The infinity dungeon 233

Chapter 233

Michael’s hand sank into the dilapidated concrete of the warehouse, effortlessly pushing past the flaking paint and moss. It only stopped when it was halfway buried in the building itself, fingers touching rebar and cold cement, at which point mana flared and a million little spirals came into existence. They were the spirals etched in the boundary of the inner space, and while they lacked the tremendous voracity of the big one inside the black hole, they were like a score of a million greedy little vacuum cleaners.

Magic spread out from the point of contact, most of it mana with traces of other leftover energies flowing like ooze on the rough surfaces of the abandoned building. Only when it was all completely encased did the spirals finally flare their brightest, and the building vanished.

A rush of displaced air ruffled the two bystanders’s clothes and hair.

“Well?” David asked, stepping forward toward Michael.

The man in question said nothing. To David, it appeared as if he was standing still, eyes unfocused. For a moment, he thought that Michael had gone to the inner space, but then he saw the wince on the young man’s face.

“Ouch,” muttered Michael. His face went through several expressions, ranging from mild discomfort to concentration. “Feels like indigestion and acid reflux, what the fuck?”

He closed his eyes, and a quick check in the inner space explained the problem. The boundary, still frayed and broken from the day before, had barely begun to repair when he had literally pulled a whole warehouse through it. He could see where the building had passed through: the tears were bigger and more… raw.

They stung like salt being rubbed on a wound.

“Perhaps you should wait before absorbing more,” Icarus said. The hologram had appeared beside Michael, staring at the same torn boundary as he was, with hands on his hips and a slight frown. “Or not. Knowing you…”

Michael shook his head at Icarus’s shenanigans. “Why are you different?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

Michael snorted. Today, Icarus looked like an inverted color palette to how he had looked yesterday. Still pale skinned, his clothes were dark while his eyes were blue like the sky and his hair was white as snow. 

“Whatever,” Michael said. He turned to the floating building, which was slowly disintegrating while being pulled toward the black hole. The acceleration was not much, this far out near the boundary, but it would pick up soon. “So, how is it?”

“Well, I see you are struggling with perspective as usual. Let me layer a schematic on top real quick.”

Green holo lines appeared next to the rotating warehouse. 

“Looks like it’s three mark-one collectors long and one and a half tall, maybe?” Michael said. “It was big out there, and it’s not too shabby here either.”

“Yeah,” Icarus agreed. “Good haul. It did cost you a pretty penny in magical coins, and it is mostly empty, but there’s a lot of metal in the roofing and foundation.”

There was also a good chunk of soil, perhaps ten feet of it, that had also been pulled along for the ride. It was mostly dirt, but there was also debris mixed in that could be used.

The whole thing began to glow with magic, and pieces of it were shepherded away toward the Scrap Foundry, which whirred to life with mana.

“I’ll take care of processing all of this,” Icarus said. “It should speed up the repairs a fair bit. I was almost out of resources.”

“Good. How are the repairs proceeding, by the way?”

“Slowly,” Icarus said. “Shouldn’t you return to the real world? You are standing in place like an idiot, and David is waiting.”

“Right.”

Michael opened his eyes, adjusting quickly to the light of day. The sun was out, but a worrying wall of clouds took up more than half the horizon in the direction of Site 00. They were half a state away, but even from here the mana front took up half the sky, and it was still growing.

“Verdict is,” Michael told David, “Good haul.”

He then explained about the inner space boundary, and that he would come back to absorb the rest of the buildings once it had healed enough.

“Say, how much do you think you will be able to absorb once your boundary is all healed up?” David asked.

“As long as I have mana, however much I want.”

“Good,” said the man, rubbing his hands together. “We could clear the whole rust belt this way. I see you even pulled up some of the ground. Do you have control over it? Can you scoop up all the contaminants as well?”

Michael checked his pockets. There was a single gold coin he had not yet used, plus his mana pool which had regenerated back to full. He took to the skies, overlooking the plot of land. There was a dark brown hole of wet dirt where the warehouse had been, a rectangle almost perfectly cut into the ground, save for one side where a particularly tall tangle of brambles had fallen partially into it.

