The infinity dungeon 248

Chapter 248

The sight of the half finished Flagship was enough to make Michael want to work on it before he did anything else. Icarus had done a wonderful job with it, and even in its half completed state, it was a sight to behold.

The ship was huge. Easily the largest thing in the inner space, save for the Aura Accelerator and the mark-two structures. A bulky thing, with girders and rough metal panels, it reflected the aesthetic of functional, no-nonsense space travel.

There was only one thing that looked utterly out of place, and yet it was also mesmerizingly beautiful. 

A ring of blue, shining the deepest sapphire or brightest lapis lazuli, surrounded the ship like a halo. The shield projector ring, a smaller cousin to the one around the Aura Accelerator, its unexplainable mystical and technological properties replicated by Icarus to an astounding level of detail.

Michael drew closer to the spaceship, analyzing its every little detail. “I don’t know what to say…”

“You can say that you like it, for instance. I wouldn’t mind.”

“No,” muttered Michael. “It would do it no justice. I don’t just like it. I love it!”

The finishing touches, as it turned out, were mostly the outer hull and a couple tweaks to the core systems, using up the last of the resources that the inner space had to offer for building.

In the end, the ship featured a reinforced hull, several dozen artillery banks designed to be a miniaturized version of the artillery station, and had slots for many more weapons in the future. 

Standing on the deck, looking out at the black hole’s colorful accretion disk through the reinforced glass, Michael felt none of the fear of deep space that he had felt back in the Seedship. Icarus was at his side, fiddling with some controls while sprawled out on the captain’s chair like it was his own. Perhaps it was. Indeed, if there was one who deserved to have this ship, it was Icarus.

“Okay, all systems are online,” the AI said. The lights blinked, winked out. The deck was plunged in red emergency lighting for a moment before they returned back online. “Nevermind, now they are.”

A last inspection took them through the winding corridors, to the engine room, the weapons systems, and the large empty spaces in the heart of the ship, patiently waiting for a purpose.

“Only one thing left,” Icarus said.

The shield. Back in the control room, the duo approached the only thing that looked out of place. A crystal, growing from the floor and into the metal of the ship, its deep blue refractive surfaces had melded into the metal, seeming to grow into it, almost colonizing it.

The crystal was dim.

“Here goes nothing,” Michael said. He manually directed mana into the crystal, watching it light up.

All around them, the projector ring spun up, and hexagons began to fill with the watery film of the shield’s surface. The shield closed right in front of the deck’s main viewing window, sealing them inside.

“It’s holding well,” Icarus said. “Mana draw is much more manageable than the big shield.”

The test completed, Michael cut the flow of mana and watched the shield disintegrate into motes of magic.

“Now onto the next test,” Icarus announced.

Nodding, Michael filled up the ship’s internal battery and flew out. Icarus remotely instructed the ship to raise its shield, and the two watched the process unfold from the outside.

“The shield looks stable,” Michael said after several minutes. “Shall we move to the next phase?”

“With pleasure.”

The ship’s engines roared to life, twin fusion flames and a myriad of positioning plumes. Then it started to move.

Michael held his breath. 

“The shield is moving with the ship!” 

Which meant that there was only one last test left to do. He felt anxiety rise, but it was less pronounced than he had expected it to be. He felt bold, like things could not go wrong. 

“Take it to the boundary,” he commanded. 

Icarus complied. As the torn edges of the frayed boundary loomed closer, the tears in the veil revealing purple chaos outside, neither of the two watched from aboard the Flagship. The shield was holding strong, and the battery was being kept topped up by Michael, but they didn’t feel like gambling.

Still, Michael was confident. It was the kind of arrogant confidence that came with taint, a part of his mind told him, but he shut it down. It was not just that. The shield was a technology he had developed entirely by himself, and he believed in it. It was if not his magnus opus, at least close to it, and it was holding strong. The projector ring was not even warm from the effort of sustaining the shield at maximum power for several minutes, and the mana drain was manageable.

The Flagship’s shimmering blue field of hexagons stopped inches away from the chaos. There were several more yards of empty space before the actual hull of the ship.

“Shall we dip our toes and see what happens?” 

Michael nodded. “Just the toes. Forward three feet and then stop there.”

The fusion engines fired up. The ship moved. The inches shrunk, the shield shimmered in anticipation, flaring brighter. The purple chaotic void awaited. The closest edge of the boundary was far enough away that there was no danger of accidentally touching it.

Time was both too slow and too quick. Michael did not even want to blink for fear of missing the moment of truth, and then the moment arrived.

When the shield touched the chaos… nothing really happened. No cataclysmic explosion. No destabilization of the whole inner space.

The shield simply lit up, its hexagons drinking more and more magic and flaring brighter, and the chaos parted. It was like watching a transparent balloon slowly submerge in murky water, allowing the two to peer at previously unseen depths. Except, the depths were shallow, and all that could be seen was more purple chaos.

“Pull it back,” Michael said. The ship’s engines reversed power, and the ship slowly crawled back into explored space. 

Michael’s breath caught in his throat when, for a moment, the chaos clung to the shield like viscous liquid. But then it snapped back to where it had always been, its surface rippling once, then twice, then stilling. 

“Check the ship.”

Icarus ran the checks. They took more than ten minutes with how in-depth they were. Michael felt his heart like a wardrum in his chest, until…

“All green. The shield drew a lot of energy, but even without you supplying it with mana, the battery would have been enough.”

The tension melted away like snow in the summer. A grin colonized Michael's face.

“Good,” he said, exaltation in his voice. “Fill the ship with batteries. The next test is going to be the last one.”

The test was the simple continuation of what had been done until now. Submerge the ship in the void completely, on all sides. If the Flagship managed to survive and return in one piece, then Michael would have all the proof he needed to confirm that his ludicrous plan to surround the inner space with a shield… was not ludicrous at all. 

That it was the right path to survive the coming collapse of the boundary.

“Ready when you are, Michael.” 

Icarus’s voice woke him up from a strange daze that had overcome him as he stared out into the void. The Flagship flew in front of him, cutting his sight of the purple chaos and allowing him to fully return to the present.

“The batteries are all charged and ready,” Icarus said.

“Start the engines, then,” Michael said. He felt confident. This, this was going to prove it.

The ship reached the void once again. The shield flared with power. The void parted.

Halfway through, the void seemed to close in around the ship. Just an optical illusion, of course, given the spherical nature of the shield. It looked dense, syrupy, confusing.

The last third of the ship went in. Michael watched the disappearing silhouette of Icarus’s masterpiece.

The last inch. A jewel of blue-white shimmer surrounded by murky water. Then it was gone.

“I programmed it to return after ten seconds.” Icarus explained.

They waited.

“...seven, eight, nine and ten. It should be coming right up.”

Michael watched. “It should, shouldn't it?”

Icarus hummed.

“Then where is it?”

A few hundred miles above them, a section of the boundary suddenly bulged and exploded. “That’s where it is.”

All hell broke loose.