The infinity dungeon 219

Quick update. I finally got the second book back from the editor. It's time to put in the work! Unfortunately, I still have my full time job sapping me of time and energy. It's going to be hard, but I'll try my best. For a little while, I'm going to wind down the release to 1 chapter per week. Then, as soon as I'm done with the edits, we will be back to our usual 3 a week pace!

Chapter 219

Michael cursed, slamming a mana-reinforced fist against the stone of the spire. The rock formation deep inside the golem’s territory exploded, shattering into a million earth-infused shards. The elemental energy lingered, drifting lazily through the air, almost taunting Michael.

“Yeah, fuck you too,” he muttered, directing his anger at the elemental energies.

It had been three months since his last elemental success, and he wasn’t sure the second iteration of the Plasma Fire Chambers could really be called a success either.

“You know, Michael, you aren’t being very productive.”

The man in question only grumbled in response to his AI’s teasing. It had to be teasing, he thought. Then he took a deep breath and circulated some mana to calm himself down. As he walked, the stone slowly gave way to forest, but the nearby swamp meant that there was an overabundance of insects. Feeling anger flare up again at the tenth mosquito bite, Michael flexed his mana. He made a grasping motion, and all the insects in a fifteen-foot radius were suddenly gathered into a ball of squished flesh.

He controlled the ball with telekinesis, slamming it to the ground and lifting it back up several times before letting the mangled remains of the buzzing buggers go. The ball hit the ground with a wet squelch and deflated sadly. It did not lose its shape much, however, compressed as it was.

Michael left it where it was. With no wild animals, he wondered what was going to happen to it, but then decided that he didn’t care much either way. It would turn back into dungeon material eventually, or something like that. If not, it would be a problem for future him.

Avoiding Drullkrin, he retreated back to his treehouse and went straight to sleep. He used magic on himself to make sure sleep didn’t take too long to arrive, but the dawn of another day did not see his frustration diminish.

Michael knew that what he was doing wasn’t productive. If mastering another element was beyond him right now, he could switch to doing something else. He could create new machines to imitate skills, increase the black hole accretion disk’s brightness, delve the dungeon…

But he didn’t do any of those things.

Snapping his fingers, he summoned some fae wine and drank it. It tasted way too sweet, and it took many tries and a ludicrous amount of mana to change it until it was to Michael’s taste. He almost summoned a cigarette, or perhaps a cigar, but stopped himself when Travis’ smug face appeared in his mind, dredged up from his memories by some strange mechanism of his brain.

The wood railing of the treehouse splintered and broke under his grip, mana and nervous tension enhancing his body almost without requiring conscious thought. Seeing what he had done, he hastily repaired the damage, suppressing a sigh.

“I’m losing it,” he whispered, staring at himself in a mirror he made out of compressed air with raw magic manipulation.

His ability with magic—mana in particular—meant that he had almost zero mundane annoyances. He could just will things to be perfect, just like he wanted, and with a pool of a hundred silver mana that he could use, there wasn’t much he could not do.

Perhaps that was the issue.

Two more months passed with him teetering on the brink of wanting to do something and not actually doing it. Being in the Valley allowed for this kind of behavior, but it wasn’t doing him any favors. Every day he lazily tried to master a random element, failed, and indulged in whatever vice came to mind in hopes of not feeling… things anymore.

After a while, an idea began to creep into his mind. It was the idea of giving the finger to the outside world, to Travis and David, to whatever the hell was happening with Unity Corp and Site 00.

Ten years passed like that. He almost didn’t notice, time passing by in the brink of an eye. Every day, his control over mana improved a bit more, fueled by his wasteful use to sate all his desires and indulgences. At the same time, indulging in pleasure meant that he did not seek further improvement, nor did he really see what was happening to him. 

Eventually, Icarus spoke up. It had been months since the last time the AI had spoken, and Michael did not know why his companion had decided to finally break the silence.

“You know, you’re being a bit pathetic right now.”

“So what?” Michael snapped back. His temper was on a short fuse, so much so that even Drullkrin avoided him.

“Just saying. You look stressed. Why don’t you head down one floor and punch something? I bet it would feel great.”

Michael almost said no. He was in no mood to fight mummies. Nor did he want to meet the dwarves of the fourth floor. The fifth…

“Wait, there’s that strange gem that emits pure elemental light down on the fifth floor. I know that element; I took it head-on with my shield and aura until I understood it well enough that it didn’t harm me anymore. Think I might be able to absorb it?”

