"Now watch this."
I had a well-refined method to deal with the earthworks and practiced it with Lambert back in Nateaser. I used limited telekinesis that only affected certain materials, like the dirt in this case, the staff even multiplied my strength, and I barely had to concentrate on the phantom forces or the mana manipulation. The earth looked like it disappeared from our way voluntarily, opening a path directly into the dungeon.
"Wow, I had no idea you can do this, Omerta." Nati praised me, although I expected a little more from the others. Gitaut was unimpressed, seeing through my simple tricks, and Ember seemed more jealous than anything, but the otherworlder sisters at least appreciated my talent. It was easy to please a rookie audience.
The path that opened for us was roughly a hundred yards and I aimed it right into the center of the huge underground circle we uncovered the day before. Its walls were smooth and sturdy, I made sure it wouldn't collapse on us, and on the other end of the cave, I spotted a purple sky, which could mean one thing: we found the entrance into the dungeon.
The hobs and the ogre quickly took point and the eight of us marched into the unknown in close formation. Their excited chatter echoed in the tunnel I carved, but even if we cleared the area of troglodytes, I knew better than to lower my guard. The riskiest part of this endeavor was to enter the dungeon, especially once I realized, we were high in the sky.
"What the hell? How?" Ember asked, sitting at the tunnel's edge and swinging her legs above the depths. "It's like I'm sitting on a cloud. What a weird entry point."
"This must have been a spire, or a magic tower, but only its shell remains." The shaman claimed, but I couldn't tell where he got this idea. He didn't even look around, at least his eyes were closed when he continued. "The dungeon has been terraformed over the last decade."
"Terraformed? What do you mean?" Nati asked, and Gitaut mumbled something before opening his eyes and answering her question.
"It seems this used to be an infernal dungeon, and the core was nearby. Where we stand now was the highest point of a castle, the Lord's tower if you will, but it has been destroyed years ago." The shaman explained, and I couldn't tell if he had some visionary abilities or just made things up on the fly. "The core was moved further into this plane of existence and the landscape transformed from the claustrophobic tunnels into this open field and the fake, purple skies. Whoever did it was quite powerful."
"How are we going to go down there? And how will we climb back up to leave?" Nati asked the real questions here, but Gitaut didn't flinch, levitating himself over the edge.
"The spirits will aid us in our descent, but we'll have to look for a different exit once we acquire the dungeon core." He said, then added something inaudible, and I felt as if all my weight melted away.
The others started floating as well, and before I could protest, we began our slow descent into the dungeon. If what he said was true, this spire must have been quite tall, and I couldn't imagine a Cerberus climbing it on its own to guard the entrance from the other side.
But the rough shape seemed imprinted on the sky, which did seem fake on closer inspection. I saw no sun, but plenty of light, even clouds slowly floating over the vast fields. The vegetation was lush and strange noises filled the fresh air.
I don't know what I expected an interdimensional space to be like, but it was certainly not this. And the fact that the shaman seemed so knowledgeable about this place frustrated me. I wanted to lead this expedition, and he just stole my glory with his levitation trick.
"So any idea where we will find the core?" I asked him just to test the limits of his knowledge. We gently touched down before he could answer me, and from the ground, the remains of the spire were even more pronounced. It was a tall and thin tower, the outlines looked almost transparent as if it was a ghost rather than an actual building.
The circumference of the spire was way smaller than the five miles it took to walk around it in the other dimension. That damned Gitaut might have read my mind because that was the first thing he addressed.
"Distances and time don't work the same way as they did on the surface." He annoyed me, especially once I saw the otherworlder's amazed faces. "I'm not sure yet if time passes faster or slower down here, but that much is obvious that what's a few yards down here might be miles up there. And this place is vast, so once we recover the core and exit, we might find ourselves in a different part of the continent."
"That didn't answer my question." I fumed, but he wasn't particularly targeting me with his monologues anyway. I preferred it when he played the shut-in, instead of the confident magician that's even more powerful than the Demon Lord. But then, I could detect the mana flow too, so I tapped my staff into the ground and closed my eyes to concentrate.
