The infinity dungeon 200

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Chapter 200

In the vastness of the Inner Space, the Scrap Foundry was like a gigantic spider of metal. Its many thin legs were a collection of pistons, ball bearings, and claw-like appendages that could grab and dismantle, through sheer strength, enormous chunks of debris dug up from the asteroids that surrounded the single lone star.

Floating next to the gigantic pile of processed materials that had been spit up by the gigantic machine, Michael couldn’t help but be impressed. The Foundry was idling, having run out of material to work through, its forge dim and only occasionally shooting out a lone spark that fizzled out in the strange nothingness of space all around.

Not wanting to waste any time, he quickly got to work. His priority was to have more magic, and there were two ways to do so. One was to increase his raw output, which was always a good idea. The other was to do as Infy had said and try to replicate his old skills in this new system of his.

He went with the first option at the moment, choosing to have more raw magic at his disposal so that he could use it to—although inefficiently—brute force pretty much any effect he desired. He built several more collectors, and even more batteries that could slowly fill up and grant him a big pool of mana and quick burst potential.

By the time he ran out of material, he was rather impressed with his gains.

“Five solar collectors, eight batteries. Maximum storage of 800 mana, maximum output of 80 for 10 seconds. Remember, with current regeneration it takes you 175 seconds to fill back up to full unless you cut power to secondary systems.”

Michael nodded. “Thanks, Icarus.”

Even as he listened to the report, he was already flying towards the asteroid field for another scrap materials run. With his increased magic, he managed to empty out the second asteroid well before reaching carrying capacity, pulling the material from the regolith itself while flying a dozen feet above the surface.

He looked around. The next closest asteroid was rather big, but also quite far away. This far out from the center of the Inner Space, things were very far away from each other.

“You could just pull some of the gravel out. The Foundry can extract some ore from it, and the rest can be used as structural material,” Icarus said with a shrug.

“Alright,” Michael said. He willed the loose stone to converge towards him, and watched the already rather small asteroid shrink by over a tenth of its radius.

Now full, he made his way back, delivered the stuff to the Foundry, and left the Inner Space to check the white room.

“We might have another hour, an hour and a half tops, before it collapses.”

“That’s good,” Icarus said pensively. “You could use this time to make some new toys.”

Michael chuckled, “Something tells me you already have something in mind.”

“I might,” said the AI. “How about automating the more basic resource extraction? Say, build a little mining drone with an engine, a drill, a mana battery and a cargo bay that can go to the asteroid field and mine resources autonomously?”

Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Sounds like more than just an hour-and-a-half project.”

Icarus shrugged. As much as a small planetoid could shrug. “You would also need a docking station so the ship can recharge between trips. And perhaps a radio unit so I can control it.”

“Ah,” Michael smiled, “now I understand. You’re bored!”

Snapping his fingers, he made a few holograms appear and started to play around with them.

“Well,” the AI said, “let’s not use the word bored… Let’s just say I could help out more.”

Michael scrapped one of the designs and started working on a new engine unit. Icarus helped with the more technical parts, once again making him realize just how much of a cheat having a personal AI was.

“I almost feel like a moron for not thinking about this sooner. I could have idle-gathered resources all this time!”

As soon as he was satisfied with one component, he moved onto the next.

“That’s why I suggested it.”

“You could have done it sooner.

“Last time you spent a meaningful amount of time here, you didn’t really have the resources you have now. Building a mining drone then would have been rather draining.”

Michael looked at the completed design. It was rather awful: a cylinder—the engine—with a long rectangle block attached to it. The rectangle ended in a comically large drill tip.

“You know? This design reminds me of... another game…” Icarus trailed off.

Michael inhaled. “How many games were you playing, man?”

“A few.”

“So, which game?”

“Space Engineers.”

Together with the name came several projected images of the AI playing the game. They were all rather similar to what they were doing in the Inner Space.

“The more I think about it, the more I start to believe that this particular magic system did not come from me but from you.”

The AI said nothing.

“Well,” said Michael, “let’s give the Foundry a hand and some extra mana and see if we can build at least a part of this drone before the room collapses.”

***

An earthquake in space. Michael had never thought such a thing would be possible, but when the void around him started to ripple, he realized that he was probably about to overstay his welcome in the white room.

He reappeared in the real world in a hurry, gathered his wits, and bolted for the door of light. Around him, the wispy clouds of white had closed in, still hiding the edges of the room but close enough that he could almost touch them.

One of them grazed his leg as he jumped through the doorway, and the pain was unimaginable. He landed in a heap inside a stone cave, fierce heat and light coming from the opening a few feet away, and rolled on the ground. The Force Lance, which he had been holding in his left hand but had not worn around his arm, rolled towards the entrance of the cave.

Michael’s momentum dissipated, but not before his injured leg hit a jagged rock, pulling on the fabric of his pants. The pain was white-hot, almost blinding him for a moment as he tried to stand and failed.

The doorway closed behind him with an almost annoyed snap, plunging half the cave in darkness.

“Ow.”

