The entrance to the Gheji Dungeon was an imposing, jagged archway carved directly into the heart of the cliffside. Even in the early hours of the morning, the air around the gate was thick with the scent of ozone and ancient dust. We approached the guard station, a stone booth manned by two heavily armored sentries who looked like they hadn't slept in a century. We went inside and payed 4 gold coins for each of us and we went inside. The weight of the gold leaving my pouch felt final, a toll paid for the right to gamble our lives in the darkness. As the heavy iron portcullis groaned open, we stepped into the first floor.
The initial descent was deceptive. The air was cool, the stone was dry, and the monsters were little more than nuisances. We cleared the first to tenth floor easily. With Euphyne leading the charge, his physical strength as a warrior making short work of the lower-tier goblins and rock-spiders, and Celdrich's precise magical support, we were a blur of efficiency. Elphyete stayed close to me, her magic casting a soft glow that illuminated the path forward. I kept my eyes sharp, looking for any sign of the Orb of Truth, but these floors were too well-traveled, picked clean by thousands of adventurers before us.
Disaster struck in a hallway that looked like every other hallway we had passed. We were moving quickly, perhaps too quickly, fueled by the adrenaline of the hunt and my own desperation to find answers. We didn't see the faint, glowing etching on the floorboards. Till we accidentally stepped into a teleportation trap.
The world didn't just spin; it shattered. One moment I was looking at the back of Euphyne's neck, and the next, the very air around us curdled into a violent purple swirl. I felt a sickening tug at my navel, a sensation of being stretched across infinity. And it should send us randomly but out of pure unlucky or luck we teleported far.
When my feet finally hit solid ground again, the air felt different. It was heavy, vibrating with a level of mana so dense it felt like walking through water. The walls weren't just stone anymore; they were a shimmering, dark crystalline material that seemed to pulse like a living heart. The silence here was absolute, heavy, and terrifying.
When I asked Celdrich what floor did we teleported to, Celdrich said that we likely teleported to 10k or 10k+ floors.
My mind instantly panicked but I remained calm. A mana-less person like me had no business being on the tenth floor, let alone the ten-thousandth. In a place where a single floor could span the breadth of an entire universe, the distance we had just traveled was incomprehensible. We were effectively lost in the deepest, most lethal part of the world. I took a deep breath, forcing my heart rate to slow down. Panic was a luxury I couldn't afford if I wanted to survive.
And asked him how powerful do he thinks the monsters here.
Celdrich was pale, his hands trembling slightly as he adjusted his glasses to read the atmospheric mana levels. He said probably more powerful than us. His voice was a thin rasp in the dark. But we don't know till we see one.
That confirmation didn't wait long. From the darkness of the crystalline tunnel ahead, a sound began to emerge. It wasn't a roar or a growl; it was a rhythmic, metallic scraping, like a mountain of glass being dragged over serrated iron. It was followed by a low-frequency hum that made my teeth ache and the very air tremble. We instantly heard something so we ran and hid on a random big rock.
We scrambled behind a massive, jagged shard of obsidian that had fallen from the ceiling. We were so quiet trying not to get attention of the unknown monster. I could feel Elphyete's heart beating rapidly as she pressed against me, her hands clutched tight. Euphyne had his hand on his weapon, but even he looked tense, his jaw locked tight. Celdrich was sweating, his eyes shut as he tried to mask our presence with a stealth spell, though he knew as well as I did that a stealth spell for a tenth-floor student might be invisible to a monster of the ten-thousandth floor.
The monster passed by our hiding spot. I couldn't see it clearly, but the shadow it cast against the glowing walls was gargantuan, a mass of shifting limbs and glowing eyes that seemed to bend the light around it. The pressure it radiated was so immense that it felt like it was trying to crush our lungs. I didn't dare breathe. I didn't dare move.
While we were huddled there, waiting for the titan to pass, I whispered to Celdrich and asked on how can we go back.
Celdrich said to me that he can teleport us back but he can only teleport us 5k floors in 1 go and it has 1 day cooldown. It was the limitation of the mana required for such a feat. Even with his vast knowledge, the energy needed to bridge the gap between floors that each held the volume of a universe was staggering. One jump would take us halfway back, but we would be stranded on whatever floor we landed on for a full twenty-four hours before we could jump again. and he can't just write that we'll be back cause his range at max would be 1 dungeon floor,
After the unknown monster disappeared we moved forward.
The sheer scale of this place began to settle into my bones. Each step we took felt like a gamble with fate itself. The ground beneath our feet wasn't just dirt or stone anymore; it was a composite of strange, translucent minerals that emitted a faint, haunting bioluminescence. The atmosphere was thick with ancient power, and even though I was mana-less, I could feel the pressure of the environment pressing against my skin like an invisible weight. We were walking through a landscape that defied human comprehension, a vast expanse where the laws of the upper floors simply didn't apply.
Euphyne moved with a silent, feline grace, his eyes darting toward every flickering shadow. Despite the danger, he kept his composure, his presence a stabilizing force for the rest of us. Celdrich was muttering under his breath, likely performing complex mental calculations to determine our exact coordinates within this gargantuan space. Every few minutes, he would stop and press his ear to the crystalline walls, listening for the vibrations of other massive entities that might be prowling the vicinity. Elphyete gripped the sleeve of my tunic, her knuckles white, her magic coiled like a spring, ready to be unleashed at the first sign of a direct threat.
As we navigated this crystalline abyss, the reality of our situation became more apparent. We weren't just in a deeper part of the dungeon; we were in a different realm entirely. The "Orb of Truth" felt closer yet further away than ever. Was it possible that an artifact of such legendary power could only exist in a place as extreme as this? My mind flashed back to the dark reflection in my dream. He had told me to use my head. Was the teleportation trap truly an accident, or was it the "luck" he had hinted at?
We found ourselves in a massive cavern where the ceiling was lost in a swirling nebula of glowing gases. Huge pillars of violet crystal rose from the floor like the teeth of some subterranean god. We moved between them, feeling like insects crawling across a vast, forgotten cathedral. Every rustle of our clothing sounded like a thunderclap in the oppressive silence. We were hunters who had suddenly become the most vulnerable prey in the universe.
"Stay close," Euphyne whispered, his voice barely audible. "If something finds us, we don't fight to win. We fight to run."
I nodded, my jaw set in a hard line. My hands were empty, but my mind was focused. We had twenty-four hours to survive on this floor before Celdrich could even attempt to move us. Twenty-four hours in a place where a single monster could snuff us out like candles. We pressed on, moving deeper into the crystalline maze, searching for a safe place to wait out the clock, while the shadows of the 10,000th floor whispered of secrets that had been buried since the dawn of time.
The journey was no longer about treasure or experience points. It was a raw, desperate struggle for survival, a test of our resolve against a dungeon that had no end. I looked at my friends, then back into the darkness. We were lost, but as long as we were moving, there was a chance. We continued our silent march, four small sparks of life in a cold, eternal universe of crystal and shadow.
After hours of traversing the silent, crystalline abyss of the 10,000th floor, we finally stumbled upon a massive, ornate door that pulsated with a strange, ancient, and terrifyingly powerful energy.