The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Millions of the things. Tiny beings, little critters that were everywhere. Looking at them could render a person insane, or kill them. They lined the tunnel, they were on the walls and in the walls, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Their shape was hard to pin down, like a blur of double-vision that just got worse the more you stared at it.

Michael could see them as he walked through the corridors leading back to the main section of the dungeon. As he got closer to the center of the floor, he felt the Dungeon Gaze increase in power and focus, even though it spared him only a glance now and again. At the same time, the ever-present critters seemed to diminish, from a sea of literal holes in the veil of reality, to something more resembling swiss cheese.

"To think that this is what holds us all up," Michael mused. "It looks flimsy to say the least."

Beneath the veil, a sea of particles and imaginary energy. If Michael squinted his metaphorical eye enough, he thought he could see beyond even that sea of particles and stare into nothingness itself.

Icarus hummed pensively, oddly uncanny with its human mannerisms. "I would argue that holes being actually living creatures is rather worrying."

"Perhaps," said Michael. The door leading out had appeared at the end of the corridor, strangely devoid of little critter-holes. "I worry more about the fact that I can see them all the time. You think this condition is permanent?"

"You did attune yourself to the Truth by barbarically exposing yourself to more of it than you can handle… to the point you nearly died several times," said the AI. Its tone of voice was petulant, Michael thought. "You and Truth must share some sort of special relationship by now, or you would be long dead."

Michael psyched himself up. The thought of returning to the wider floor, with its sudden access to the rest of the dungeon and beyond, to the world, felt stifling. As if it wasn't him who had shut himself in a remote part of a labyrinthine place, but that the open spaces of the world were the real limiting imposition.

"To fear the open sky, like a dwarf of the stories."

He stepped through and found himself staring at a strange stalemate between David and Travis. He read the room in a nanosecond, faster than he ever could, feeling some sort of gut intuition that could be nothing other than the Soul Dantian showing the first benefits.

The two turned their attention on him, opening their mouths to speak at the same time.

"I want none of it," Michael said before they could speak. "David, I find you rather well. You do seem to be more agitated than usual, however. Perhaps some fresh air will help. You too, Travis. Shall we leave?"

They both thought for a moment. Michael knew what was going through their mind, for he could read them like open books. There was a new gravity to him, they were thinking, and the gap that already seemed insurmountable before, had widened yet again. Travis was oddly accepting of this; David took a moment longer to calm down. His sudden healing made him powerful, and yet for a single step forward that he had made, Michael seemed to have made five.

David left quickly, excusing himself by claiming that Liff needed medical attention. Travis stuck with Michael, who walked back towards the center of the floor, where the exit was located, with a slow and leisurely pace.

"Don't think about them now," he said to the grumbling Travis. "You'll get wrinkles if you do, and then you'll be the old one in search of a rejuvenation and the whole cycle begins anew."

"What?" asked the man.

"Here," Michael pointed at his back.

Only then did Travis notice that a veritable pile of things was following them, bobbing up and down in the air suspended by Michael's Telekinesis skill.

"The loot," Travis muttered. It was more than he had ever seen in one place, except for the vaults where Candle Light and Unity kept their stuff. "This is just from one hidden boss?"

"That almost killed us, yes," Michael said with a nod.

"You need to tell me all about these hidden bosses."

"Don't worry. With Icarus, you won't have to do much more than just to ask him."

Travis hummed, "Right. Is it deployed everywhere inside the dungeon?"

"Everywhere Johanne's experimental portal network reaches, the internet reaches. Where the internet reaches, Icarus also reaches. That, and anywhere there's a device with an instance of him installed."

In the case of the boss room, it would have been shielded and would have required at least a phone with an instance of Icarus installed for basic telemetry. Except, Michael had Icarus in his Sanctum, and didn't need external tools to carry the AI with him.

"I see," Travis said. "What about the loot? There's a lot of stuff there, man. Did you scan it?"

Michael shrugged. "Nothing really useful for me, but there's probably a few trinkets Candle Light might find useful."

Travis' face lit up, "like what?"

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"Not telling."

"Right, because you recorded the information with Icarus."

Michael's eyes glinted. "Nope, where would be the fun in that? Plus, the divining rod I gave you a while ago, you wouldn't want it to gather dust while I do all the work with my skills, right? I have better things to do with my time."

Travis frowned, "You're becoming weird, man."

"Power corrupts."

Perhaps he was going to become like a young master in a cultivation novel, he mused. He really hoped not.

***

"Let's take stock," Michael said as he walked. He looked like he was alone, but he never was these days. Walking rapidly towards the end of the first floor, he ignored the monsters, who could not even scratch his improved body.

