Octavius slowly ran his hands along the underside of the hovercraft until they settled onto the small grips that he'd made. Pulling up, he set his feet and remained perfectly still on the bottom of the hovercraft as one of the new arrivals stomped up to the large enchanted disk. He tracked the alien's white-robed legs with his eyes as it circled the hovercraft that he was plastered to.

"Good here!" called out a guttural voice with a tone that was all too recognizable as that of a thrall. Octavius took a moment to make sure that his cloak was wrapped around him in a way that would prevent it from hanging limply in the air.

The pair of legs turned and walked over to the next hovercraft in line before calling out once more. Octavius breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that the hovercraft that he was on had passed some type of inspection.

"Very well," a new voice said with a languid fluidity, "Lord Kilne, Lord Djicae, could you two please join me for a moment before we leave? I would like to discuss our strategy."

"Sure," said one of the aliens in the group by the wall. The other of the two lords must have made some sort of silent gesture in response, because two pairs of legs stepped away from the wall and strolled over to meet the newcomer. Together they moved past the hovercraft and toward the ledge before stopping.

Octavius was forced to strain his neck if he wanted to keep an eye on them, so he decided to merely listen. Closing his eyes, he split his attention between using his mana to gain control of the shadows beneath the hovercraft and listening to their conversation.

"Am I correct in assuming that you are both aware of the reason for our mission here?" the alien that was most likely the son of the lord from the previous night asked.

"Yes," came the response from one, "We must find one of the escapees and figure out how they managed to activate the device."

"Not only that," the son said, "We also mustn't allow any of Glirini's people to discover our actions. They have far more access to the Great Below than we do, after all."

"So then we'll be taking one of the old entrances?" asked the third alien lord.

"Indeed," replied the lord's son, his words suddenly containing sharp pauses between each syllable "In fact, we'll be using one of the epsilon entrances."

A strange snarl came from one of the three aliens before one of the lords responded in an even more clipped tone. "The epsilon entrances?" it said in a tranquil voice that failed to match the whirlwind of emotions that practically radiated from it, "There's a reason that most of those cursed ruins are unexplored despite how much value they contain. Is your father just trying to get us all out of the way?"

Octavius frowned as he heard that and paused his gathering of shadows around himself. If there was going to be some type of internal conflict among these aliens, it would be something that he needed to account for. On the one hand, a distracted opponent was a disadvantaged opponent. On the other hand, however, an internal conflict of any magnitude would create a great deal of chaos.

"No," came the simple response of the lord's son, "If the escaped thralls were in the hunting grounds, or anywhere near the lower levels for that matter, they would've all been found. I've also been given a true compass."

A long moment of silence followed that proclamation, and Octavius took the chance to solidify his control over the shadows that engulfed him. As shadowed as his location already was, he could hold the spell for a significant amount of time before using up a good percentage of his mana pool.

"I suppose that's fair," said one of the lords, its words beginning to haltingly flow together once more, "After all, they might have hints toward the answers we need to return home at last."

An even longer silence followed that sentence before the lord's son finally spoke up again. "Yes," he said, "Now we must come up with a specific plan. I think that we should make our way from the entrance we use to the southern quadrant of the lower levels in a straight line. If we don't find any of them, we can try again with another entrance."

"That could work," responded one of the lords, "And it would be significantly simpler and quicker than just patrolling like I'd assumed we'd do. What would it take? Three days for each trip?"

"Give or take, yes," came the son's response.

"Alright," said the other lord, "We have a true compass and two master mages among us, along with a stone shaper and the rest. I think that we'll be able to survive if we simply head straight for the lower levels like you said."

As the three apparent leaders of the expedition turned back toward the hovercraft, Octavius considered his next course of action. No matter what, he wanted to return to the planet's surface. From there, however, he had a choice to make. He could either try to find one of what he guessed to be the thralls that were in his tutorial instance, or he could try to level up and grow strong enough to stand a better chance of surviving.

After a moment's consideration, he decided that he'd check out this entrance to the Great Below that the aliens had discussed. It was likely that it would be deadly to him if it managed to scare the thralls' masters, but it still warranted an investigation.

He was quickly drawn from his thoughts by the various occupants of the room converging on the hovercraft. One by one, their legs disappeared from his vision as they either climbed up the small steps onto the magical craft or simply hopped on board. Flexing his hands, he braced himself for the hovercraft's inevitable movement.

Its acceleration was slow at first as it angled out of the alcove. As the ground gave way beneath him, Octavius held tightly onto the shadows with a mental fist. He was unexpected, well hidden, concealed by shadow magic, and had a stealth boost from his cloak, and was still worried about being spotted. After all, he was hiding from beings that were presumably almost all of a higher level than him.

