The infinity dungeon 228

Chapter 228

The hologram of the new blueprint glowed with a sickly radioactive green sheen against the dark backdrop of empty space. It was the same pale green as all the other holograms, a color that reminded Michael of a nuclear survival game.

And the lost nuclear manifestation from Sitea… 

Unlike most other things in the Inner Space, save for the control room, the hologram was not one of his creations. It had not come from trial and error. It had been dungeon given, a gift, a reward for beating a strange challenge down in the sixth floor.

It expanded and expanded, a latticework of interconnected hexagons, huge in size. 

“Fascinating,” Icarus muttered under his breath, leaning forward from where he was hovering in space beside Michael. “It takes the old collector and transforms it into the center of a much wider array.”

The hologram was still changing, inching toward a final form. Even in its incomplete state, however, it was easy to tell what it did. It upgraded the old collector making it the centerpiece of an array of collectors that fanned out with a slight curve like a satellite dish pointed at the black hole. Each of them was hexagonal, as was their ensemble.

“A hundred basic ones in total,” Michael noted once the hologram had finished changing. “The material costs are insane.”

Icarus nodded. He too was examining the information that had come with the blueprint. “Way more than a hundred times more expensive. It’s a steep increase.”

“And yet,” Michael said, “it’s a price that will have to be paid.”

With a mental command, he directed a steady stream of raw materials from their orbit to the hologram. The blueprint accepted more than two thirds of the Fae stash before it was satisfied, after which it began to build itself from the center outward. The process was not instantaneous, nor was it fast, but it was fascinating.

“Complex,” Icarus said. “No wonder it’s taking its time.”

With a nod, Michael left Icarus to his ponderings and flew to another collector. He summoned the blueprint again and tried to direct the remaining materials to it.

It did not let him.

He cursed. It looked like his inner space could not do parallel builds. Not yet, at least.

It took almost two days before the build was completed. By the time it was done, it was almost time to leave.

The moment the hologram finally snapped in place, Michael’s aura went from 9.65 silver to 19.55, once again more than doubling. His mana regeneration also doubled, reaching close to twenty copper units per second.

He grinned, feeling more powerful than ever. Finally, he could fill up his batteries with mana even without the need to use active meditation.

“Even outside the dungeon,” he muttered.

“Yessir, even outside.” Icarus flew close to him, wagging a finger. “All your earlier whining was for naught, it seems.”

Michael shook his head. “The star would have produced much more energy.”

Icarus pouted. “But then, kind sir~” he said, dragging the last word. “You would have had no spiral to fight back against the big bad Renegade.”

Michael inhaled, shifting his focus from Icarus, who was clearly having the time of his life, to the black hole. The spiral inside pulsed softly. Nothing he could not control, but ever since he started training to absorb the coins quickly, the spiral felt hungry. Almost… demanding to be fed.

“I can’t wait to see all the collectors upgraded. It will take time, but it will be an enormous power-up indeed,” Icarus said. “Well, if you manage to survive your encounter with the Renegade.”

“Need I remind you that our fates are linked?”

Icarus sighed. “Alas, they are. Or, I could make my escape in the computronium cubes Johanne prepared for me.”

Michael frowned.

“Don’t worry,” Icarus smiled at him. “I won’t. I’m not leaving you. Ever.”

After he was done bantering with his AI, Michael left to inform Drullkrin that it was finally time. He explained the threat he was about to face in the outside world, as well as his plan to deal with him.

The goblin general could do nothing but nod. He did not wish him good luck. “You do not need luck,” he declared. “You are capable and strong. It would not do for my king to succumb to a mini-boss such as the Renegade. I trust that you will be back soon, your foe vanquished with ease.”

Michael smiled at the mention of the mini-boss, then his mind recalled a similar talk with Travis after he had easily killed off Carmela. Perhaps this was going to be more of the same. Easy task. Overpreparedness paying off.

But the good mood and mirth did not last long after he left the forest and approached the exit. He stared at it with a strange sense of trepidation. The dungeon, although infinite, had been a cage for him these last few years. One he had welcomed, but also one that was growing too small for him. 

At this point, he could either keep hiding from the real world and descend deeper in the dungeon, or go outside. The two portals were both right there, in front of him. One filled with light, the other a foreboding stairway leading deeper.

He turned to the brighter of the two, taking a deep breath. The pockets of the clothes he had created with his magic burned with the weight of platinum and gold coins. Their presence was equal parts reassuring and dangerous, a reminder of the events that were about to unfold.

Michael cracked his knuckles, called for his magic, took one last deep breath of fresh Valley air… and stepped through.

The light of the outside world assaulted him, as did its smell. The air was dirty, polluted, stale. The magic in the air was much weaker than even in the Valley. He could smell the ozone taste of the electromagnetic waves that saturated the environment. For a moment, Michael was stunned by a sensory overload similar to that he had gotten when he had awakened his first Dantian core.

Then he absorbed a gold coin, the magic washing over him, sinking in the inner space. He seized most of it, while the rest fell into the black hole, and he used it to steady himself.

Flaring his aura to the maximum, he took to the skies. He flew up, cutting through the terrible storm that was whipping Site 00 without mercy, until he came to a stop above the main compound.