I almost lost my balance and my head started to spin. It was much less of a flow, but rather a whirlpool, that I detected. This place didn't just contain some mana, it was practically built from it. I had never seen magicules this densely concentrated before, but this was a dungeon. A few distinct shapes separated from the rest and moved fast towards us. I couldn't see them with my eyes from the dense jungle-like vegetation, but detecting their mana was trivial. I had to warn the others.
"Something is coming," I claimed, but as usual, Gitaut outdid me.
"Five creatures from the north, with mediocre to low magic potential. They are flying towards us and I detect quite some malice in their emotions." He spoke with confidence, pointing out their exact location. "I can easily tell, they are hostile. Must have seen us descend."
"Well, then they can taste my chain lighting." I tapped the staff to the ground again, then aimed the general direction, and the static electricity in the air around us was released as a lightning bolt. After measuring the immense mana nearby I should have known better, but the spell did its job.
It was just an absolute overkill.
The thunder and the backlash almost deafened me, trees got torn apart in front of us and the five creatures got incinerated while still in the air, with barely anything left to help us identify them later. I did notice earlier that my spells got stronger, more efficient, and faster since I got my staff and the crystal, but add this place on top, and my power became utterly devastating, going out of control. I wanted to impress my companions, but their expressions had more anger and fear than I aimed for.
"Are you an idiot?! What the hell was that?" Ember yelled at me, her palms squeezing her cat ears. Her large pointy hat flew off her head, and even the hobgoblins shook after that lightning bolt.
"S-sorry, I didn't expect it to get this big." The best I could do was to apologize. The only one who didn't seem to mind my blunder was Emi, the human girl looked at the devastation with glistening eyes and flashed a grin towards me. "We'll have to adjust our spells to the abundance of mana in this place. But at least it was just a simple lightning that got loose, not a black hole from Nati's experiment."
"Don't try to shift the blame now, you moron." The Fire Witch kept fuming, collecting her hat from the edge of the clearing. "So what were those things? And is there any more of them?"
"None of them survived that, but I'm sure every creature in a ten-mile radius heard that thunder, and were alerted of our presence now," Gitaut claimed, taking point in our formation. "But at least I can feel their presence before they'd get into range. Still, I suggest we move before too many of them start to gather here. Let's see what they were."
"Ugh, now he's acting boss," I mumbled rolling my eyes and hearing Emi's giggle. It only took a minute to find the burned corpses of what looked like a half-bird half-human creature.
"Harpies. They must have been on a hunt or saw us come down the spire. Well, they can't hurt us now for sure." The shaman noted before continuing ahead. "That's where the strongest mana signature comes from, the same way these beasts arrived, so I suggest going that way."
"Will it be all right?" Nati asked, sounding worried. "I mean, you say some powerful being terraformed the entire dungeon and destroyed some castle. Should we go for a frontal assault?"
"You just want to take your time exploring this place, don't you?" Her sister asked, walking beside me. "But they said, time might flow differently here than on the surface, and what if the village is attacked while we are leisurely strolling around?"
"That... No, well, yes. Maybe I want to explore the place a bit, but all I'm saying is that we don't know what lies ahead, running straight into them seems a bit risky." Nati went on the defensive, and I couldn't help but laugh. The otherworlders were truly amusing, but I admit, I was just as curious about this place as she was. "What can you sense, Gitaut?"
I expected the shaman to roll his eyes as usual, but if Nati used this name, he didn't mind. And here I did my best not to call him that. My charms still couldn't match hers, but then she was living in the body of the Goddess. The orc simply closed his eyes and answered her question in great detail.
"There is a strong signature up ahead, true. But I think it must be the dungeon core, which is probably enormous, and has a huge mana potential after spending a decade in the center of this place." He started but wasn't finished. We walked almost a mile by the time he shared all the information he gathered from the spirits. "Multiple tribes of abyssal creatures seem to be living down here, constantly fighting amongst themselves, but still under the control of a central entity."
"And what if you didn't feel the core but that insanely strong central entity instead?" I asked once he finished, but he vehemently shook his head. It seemed like a chill ran down his spine before he answered.
"Impossible. To have this much power, it would have to be a true god at the very least. And then where would be the dungeon core?" He reversed my question, but his version was only wishful thinking. His shut-in personality peeked through. "It... It simply can't be a god."