'So she can use the void, huh?' Victor watched her impressive display of magic with interest. 'Didn't expect humans to be able to wield the void, always assumed it was out of the system's jurisdiction, but I guess I was wrong.' Victor shook his head and went to find the poor girl's food. If not for her high CON stat, she would have starved to death or returned to her pathetic state from before. She had lost a bit of muscle and fat, but overall she looked alright. Nothing a little food couldn't fix... but that was the major problem.

"Genus," Victor said through his avatar as he crested the rim of a volcano, some ten minutes away from where he had left Alice. "Hey! Wake up."

The noble golden dragon opened a tired eyelid and stared at the avatar. "What." He snarled, but his tone sounded colder than usual. 

'Dragons hate being woken up... noted.' This was the first time in days that Genus had been allowed to sleep, unlike Alice, who had slept the entire journey soundly. The two had travelled in silence, trying to preserve their energy at any cost. "You have been sleeping for eight hours... don't be so grouchy."

Genus snorted, but it lacked the motivation behind it. Even to Victor's untrained eye, it was clear the dragon had lost some weight and was exhausted. 

"Eight hours is nothing... I can sleep for weeks, sometimes even months." Genus slowly closed his eye again. "Are they following us?"

"Not for now," Victor replied. He had left many undead minions throughout the Grand Dungeon and used them to monitor the dragon's progress. To his surprise, it seemed they had mostly given up. "It seemed your idea to take the last few dragon eggs and run off in different directions was a good idea..." When they reached the second floor, Genus had suggested that Victor command his undead dragons to loop back to the tower and take the remaining dragon eggs hostage. They would then fly in different directions to force the dragons that came due to the disturbance to split their manpower.

"Ha. Honestly, it would be a miracle if they followed us. We left no evidence behind except destruction and zombie dragons. A few may have seen us from afar, but to organise a search party willing to chase us down will take weeks, if not months." 

"Really? Why?" Victor's avatar asked as it wandered around.

Genus reopened his eye and followed the avatar's movements with his rainbow eyes. "Dragons are complicated and selfish." Genus snorted, and smoke plumed from his nostrils. "Before the Grand Dungeon takeover, we used to live in separate groups spread across the continent, and we still do. Each family only sent a few members, some more, some less. But the point is, even if every dragon here died, their clans would live on. So... politics. It would take one of the elder dragons to take us down, and they would all refuse to move over some killed eggs."

Genus uncoiled his neck from his sleeping position, spread out his paws, and yawned. "I feel awful. I heard stories about this place, but it's much worse than I thought." 

Victor had to agree with his oversized lizard companion on that. "Yea, it's a lot more ridiculous than I thought. Ten floors of straight undead graveyards, followed by floors of endless oceans... and nothing else. No wonder your kin aren't interested in this hardship, especially the ocean floors; you couldn't rest for two days."

Genus grumbled. "And I can't rest now either because you keep bothering me. So why are you here?"

"Ah! Do you have any food left over? There were some slugs you found. Did you eat them all?" Victor's avatar put a palm over where its eyes should be and scanned the dragon's lair.

"They tasted rancid, just like the mana on those graveyard floors. But at least the mana is much better here. The fire element was always one of my favourites to sleep in, nice and comfortable." Genus rolled over, sending grey sand flying as he shifted his enormous body. "Those scrumptious slugs are in a pile over there..." His wing pivoted its tip toward the far corner.

There was indeed a grey clump of some kind of meat covered in grey sand.

"Alright, thank you, Genus. We will stay on this floor for a while, so sleep well. We have a long journey ahead since the distance between each tower is increasing exponentially."

The dragon grunted in agreement and went back to sleep. Victor used his avatar to grab some meat and headed back to Alice. 'Since she can use the void, are there other humans that can wield void magic? Maybe I can find one powerful enough to fix my falling stats... like using them as a portable battery.' The idea was a bit sinister, but if he treated them well, it should be fine? 

Returning to Alice, he dumped the meat. She looked at it as if it was cursed and wouldn't touch it with a ten-meter pole, but alas, she had no choice. Slugs were the only food they had found so far. 'I still count my lucky stars that I picked Netherborne as my race and don't have to eat or sleep. Looking at that pile of grey meat oozing with white puss makes me want to gag.' Victor noticed a small pile of shit and urine behind the dragon, 'Yep, don't miss those bodily functions one bit. Also, ever since entering this dungeon, the idea of stat points has become a joke to me...'

