The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Michael slowed to a fast jog and then to a brisk walk as the path took him down the mountain and into the jungle below. Unlike the Misty Valley, where the vegetation was concentrated at the higher elevations, on gentle hills at the foot of the mountains and then up the mountains themselves, here it was different.

The spawn point had been roughly a third of the way up a steep mountain, with a winding path that spiraled down following the natural formation of the landscape. Along the path, the foliage was thick and dense, large leaves on tall, thin trunks, but the rest of the mountain was too steep to be forested. As Michael descended down into the valley, things changed and the flatter terrain meant that plants were everywhere, tall and verdant with huge leaves that dripped water on a perpetually moist ground.

The sky was mostly hidden behind the layers of canopy, and birdsong accompanied the rustle of leaves moved by the wind. Michael followed the sensation coming from the tracking energies he had hit the strange dark blur with until he stopped in front of a wall of solid stone. There, the terrain rose by a couple dozen yards all at once, leading to a sort of raised platform that sat at the center of the valley.

The dark blur had led Michael straight here but now, perhaps conscious that it was being followed, it was moving around in circles around the location without stopping anywhere for longer than a few seconds. Still invisible, it was hard to tell what it was doing, and at times it just disappeared at a location only to appear moments later in a totally different one.

Michael sighed, moving to study the stone wall itself: it was unassuming, made of loose soil and roots poking out in places where the rocks were less packed together, and from the low vantage point only the canopy of trees was visible at the top.

Climbing the stone wall wasn't going to be a problem for someone with his stats, but when Michael was about to brute-force his way up he suddenly stopped. He cocked his head, narrowing his eyes and looking at a strange hole in the wall. It looked completely ordinary to mundane senses, but not to the rest of his perception.

He had been about to stick his hand there, the first handhold of the short climb. Instead, he materialized a small Distortion Field sphere right into the hole. It exploded outwards, all the loose material becoming flying projectiles that impacted his shield. Even before the dust began to settle, Michael could see a red glow coming from the depths of the makeshift tunnel, perhaps five feet deep.

The wind cleared the air, and a big red gemstone embedded into intricately carved stone bricks became visible. It was like the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger structure, a small part of a whole. Taking a few steps back and summoning a Spirit Guardian to get an aerial view, Michael realized that the raised platform of stone might just be a shell of a very old structure buried by rock and soil. Trees had grown on top of it over the years, hiding the structure from view and blending it with the rest of the jungle, but the thing itself had resisted unchanged–no doubt thanks to the Dungeon.

He approached the red gemstone. A faint sensation of Elemental Energy came from it, but it was hard to pinpoint–probably exotic.

At the same time, a sudden urge to touch it suddenly overcame his mind.

He frowned, strengthening his shield but choosing not to resist the sensation. Strangely enough, it didn't seem to come from the stone but from the same general direction as the tracking energies he had marked the dark blur with.

Michael's hand made contact with the surface of the stone. It was cold, smooth and the dust kicked up by the small explosion had not settled on it at all. Its shiny surface reflected the murky sky between Michael's fingertips for a moment, then a bright glow overshadowed the light of the sky, coming from deep inside the structure.

A laser shot out of the stone, pure Light Element of a strange exotic variety hitting Michael's shield head-on. He recoiled, the impact forcing him to take a step back, while the shield deformed under the assault of pure Elemental Light so strong to be almost physical. He watched his internal reserves of Qi start to dip for the first time since coming to this floor, but didn't make a move to dodge the laser. Instead, Michael simply looked at his own shield, its surface becoming orange and then red around the impacted area, the runescript activating to draw Qi and disperse the deadly energy of the laser across an ever-larger surface.

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Soon, a whole hemisphere of the shield was opaque, and Michael learned something new about his own skill. He could move around even while it was under stress, but doing so would weaken the shield so much that the laser would probably manage to breach it.

He smirked, shifting his weight and taking a slow, measured step forward. As predicted, the shield collapsed and Michael was hit by the full strength of the laser. It was a thin beam, but the heat made it deadly across a diameter thicker than an arm, and the Element was strong enough that it melted Michael's body like butter, cutting through his passive Aura defenses like they weren't even there.

Michael kept advancing. The laser carved a hole across his mid-section, but unlike when the shield was active, it was not pushing him backwards anymore. His movements were unimpeded.

He took another step.

"Haha!" came a voice from somewhere deep inside the structure, "what a fool! My laser will kill you."

"Cliché villain," Michael said, the smirk not leaving his face.

There were a couple of seconds of silence before the voice spoke again, this time with noticeable traces of panic. "How are you still standing?"

Indeed, Michael was tanking the laser as if it was nothing. The hole in his stomach was growing, flesh charring and melting, but it was as if pain didn't even register in his mind. New skin was growing where the dead, charred flesh flaked off and fell, and the process was getting faster by the second.

"Your laser's weakening," said Michael. He was adapting his Aura to the laser on the fly.

The laser suddenly started to move, erratically trying to singe as much flesh as it could. Whoever was controlling it would have preferred to cut through Michael, he was sure, but by now the laser was no longer effective enough.

He simply protected his face with his arms, making sure that the only truly vulnerable part of his body wasn't damaged.

"H-how?" the voice was in full panic mode. "Are you adapting to it? Is this why you were walking so slowly?"

Michael stopped walking altogether. He looked at the gemstone, then snapped his fingers.

[Shield] reaches level 4.

The shield appeared around him again, completely transparent save for a faint distortion in the air–the only telltale sign it was there at all. Looking at the laser, Michael was pleased to see that where it impacted the shield, it wasn't even reaching orange, barely yellow.

Taking a step, the shield turned orange and then red, but held strong. Taking another step, the edges of the shield touched against the stone surrounding the structure. Michael's early explosive action had carved a thin tunnel, smaller than his frame and incompatible with the much larger size of the shield, but he just kept on walking.

A feature of the shield he had learned about when barrelling through the jungle was that, as long as the shield had power, it didn't really transmit much of the momentum it experienced back to its caster. Michael had felt the laser because it had been powerful enough to turn the shield red and even break it, but simply pushing against solid stone didn't even slow him down with his superhuman stats.

The shield forced the tunnel to widen, stone groaning and grinding before falling down towards the open jungle behind in great heaps, cracks spreading through the stone. Then Michael was face to face with the red gemstone, still glowing and angrily shooting its ineffective laser at his shield.

"Your laser is elemental, man," said Michael with a shrug, "it's never in a million years going to breach a shield reinforced with Qi that's just been fine-tuned to its frequency. If you could somehow react to it, you would have. Now, admit defeat and open the door; I want to know who keeps trying to eat my Spirit Guardians."

The laser suddenly lost power. The gemstone dimmed. The grinding of stone preceded a small earthquake, then a whole section of brick wall slid into the ground. Ahead, Michael could see a long corridor lit with Fire Element torches that made no smoke and consumed no oxygen.

"Eating your Guardians? What are you talking about? I thought you were here for the Gnapticon stone."

"The fuck is a Gnapticon stone?" asked Michael.

"Then you don't want it?"

"How can I want something I've never seen before?"

There was a pause. "Good point, however!" said the voice, "people do come from time to time, wanting it even though they don't know what it is."

"I don't want it, man…" Michael felt suddenly tired.

"Swear it."

"Listen," he said as he took another step, "you opened the door, too late to go back on your word. You either let me through, or I make my way there and I swear the Gnapticon stone is going to be the last of your worries when I do."

"Come," said the voice, "I think I might know who's been eating your spirits."