The infinity dungeon 250

Chapter 250

Michael huffed, looking around the empty forest as if hoping to find something. Mana rushed to his eyes, coating the world in colors. Sensations reached him, because seeing mana was more than just vision, and the action of bringing mana to his eyes was mostly symbolic, its true effect much larger than just a sight enhancement.

There was nothing but the residual Qi from an aborted teleportation, and not even a lot of it. Had it been a huge waste, at least Michael would have enjoyed knowing that the Renegade was using up his limited supply, but the amount had been nothing more than just a probing attempt to see if he would react to it. And react he had.

On the way back, he forced himself to dismiss his magic senses. The forest was alive with magic, and the storm was picking up again, spitting sporadic discharges of magic and electricity down at the earth. They were intercepted and absorbed by Johanne’s lightning rods, powering the Site, a silver lining to what was still a developing disaster.

One such lightning strike managed to slip past the rods, and struck a tree some ways up a nearby mountain. Michael squinted, but kept walking. Someone else would clean up the mess.

A loud boom echoed across the valley below. A shot whistled through the air, a gigantic bullet coated in Gold energies, and whatever threat had arisen from the storm ceased to exist. A crater was all that remained.

There, all cleaned up. Travis’s card is pretty strong, he thought. They had not tested it yet, mostly because he had been too busy with everything else.

The thought reminded him of his precarious condition, and he felt a wave of strange emotions wash over him as he looked inward into his inner space. The purple chaos filled him with fear, and fear made him angry at his lack of power, but then the sight of the aura repelling the chaos tickled his arrogance, and the sight of the black hole renewed his anger.

He vanished, no longer interested in walking. He collected all the ore David had prepared for him, went to the various abandoned factories, and cleaned the lots of all they had to offer. The materials did not appear from the boundary–there was no boundary anymore. They just popped into existence in the inner space wherever Michael wanted them to, as long as it was within his aura’s effect.

It even worked with coins, as he had learned moments before they were vacuumed up by the spiral black hole and caused the shield to explode outward.

I can’t even be all that angry at myself for the oversight. Who would have known they’d appear like that? In fact, I didn’t do anything wrong. The fucking Flagship tore the boundary way ahead of time.

And now the Flagship was nothing more than dissolving debris slowly being eaten by the chaos. A fitting end.

It was a miracle his machines, the sources of his magic, had managed to survive the cataclysm. Even without the mishap with the coins, the shield would have run out of magic, and then the same thing would have happened.

Whatever, it didn’t. I’m safe now. 

Michael vanished again, entered the dungeon, and made his way down to the fifth floor to stock up on mana coins. He strived to be as fast as possible because he knew that the Renegade was waiting for the right moment to–

“Michael, I am detecting a surge of Qi.”

“Fuck!”

Michael’s scream echoed in the strange tropical valley filled with dinosaurs. He vanished, returned to the surface, and once again only ate a handful of Qi particles when the Renegade canceled his teleportation. 

When he returned to the fifth floor, he was fuming. His roiling aura sent displacement waves into the chaotic void around it, making it ripple and morph.

“I’m lowering the aura, Icarus,” Michael said through clenched teeth. His neck was so tight, he was getting a headache from the muscle spasms.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Michael,” the AI replied, speaking softly.

Michael’s face contorted. He ran his tongue across his teeth, feeling their shape as tension rose in his body.

“I don’t care,” he said. He smacked his lips, feeling heat rise to his face. “I can’t risk the Renegade returning, not when things are so precarious. Every time he teleports in, and I fail to catch him, he makes me downright mad!”

He held up a finger, stopping Icarus before he could reply. Because the AI was not manifesting in the outside world, it looked like Michael was talking to a giant tree. He made it explode to vent some frustration, for daring to look at him wrong, before he took several deep breaths.

“What makes me even more mad,” he said. His slow talk betrayed the fact that he was even more worked up than before. “Is knowing that should I manage to catch the fucker, he will probably not only wipe the floor with my sorry ass, but even if I survive, the fucking chaos will do me in.” 

He breathed, failing to control his temper. “Why wait?” he said, clenching his jaw. “If I lose to him, my aura will surely fail. Might as well lower it now and enjoy some time dilation, for a change. The chaos should stop a millimetre or whatever away from the rings.”

Icarus sighed. “What about the taint?”

“What of it? I am stuck between the frying pan and the coals, Icarus. The taint might very well be the lesser of two evils, if the time dilation that comes with it gives me some fucking peace of mind!”

The forest fell silent as the last, screamed, word echoed.

“I understand,” Icarus said.

Fucking taint. Why does it get to me this bad?

“I’m doing it,” Michael said.

His aura receded. The chaos advanced. Michael watched it with eyes almost bulging out of his head, mind full of anger, as if daring the void to do anything bad to him. Then it would suffer his wrath.

When it stopped, Michael turned to Icarus. “See? It’s stable.”

“I’m glad to see that you got over your fear of it, at least,” he said. “Now that the time dilation is up, can I gently guide your attention to your current state of mind? You can’t brush it off by claiming that there is no time to process it.”

Michael groaned. He wanted to say that it was the taint, and indeed it was, but it didn’t mean that he could not at the very least work on calming himself.

***

“You are playing with fire, Michael," Icarus said.

Michael ignored him, focusing on the small stash of platinum coins in front of him. He could already imagine Travis’s face when he gave the man a few of them to run his little organization.

“Foucus on what you came here to do, please.”

Icarus’s pleas finally got to him. “One last thing, and I will.”

Icarus did not argue. It would be just a stale repetition of “think about the taint” and “yes but.”

“Listen,” Michael said. “You trust me when it comes to magic, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You are forcing a lot out of me with this question, Michael. Is this your way to get revenge?”

“No. But I want you to say it.”

Icarus rolled his eyes, shifting on his gaming chair in the control room floating in the inner space. He had moved the floating room away from where it had been, close to the accelerator ring, because the proximity to the chaos had given him the chills. He was glad Michael had gotten over it, but he hadn’t.

“Because even though I am making progress with magic,” he said. Michael laughed. “I am!” he argued. “But you have an intuitive understanding of it that is utterly uncanny. I have learned to trust your intuition.”

“Very good!” Michael said with a smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now, I have two hunches. I will prove the first with these coins, then I am going to upgrade the inner space as much as I can with the resources I have on hand.”

“Finally,” Icarus said.

Michael’s smile widened. “Then I am going to prove the second hunch. If it is correct, no more talk about taint, how about it?”

“Can’t promise that without knowing what the hunch is about.” Icarus said.

Michael shrugged, still smiling. “Trust me. If I am right about it, the only reason the taint is even a problem is because we’ve been trying to abuse the dungeon mechanics too much. Had we been delving like the dungeon was intended to be used, there would be no problem. Or we’d be dead. You’ll see.”

“Not encouraging, Michael."

He just kept smiling.