Michael touched his leg and then cursed. The flesh had been torn and shredded by the fluffy-looking cloud of the white room, causing damage that was worse than what a blender of misshapen and perfectly sharp blades could ever inflict.

Thin strips of flesh were held by even thinner pieces of skin, dripping blood. Where the pants had been dragged over the wound, the flesh had ripped and torn, and some dirt and dust had even gotten into the wound.

It pulsed, hot and painful. The blood dripped in a rapidly growing puddle on the floor.

“Michael.”

He had been staring at his reflection on the rippling pool of blood, watching its edges absorbed by the dry powdery soil of the cavern’s floor when Icarus’ voice shook him awake.

“Shit,” he cursed and immediately drew upon his mana pool. Eight hundred coppers of mana flowed out of him over the course of ten seconds, through his hands that glowed violet and then into the wound. The worst of the pain subsided quickly, and the flowing blood was replaced by a nasty coagulation of crusty blood and particles of dirt.

The mana ran out just in time for the healing to reach first-aid level. The wound was closed, but it would take several more rounds of emptying his mana pool before he could safely stand on his leg.

175 seconds later, he healed himself again. Doing it in bursts rather than healing himself at the speed of his magic regeneration seemed to be more efficient.

While Michael sat down and waited to apply the third round of healing, his eyes wandered around the cave. It wasn’t very deep, perhaps a dozen feet of darkness, and then he could see the faint outline of jagged rock sharply sloping up. There were holes in the rock, leading to what probably was a much deeper cave system, but they were too small for him to fit.

On the other side, violent sunlight baked the ground a few feet away from where he was sitting. Fierce heat radiated from there. In the few minutes he had been healing his wounds, the reflected heat had already warmed him past the point of sweating and to the point where he was considering dragging himself deeper into the cave to escape it.

At least the air was cool there.

A third round of healing and he was finally able to prop himself up against the slightly damp stone. 

Outside, from his new vantage point, all he  could see was a desolate landscape. The reddish-brown ground was cracked in a spiderweb pattern, like the bottom of a lake that no longer held water, and in the distance it seemed to rise into sharp formations of rock that eventually melded together into hills. Climbing those hills would be nothing short of suicide even with magic.

Reaching those hills would also probably be fatal.

Healing himself again, Michael walked towards the light and stuck a hand into the sunlight. He retracted it immediately.

It was red, the ugly color of sunburn that took a whole round of magic to heal. The Force Lance was several feet further away.

“Given that it took less than half a second, I don’t think going out there to grab it now would be a good idea,” Icarus supplied.

Michael was inclined to agree. He healed himself again for good measure, not wanting to get skin cancer some decades down the line, then sat back at the far end of the cave, watching his mana slowly tick back up.

“No going out until it’s nighttime,” he muttered.

“Unless you are on a tidally locked planet,” Icarus said. “And there is no night.”

Michael made a face. “Let’s hope it’s not. Because the only other option would be to go in there,” he said, nodding towards the tiny dark holes in the wall.

“Let’s hope not. While you wait, you could finish making the mining drone for me to pilot,” Icarus said expectantly.

Michael was about to object but then realized that the AI was right. It would be no use wasting time with a full mana pool. He closed his eyes, sinking into the Inner Space, and began to make materials float towards the half-solid projection.

As he did so, he thought he heard a skittering sound. He thought nothing of it at first, but when the sound not only persisted, but also grew stronger, he felt his heart rate quicken.

Was there something in those holes in the walls? Because if there was, then he was sitting way too close to them for it to be safe.

He returned to the real world like a stretched rubber band suddenly snapping back to its normal length. He bolted upright, jumped away from the wall, ignored the pain from the still-tender flesh of the leg as he put his weight on it, and eyed the holes suspiciously. 

His heart thumped in his chest and he felt the jitter of adrenaline in his limbs. Apparently, his body had reacted to the sensation of threat even as his consciousness had been blissfully unaware of it while in the Inner Space.

The skittering suddenly halted, something shifted, and then the sound resumed. A glimpse of chitin and many limbs caught the light for a moment, moving in the hole, then disappeared in its depths.

Silence followed. With a snap of his fingers, Michael made a little light appear and commanded it to enter the hole. He could only control it as long as he had line of sight, so he had to get closer in order to be able to see inside. The hole extended down into a fissure that ran deep into the stone, with twists and turns and smooth walls. It was no larger than his arm, with spikes jutting out of the smooth stone at random places.

The light could only reach a couple of feet down, then utter darkness. Darkness and no sound at all.

“Well, if it’s only an oversized centipede, I can deal with it.”

As if on cue, the ground started to tremble. Michael thought it was an earthquake at first, but then his brain interpreted the vibrations and drew a sliver of magic, some sort of prescience overtaking him for a moment. It reminded him of the effects of Truth, in a weird twisted way.

His eyes saw the image of a gigantic worm digging through the stone, converging on his location, then he was back to staring at the ground where the rocks were jumping up and down so quickly that they appeared blurry.