The three hovercraft accelerated toward mountains far below in complete silence. Some of the passengers of the craft that Octavius was hiding under spoke to each other, but he was far too preoccupied to pay attention to them. His hands and the toes of his boots strained against the effects of gravity.

The strain that he felt only increased as the hovercraft approached the ground and began to slow down. Turning his head to peek over his shoulder, he saw the shadowed mountainside quickly approaching.

The hovercraft dipped between two mountains and hugged the valley floor. Rocks and light grey shrubs flew through his line of sight as the hovercraft turned suddenly to the left and followed another valley.

As he was jostled back on forth from his position beneath the hovercraft, he had the strangest sense of deja vu. For an instant, he was kitted up in full battle rattle, the comforting weight of his rifle strapped to his chest. Green foliage flew by beneath the SOAR MH-6 Little Bird helicopter as it maneuvered through a valley.

He shook his head, pulling himself from the memory. The helicopter flew low through valleys to avoid being spotted, predominantly by radar. That left the question of why the hovercraft was moving in such a manner clear in his mind.

Obviously, it was also to avoid detection, but from what? He hadn't seen any modern technology that would imply the use of radar being possible, but perhaps there was a magical equivalent. Maybe they were hiding from the other spires? The aliens had mentioned that they didn't want to be found out by a rival faction.

Of course, there was another question that the high-speed maneuvering raised — how was it done? There was absolutely no way that this was a preprogrammed flight path. Something as small as a slight miscalculation would send them slamming into the mountains on either side. Shaking his head, he decided that he'd see what happened to the hovercraft once they disembarked. They had to return to the spire somehow.

Shaking his head, he pulled himself from the ever-growing list of unanswered questions that occupied his mind and brought his attention back to his surroundings. The forward momentum of the hovercraft began to decrease slowly as they presumably approached their destination.

From his position beneath the hovercraft, he couldn't see the direction that it was currently moving, so instead, he just scanned the ground beneath them. This hovercraft is the last one in their formation, so none of them will notice me if I drop off. Will that be the best way for me to disembark, though? he considered his options but soon decided that even with his hundreds of health points, dropping onto uncushioned stone back-first would be far too risky.

Slowly, the speed that the ground flew past his vision decreased until he could pick out the individual pebbles that littered the valley. Assuming that they were getting close to the LZ, he started picking out various hiding places along the length of the valley.

Soon, the forward movement of the hovercraft ceased entirely, and it began to lower itself the final fifteen feet to the ground below. As it did so, Octavius locked his eyes on the shadowed mass of a boulder to his right. Closing his eyes, he spread the shadows that he had covered himself with toward the boulder and quickly confirmed that there weren't any obstructions between him and it.

The voices of the occupants of the various hovercraft were all hush whispers, but Octavius largely ignored them. He needed to concentrate on getting away from the hovercraft the moment it landed. If it started back toward the spire with him still attached, he would not be in a good position.

As the hovercraft slowly descended, he counted off the distance between himself and the ground. He had to drop at a time that would allow him to get behind the boulder before the hovercraft's occupants disembarked and after it was low enough to obscure his sudden movement.

Five feet...

Four feet...

Three feet...

In an instant, he released his grip on the bottom of the hovercraft and dropped silently to the ground. The moment that the armor plate on his back struck the gravely ground, he started to roll to the right. As he moved, he oriented himself toward the boulder with his shadow sense. A second later, he was behind it.

As soon as he was hidden, he froze, listening carefully for any sign that he'd been spotted. After ten seconds and no change in the various idle conversations, he decided that he hadn't been. With slow, smooth movements, he flipped the hood of his cloak over his head and began to crawl around the large boulder.

He stopped as soon as his eye was able to peek around the side of the boulder and toward the various disembarking aliens as they milled about. Now that he could see them, even if it was only by the light of the stars above, he was able to count their numbers.

There were a total of thirteen of the Ulindre and two thralls that both wore the robes of magic users above level 25. He was also able to pick out three distortions in the air that marked the presence of more thralls hidden under illusions, but he wasn't confident in picking them all out against the irregular, dimly lit mountainside.

As he watched, the empty hovercraft simultaneously rose into the air in complete silence before departing along the valley floor at speed. Maybe it is a preprogrammed flight path?

Turning his attention back to the various aliens, he saw three of them huddled together in the front. Two of them stood at an imposing eight feet, and the third stood a few inches less than seven—all three worth robes with patterns that he couldn't make out in the darkness. With a clear view of who he guessed to be the lords and the other lord's son, he used identify on them.

