At the bottom of the stairwell, seconds before I began my ascent, I carefully observed my surroundings. All around me, darkness loomed, darkness which would have blinded lesser beings but had no effect on me, a creature whose sight wasn't reliant on light but rather was powered by an internal source, in my case; magic.

It was powerful, hungry darkness that lurked, omnipresently, throughout the stairwell. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, be it "myself" as the secondary will of Althos, or "myself" as a complete, tri-minded entity.

And yet it didn't hunger for me. It felt odd, unnatural even, to be within the reach of such hunger, yet completely overlooked or even ignored by it. That was something that took a moment or two to adjust too.

After a few seconds of observation, and mental adjustment, I felt satisfied with my situation. Aside from the darkness that loomed, hungrily and impassively in the stairwell, there was nothing of concern that prevented me from going on my journey upward, further into the belly of the beast, as it were.

Freeing myself from gravity was easy enough. It took just the desire to be unchained from the ground for my body to begin to float upward, no longer limited by something that held down mortal creatures.

I began my ascent slowly. Flying felt odd, even to me. It was if gravity held no power over me as if it couldn't contain the unspeakable power that made up every atom, every fiber of my being. Moments after I felt gravity lose what will hold it held over me, and I had floated up a few meters into the air, I glanced down at the floor I had just left.

The floor underneath me was also made of some dark material, but it wasn't the same sort of dark material that the walls were made of, obsidian. I gazed at it, studying it, and eventually opted to just use one of my divine powers: appraisal.

In perhaps a matter of nanoseconds after I made the decision to use my power, I heard a familiar mechanical voice speak directly to my mind, even as the green text I had long grown accustomed too lit up my vision.

[New Knowledge Alert: Ceramic Tile

Ceramics themselves are solid material made of hardened clay. Clay is a substance that can be found all over the planes and can be reliably be used to form a variety of instruments, vehicles, and other things sapient species use to improve their lives.

Ceramic tiles are used to cover the ground in homes populated by creatures who create things like settlements. They can also be used as decorations themselves, but that is not their primary purpose and typically the sorts to use them that way are the artisans who create them for others to use.

The particular ceramic tiles you appraised were originally a different color and got dyed to their current color, after being covered with a dye made of the juice of local fruits.]

I studied the entry for a few moments and then willed it away. Doing so was easy, all it took was the desire to get the thing out of my sight. That knowledge was like many other bits and pieces of knowledge I knew, odd little facts that I sprung into being already knowing, and by now it was something I was growing increasingly comfortable doing.

Once the entry had faded from my sight I continued my upward ascent.

Ascending through the darkened, vertical chamber was odd. I flew upward at a leisurely pace, all while keeping my eyes open for anything worth inspecting and found no such things in the stairwell.

After I released myself from gravity's binding, I floated lazily through the vertical stairwell. My mind and body were in the chamber, but my focus wasn't on anything in front of me: it was on my powers.

Specifically, I was focused on my radar. I intensely focused on it, waiting for it to change, wondering if it would.

I know this place has multiple, probably hundreds, of floors. So far everything my radar is showing me appears to be on this floor, the ground floor. If I float up... will it change? I wondered, and while I did so, I opened my mind to truly explore this chamber.

As I casually floated upward I allowed my other senses to inspect the chamber as thoroughly as my eyes had before I took to the sky. They flooded my brain with sensory information.

The smell of sweat, fear, and stubbornness filled my nostrils each time I inhaled. I could smell a few separate scents of sweat, one of which belonged to a... what I assumed was a desert giant who favored spicy food due to the amount of sweat they exuded, and another of which appeared to belong to a giant who favored food that exuded strong scents.

Their sweat lingered heavily in the air, and whenever I opened my mouth it surged into the open orifice, coating my tongue and forcing me to endure the unpleasant taste of their musk. On the other hand, their emotions also coated my tongue and pleased my palate, but weren't pleasant enough to offset the unpleasantness of their bodily odors.

While studying this strange chamber I resolidified a single part of myself, and gently placed that part, my hand, on one of the staircases as I floated upward. I didn't try to stop myself, as that would have been easy for me to do with but a thought. Instead, I wanted to feel the ceramics.

They were cold and hard in my hands, solid and reliable even if I had opted to walk on them rather than fly through them. Their solidity made sense, this was a stairwell designed for creatures of at least giant stature after all, so they'd need to be solid and unyielding against force or weight.

This stairwell was silent. It wasn't eerily silent or anything, I heard faint voices coming from beyond doors located throughout the chamber, but the chamber itself was quiet. It was one of those loud silences too, the sort that felt heavy. I listened to the voices, but even for my hearing, they were too quiet for me to make out what they saying, at least so far.

The first time my radar shifted happened about two minutes after I began my quiet, incorporeal, ascent through the dungeon. At that point, I had ascended through several staircases and was floating high above where I had begun my ascent.

