The infinity dungeon 223

Chapter 223

"This is crazy," Icarus said.

"It gets crazier," Michael replied smugly.

Mana flowed out of him, snaking toward the main base where he had built all his collectors and machines. It reached them, splitting into streams that surrounded two collectors and two batteries, allowing Michael to pull them to him.

“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” Icarus asked.

Michael only smiled. Hovering in the air, he settled in front of the golden coin. There, with the central spiral and its tremendous gravity at his back, he grabbed a collector and gently placed it near the coin. When the magic wrapping it faded, the collector oriented itself, unfurled its diamond-shaped wings, and soaked up the radiation coming from the spiral’s accretion disk.

“And now…” Michael said theatrically, then snapped his fingers. A burst of magic erupted out of him, and the collector effortlessly slotted into place. As if it and the golden coin had always been meant to be connected. “...aura.”

The energy from the collector flowed into the coin. A low hum permeated the inner space as the coin sent the energy into the golden thread connecting it with the coin on the other side, making the thread brighten into a muted golden light.

Flying across the solar system with a second collector in tow, Michael attached it to the other coin. The ring became a little bit brighter.

Icarus sounded impressed when he spoke. “It’s weak, but… you did it. Self-sustaining aura. How does it work? Mana goes in and aura comes out?”

“That’s the best thing,” Michael said. “Look.”

With a flourish, he emptied the two battery packs he had seized from the main base, letting their contents fall down into the spiral and feeling the inner space stretch a little bit in response. Then, he attached them to the golden coins of Qi on the opposite side of the collectors.

“Watch,” he said as he followed the energy coursing through the golden thread. “Mana is gathered by the collector and sent into the first golden coin. It creates a first pulse when the coin sends it into the golden band, generating aura for the first time. Then the mana travels the length of the golden band as if it were a particle accelerator. When it reaches the coin on the other side, it pulses again and generates aura a second time. The mana passes through. When it returns to where it started, since it can’t pulse twice in the same coin, it is directed into the battery.” Indeed, the battery was beginning to charge itself up at the expected rate given the brightness of the accretion disk. “No losses.”

“No losses,” Icarus echoed. “This means that aura is generated by mana simply moving around the ring. The golden coins! They act like focusing lenses, don’t they? What if you add more?”

“Well,” Michael grabbed another pair of coins and slid them into the ring. They took up position at the midway points between the coins already present. Now each packet of mana generated four pulses of mana instead of two. “More coins means more aura, of course.”

Michael continued until all 24 golden coins were placed on the ring, equidistant from one another, each accompanied by its collector and battery. When he was done, the ring was glowing much brighter than before, but Michael knew that it was only at a fraction of its full potential.

“Twenty-four percent of its max, if I had to guess,” he said.

“Let me guess,” Icarus said, “you can fit a hundred focusing lenses on the ring?”

Michael shrugged. “Think so. I might be in a state of inspiration, but this is uncharted territory. Hard to say for sure.”

“And the ring? Will it be able to handle the increased amount of energy?”

Michael shrugged again. “One problem at a time. Don’t know if you noticed, but we are out of golden Qi coins to act as lenses.”

“One problem at a time, then. Shall we test how the Gaze feels now that you’ve got an Aura Accelerator?”

“I like the name.”

Michael finally allowed himself to return to the material world. He opened his eyes, taking in the sight of the small hut where he had been living for the past year, and feeling the Gaze of the dungeon on his back like a physical weight.

“There’s literally no difference,” he said. He was, admittedly, a little disappointed. “I know I shouldn’t be; the current Aura Accelerator is not complete, and the Collectors are not collecting nearly as much as they should be because of how dim the accretion disk is, but…”

“How about,” Icarus said, “instead of thinking that the Aura Accelerator is currently operating at 24% of its max capacity, don’t you instead think of it as being a 24-fold multiplier for your aura? One that could potentially become a 100-fold multiplier once you figure out how to make more focusing lenses. Even as it is now, each mana packet generated by your collectors pulses 24 times as it passes through the 24 focusing lenses, generating 24 times the aura it would without them.”

“Which would be how much aura, in number terms?”

Icarus mumbled as he ran the numbers. “Let’s see. How would you like to quantify the aura?”

“Just tell me the number after the multiplier.”

“Sure thing. You’re currently sitting on an aura of 5.604 copper.”

