The infinity dungeon 207

Chapter 207

The door of light deposited Michael in the middle of an empty street. Beneath his feet, tall weeds growing out of the many cracks in the concrete made the ground uneven, their thick roots widening any gap they had found and loosening the foundation of the road.

It had rained not too long ago. The air smelled of it, and large potholes were filled to the brim with muddy water. Mist rose from between the buildings, swirls of cold water vapour emerging from dark alleys and hidden rooms.

“So this is what’s left of Johanne’s world,” Michael muttered. “I was expecting something different.”

On both sides of the road, dark grey buildings rose one or two floors and then ended in flat roofs made of concrete. Streaks of lighter color ran down the sides of the buildings, where the elements and the rain had washed them. There had been a lot of smog in the past, for the faces of the concrete buildings were dark where the rain could not reach them, and the water had melted away the muck like ink being carried away in little vertical rivulets.

The road wound through the desolate block of square buildings, all angles and grey, then past metal bins and rusted railings, bending and twisting. Sometimes the view opened up to parking lots, stout warehouses barely hidden by degraded sheets of metal and dark rooms beyond broken doors. In the distance, a lone hill full of dark trees was visible against the overcast sky, barely tall enough to be seen above the roofs of the factories.

Concrete was everywhere, but despite its almost ubiquitous presence, nature had managed to establish a foothold in many places. Entire buildings were covered in vines, corners of the road overgrown with thorny weeds, and broad leaves dripped with moisture. The plants were dark, their green deep and muted, lacking the brilliance of nature on Earth.

Brick chimneys dominated the skyline, their reds and browns darkened by the same elements that had stained the concrete, rendering the whole place a dull, depressing painting of greys and blacks. Even the sky followed the same color palette, with thick clouds that threatened more rain.

There was not a soul in sight. There were no sounds. The air was still and humid, save for the occasional gust of wind that swept the empty narrow street and sent a chill up Michael’s spine.

“Nobody’s been here for a long time,” he said.

He switched to his magic sight, feeling the slight chill of the wind penetrate his clothes. He tried to dispel it with his magic, but the mana cost was higher than his regeneration, and he cursed his lack of aura.

“I was feeling like something was missing,” he cursed under his breath, “how did I forget about the aura?”

Icarus chimed in. “At least we now know for sure that the aura is not separate from the magic system.”

“It’s certainly connected to it, but it’s also not a direct consequence of it. The proof of concept is that I don’t currently have one.”

“Just like the Fae,” Icarus mused.

“This means that we will have to figure out how to recreate it, adding another item to a growing laundry list of things to do,” he said. He cut the flow of magic to his eyes, frowning. “There’s literally nothing of note around here. Not a shred of mana save for what I’m generating.”

He eyed one of the chimneys. A rusted ladder snaked its way around it, a haphazard collection of thin sheets of metal corroded by time and rain. Taking out the Force Lance from the dead cultivator’s spatial ring with a flash of mana, Michael warily made his way through the empty ground floor of the factory below the chimney.

It was dark, with only the sound of dripping water reverberating in the empty open space. Some plant life had managed to colonize the concrete floor, taking root in a crack under a broken window, the blackened glass still half attached to the frame but with a hole wide enough to let sunlight and rain through. The leaves of the plants all faced the window, looking at the sky with longing but unable to move; instead they were forced to fight each other for dominance, yearning for what little light there was.

The second floor was cramped, a stark contrast to the spacious, liminal emptiness of the first. There were rooms, doors, rusted metal, and dust everywhere. The walls were the same featureless concrete of all the other buildings, but here they were lighter in color, sheltered from the elements and the smog that had surely once hidden the sky from sight most of the year. Some lines had been painted here and there, and there was text in a language Michael could not understand.

A small hatch led to the roof, where more plants thrived in puddles of water at the corners of the flat space next to clogged drainpipes. One of them had extended its root system across the surface of the concrete, following the path water took and, finding no cracks to dig into, had simply continued to expand on the surface of the concrete. It looked like lungs, veins branching into smaller and smaller segments that filled every inch of the moist surface.

Then Michael was up the chimney, the Force Lance once again safely stored in the golden ring on his index finger. He had chosen his left hand for the ring so that when he wore the Force Lance on his arm, the ring would be concealed. It had the side effect of making it very easy to equip and unequip the gun with just a thought, even though since he had no Qi, the mana cost to force the universe to obey his will was exorbitant.

