from the surface as he started forward into the pitch-black darkness. Concentrating, he extended his shadow sense down the perimeter of the tunnel for twenty feet.

Eying his mana bar, he quickly calculated that he was expending mana at a rate of two mana per minute. Assuming that he wanted to never drop below half mana to prevent exhaustion and still have enough for an offensive spell or two, that meant that he had about three hours of sight before he would have to take a break.

As he walked down the hallway, he kept his ears pricked for so much as the slightest sound coming from outside the range of his shadow sense spell. The hallway was clearly made with either some type of magic or with a great deal of physical labor.

Its floor and walls were extremely smooth, if not polished. The floor was bowed ever so slightly toward the walls so that gravity would drain any liquids to the sides of the hallway, and the walls were near-perfectly parallel to each other. The ceiling of the hallway was arched a couple of feet above his head and was just as precise and symmetrical as the walls and floor.

The complete and utter silence of the hallway was rather unnerving, giving Octavius the impression that something was waiting just outside the range of his senses. As he walked forward, he kept the blade of his spear in a low-ready position.

He walked through the uniform hallway for just about half a mile before he came to the first intersection. The hallway opened up into a small circular room with a dome for a roof. Five other hallways, all identical to the one that he was traveling down, also opened up into the room.

With a frown, he considered his options as he walked to the entrance of each hallway and cast his shadow sense down them. None of them had anything that stood out about them, as well as nothing to indicate which path the Ulindre had taken.

The most likely thing would be for them to have either just continued straight or have turned down the far-left hallway and headed in the general direction of the spires, he rationalized, so if I take the hallway on the close-right side, I should have the best chances of avoiding bumping into them.

With that in mind, he returned to the hallway that he had come from and dropped to a knee. Grabbing a fist-sized rock from the edge of the room, he started using it to scratch an 'X' symbol into the wall at knee height. Satisfied that the way back to the surface was marked inconspicuously enough, he decided to slip the jagged rock into a pocket and started down his chosen tunnel.

As he walked down the identical tunnel, he made sure to keep the range of his shadow sense a few feet behind him to prevent anything from attacking him from the back. Suddenly, he heard a distant noise and froze mid-step.

In an instant, he had raised the half-spear into a defensive position. After a minute of absolute silence, he began to wonder if he had imagined the soft sound. Nonetheless, he continued forward with even more caution.

As he moved, he considered assembling his complete spear but soon decided against doing so. While the range offered by the spear would be a boon, its size would prevent him from using it effectively in the confined space of the hallway.

His journey continued for another fifteen minutes with sporadic pauses whenever he thought that he heard something in the distance. Although he couldn't even tell if the noise was coming from in front of him or from behind him due to its volume and the hallway's echo, he was growing more and more certain that something else was in the tunnels relatively nearby.

His boots moved quickly and quietly over the smooth stone floor. With his intense concentration on his surroundings, he nearly jumped into the air when his boot kicked something small and metallic by the sound that it made as it skipped across the floor. Even before the echoed died out, he had frozen in place, both listening for any noise and searching for whatever it was that he had kicked.

A few seconds later, his shadow sense latched onto something small and thin. Taking two quick steps forward, he crouched down and picked it up. Running his fingers over it in the darkness, he decided that it was just a small shard of metal.

It was both corroded and warped enough that he couldn't even attempt to figure out its original purpose. It was maybe a sixteenth of an inch in thickness and half an inch long, which was probably why his shadow sense hadn't originally noticed it.

He used identify on it quickly in hopes of finding its origin.

Small Metal Shard (Common) - A small shard of metal in extremely poor condition.

Well, that didn't help much.

Now that he knew that there was something like the shard in the hallway, he focused his shadow sense on the floor and scanned it thoroughly for any other small things that he might've missed.

After a minute, he'd failed to find anything beyond two more similar shards of metal. With a frown, he continued forward down the hallway. Suddenly, as the boundary of his shadow sense moved forward down the hallway, something long and thin entered it. Moving farther forward, the rest of the object was revealed to him. It was an old battle axe.

With a frown, he walked toward it. As he did so, more objects were revealed to him. Next came the rotten remains of something wooden, followed by a dented metal helm. The farther that he moved, the clearer the situation became. He had discovered the remains of some type of battle.

Counted a total of 7 bodies by the time that his shadow sense reached the far side of the battleground. Five died facing away from him. These bodies were all short with small horns and shrunken skin. Thralls, he realized.

The thralls were outfitted with little to no armor or even clothes. Each one was armed with what appeared to be a long, curved blade, although two of the bodies only have scabbards with no blade to be found. The blades that he did find were all damaged and corroded from age.

The other two corpses were much more impressive. They were all of a similar short height to the thralls but were much broader in the shoulder. In fact, it looked as though the two of them had fallen, blocking off the entirety of the hallway.

They both wore full plate armor of some type of metal, and one was missing its helm. They were armed with spears and massive metal tower shields as tall as they were. As incredible as their armaments were, it was their bodies themselves that surprised Octavius.

As his shadow sense penetrated the sets of armor, it became apparent that both sets were filled with thick bones that were covered by shrunken skin and wispy hair on their faces. Holy shit, he muttered in his mind, Those are dwarves!

He most certainly hadn't expected to encounter the corpses of dwarves when he'd entered the dungeon. What is it with dwarves and dungeons? he wondered, I guess it's just a coincidence that both dungeons I've been in have been dwarf related, but it still seems strange.

He walked toward the corpses of the dwarves with the intention of searching their corpses. As he stepped over the body of the first thrall that blocked his path, his boot brushed against it. The moment that he touched it, a strange crinkling sound filled the hallway.