Maeki - Ulindre (E) (Lvl 57) (Mage**)

Eludii - Ulindre (E) (Lvl 73) (Chrono Mage)

Eledireni - Ulindre (E) (Lvl 71) (Air Mage*)

He sucked a breath of warm air through his teeth as he read the levels of the two lords. Ok, definitely no confrontations then, he decided.

Now that he was able to match the name of the lord's son with a specific alien, he tried to pick out their conversation from two dozen feet away. Deciphering the speech of the Ulindre was hard enough on its own due to its lack of inflection, but doing so over half a dozen side conversations? It took every bit of concentration that he had.

"We should send a stone shaper in first to sure up the tunnel's structure," one of the two lords, who both had their backs to him, said, "It would be ... [unintelligible] ... this."

"I agree," replied Maeki before calling one of the robed thralls over to him and saying something that Octavius couldn't hear.

The thrall nodded and walked toward a pile of boulders that stood fifty feet down the valley from Octavius's position. Knowing that the entrance of the Great Below was likely hidden there, he paid extra close attention to the thrall's specific movements.

The thrall stepped around a boulder and then rested a hand upon a boulder. The stone of the boulder slowly flowed upward over the course of thirty seconds until it formed an opening that was twice as far across as the thrall was. It then stepped into the hall that it had created and disappeared from his line of sight.

The various hushed conversations went on between the gathered Ulindre, who seemed to have broken into two groups of equal size. The remaining thralls merely stood in place around their masters without a word.

Five minutes later, the stone shaper walked back out of the pile of boulders and gestured to the lords.

"Alright, let's go," one of them said before waving to its subordinates. The aliens quickly closed the distance to the pile of boulders before pausing for a moment. They spoke for half a minute before one of them raised an arm. Above it, a small glowing orb of light flickered into existence, and they continued into the pile of boulders and out of Octavius's line of sight.

Once they disappeared, he remained on guard and perfectly still for fifteen minutes. After deciding that they wouldn't be returning any time soon, he silently crept toward the pile of boulders with his eyes constantly peeled for the slight distortion in the air that would mark the presence of a thrall. He didn't yet know the operating procedure of the Ulindre and thus wasn't going to take for granted the fact that they wouldn't leave a sentry behind.

As he closed the fifty feet between himself and the pile of boulders, nothing stood out to him. With a final look around in all directions, he stepped out from cover. Even out in the middle of the valley, however, he knew that he'd be difficult to pick out with his huntsman cloak wrapped around him.

Moving forward, he peered into the opening that the aliens had all disappeared down into. It was small at first, maybe four feet across and five feet tall. As it pitched downward, however, it seemed to open up just as it faded into pure darkness.

So I guess that this is the Great Below. Now the question is if I should follow them down. It is undoubtedly my best chance to not only find one of the thralls from the tutorial but also to get some other benefits for myself. After all, that lord did mention that there were ruins of some value down here. On the other hand, anything that scares multiple level 70's is something that would almost definitely kill me...

As he stood at the entrance to the Great Below, he considered what the dangers could be. Presumably, getting lost was a significant portion of the danger. After all, the lords had seemed extremely relieved after Maeki had revealed that he had a true compass in his possession, whatever a true compass was.

Octavius, however, most likely didn't have much to fear in getting lost. Now that he had the huntsman cloak, he wouldn't have to worry about running out of food or water. Beyond that, he would likely be able to navigate through the underground ruins easily with the use of his shadow sense spell.

Alright, looks like I'll be going dungeon diving, he decided, It's not as if I have any better things to do around here.

Now that he had made the decision, he stepped back from the entrance to the tunnel and took stock of his equipment. He wanted to give the alien party enough of a head start that he wouldn't encounter them ever again.

Patting down his person, he counted off the items that he had, which included the clothes on his back, his carapace armor, his spear, his long dagger, a multitool, a decently sized piece of cloth, a few lengths of paracord that he was using as a belt and as a sheath for the halves of his spear, and a few other knick-knacks.

Sitting down in the entrance, he waited until his mana and stamina bars had topped off and stepped forward into the tunnel. As he moved, he drew the bladed half of his spear. In the darkness, he was forced to immediately cast shadow sense. Moving in a crouch, he ducked down the irregular incline until it suddenly opened up into a perfectly square hallway that ran in a straight line into the distance.

Examining the hallway before him with his shadow sense, he realized that the entrance that he had just walked down was actually an old cave-in. With a sigh, he took the final step forward and stood up straight in the pitch-black hallway.

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.