“We are, like, miles away from Silver.”

“Which is why you should leave this floor. You’re too deep, and the Gaze will start affecting you soon.”

“Right,” Michael said. He started walking toward the exit that had appeared close to where he and Master Yu had played their last game. “Destination Valley?”

“It should be more bearable. In the meantime, let me deactivate the Scrap Foundry, Mining Drone, and Artillery Station. Also the Borealis Drill and the Pure Light Mirror, unless you plan on using the elements soon?”

Michael shook his head. Icarus took it as confirmation and cut the flow of mana to all the machines. The difference was immediate and quite stark.

“8.076 copper aura,” Icarus announced.

It was almost double, and even though it was still insufficient to handle the Gaze of the sixth floor, it still brought a smile to his face. It got his mind thinking about just what he could do with the power of multiplication. Increasing the brightness of the accretion disk was a multiplier. Increasing the focusing lenses on the Aura Accelerator would also increase the multiplier. Figuring out how to build more Collectors would increase the base rate, which would then get multiplied.

“I like this. I like this a lot…” he muttered.

“I should note,” Icarus interjected, “that it currently is a pure-mana aura. We don’t know its limits, of course, but given what we used to think about True and False auras, it’s safe to say that it will probably not be a match for a similarly strong aura that also integrates elements, Qi, Intent, or other energies.”

“Way to dampen the mood, champ,” Michael said. He didn’t let Icarus’s words ruin his mood, however. 

He knew how good he had gotten at manipulating mana, and even without the aura he could still bring a lot of power to bear if he needed it. Thanks to his batteries, he had up to 100 silver coins worth of mana to spend, up to ten per second. If he also used his considerable manipulation abilities, he could push those limits a bit more. If he also brought the spiral glyph and its tremendous gravitational power… he shuddered. The spiral still gave him the creeps. Best to leave it as a last resort, or as a trump card to be used sparingly. In comparison, the tiny spirals on the edges of the inner space, the ones he used to pull mana in from the air to supplement the Collectors when he actively meditated, felt much less threatening. 

A few minutes later, Michael finally reached the mountain peak where the exit waited for him. He was ready to leave this floor behind, and he had plans to consolidate his power in the Valley while he could still make use of the time dilation, before returning to the outside world and its many responsibilities.

The peak was empty. There was no game board. The wind howled as it snaked between the crevasses and the glaciers, coming from beneath the layer of clouds that obscured the wider world. There was much more to the sixth floor than just the mountain peak, Michael had learned when Master Yu had momentarily dispelled the cloud cover. Just like with the other floors, however, it was hard to get there—a side quest, not necessary to progress down the dungeon but promising the possibility of great rewards.

As he made to leave, Michael was forced to stop when he spotted a strange gathering of magic. It swirled, a mist congealing into a golden nugget of light. The little thing hovered in the air next to where the stairs leading up and down had manifested, waiting.

Michael took a single step forward. The pinprick of light reacted, accelerating in the blink of an eye as it flew straight toward Michael’s forehead. It pushed into his aura as if it wasn’t there, not even eliciting a reaction. Then it sank into his body, disappearing from sight but not from the senses. He felt the magic slowly lose cohesion, like a pill’s exterior melting after ingestion, revealing a packet of information.

He immediately knew what he was looking at. A blueprint. The reward for beating the floor.

He whistled. “Damn.”

Icarus echoed his words. “Damn indeed. You were talking about multipliers, weren’t you? The dungeon has just given you one.”

Blinking, Michael refocused on the material world. He could feel the Gaze on him, like a blunt weight attempting to squish him to the ground. His aura protected him, making a small part of the weight of the Gaze slide off him. The rest of it, however, was tainting his soul. He knew it was. 

The Gaze itself felt different, lacking the piercing sensation he got back when Infy was still trapped. There was no mind behind it, he realized. Perhaps this fact made it even more dangerous. The weight behind it was immense, and he had difficulty even coming up with a way to compare it to how it used to be before. It pressed on his aura, deforming it, making it utterly useless against its weight.

“It’s only going to get worse as we descend down the dungeon.”

“It is,” Icarus said. “But I would surely hope that your aura will also upgrade. Integrate Qi into it, maybe?”

Laughing, Michael emerged back into the idyllic sights of the Valley.