The radar's shift was quick and quiet. One moment my minimap, the visual representation of my radar, showed the creatures I had seen and heard when I crept through the first floor of the dungeon, and the next it was changed.

New dots appeared on the minimap, more than there had been on the other floor, and located in new places relative to myself. They were scattered throughout the part of the dungeon the system appeared to believe I was now in, and seconds after the shift I floated through the top of a staircase and found myself facing another rectangular door. I stopped my ascent and took a second to get my bearings.

Rather than opt to read through the newest dots to adorn my mini-map, I quickly decided to see if I could outsource that. And I knew exactly who to ask.

[Hey, system, can you summarize what the radar is picking up from this floor?] I questioned, hoping that the system would have that capability if I asked for an assist.

It didn't take long for my brain to be filled with the familiar voice of the system.

[Hello, we can actually! Do you want that to be what happens from here on out? You can change this back anytime you want. If you decide for us to do this, then whenever you reach a new floor in this dungeon you'll get information about the composition of its inhabitants.] The system informed me, its mechanical voice as relaxed as ever.

I nodded and prepared to respond. I wouldn't have too. The system, evidently seeing my nod, decided to take it upon itself to just go ahead and inform me of the inhabitants of this part of the dungeon.

[This floor contains the first cells of the prison. It houses conventional prisoners. Both desert giant guards and desert giant prisoners exist here, as do a handful of domesticated animals that serve this facility's guards. All of the cells here are cells fit for giant prisoners, but are otherwise conventional prison cells.] The system informed me, nonchalantly discussing the state of this floor of the prison.

I'll come back here, either later, or after I rescue Angelica. I told myself, content to mark this place for future exploration at a later date, given the priority and timely nature of the mission I was on. But I might as well double-check what the system told me. Briefly, anyway. I thought, grinning and inspecting my radar myself.

In seconds I found that it was telling me the truth. Not that I doubted it, but double-checking it didn't hurt me in any particular way.

Some of the animals the radar could detect included venomous snakes and a handful of "Massive desert worms", creatures which were unlike any I had met to date. I'll be back, and when I am... I might just play with one of those worms and a few snakes. The idea of interacting with new creatures, especially ones unlike what the primary will had met, was intriguing to me, but not interesting enough to distract me from the matter at hand.

I turned my head away from the door in front of me, looked straight up at the underside of another staircase and willed myself upward yet again. In an instant, I continued my journey through this dungeon.

I had no way of knowing that prisons tended to be kind of repetitive. I'd learn that soon enough.

Are prisons... boring? I asked myself after my journey into the depths of the Onyx Obelisk had been underway for the better part of an hour. At that point, I must have ascended deep into the dungeon and therefore been high up within the tall tower.

I had climbed over three dozen staircases in the vertical chamber, each higher and higher than the last, and each time I had reached a new floor I had been informed that "this floor houses giant guards, guarding giant prisoners." Nothing distinct, nothing that stood out, aside from the different kinds of animals aiding the faculty of the place.

So far this has been pretty boring. I told myself, with a heavy sigh. But I continued my task, knowing full well that the award that awaited me upon completion of this task would be one worth the drudgery I was undergoing at the moment.

I was two dozen floors away from reaching a place of interest, but I wouldn't know that for another few minutes. When I finally reached the mysterious yellow door that signaled a change in the prison's population.

By the time I reached the sixtieth floor of the Onyx Obelisk, I was beginning to grow impatient. I hadn't really known that I could experience impatience since before I found all of my tasks to be moderately interesting and not at all repetitive, even the trek through the desert since I had been accompanied by worshipers and allies and hadn't trekked through the wastes alone.

Ignorance of my ability to experience inconvenient mortal emotions hadn't prevented me from growing mildly annoyed by the time I was on the 59th floor of the dungeon. I had sighed in annoyance as I took off yet again, in the wake of an all too familiar explanation from the system that yet another floor housed some animals, some giant prisoners, and some guards.

At that point, I had flown enough in this chamber to have an instinctive awareness of what speed I needed to go to quickly reach the next floor. In a matter of moments, I was on the next floor, my incorporeal feet planted as firmly as they could be on the floor that connected the staircase to a door I had expected to look different.

The door that greeted me on the sixtieth floor was unlike the obsidian things that had greeted me over and over again thus far. No, what stood before me wasn't an ominous slab of dark stonelike glass, it was a bright, metal door that loomed large in my vision, even in comparison to my massive frame.

The door must have been twenty-five meters tall, and it was made of some bright yellow metal. I stood and stared at it, shocked to see it, after growing used to the familiar and unwelcoming doors that had littered the dungeon and prison thus far.

It was when I had studied the eerie thing for a few moments that the monotone, mechanical voice of the system filled my mind once more.