He kept an eye on the energy readings. Icarus was connecting to the wider network, quickly colonizing all the computation spaces Johanne had readied for him. Even a single crystal was more than all the processors in the world combined, and there were dozens of them for him to expand into. He reabsorbed the inferior copy of himself back into his being, syncing with the data streams.

“Satellites show that the energy buildup is confirmed to be Renegade Energy, Michael. He is coming.”

Michael inhaled. Everything was so small when seen from this far up in the sky. Everything looked so insignificant.

Absorbing another gold coin, he suddenly directed the attention of every single living thing in a several miles radius to himself. He did his best to ignore the buildup behind him, counting down the seconds.

Then he spoke.

“This shitshow has gone on for long enough. Time to put an end to it.”

Everyone heard him, his magic made sure of that. Another gold coin, and suddenly Michael was in a room at the top of the tallest building in the whole Site 00. Travis and David were also there, looking dumbfounded for a moment before quickly getting their bearings. 

They stared at Michael. Travis was about to speak, the faster of the two, moving even while David was still glowering at his surroundings with his youthful breadth of emotion.

Before any of them could do anything, an explosion of Renegade Energy froze them stiff. The very air restricted their movements, its consistency suddenly that of a solid, trapping them in place. 

The Renegade appeared in the sky outside the window, phased through, and strolled into the room.

The pressure increased. Travis and David were sent to their knees. Magic gathered and vanished, and Michael recognized that Johanne had just tried to teleport into the room and had been stopped by the Renegade.

“You are struggling,” the Renegade said, seeing that Michael was fighting against the force attempting to push him to the ground. “It will not help you. What does the moth say to the flame?”

Michael smirked. The Renegade clearly did not expect him to, and his face morphed into confusion for the briefest of moments.

“Fuck you, is what it says.”

“What?” the Renegade yelled in surprise, feeling a truly enormous amount of magic gather right in front of him.

Michael pulled. The spiral black hole, deep inside his inner space, flared to life. Like a hungry predator smelling blood, the glyph inside the black hole suddenly smelled the three platinum coins Michael had taken with him from the dungeon. It knew, right there, that Michael wanted to give them to it.

It wanted them for itself.

A gigantic spiral, wrought in the impossible blackness of a black hole’s event horizon, surrounded by the strange colors and distorted shapes of the accretion disk appeared in the air above the room.

The manifestation was tangible, solid, real. Its gravity pulled, disintegrating the half of the building, pulling the whipping winds of the storm to it. A deafening rush of air whirled, pulled to the spiral as it consumed and expanded.

The coins vanished. Terrible power, the power of the dungeon, the power of magic itself, unraveled and fell toward the center of the inner space. The equivalent of three hundred gold coins suddenly turned into a shower of sparks and energy and terrible light. The spiral pulsed, pulling them all to itself. The energy fell, faster and faster, bright as to almost be blinding. 

When it reached the many structures, it struck them with the might of relativistic weapons. The Aura Accelerator took many hits, as did the batteries and collectors. Entire sections exploded, the debris joining the meteor shower converging toward the center of the space. 

The spiral welcomed everything in its cold, deadly embrace. Luckily, the core of the structures was well-armored. The damage was extensive, but the important bits remained, a testament to Michael's paranoia paying off. 

Michael thrust a hand forward, his fingers sinking deep inside the Renegade’s chest. The man screamed, clawing at Michael's hand to try and remove it, but it was like the weight of the black hole itself was keeping it firmly in place.

Then the spiral flared again, impossibly bright and big enough to blot out the sky. The Renegade’s eyes widened in horror and fear, recognizing the glyph that had kept him trapped for ages deep inside the dungeon. He redoubled his efforts to escape, but the force was too strong.

It tugged at him. It tugged at his Renegade Energy. Then it yanked. Michael had fed the spiral three platinum coins, and now the spiral wanted more.

The Renegade cried in pain, doubling over, his body crumbling to the ground save for where Michael's hand was still embedded in him. He looked like a wet tissue, magic being ripped away from him, tearing him apart.

Realizing what was happening to him, he suddenly let go of his Renegade Energy. The spiral, still focused on it, eagerly devoured the energy. For an instant, its attention was no longer on the Renegade himself, and he used the opening to escape.

Qi swirled, a truly enormous amount of it, and he vanished.

“Michael?” David’s voice came from behind. “What the fuck just happened?”

Michael did not reply. He moved away from the broken window, fearing that he might fall if he didn’t. Leaving bloody trails, he propped himself with his hands against the marble table at the center of the room, finding a chair and sitting on it.

He swallowed, feeling acid rise up his throat. 

“One moment, please,” he croaked out. “I’ll deal with you all in a moment.”

His inner space was flooded with energy. He tried to direct its flow, but the spiral had set its eyes on its prize, and was not letting go. As the energy from three platinum coins, plus all the Renegade Energy the Renegade had in him finally disappeared behind the event horizon, a tidal wave swept the inner space.

Force pushed out, against the confines of the space. Against its edges, like air inflating a balloon. It pushed and pushed, threatening to fracture what had always felt like a sturdy boundary but that now felt like flimsy paper. The little spirals etched on the boundary lit up, eager to partake in the feast of energies, and then the space expanded.