Another acid monster crumbled as Byron drained its life force, this had been the third one he killed since he started walking the suspiciously empty hallways.

A system prompt popped up in his vision a few seconds later.

Experience gained

Byron wondered what exactly was experience as he walked the empty hallway.

Where did it come from? He knew he got it by killing what the system classified as monsters, but there had to be more to it than that.

Another thing that bothered him was not knowing exactly how much experience he got from killing a monster.

It would be useful in many ways, he would know what monsters to kill to level up faster, among other things.

Byron knew stronger monsters gave more experience, but as to how much exactly he wasn’t sure.

He added it to his mental list of things to figure out and sped up his pace of walking.

Drain life is now level 9

Byron was quite happy with the new leveling speed of skills, the system was getting more generous with each update.

He didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, only time would tell this only pushed him to pass the tests even faster, he had so many questions to ask whoever made the system.

Byron doubted he would get all the answers he wanted, but he at least hope he got something to quell his unending curiosity.

Byron wasn’t even sure he would pass all the ten tests, but he wouldn’t give up without trying.

He wouldn’t have been here if he gave up just because the odds were stacked against him.

A majestic door materializing at the end of the hallway pulled Byron from his thoughts.

It was entirely black, with contrasting white serpents interlocking each other on its surface; its handles were made out of what seemed to be tangible light.

Upon closer inspection, Byron could make out thousands of tiny runes moving on its surface, almost as if it were alive.

“You’ve got good eyes for a human”

A booming voice that came from seemingly everywhere snapped Byron out of his inspection, he instinctively took a fighting stance and readied drain life.

“Calm yourself human, I can’t hurt you even if I wanted to,” it said, sounding a little sad at the end, Byron didn’t miss this, he noted it but still didn’t relax.

Byron’s attention was brought back to the strange door when he saw one of the interlocking serpents unfold itself, its hollow eyes flickered as they shone bright red.

Byron hastily infused life force into his feet as he shot backward.

“Human wait! please don’t leave!.” It called out, Byron slowed down his mad dash when he heard its pained voice.

“I’m marly the gate to the next floor of the dungeon.” Byron still found it odd, why would a gate for the next floor behave like this? Did it do this to all its delvers? So many questions.

Byron kept his distance but decided to listen to what it had to say, he only hoped he was out of its attacking range.

“You might be wondering why I’m behaving like this. It’s a long story, and it goes like this…” Byron listened to it, explaining its sad story.

The gate, now named Laubres, is a soul shard of a necromancer from the Era of death, his name was Laubres The Resurrector.

He rose to power quickly and gained the name and title of The Resurrector because he could bring back anyone from the dead as his minion.

He amassed thousands of undead very quickly, his power threatened to overthrow the gods themselves.

His alarming growth was becoming a problem, a problem that needed to be dealt with fast before it was too late.

The gods were too prideful to come down themselves, so they sent their apostles of the current era thinking it would be enough to deal with him.

They were wrong, Laubres slaughtered the apostles and converted them into his loyal minions, the apostles kept their power granted unto them by the gods, so this only grew his power to greater heights.

Like all mortal men with too much power, Laubres became arrogant, believing himself to be so powerful that even the gods could not touch him.

He went around the world with his millions of undead and destroyed all the temples and churches belonging to various gods.

This angered many gods and minor gods who were almost ready to become a true god.

Some Demi-gods, known as minor gods at the time, came down from their pocket dimensions to stop him but were all killed and added to his undead army.

His frightening control over death caused even the true god of death to be unable to stop him.

Each concept was unique to its owner, nobody could have the same concept at one time.

If a person and their concept were close enough, it would become inseparable from said person even after death.

His army grew and grew until it covered half of the planet, over the next few years, he scavenged the now ruined planet for the method used to become a minor god.

According to Laubres, back then one didn’t need mana’s blessing, mana didn’t even exist back then, people would awaken a power at the age of ten.

One simply needed to use and grow that power throughout their lifetime, and godhood would be within their reach if they survived long enough.

They would eventually grow their soul enough to fit enough powers, as it was called then, to form a domain and become a minor god.

Laubres eventually found this out and set out to gather death-related powers to form a domain and ascend to minor godhood.

Drunk on power and arrogance, Laubres didn’t even notice when the gods started avoiding him, he just assumed they feared his power so much.

He didn’t even think himself killable, millions of undead surrounded him every day no one would dare to attack him.

Or so he thought.