The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Michael's fists pounded on the ground, cracking the strange concrete-like material and digging small craters.

"How dare you die on me!" he screamed.

David was a fallen giant, his body lying to the side with long limbs like gnarled tree branches. He was a statue: ponderous and immobile.

Then a blow of magic caught Michael's eye. It was more annoyance than anything at first, and he wanted to curse at the dungeon for daring to distract him in a moment of mourning. He did not see what the reward was. He did not care.

He started pacing around. There had to be a solution to this. There had to!

He finally allowed himself to look at the loot. His face was a mask of disgust as he regarded the many silver and scant few gold coins, the items and skill stones. This place, he thought. They had known what they were walking into, they had known all along. And yet, the moment it finally happened, he was not ready for the consequences of his own choices. He felt immature, young, inexperienced, like he had been the moment of his first delve. Like he had been at the time of Josh, that asshole.

"What is that?"

His eyes noticed something. Throwing himself at the pile of stuff, he shoved the coins and shiny valuables to the side, letting them tumble and scatter across the room. He dug through the loot until his fingers gripped the cold glass and metal of an injector. In it, a familiar liquid.

His movements were a blur. Within fractions of a second, Michael picked up the thing, inserted the needle, sterilized it with his flames, and was back at David's side. He searched for a suitable place to inject the liquid, cursed himself for his stupidity, and directly shoved the needle into David's heart.

He started shaking the body to help the concoction reach all the cells, remembered about cardiac massage and started to perform the manoeuvres. Thankfully, even though he had grown complacent and only ever used his healing skill to fix people, his enhanced stats allowed him to recall medical knowledge from the brief time he tried to study it, what felt like ages ago. Back when he had just started healing people, and the skill was at a low enough level that mundane medical knowledge was enough to make a difference.

Nothing happened for a long time. Michael went from sitting beside David, to standing, to pacing around the room, then back again. He counted the coins the dungeon had given them, made towers with them, scattered them all around the arena in fits of rage only to make neat little stacks all over again. He took out his anger on the walls of the place, tearing down bricks and digging craters.

He talked to David's dead body, knowing nobody was listening. He cried ugly tears. Tears of someone who knew that nothing would change, save for a growing void in his heart as things progressed. The dungeon giveth, and the dungeon taketh, and this was the way of Michael's world now.

Then suddenly something started to change. The body glowed with magic, smoothing wrinkles and reforming bones. It strengthened tissue and organs, muscles and even the brain. David's body convulsed and even shrank a little.

But it was still dead.

Michael got up, cursed at the dungeon, cursed at its twisted sense of humor.

"What the fuck," came a voice that was familiar yet strange.

Michael jumped around, looked everywhere, then his eyes registered what his senses were detecting but his brain was ignoring.

"David?"

"That would be me. The hell happened?"

There stood a whole different version of David. Younger, stronger, he carried himself with arrogance and pride, a scowl on his face, eyes focusing and unfocusing as if trying to remember things that were a bit too fuzzy. When they cleared, his frown deepened.

"This place," he shook his head.

"How are you feeling?"

"Whole new person," he said dismissively. "Thank you Michael, for all you did. But now I want to get out of here. I want to see Liff."

It was not a question, it was a statement. Michael shrugged and nodded, accompanying the man back through the tunnels. They didn't speak at all, each focused on their own things. David flexed his muscles, his magic, his newfound powerful body.

When they were at the exit, Michael stopped.

"You not coming?" asked the young David. He looked no older than thirty, slightly shorter than he used to be, but even more powerfully built. His hair was still white, but silken and full now.

"I have things to do in that room. I trust that you can deal with Travis yourself?"

David scoffed, "I can deal with him."

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Two men filled with arrogance and defiance stared at each other. Now that David was alive, Michael felt the opposite he had felt when his old mentor had died. He was filled with the desire to take on the dungeon, to show the thing who was boss. Looking in the other man's eyes, he saw the same fire reflected back at him.