[This floor is the first of the warding floors. These are floors that house specific, unusual prisoners.] And at that, despite the fact that the system wasn't done explaining itself just yet, I felt myself begin to grow just a bit excited, daring to hope that maybe I was nearing my goal.

[This floor and in all likelihood the next ten or so floors, do not house angels or demons. This floor houses ogres, powerfully built and simplistically minded brutish humanoids who in the worlds of mortals are known and feared for their cruelty and strength.] By the time I finished reading that notification, I could feel my eyes widen.

Powerful, simple-minded, brutish warriors. I thought, grinning at the similarities these creatures shared, even more-so given their names, with other powerful and brutish warriors I knew of: orcs.

This... they could be useful. Though... it's not like they need help now. It isn't pressing or time-sensitive. I told myself, quickly regaining my focus and refusing to be swayed by the newest of the things and creatures I could find some way to add to my worshipers. I'll be back soon. I reassured myself and readied myself for even more flying.

I took off with a thought, once again willing myself ever higher, and allowed my mind to wander for a moment. Now we're starting to get somewhere... a bit more interesting. I thought, chuckling.

[This floor is guarded by a large number of giants. And this floor houses demons.] When I heard the voice of the system, an androgynous and mechanical voice I had heard over and over again, tell me that, I began to experience the sort of sensation that a mortal might describe as "their heart racing". And then, after giving me a second to catch my breath, as it were, the system continued its routine explanation of the floor and its inhabitants.

[Specifically, this floor contains Colo Colo demons, rat-like demons of sloth. These critters are gnome-sized rat-demons who sneak into buildings and who drink the bodily fluids of a building's inhabitants, which allow them to drain the energy of such people until their victims either die of exhaustion or succumb to deadly diseases.] The more you tell me, the more excited I get! I realized, with a start.

Rat-like demons? Creatures of subtlety, who cause inhabitants to feel exhausted and drain them of energy? Oh man... I could do a lot with creatures like these. I thought, grinning all the while.

[Hey system, can you pull up a new species entry on Colo Colos?] I asked, eager to learn as much as possible, even while I once again willed myself upward, now beginning to float to perhaps the seventy-second floor of the dungeon.

[New Species Knowledge Gained: Colo Colos

Colo Colos are a type of demon tied to the sin of sloth. Sloth is a reluctance to work or make an effort, and demons who are tied to it are creatures with powers that specialize in snatching away the wills of their enemies to resist, or the ability of the good-hearted to do the work necessary to overcome evil.

Colo Colos are surprisingly speedy, ratlike entities who feast on the bodily fluid and waste of civilized creatures. Through potent sin-magic, magic that infuses their very being, Colo Colos are capable of draining the energy of those who fluids sustain them.

These demons are surprisingly skilled at assassinations and are great at weakening a community's defenses by either reducing the number of defenders through assassination or forcing a community to take time to recover from their vicious and underhanded methods, reducing the number of people they can rely on to muster an effective defense against invaders.

Colo Colos who evolve often evolve into other sorts of subtle demons. Colo Colos who frequently targeted humanoids become succubi, liliths, and other seductive sorts, while Colo Colos who targeted nonhumanoid creatures become demons that can infiltrate the communities of creatures who found themselves frequently antagonized by the Colo Colos in question.]

These creatures are definitely worth trying to recruit. Even if I can't use them against say... Paimon, if I decide to raid a town in the mortal world, or launch an attack against a house of dark elves, these creatures would be potent allies and servants. I learned, assessing their capabilities from what the system told me, in a matter of seconds.

And as I was distracted by schemes, I came to the seventy-third floor of the dungeon. And faster than it had happened so far, the system roused me from my distracted thinking with a notification I had spent a while waiting for.

[This floor houses a single angel. The emissary angel, Angelica. It is guarded by a single creature, a devil. A devil who can see incorporeal creatures. A single, perfect, guard. A monje devil.]

I scanned my radar and found that beyond the door in front of me, which was also an odd yellow color, there was only one creature. A monje devil named Lucien. And so I simply asked for a new species knowledge notification about monje devils, as I moved to fade through the door that stood between me and the guard who'd no doubt try to prevent me from reaching Angelica.

I quickly got the notification I was looking for, as I pushed my face through the door and prepared to peer at the one enemy I wouldn't be able to hide from.

[New Species Knowledge Notification: Monje Devils.

Monje Devils are hand to hand fighters whose discipline surpasses that of mortal monks. They are ferocious fighters whose mastery of their bodies is unmatched and whose philosophies revolve around the idea that when all else fails when swords shatter and shields break, their bodies remain.

These creatures are devoted guards and potent fighters. When assigned a task they complete it or die trying, and they are more proud than the most arrogant mortals. They are also infinitely more skilled than their weaker, mortal counterparts.

These beings can evolve into other fierce devils, particularly high ranking military devils or assassin devils.]

This could be fun. I thought as I laid eyes on the one obstacle that yet remained between myself and Angelica.