Icarus shrugged, “If that’s what it takes to feel better, why not try?”

There was a simple reason not to try. He could fail. And if he failed, Michael knew that he would only slip further down whatever strange self-sabotaging spiral he had found himself caught in.

Except, the idea of punching something felt good. It felt very good. So good, in fact, that Michael had arrived before the stairs leading down to the third floor before he even knew it.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered as he observed the threshold, “ten years I’ve been stuck here, doing nothing.”

He had even stopped collecting materials after a while. Drullkrin’s construction project had been completed, and the dungeon had not absorbed it, proving that you could build things in the Valley and that they would stick. The glacier next to the Valley, with no throne to provide the ice element, had slowly shrunk until it disappeared, leaving barely a snow-tipped mountain behind. The tunnels beneath had collapsed, with no trace of the Qi tunnel remaining.

Things had changed during Michael’s ten-year sabbatical.

“But most of all,” he said to himself. “I changed.”

Some things hadn’t changed, of course. Looking within himself, Michael found that his inner space was the same as always. Other things had. For instance, looking at the stairs, Michael felt… anxious.

He took a deep breath. He didn’t even know why he was feeling the way he was. Knowing that unless he took the plunge now, he would never manage to get his ass moving again, he stepped down into the third floor.

The first monster appeared right around the corner. The mummy was tall, shambling towards Michael, closing the distance with deceptively fast great steps. Its body was wrapped in white bandages, casting strange shadows under the light of the few torches scattered about the narrow corridors.

Michael readied his magic. It felt rusty. Not the magic itself—for he had trained it for ten years by making it do all sorts of strange things—but the fighting. It was almost a stumble, then, when he released the magic and the mummy simply… ceased to be.

Michael stared slack-jawed at the empty space where the monster had been. Then he began laughing. He laughed, feeling euphoria and a tinge of madness overtake him as he searched for the next monster. Why bother? He used magic, and the magic responded, pointing him towards his target. He hadn’t even needed to shape it to imitate a skill. His mana control was simply too good, after ten years spent doing all sorts of strange things with it.

He disappeared and reappeared before the mummy, and a moment later the monster was gone.

He cleared the whole floor in a matter of minutes. Then he breezed through the fourth, not even caring to interact with the dwarves, and found himself at the fifth. There, dinosaurs and strange primeval monsters were turned to paste and glittering magic that quickly dissipated, reabsorbed by the dungeon.

He hadn’t even needed to use his elements yet. Raw magic just did everything. Was this the power of a hundred Silver? He checked his batteries, the thought reminding him of his limited reserves. They were full.

Of course they were. He had not even realized it, but in the years he spent lazing in the Valley he had developed a way to absorb mana without having to stop and meditate.

Perhaps he had not wasted ten years of life, then. He had been focusing on his failures so much that he did not see just how far he had come. He ran a hand over his face, summoning a mirror. He had not wasted time at all! Magic had kept him young. Perhaps his mind was a bit older now, but that was it. He was already much older than his appearance suggested, after all.

Besides, he was powerful now.

A strange euphoria washed away Michael’s previous mental state. He wasn’t lucid, he knew, but he did not care.

Reaching the center of the fifth floor, he found the strange temple. It had collapsed, which was strange, and the goblin inside was reduced to nothing more than desiccated bones.

Michael found that he did not care about it one bit. He dug through the rubble, found one of the Pure Light element gems, and pulled it into his inner space.

Struck by inspiration, he built a refractive sphere of mirrors around it, caging the stone within. A small hole in the ball of mirrors allowed him to direct the light it emitted towards where he needed it to go. It barely consumed any mana!

The cost only went up if he wanted the beam to become stronger.

The euphoria only increased. He had come, and he had conquered an element.

He felt invincible. He felt ready. To descend to the sixth floor.

Infy appeared to him before he descended. She looked worried, perhaps a bit sad. He waved her worries away, and she seemed to cheer up, telling him that she had the perfect challenge for him. The reward, she said, would be a new blueprint to overcome his inner space limitations. And a way to regain lucidity.

He didn’t care about the second part one bit. In fact, he wished he could remain in this strange euphoric state. But the other reward? To break through his limits? It was perfect.

Grinning, Michael descended. He did not see Infy’s smile slip off her face like a mask the moment he turned away from her, replaced by the same worry and sadness Michael had waved away earlier.