Octavius leapt backward and brought up his half-spear as the corpse stumbled to its decrepit feet. As it clambered to a standing position, it bumped into the corpse beside it. That seemed to start a chain reaction because soon the other six corpses were all clawing their way to their feet.

The dwarven zombies seemed to be having significant troubles in standing in their heavy armor, but the thralls weren't so bogged down. They stumbled toward him as he used identify on the one that was closest to him.

Common Zombified Thrall Legionnaire (Lvl 34)

The thrall stumbled toward him slowly, and he backed up using his shadow sense to keep an eye on them as he used identify on the rest of them.

Common Zombified Thrall Legionnaire (Lvl 34)

Common Zombified Thrall Legionnaire (Lvl 35)

Common Zombified Thrall Legionnaire (Lvl 33)

Common Zombified Thrall Legionnaire (Lvl 34)

Common Zombified Dwarven Bulwark (Lvl 43)

Common Zombified Dwarven Bulwark (Lvl 44)

A frown made its way onto his face as he read the levels of the zombies. Their levels implied that they were stronger than him, but the identify windows were structured like that of beasts and monsters. I guess that they aren't sentient; that should make this much easier.

He had defeated beasts that were twenty levels higher than him before, just not in such large numbers. One thing that he clearly had going for him, however, was speed. The zombie simply shambled toward him at a slow walking pace that he could easily outrun if he decided to.

If they don't have any stat points in agility or dexterity, it probably means that either their strength or stamina stats are incredibly high. After all, there has to be something about them that warrants their levels.

After some consideration, he decided to attach the two halves of his spear together. Even if he wouldn't be able to bring it to bear against any enemies that attack his form behind, he much more wanted the advantage in reach that it would provide at the moment.

After the two halves of the spear were firmly attached to each other, he activated instant thrust and struck at the zombified thrall's head. It made no effort to avoid the attack as it shambled forward.

Guided by the colorless image that his shadow sense provided him, the spear blade pierced cleanly into the thrall's eye socket. Unlike with a normal thrall, the back of the zombie's head failed to stop the spear as it sliced clean through the head.

He pulled the spear back with a surprised expression. He hadn't expected it to be so simple to defeat a level 34 monster but was still surprised when the zombie failed to so much as react to the hole going through its head.

Ok, it seems that the movies lied, he said to himself, but if destroying the brain doesn't stop them, what will? Do I have to behead them? Cause that's going to be a bitch to do with a spear in a confined hallway.

With a frown, he decided that he had to at least see if beheading would work. As he studied the five zombies shambling slowly toward his retreating form, he tried to figure out how he could decapitate one of them. At first, he considered using a spell; he most certainly had plenty of time to prepare one. His problem was that he'd never have enough mana to behead all five of them plus the dwarves and still be able to use shadow sense.

After a moment, he had come up with a plan. With his spear held firmly in his right hand, he drew his long knife with his left. After taking a deep breath, he concentrated on the endless shadows of the hallway. In the pitch-black environment, it took significantly less mana than it otherwise would for him to form the shadowing into a thin, solid bar.

Jamming the bar into either wall at waist height between the first and second zombies, he watched as the second zombie bumped into it and was blocked. It backed up a step and tried again, only to be met with failure. With a raspy hiss, it swung its arm, easily knocking the bar of shadows free.

Octavius let the shadows dissipate, glad that it had served its purpose in separating the first zombie from rest. Stepping forward, he ducked and swung his spear at the zombie's ankles. A healthy thrall was light; a thrall that had lost most of its water weight and had begun to decompose was even lighter.

It fell to the side and slid down the wall. It immediately began to claw its way back to its feet, but it was too late for it. Octavius stepped forward, stepping on its chest as he used his knife to hack at its neck as though it was a machete.

After his second strike, its head popped free and rolled across the floor. He was thus caught by surprise when its arm reached up and gripped his left wrist with an incredible crushing strength. Reacting nearly instantly, he brought his spear around and sliced its hand off at the wrist.

Backpedalling quickly, he watched in horrified awe as the headless zombie shambled back to its feet as if nothing had happened. Resheathing his knife, he shook out his arm as it throbbed in pain. Another few seconds of that would've resulted in him having to deal with a broken arm. As it was, the experience would leave a nasty bruise.

His more immediate concern, however, was how he was going to deal with the zombies. Now he knew why they had such a high level; they were practically impossible to kill. He began to consider just running back to the round room and ducking into a different hallway.

Before he did so, however, he tried to puzzle out how they could be killed.

Maybe it's an elemental weakness? he wondered, Something like you have to burn them. If that's the case, I'm just out of luck.

As he stared at its stump of a neck, another thought came to him. It's obvious that they're animated with magic; maybe that's how I can kill them.

His gaze fell on his Soulsilver spear. He took a quick half dozen steps away from the zombies to give himself an extra few seconds. Closing his eyes, he allowed his spear to funnel mana from his core at its natural rate.

As the spear began to glow, he stopped his shadow sense skill and opened his eyes. As he saw the zombies in color, he noticed that they looked pretty much exactly like he would've expected zombified thralls to look like.

With a quick step forward, he thrust his glow spear forward and into the chest of the headless zombie. Just like on his other attempts, however, it had no visible effect on the zombie. Stepping back, he reconsidered running away.

I guess there's one more thing that I can try, he decided, If they are animated by magic, maybe my attack just missed the magic.

Backing up to give himself some room, he activated his mana manipulation skill and searched the zombies. Suddenly, the zombie looked entirely different. A glowing core of dark green mana pulsed in its navel, beating rhythmically like a heart and pouring mana into the zombie's body. A single dark green filament extended from the core into the distance behind the zombie.

Finally, he sighed as he stepped forward again, this better actually work.