The infinity dungeon 205

Chapter 205

As Michael approached the asteroid, it slowly grew from a small gray silhouette against a black background into a larger and larger celestial body. Its features were still mostly hidden, but it was clear that this was the largest asteroid he had ever explored so far, and by a large margin.

It was in the space between two instants that the asteroid became suddenly fully visible, as if Michael had just crossed an invisible threshold. Its surface was smooth, white, and mostly uniform save for a couple of small hills and impact craters. Unlike the other asteroids, the main material was not gravel but hard, compact stone.

Michael landed, feeling the slight heat of the stone under his feet even though he had no feet. The sun was far away from the asteroid belt, but with no atmosphere to rob the stone of its heat and no night because of the utter lack of motion of the celestial bodies, the stone had slowly warmed up.

Icarus did not waste time and immediately started digging. The same strange properties of this space that allowed Michael to touch the stone even with no feet, also allowed for sound to propagate, and soon the not-air was filled with the deafening whine and grind of the drone’s drill against hard rock.

“It’s much harder and slow-going,” Icarus said, “but I can already see veins of minerals just under the surface. This asteroid is a treasure trove.”

While the AI licked its lips at the thought of riches hidden under the surface of the asteroid, Michael scanned the horizon. Even though the space rock was huge compared to the other two he had explored, the curve of the starless night sky was still uncomfortably close, and the lack of air made every feature sharp and easy to see. The white rock stood out against the dark sky, highlighting every feature.

Under a small crooked hill, made of slightly redder stone, Michael spotted a dark depression in the terrain. The way it was angled meant that the light from the sun didn’t quite reach the bottom, but he was curious to see what sorts of minerals would cause the strange colors.

He, unlike Icarus, was not limited by the rules of this place. He could pull the magic from his batteries even from half a solar system away, and he could use it to process the stone manually without any equipment. It was grunt work, but it could be done.

He approached, pulling some of the stone towards him with his mind. His magic had grown in the last few days even though he had spent most of the time experimenting, and failing, and it felt easier than ever to just… do whatever he wanted. It was almost intoxicating, to be able to play god even though his playground was the barren face of an airless asteroid.

He imagined how, in the future, he could transform this place to look like a space mansion, or a garden, or perhaps he could get even more ambitious and create all the sorts of things that were impossible to make in the real world. Here, space was not the scary endless expanse of harsh vacuum that could kill a man in moments. Here, space was tranquil and friendly. It was his space.

The red-hued rock melted in his hand, and he tossed the processed metal to Icarus.

“Hematite,” Icarus’ voice echoed from where he was still digging.

“What would a darker, green-blue one be?”

“Might be olivine,” the AI said, “bring me a sample. If there’s a good deposit, I might just move over!”

Michael chuckled and prepared his magic to dig out a sample for the excited AI. However, right when the magic reached the rock and was about to tear out a chunk from the asteroid, things emerged from the patch of ore.

They looked like tiny worms; they emerged from the rock itself like stingrays hidden in the sand. They shot up and towards Michael, organic landmines emerging from the ground and then turning into slingshot pebbles directed at him. He frowned, slapping one away and twisting his body to dodge another. He didn’t see the third one, and the little shit latched onto his skin and bit down like a hungry lamprey.

“Ow!”

Michael jumped back, yanking the tiny creature away. Blood was dripping from the wound, a strange conceptual thing given that he was still rather convinced that he had no body or blood to speak of. Still, the pain was very real, and the wound leaked mana like an open faucet.

Looking up, he saw that a whole army of angry little creatures was being roused by the ruckus. He readied magic, wanting to bury them in stone and rubble, but the result was akin to kicking an ant’s nest. It was simply impossible to contain the flood of angry little buggers.

“Icarus! Retreat!”

“What is going on, Michael?” the AI asked without even turning the mining drone away from the rock it was drilling.

Only when Michael forced the drone to rotate with raw magic did the AI see the flood of creatures converging on their position. One of them was ahead of the pack and latched itself on the outer hull of the drone. When Michael yanked it away, its bite had torn a chunk of metal plate away. The creature chewed it even as it flew towards the void.

“What are those things?” Icarus was suddenly alarmed, now that he had seen the damage even just a single creature could do to his drone. He backed off of the hole, fusion flame igniting as the box-shaped spaceship rotated and blasted off into space.

The tail end of the flame melted some of the stone into slag, and a few creatures with it. They writhed, charred, and died.

Michael took off a few moments behind Icarus, the two flying off into space until they were a good distance away from the asteroid. Some of the creatures had tried to follow them, but Icarus was keeping them at bay by using the drone’s engine like a flamethrower, performing strange maneuvers to reposition himself after the attack also caused propulsion and changed his trajectory and position.

“We are far enough away that the asteroid is in the fog of war!” Michael growled. The asteroid was now looking like a still picture, a low polygonal rendition of its true appearance, frozen in time. “Why are they still coming!”

From the eerie sight of the low-poly asteroid, a stream of worms was rising like slow-moving bullets shot from a machine gun. Icarus’ flame made short work of them, but they just kept coming.

“We gotta do something about it. Blast the whole area into slag. See if that kills them.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

Michael grinned. “Well, by using the rules of this place to my advantage, of course. And by cheating a little.”

He called for his mana, opening the floodgates of his batteries and drawing an obscene amount of it to himself. Then, he took hold of the stash of processed materials close to the Scrap Foundry half a solar system away, and pulled.

It took several minutes for the sparse cloud of metals to arrive, but when it did, Michael wasted no time and got to work.

Icarus laughed, still torching the little creatures that streamed up from the asteroid. He could see the schematic Michael was working on as the materials slowly filled it up. First he created a large base, then a barrel, then came the blue glow of magical capacitors and circuits, and eventually the whole thing was encased in an impenetrable layer of concrete.

With a magical pop, the schematic turned into reality. Magic gathered, manually pumped by Michael into the capacitors at the base of the weapon, then slowly filling up the circuits that hummed with power.

“Magical artillery,” Icarus said.

Michael only smiled back. With a snap of his fingers, he made a dense iron shell appear in the gigantic weapon’s chamber and then gave the command. The magical circuits acted like the magnets in a railgun, accelerating the projectile in exchange for a ludicrous amount of mana.

The weapon hummed. One full Silver of mana was about to be turned into pure kinetic energy. Michael had no idea how much of it, but even he could feel a sense of danger coming from the artillery weapon beside his disembodied consciousness. The thing was huge. It was armed with a 500-pound, pure iron bullet. The barrel was ten feet long, and it was there that the one Silver of mana was going to become kinetic energy.

The design had come naturally to Michael. He wondered if perhaps there was a connection between it and the explosion magic he had performed a million times to distract the huge worm. This time, he was the huge one while the worms were tiny.

“And now, get the fuck out of my Inner Space.”

He mentally pulled the trigger.