"How's Necron?" Alice asked as Victor's sight returned to the Grand Dungeon, and he looked around. 

"Complicated." Victor turned to Alice with his many blue eyes. "What did you call me back for?" Victor did a checkup on everything. Behind them was a literal sea of islands, spreading to the nonexistent horizon like a coral reef into the ocean's darkest depths. The island they currently stood on was rather grand, easily the size of a large city covered in lush grassland and picturesque lakes. A welcome change from the volcanic or wasteland islands.

They were currently floating near the edge, facing out to the void.

"Can you see it?" Alice asked as her [Void Eye] skill flared to life, transforming her pink pupils into swirling abysses. Victor followed her finger and saw her pointing into the far distance... 

Only now did Victor realize there were no more islands. Only the endless void stretched out infinitely except one. There was a single spot of something emitting so much mana it was almost blinding—like a distant star.

"What is that?" Victor couldn't help but ask. Alice seemed to have a better idea than him.

"Dunno..." Alice shrugged and playfully hung her leg over the edge of the island. "But why don't we go and find out?"

Victor ignored Alice and floated back a bit to the half-asleep dragon on the floating platform. "Genus. Can you see what we can see?" 

"Mhm?" Genus's rainbow eyes scanned the void, but he seemed blind to the little distant star. "Nope. Nothing but void..."

Victor tried to squint to gain a better view, but he had no idea. Everything in this place was beyond bizarre... 'But a suspicious thing out in the void is far more interesting than more islands. Perhaps it is a portal to the next floor?'

The next question was if he could actually get there. Till now, the group had used these premade bridges of mana to traverse between the islands. Genus's confirmed that these bridges were climatized, with their own oxygen and temperature. But what was out in the void? 

Victor was sure he would be fine. He was a creature from the void; after all, his true form lurked somewhere below... 'Below what? Assuming space is inverted in this place, this would be the lowest floor. Where is the golden barrier I crawled through to enter this world?' All this dungeon did was lead to more questions and not enough answers. Something that frustrated Victor to no end.

Victor floated to the very edge of the island next to Alice, and a silly thought crossed his mind as he looked down. 'What if I fall? My body naturally allows for flight, but I can never go too far from the ground. So where is the ground in the void?' 

Like a child scared of getting into a swimming pool, Victor rammed his claws into the ground before letting his legs leave the island—and he tried to suppress a moan... To Victor, dipping his body into the void felt like entering a cold bath after being burned alive his entire life. The constant shadow vapor that usually coated his whole body as his life force battled the abient mana ceased.

"There's no mana in the void," Victor said. It felt like a stupid realization. Of course, he could combat his falling stats if he returned to where he belonged...

Sadly life wasn't so simple. Energy waves pulsed off the distance star and shaved a few stats points each time. It had a similar feeling to mana; it likely was. But the difference between mana being ever present in the atmosphere and permanently attacking him compared to being attacked in intervals was heavenly.

Finding that he could levitate his feet just fine, Victor released the grip on the island and pushed himself into the void. There was an audible pop as the atmosphere within the island's mana vanished.

Genus said something to him, but he couldn't hear. 'This really is like space... maybe it is space? But where are the stars? Oh, wait, there is one...' 

But before Victor could float over and investigate, he saw something happen to Alice. Void rippled across her skin and formed a suit of armor that had a similar shadow vapor to him. The island's mana seemed to attack her, and before Victor could offer any assistance, she threw herself forward and left the island. Genus also rushed off the floating platform and tried to grab her leg, but he winced back before he left the island's mana field. To the dragon, the void meant certain death with almost no mana or oxygen.

The void-covered Alice floated to Victor's side and let out a laugh he couldn't hear. Sadly, she wasn't part of his undead network, so he couldn't ask her what had happened, but he suspected it was her [Void Form] spell that she had mentioned to him once.

Deciding there was nothing else to do, Victor returned his attention to the pulsing star in the distance and started flying toward it. In the absence of mana, the limit on Victor's speed was gone. 'Back on the islands, it felt like swimming through honey compared to this!' It was obviously harder to tell exactly how fast he was going with fewer reference points, but the large island he had been on only moments ago was now a spec in the distance.

Minutes passed as Victor and Alice hurtled toward the star. As they got closer, Victor identified a large glowing object with multiple rings rapidly orbiting it. One of the rings would flash white every few seconds, and a mana pulse went out in all directions. It was only as Victor got closer he realized just how big it was...

Was this the sun?

Hours passed, and it only grew and grew until it took up all of his vision. The rings were actually millions of giant boulders the size of him, likely mana stones, that absorbed energy from the star before something forced them to discharge the energy into the void.

Victor passed by the rings, careful not to be smashed into smithereens as they rotated at immense speed. The mana pulses were brutal here, easily shaving off a few thousand stat points each time. Victor was unsure what Alice's situation was, but she seemed fine... at least for now.