He scanned the area, and things began to light up in his vision as Icarus processed the data. Then, with a snap of his fingers all the contaminated soil was stripped of the heavy metals and odd chemicals, which flew up and formed a neat pile close to David.

The man poked at the shimmering shield surrounding the pile of hazardous materials. “Harmless and packed up for when you can return to finish the job. Did you clean the whole site?”

“Just the area around the warehouse,” Michael said. “But I think I can do much more the next time around. I’ll gather and compress the materials first, and absorb them later. Less stress on the inner space boundary, which is the bottleneck, at the price of a bigger mana cost because of all the pre-processing I’ll have to do.”

If he did it slowly, meticulously, he could keep the mana cost low. Perhaps he could even use his natural regeneration. But Michael’s time was limited, while Travis was already scaling up operations by sending more men to farm the coins in the dungeon. It was more efficient to just brute force it, spending more coins but wasting less time.

“I see,” David said. “Glad this turned out to be a viable solution. I will keep working on the other fronts as well, of course. We should have a shipment of ore delivered to one of our secondary locations pretty soon, and that too should be a very good haul. Smaller, but denser. It cost us a fortune, but…” there was a glint in his eyes. “We can afford to spend it. Hell, the whole company was built for this.”

Michael nodded along as David spoke. At times, he had lost sight of what he was doing, especially when it came to Unity Corporation, but what David was saying rang true.

“Kid.” David said, looking at him. “I will say, it feels fucking amazing to finally be able to mobilize the immense resources we have quietly been gathering all this time to power you up like crazy. I don’t know about Travis, but I admit I was beginning to feel rather useless being the CEO of a company built to help you, with no way to help you. Sure, we were doing… stuff. But when it came to you and your power, you just went into the dungeon and did the thing yourself. Made me feel like you had no real need for any of us in the real world. Now, I know what to do! I feel useful! And all these plots we’ll be clearing? Oh, we will develop them. We will keep buying the land. Here, there, everywhere!” 

He laughed, roaring in delight. Michael decided to let him, but did not say anything either because it would be like adding fuel to the fire. 

But man, was it good to see David like this.

***

The return trip was quick. Michael opened a portal and stepped through, consuming most of his mana pool in the process. 

But with my regeneration, it takes only a few minutes to get back to full no matter where I am. 

The important bit was that he was not tied to only being able to regenerate magic while close to a dungeon. The portal collapsed behind him, David having chosen to take the helicopter so that he could work on a few things and make a few phone calls.

Michael looked up. He had chosen to portal close to the dungeon, one of the few locations where he knew he could jump to rather cheaply because of the significance the place had in his mind. Again, he was reminded of how different magic felt now that it was no longer skills and levels. Back then, portalling would have surely been tied to several measurable factors, now it was all just vibes and feelings.

Vibe magic, he thought with a wry smile. It fits, given how I cast much of it with the help of an AI. 

In the distance, he could see the skyscraper where he had fought the Renegade. It was still badly damaged, but teams of workers were already fixing the worst of the damage, aided by magic and the best tools that inordinate amounts of money could buy.

He found Travis at a temporary office, grumbling as he pored over stacks of paper so tall they hid several of the screens that littered the wall. He was fuming about something.

“Hey Travis," Michael said as he entered. “Lost this?”

He held up the computer mouse, and the man’s eyes narrowed at it like he was looking at an ancient foe. “Where was it hiding?”

“Over there, between two stacks of paper.”

“I knew it,” Travis muttered.

“You didn’t.” Michael muttered back.

“I didn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been cursing it for ten minutes.” He took a deep breath. “Anyway. Thanks for the mouse. What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted a quick update. The storm is coming back, and the satellite readings are not encouraging. I will need to deal with it, possibly with Johanne’s help. I might be busy with it for a day or two, but can we afford it? For instance, how’s the situation with the OA? Icarus told me some things…”