[Name: Victor]

[Race: Netherborne]

[Level: 387] (level up! x80)

[STR: 60004800, DEX: 6007840, CON: 6007840, INT: 6007840, WIS: 6007840]

(Life Force Unstable - 16668 hours) (Mana Sickness)

[Skills:]

[Consume X]

[Raise Undead X]

[Shadow Magic X]

[Annihilating Aura X]

[Freezing Cone IX] (level up! x2)

[Stealth X]

[Doom Ray X]

[Spirit Movement VIII] (level up! x2)

Although his status had ballooned, so had the mana sickness. Apart from feeling suffocated, it didn't affect him too much. 'But if it gets worse the further we go down, I may start burning a lot more life force to exist each second. Luckily, apart from the uncomfortable feeling, this dungeon is so filled with mobs for me to slaughter that I could lose ten points a second and still be fine.' 

While doing some quick maths, Victor found he had over two years' worth of status points at his current loss rate to play with. Although they still fell, he felt better knowing he had such a massive buffer. 'Which means it's time for that cross universe phone call...' A part of him had been dreading trying to contact Terry. Did he really want to know what was happening on Earth? How his parents treated his death? Was Terry even on his Earth or some alternate one?

Victor moved far away from the group. Only Wiggles diligently followed along a mile or so beneath his feet. He could tell he was there without even using his undead connection. The sand shifted even this far up as the titanic earthworm made its way below.

Finding an excellent isolated location. Victor flashed an [Annihalating Aura] with maximum power to extinguish anything below level 100 in a ten-mile radius. He entered the black ocean in his mind with nothing to bother him. It was packed with millions, if not hundreds of millions, of undead on the various floors. Victor now had complete control over the undead residing over the first ten floors and had leviathans, sharks and other aquatic monsters on the ocean floors. But those didn't interest him. No, the single fleck of light in the distant void did.

"Terry. We need to talk." He shoved an impressive 10% of his total stat points into this transmission. And then he waited.

 

***

 

A few hours passed. Victor waited patiently while debating the many topics to discuss. 'Do I care what happened to me? What if I'm still alive?' That idea haunted him. If he was still alive back on Earth, then who was he? Where did he come from?'

"Boss! How are you?" Munching sounds accompanied Terry's casual voice.

"Are you eating?" Another few hundred stat points vanished with those words, but Victor didn't mind. He would speak as much as he wanted. There was a slight delay between messages as if they had terrible phone reception.

"Aye. At the movies with my mates. This popcorn thing is wicked."

Victor didn't know what to say. Should he be happy Terry fitted in so well? Or concern for the human race that they still hadn't worked out Terry was a zombie. Was he really that good at acting? Was Terry secretly a genius at avoiding the government?

"What's the name of the planet you are on?" Victor asked.

"Errr... Yo John! Where are we, mate? No, I know we are at the cinema, you moron, listen to me. What the hell is a New York? Hahaha, what happened to the original York? You are such a riot. Give that here." More rustling sounds of popcorn and slurping noises, "Ooo vanilla flavour, yea? Good stuff, this."

Victor ignored the idiot. 'New York, that has to be Earth... wow, going back to Earth is possible? How did Terry even get there?'

"Terry, how did you arrive on Earth?"

"Earth? What the hell is that? No, YOU shut up, John. This movie fucking sucks anyway. Why did you bring me here? Ohhh, to escape Jessica? Yea, she's a real bitch." Terry loudly ate another mouthful of popcorn. "Anyway, sorry, boss, what did you say?"

Victor had never wanted to hang up a phone call more in his life. "Terry, how did you arrive where you are now?"

"The bus." He answered with resolute certainty. "Sometimes we take the subway, but they were closed today."

"...Terry, you died. What happened next?"

What followed was an hour-long incoherent ramble from Terry about how he and John became best pals while working on Zombie Land season two. And how they are now working on another show together. "And that is how I ended up here." He finished and took a deep slurp from his milkshake. 

Victor had undoubtedly confirmed that Terry was on Earth and was in the period he had been in when he died. Terry had purchased the latest iPhone, one version higher than the one that had been out when Victor was alive. So some time had passed but not much. Maybe a year at most.

"Terry, can you search on your phone for a person called Victor Harrison? Did he die?"

"I'll take a look. One second..."

Victor held his breath.