Even from his vantage point, Michael could see no end to the concrete and the factories. There were more hills in the distance, and a river of dark water flowed placidly and split the concrete sprawl in two, and then in the distance it was like the forest just swallowed everything, even the buildings at the far reaches. They blended into leaf and darkness, moss and the amorphous concept of dark and foreboding forest until there was no trace of them, just trees.

“Why would Infy take me here, though?” he wondered as he once again made mana flow towards his eyes.

Most of the city was dark to his mana sight, mundane concrete that made him think of an industrialized society that never made peace with itself. Here and there, however, he could see faint traces of magic lingering in the air, wisps and little tongues of mana reaching towards the sky from deep underground. They escaped the concrete buildings, finding their way through smashed windows and chimneys, through cracks in the concrete and manholes in the road.

The world returned to normal. In the minute and a half he had spent watching the landscape, Michael had consumed his whole pool of mana plus whatever his collectors had managed to regenerate in the meantime.

“Depressing,” he said to himself, “to think my power is so reduced even mana sight depletes my reserves…”

What good was it, he wondered, to have Silvers worth of mana when his efficiency was so low? He mentally upped the priority of the ‘create new skills’ task. Now that he had successfully done so with the artillery explosion, perhaps the rest would come easy.

He climbed down, making for the first building that exhibited traces of mana. Icarus had recorded what he had seen and had created a map of the place which he could summon in his vision on command, like a game HUD. Thanks to the map, he could see that the traces of mana extended out in a spiral, the long arm of it vanishing beyond the river, behind one of the hills.

The first building was yet another factory. Inside, he found empty tables that were nothing more than slabs of concrete with metal on top, bare scaffolding that was rusting and staining the concrete walls, and more of the strange dark-leaved plant life that seemed to thrive in the damp corners of the indoors. A lantern hung broken on a chain, still smelling of oil, its glass marred and clouded by combustion gases.

Michael was about to explore, to go deeper inside the building towards the source of the magic, when he remembered Infy’s words. She had told him that he would find clues and information in this place—about what, he was not sure—but she had begged him to ignore it all and find her as soon as he could.

Frowning, he returned to the road and made his way towards the river, crossing the path of the spiral of magic many times but always ignoring the buildings around him even if they shone with more and more magic. Soon, he was passing by concentrations of mana that he had never felt before, exotic elements calling to him, Qi that appeared so tame he could seize it for himself without any difficulty and, finally, a library.

Michael had never been fond of books save for the occasional fantasy novel. Not even after his mental statistics had made him smart enough that he could understand and remember anything he read, he had only studied book out of a sense of duty to become stronger. 

He had to admit, however, that curiosity almost made him step off his path out of the city just to take a peek inside the library. He yearned to know what had happened to this place, to reconcile the image he had created of Johanne’s world in his head with what he was seeing.

He almost went inside. He could just grab a few books, he thought, put them in his spatial ring, and read them later.

The memory of Infy’s tearful face, however, made him hesitate. He wondered if this was the sacrifice she had talked about, but it couldn’t be. Even though he burned with curiosity, in the end he found it easy enough to walk past the library, putting the thought of knowledge out of his mind.

It was dark by the time he reached the river. A single bridge loomed like a giant shadow of metal and concrete, so thick that it looked like it didn’t belong in the air above the water, its weight too ponderous to be kept aloft by mundane materials. Behind the bridge’s towers, the hill was tall like a mountain, black against a darkening sky.

The light Michael had conjured did not reach past the halfway point of the bridge, nor did it illuminate the dark waters below. It was consuming too much mana already to increase its luminosity. Instead, he switched to his magic vision for a moment to confirm that he was going in the right direction, not wanting to wander into a dark forest at night unless strictly necessary. He would have waited until dawn, but Infy’s plea weighed on his mind.

What he saw blinded him. There was a man, standing in the middle of the river, a storm of magic and Qi and…

Renegade Energy.

The Force Lance appeared already around Michael’s arm in an instant. His body acted on its own. He raised the weapon and shot. The wave of force hit the metal of the bridge first, bending it and pushing it away in a deafening grind and groan.

The figure did not move. Michael did not even ask himself who that blob of powerful magic in the shape of a man was. Only one person could be here, of all places, and wield the elusive Tier 4 energy.

Michael hoped that the Demiurge Particles of the Force Lance—Tier 5 magic—would be enough to kill the Renegade.