The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

The cold wind howled. It pushed the snow and bits of rock towards the edge of the small flat plain at the top of the mountain until they fell down, only to stop a long time later somewhere in the valley below. Michael watched the lonely particles dance in the wind: sometimes they went back towards the relative safety of the center of the flat space, only to be carried to the edge by the next gust.

This was not the Misty Valley. He was sitting at the top of the tallest peak of the Fourth Floor of the dungeon, and the mountain felt lonely and isolated from up here. One could not really appreciate how much taller this mountain was compared to the others from the entrance to the Floor. From there, it seemed just another peak, one of many, and the valley at the bottom looked like it was the center of the little world contained within one Floor of the dungeon.

From where Michael was, the truth of this place was revealed. The mountain was much taller than the others, and the valley he could see from the dungeon stairs was not the only one around. There were others, some bigger, some smaller, all verdant and lush and hopelessly far away. Michael looked down, imagining the dwarves in the depths of the earth below him. This was their mountain, the real center of the gigantic Floor.

His random musings made him think about Johanne. The woman said she wanted to meet the dwarves she had long thought gone for good, and she claimed to be very interested in their magic, engineering, and ability with the Elements. Despite this, however, she had not yet set foot in the Fourth Floor, despite Michael giving her permission and access a long time ago.

Then he thought about time. He must have spent a good portion of a day just sitting on top of a mountain, mere minutes in the outside world thanks to the Fourth Floor's much stronger time dilation. When outside, his mind was always in overdrive. When inside, it was as if a switch was flipped, and the opposite was true. He did not feel at peace, nor did he lack the urgency that the outside world seemed to want to impose on him; it was just that time itself gained a different meaning. Spoke a different language.

He got up with a sigh. Despite long hours spent thinking about it, he felt like his understanding of time was shallow and his relationship with it elusive and scattered. Time itself felt scattered, the currents of the underlying Elemental energy of capital-T Time erratic and strange to his magic sight.

Michael walked down the mountain and into the valley, the journey taking hours but not leaving him even a little bit winded. He passed by the great gates that led to the dwarven halls; they had been repaired after he freed the dwarves of their prison inside a time loop.

Time. he had freed the dwarves of its burden, and yet he felt no more capable than a child with a baseball bat smashing glassware in an ancient room, only by chance managing to trigger the correct sequence of events, or perhaps not by chance but by design–except the designs were of an entity much bigger than himself.

He deftly avoided the few dwarves milling about the entrance to their underground kingdom. The much bigger entity that controlled Michael's life nowadays–the dungeon–had last spoken to him on this very floor, congratulating him for completing the challenge. Before that, it had asked him to deliver the Renegade, offering a handsome reward should he succeed.

The dungeon had felt much closer back then. He used to call it, or its Gaze, Infy–and he had claimed that the Gaze felt warm and comfortable. Nowadays, it didn't feel like anything. No hostility nor intention, it felt like the dungeon wasn't even looking at him.

He didn't know whether he would have preferred disappointment to this cold indifference. In the end, it made no sense to question the unfathomable. The rest of the dungeon worked as it always did, mechanically, yet also holistically. Where Michael had some sort of official claim, in places he could call his domain like the Misty Valley, he even had power to shape things to his desires.

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Things were better overall, but he felt apathy. Apathy and worry, because the things that had come out of the biolab and that had pushed David to the end of his feelings of inadequacy–enough that they made him take risks he would have never taken–were still at the forefront of his mind. Whoever was behind them was at large and was a threat. Magic was waking up all around the world, Icarus was collecting worrying data about it, but Michael felt impotent and useless even though Unity corporation was moving quickly.

He felt like the eye of the storm, with everyone in a frenzy around him, yet not touching him. Just like he could not touch them.

The entrance to Floor Five was a dark hallway, reminding him of his first encounter with the dungeon. Back then, he had been a stupid, naive boy, camping in the Appalachia with a friend who had not been a friend, and who was now dead. Right now, he felt like he was the same person he had been then, like nothing had really changed about him even though the sole act of thinking such things meant that everything had changed.

It didn't matter. After a long time spent just looking at the darkness, he crossed the threshold. His personal shield shimmered around him, its protection amped to the max for the transition to a new, hostile environment. He had not even needed to think about it, the shield and the preparations that came before the threat of a fight so ingrained in his mind that they were completely automatic.

He appeared somewhere around a third of the way up a large mountain, on a flat platform of land. Thick, broad leaves surrounded him everywhere. They were vibrant and luscious, and ever-present both in the canopy and in the underbrush. The trees were thin, tall, and bent by the weight of their leaves.

The place looked primordial. The humidity of the jungle hit him immediately, even through the shield, while in the distance–through a little window framed by broad leaves–he could see a volcano spewing smoke in the air. Its silhouette was a dark shape obfuscated by the water in the atmosphere, and the sky was the pallid light blue of overly humid days. The wet heat was enough that even he was starting to sweat.

Seeing that there was nothing in his immediate vicinity, Michael started to fiddle with his shield. He changed its permeability settings and cooled down the air with his Hycean Ice until the controlled environment of the inside was pleasant and dry.

Right as he was concentrating on that, a roar shook the whole jungle. A gigantic head of scales, teeth, and tiny deep-set eyes emerged from the foliage, dragging leaves and bark with it. The rest of the body followed: more scales, tiny upper arms, and powerful hind legs. The dinosaur was easily thirty feet tall, but in the oversized jungle even it appeared tiny.

It did not slow its charge, roaring again and making a beeline for where Michael was standing. Michael did not move an inch, instead watching the dino approach without blinking, studying its teeth as they got bigger and bigger.

The enormous mouth closed around Michael with the force of a whip, plunging Michael's immediate surroundings in darkness. Then it stopped, and the sound was that of nails being dragged across a blackboard. Something snapped as the dinosaur put more force in its jaw, then a crunch of bone dislocating, and then there was light again.

[Shield] reaches level 3.

The dinosaur recoiled backwards in pain. Several of its teeth were snapped, and its jaw was not aligned anymore. Around Michael, the shield protecting him rippled and returned to almost invisibility.

Michael yawned. "Stupid dino."

He raised a hand. Inside of his Sanctum, the elemental energy he called upon responded to his command, and a wave of Hycean Ice surged through some conduit in his Sanctum's walls and manifested in the real world.

A spike of ice shot from the ground, so fast it almost materialized already embedded in the underbelly of the monster. From there, it effortlessly pierced its scaled hide. Crystals of pure ice began to spread, the moisture in the air becoming brine as the skin of the animal was quickly sapped of all of its heat. Moments later, the dinosaur went limp.

A grinding sound reverberated, absorbed by the foliage and sounds of the jungle. The dino slid down the ice spike skewering it, frozen internal organs shattering under its weight. Then Michael cut the flow of energy, recalling any Elemental Hycean Ice that he could, and the spike disappeared.

The dinosaur, now without support, slammed into the ground.

Michael did not even have time to take a single step towards the carcass before another roar shook the jungle again. He exhaled. "Right," he cracked his neck, "time to get warmed up."