Mountain of the Immortals

A cold humid breeze rushed over my face as soon as we crossed over the dark stone entrance of the building. All the light from outside disappeared immediately, and the only sources of light inside were the flickering torches hanging every few feet along the walls.

* * *

You have entered the Eternal Doom of Hyperion Dungeon.

This is a level 62 dungeon.

* * *

I didn't like the prompt about the dungeon one bit and from the comments in the guild chat, neither did anyone else.

"Sixty-two?" Artemis asked. "Why is it so high?"

"Does this mean that your uncle is here?" Ares followed up.

"It's perfectly natural that the dungeon he created takes his level," I replied, "and there's nothing to suggest he's here himself."

"Can you please tell us the cell number you would like to inspect?" the guard asked me.

"I'll let you know," I said, and pointed him toward a doorway made of iron bars that went from the floor to the ceiling ahead of us.

The man nodded and took out a key from his inventory, placed it into the lock of the door, and opened it.

"Before we move further forward," I said, and steadied myself on one of the metal bars, "can you tell us about the history of this place?"

I couldn't have cared less about the story of the dungeon, of course. But I knew that this odd request would seem plausible enough for the guard to consider it, and sudden enough for them to worry about delivering on it more than how I looked while I triggered one of my divine skills.

* * *

Name: Go with the Current

Level: 1

Type: Active - Divine

HP Consumed: 0

MP Consumed: 100

DP Consumed: 1/minute

Power: -

Range: Self

Precondition: None

Description: The god of thunder and lightning is able to leave this mortal coil for a brief period of time and transform his consciousness into pure electric energy. By doing so, Zeus is able to travel through any material that allows electricity to pass through it, adopting all the attributes of the energy he has become. Zeus will reclaim his body when his available DP run out.

* * *

The moment I activated it, I felt my mind race through my whole body a few times before I managed to focus on the iron bar. Leaving my body, I was surprised at how clearly and vividly I could see everything around me. In fact, I could still see my body facing the guards with its eyes closed as well as the ceiling, the floor, and the corridor behind me.

It was as if my range of vision had broadened and I could see in a full circle, as if I had eyes on my back. Of course, not having a physical body meant that I had no back, and no eyes for that matter, but the amount of information I could take in was staggering.

An even more interesting effect of this skill was that everything around me seemed to be moving incredibly slowly. When I first got this skill, I hadn't considered that one of the attributes of pure energy I might share is that I would be able to travel at the speed of lightning. I was sure though that the cost of DP in minutes would be accounted for based on my own perception and not that of the world around me, so I needed to act fast.

I traveled down the iron bar and into the ground. As I expected, the metal went right through the ground and all the way through the building. It was as if this whole place had been constructed around the metal skeleton of the prison, which was how most jails were crafted by gods and titans. The large cage made of enchanted metal meant that even someone with specialized mining equipment who may be able to shift the earth to break someone out, would struggle as their tools would have no effect on the metal. What those designs had not accounted for, however, was someone who was able to travel through those very bars.

My body stayed still in front of the guards, its eyes having rolled up to make only the white show. It was my consciousness that was moving with the speed of light, seeing and hearing everything that surrounded the material I was in.

I moved underground and followed the corridors of metal, taking one turn after another, occasionally returning above ground to orient myself. The cells started a few feet after the entrance where I'd shed my body and there were dozens of them on each stretch of corridor.

Each cell was only a few square feet, furnished with nothing more than a hole in the ground. No bed, no chair, no water basin. Whatever crimes these prisoners might have committed, surely they couldn't have deserved such a fate. Death would have been less cruel.

The luckiest of the prisoners were the smaller races like the dwarfs, pygmies, gnomes, and the likes. They could at least lay on the ground and stretch their limbs out fully without touching the walls or makeshift toilet. The larger prisoners were much less fortunate. Not only were they not able to stretch their legs while they slept, but judging by the low ceiling, they wouldn't even have been able to stand up either.

I went from one cell to the next, scanning people. Some looked intimidating with large scars on their bodies, missing an eye or a limb. Others were the exact opposite, from frail old men to younger boys and girls that couldn't be any older than sixteen. As much as I didn't like seeing any of them in there, especially the ones with the lowest levels, we hadn't come here for them. And since I had already consumed one DP traveling through the metal frame of the dungeon, I needed to hurry up and find the god I was looking for.