"Here," David said, throwing something at Michael. "I don't need this anymore."

Looking down, Michael saw that it was the Gnapticon stone. Except now it was dim and cracked, holding no trace of its former magic or Element.

"I can see why, asshole."

David grinned. "Not going to say sorry and you know it."

Michael grinned back. They clasped hands. "Welcome back."

"Glad to be back." David replied, and left the tunnels.

Michael, suddenly alone, wasted no time and went back to the boss arena at full speed. He reached it less than a minute later, finding the place unchanged. Craters littered the ground, the walls were broken, the stone singed and entire bricks turned to molten slag. The only thing missing was the boss' corpse, absorbed as it always happened by the dungeon, part of its magic turned into loot.

Michael awkwardly scooped up the loot, wishing he had a storage skill or at least a damn backpack. Giving up, he remembered about his Telekinesis skill and lifted the whole thing with his mind and set it down in a corner of the room. He sat down beside it, thinking and contemplating things.

"How old do you think I am, Icarus?"

"Your legal age, or your true age, Michael?" the AI replied, its–his–voice smooth.

"Both."

"Your legal age is 24. I do not know your true age. The data is incomplete."

"I am 67," Michael said, looking at the ceiling while resting against the wall of the arena, "now even I knew for sure. But, as you know, Johanne has mastered the Time Element to Aura level, and she used it to calculate my age. I spent more time in the Dungeon, in the Valley, than anywhere else. Than outside. It's crazy."

The AI said nothing. Contrary to how it posed when acting like a normal LLM, it actually knew the nuances of conversation and human psychology, including when not to speak.

Michael got up, "Okay. Time to do some work."

Walking to the center of the arena, he faced away from the entrance doors, towards where he imagined the dungeon led deeper into itself, to more hidden rooms and challenges. He wasn't sure, but he had this theory that the dungeon didn't only go down in depth, but it also expanded radially from the center of a floor, and the further away from the center you went, the harder the challenge became. This room being an example.

He spread his arms wide.

"Icarus."

"Yes, Michael?"

"How much Truth was I using at the end there? When I killed the boss and did not even realize?"

"Around 0.05%, Michael."

"Take the helm. Crank it up to 0.1%, at my signal."

"Are you sure about this, Michael?"

"I am."

"When you are ready, then."

"Now."

He started screaming. After a while, his screams died down.

"Increase it to 0.15%."

His screams began anew.

Travis was thinking about Amazon. Not the forest, but the multinational company. He wanted to challenge the corporation at its own game and win, using Trevor's Ghost Market skill to provide true worldwide shipping to any part of the world. Any company or individual could request Unity's services, for a fee, and the magic skill would handle everything else.

The plan had question marks in several crucial points, but the idea was there: use Johanne's portals, once she finally managed to make them work, to either send Trevor to the goods or the goods to them. Then, the Ghost Market skill would take care of everything from there, delivering the goods to consumers with only a mana cost.

Could Unity Corporation cover this cost if it meant putting the competition out of business? Perhaps. They were scaling up their Dungeon expeditions, and even though they were encountering problems here and there, the flow of Coins was reaching truly momentous levels. According to Icarus–the AI being Travis' best friend with how useful it was, never mind it was developed by Johanne–they were close to reaching a whole Gold Coin a day.

That was not counting the heaps of Coins Michael and the Fae also brought in.

They were only missing actual, stable portals. Perhaps he should push Johanne to gain a Space Element. Her chosen element was Time and already she was close to making permanent portals work inside Site 00. If only she could take the final step…

His thoughts were interrupted when a stranger emerged from the darkness of the door at the other side of the room. Immediately Travis entered battle mode, his instincts honed by countless hours of dungeon delving, calling for the power of his Cards. He had battle cards equipped–after clearing things up with Michael he had been farming many cards and he could now swap them at will, easily handling the pain that came with removing Silver cards.

"Who the fuck are you?" he demanded, preparing his first attack before his rational mind could catch up and realize who the person really was.