Whatever his plan was here, he needed to wrap it up quickly. 'I doubt this is a portal to the next floor or a final boss... is it perhaps the dungeon's core? I don't know what I expected... maybe a blue marble on a pedestal? The idea of a floating sun powering the dungeon never came to mind...'

With curiosity gnawing at his mind, Victor pressed on until he was only a few meters away from the star's surface. It was surprisingly calm and glowed a blinding white. 

Suddenly, his status page willed itself to life and overlayed onto the star's surface with a large button: 

[Link to World Core]

"World core? Not a dungeon core?" Victor stared at the button, hoping his system would give him more information. But as usual, it refused to elaborate. He looked at Alice, but she seemed oblivious to the screen as she was looking at something else.

Victor's claw hovered over the button for a second. "Could there be any disadvantages to linking to this world core? Well, that's a hard question to answer when I don't even know what a world core is..." Victor could pretend he had never seen this option, float away and live the rest of his life how he had all this time—in fear of his life force.

"I hope I won't regret this..." Victor tapped the button.

What followed was madness. Victor's worldview warped in ways he couldn't imagine. For a brief moment, Victor felt like an insect looking at a circuit board; it was a strange landscape of humming monoliths, but this would not incur madness. No, madness is when the insect, for a brief moment, understands everything like a human. It now knows the meaning of the words, symbols, transistors, and capacitors—completely alien concepts suddenly become obvious. It now knows the world is vast, far larger than the small patch of a garden it had called home. Through the eyes of a human, it could travel unimaginable distances within hours. Visit lands of snow and ice and sprawling cities of concrete and machinery. For just a moment, the insect looked at an ant on a tree branch and realized how tiny its existence really was...

And then everything twisted back, and Victor's an insect again. Echos of things he couldn't comprehend or possibly store in his tiny mind echo relentlessly like a dream he couldn't quite remember. Victor screamed in agony as his mind was overwhelmed. He needed that knowledge back. 

[World Core Initialization at 50%]

The more Victor saw, the harder it was to forget what he didn't know. Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and he felt like the knowledge was sand falling through his fingertips. Every time Victor opened his palm in a vain attempt to gaze upon the forbidden knowledge—it flowed through the gaps in his brain like a leakage.

It was infuriating. It was... madness.

Victor saw intergalactic warfare, battles that lastest eons spread across a vastness of the void he couldn't comprehend. The World Core was... scared. Terrified of the unknown horrors that lurked just outside its barriers. It knew it was being hunted. By who? It did not know. Victor felt the love for this world flow through him; he soared through the clouds, the land rushing below him in a green and brown blur. Millions of people's lives flashed through his mind like an old-style film, every frame a person's journey.

[World Core Linked]

And then it all came crashing down. Victor was pulled down from the sky; he rushed through rock at unfathomable speed, and all at once, everything he had just experienced smashed into his mind like a bowling ball.

Before he could even process what had just happened, his status page reappeared.

[Name: Victor(Main Body)]

[Race: World Core]

[...]

[Name: Victor(Avatar)]

[Race: Netherborne]

[Level: 905]

[Stat Points: 903+ Million]

(Life Force STABLE - 10451 Days)

[Skills:]

[Consume X]

[Raise Undead X]

[Shadow Magic X]

[Annihilating Aura X]

[Freezing Cone X]

[Stealth X]

[Doom Ray X]

[Spirit Movement VI] 

Victor's mind felt split. He could see his claws, a terrified Alice, and the surface of the Word Core. But he had a second view, one that was that of a god. All the floors of the Grand Dungeon become visible from every angle, every blade of grass, gemstone, and tree root. But not just that... he could spread out his view further.

Now he was far up in the sky, and Necron was down below. He tried to spread his vision out further out of the cursed forest, but there were established borders. A force seemed to stop him... It took him a moment to theorize, but didn't each region blocking him have a Grand Dungeon? Were there more world cores at the end of each Grand Dungeon?

And what would happen if he linked with them all? Could he control the whole world? Overwhelming power was a desirable thing, after all. But first, he might pay the dragons a visit, as they are now on his territory.

~ End of Book One ~

XKARNATION

Hey everyone that is the final chapter of Netherborne book 1. However, the series is far from over! I have signed Netherborne with Aethon books for a Kindle/KU/Audible release sometime next year, so there's still more content to come! But I have been writing this novel nonstop for a few months now and have an upcoming family holiday, so I will take a break from posting here on RR for around a month. During this time, I will be releasing a new fiction here to RR, building a larger backlog of this book for Patreon, and editing this first book for my publisher.

First chapter of book 2 (chap 64) will be released on the 1st of February 2023!

If you can't wait that long, there's more chapters on Patreon

I am writing full time so any support helps a lot!

Hope you all have a great Christmas and Happy New Year, see you in 2023!

Wanna chat? Come hang out in the Discord! I also answer dm's so feel free to ask me questions :)