On the first level of the construction, I didn't see anyone of a level higher than eleven. Just how these people had managed to end up imprisoned in the jail of the titan Hyperion was beyond me, but at least I now thought I had an idea of how the people were arranged in here. If the first floor was for the weaker ones, then I could safely assume that the underground levels were where the god-tier threats would be imprisoned. With that in mind, I moved down the metal frame of the dungeon at the speed of light.

From the little I managed to see, the levels of the people in the cells as well the number of jailers increased the further down I went. That was until I reached the lowest level, where there didn't seem to be anyone moving around and the complete absence of light made it difficult to see.

There were only a few cells here, some more spacious than others, though I doubted this was done to accommodate the prisoners' needs and only out of sheer necessity. I moved through the insides of each cell, trying to discern whether Hephaestus was in here somewhere, but it was pitch black and impossible to make anyone out.

I could go back up one floor and check there, assuming that if the god we were looking for wasn't there, he could only be in here by process of elimination, but that would take some time and I was very close to losing another DP. Perhaps there was something else I'd be able to try.

I entered the frame of one of the cells and focused on the outer edge of the metal bars. Pushing my way through it only got me so far before I was pulled back. There was nothing outside of it to conduct the electricity. That little bit was more than enough for my purposes though.

When I did this, I created a small spark which briefly illuminated the whole room. Though it looked rather more like a concrete box, where a creature with goat-like hooves and huge ram-like horns protruding from its bald head sat back on its knees.

* * *

Name: Astaroth

Race: Demon

Class: Hell Incarnate

Level: 51

* * *

The demon must have been at least ten feet tall had he been able to stand up straight, and his body was red and extremely muscular. The two enormous leathery wings on his back touched the walls of his cell, and from the split second I managed to look at them, it seemed like they were withering since they weren't getting enough blood flow the way they were crammed in there like that.

As interesting as this demon was, he wasn't the one I was looking for.

I moved to the next cell, pushing myself forward and creating another spark, momentarily lighting up the interior of this one too. The divine skill I used utilized none of my senses other than sight, and even that only gave me a still image of my surroundings since I was operating at such a different speed. Glancing at what was in the room, I felt almost lucky that I only had sight available to me, for the room would have definitely have reeked with the disgusting stench of death.

A winged humanoid was dead on the floor, its innards having burst open from the inside, and the slimy bodies of countless maggots glistened from all of its orifices under the sudden light of the spark. Whoever this celestial being was, and no matter how radiant and holy it must have been when it was alive, the rot of death had affected it in very much the same way it would any mortal.

Judging by the size of the metal frame, the next prisoner had a lot less space to move around in. When the spark illuminated the old man, I could see that he could barely move his head or shoulders because of the way he'd been packed into the extremely tight space. But that would soon change.

* * *

Name: Hephaestus

Race: Greater Deity

Class: Forge of Divinity

Level: 60

* * *

The old man looked beyond ragged and frail. His long white beard was filled with the dried crust of whatever little food was pushed into his cell from the small opening at the bottom of the door, and what little gray hair he still had was matted and dirty.

It was hard to imagine how this man would even be able to hold a hammer and strike it on anvil, much less create a weapon that could kill titans. But I knew looks could be deceiving and the information I got from the Dark Energy didn't lie.

Having finally found what I was looking for, I made my way back to my body in an instant and found the guard still trying to find something to blurt out in response. I had consumed three DP, but there was no way to know how many seconds, if any, had passed for those waiting up here.

"If I wanted to wait, I would have sent a letter to my uncle," I said, and walked through the iron door. "We're going to the lowest level."

"Ma... master," the man said, frozen in place. "That is off limits to everybody."

"You do have a key for it, don't you?" I asked, and the man nodded timidly. "And I suppose you have a torch to light the way in there? Last time I visited, it was completely dark."

I hoped that this would be enough to push any doubts about taking us there away. Surely the only way I would have known that the deepest, hardest place to get to in the dungeon had no lighting would be if I had been there before, with the permission of my uncle.

"Of course," the man finally responded. He nodded to his companion to grab one of the magical torches from the wall. "Please follow me."