"What do we know of my magic? First off, the system that governs it is broken."

"It is," Icarus replied. "It seems to be in a rapidly cascading failure state. You are quite fortunate that I can interface with what's left of it and with magic."

"I don't need you, or the system. While I appreciate your help and insights, I would have been fine without–and you know it."

"Of course."

Reaching the boss room, Michael squared up against the assortment of boss goblins and giant skeletons. He backhanded one, shattering its shield and pulverizing the bones that made up its body. The far wall glimmered with magic, Space element and a veritable torrent of Dungeon magic, which Michael was learning to distinguish from normal magic. It had a taste to it that reminded him of the Gaze, like an extension of its will. He wondered what it was doing.

"I must have caused the first domino to fall when I messed with the Unity skill, forcing a level up past the cap without increasing its rarity."

With the monsters dead, two sets of doors appeared, holes devoid of magic surrounded by a vortex of it. One led down to the Misty Valley, the other to the Twilight Steppes–David's Second floor. This close to the wall, the presence of the Gaze was strong.

"The breakdown of the system reached a critical point when you exposed yourself to lethal amounts of Truth," the AI said. "And I think the dungeon is creating a new room."

Michael nodded, walking through the door leading to the Twilight Steppes.

"Worrying."

This was the fifth day in a row he repeated the same pattern, walking down the same doors leading to the same Steppes while mulling over the same things with Icarus, but the first time he had seen the dungeon work on itself. He didn't dwell on it, feeling surprisingly nonchalant about it. It was the sort of nonchalance that hid something else, though, like a threat that perhaps exploring the ramifications of this new discovery could lead to more dread and bad feelings–which Michael really didn't need these days.

"So, Truth. When I used it I felt some sort of overload. Several things happened at the same time, but I was too focused on Truth and the Dao of potential, and then the Soul core to really make sense of them."

He reached the research facility, navigating the place with ease.

"We just need to replicate the same conditions," he said.

"It would require an ever larger amount of Truth."

"This only means that I have a limited amount of tries before I reach 100% activation and then get stuck."

"Or before you die."

The gold plaque explaining the challenge, which had appeared in gold letters as sent by the dungeon itself, was still there. Michael walked past it, through the dark threshold leading to the hidden area of the floor.

"Potential aside, the flood of Truth knocked something over. The broken system loosened, and I could feel my own skills begin to transform. They were like trees starved of water, soaking up everything they could while they could. This is not just that the training wheels are off, this is beginning to look like the system was a parasite of some sort."

"Or perhaps a limiter put there for a reason? I have reason to believe it might come from the dungeon."

"How do you know?"

"It bears its signature. Besides, didn't it come with the first skill you absorbed?"

"We can't rule anything out. The dungeon didn't stop me when I tampered with the system before, even though it clearly knew. It won't stop me now. Right, Infy?"

If Michael expected any reaction, he didn't show it when nothing happened.

"Okay, Icarus, let's warm up. Truth exposure at 0.1% please."

The AI complied. Michael's brain lit up like a junkie taking a hit of their favorite drug of choice. The pain washed over him in waves, and the whole orchestra of his body, mind, soul and magic responded.

"This is the shit," he muttered, "more!"

The AI, once again, complied.

"Forget alcohol, forget about worldly vices."

His mind expanded, the flow of magic in the world visible to him through an impossible window into what lay beyond. The dungeon vanished from his mind, and even though he was deep in its clutches he felt like he was free-floating in the vastness of space.

"This is what I've been missing. Icarus, increase exposure to 0.25%."

"Are you sure, Michael? It's past the lethal dose," the AI said.

"Do it."

The pain redoubled, and Michael collapsed to his knees. Still, a stubborn force of will kept his back upright, his head held up high. He felt the euphoria of the edge, between life and death, the adrenaline that had been missing for so long from his normal dungeon delves. The only other way to get this much adrenaline was to put his life in danger against unknown bosses.

Minutes passed.

"Are you done, Searle?"

Michael did not even register the name the AI called him with. "It's beautiful. It's an infinite expanse of peace."

"That renders your body to atoms in the process," Icarus said. "It makes me wonder whether you named me Icarus after the Greek myth, or that ship's AI."

It finally clicked what the AI was talking about. "They were flying towards the sun, Icarus. The name of their ship's AI was indeed taken from the myth, which means that either way the origin of yours is mythical.

"Will you be staring at the sun next, Michael?"

"You sound like HAL right now. You even have the same tone of voice," he said. "Perhaps I have been looking at my own strengths all wrong, all this time. My highest stat is resilience for a reason. It's not my potential that is limitless, it's the amount of shit I can endure that is. The ability to endure everything will allow me to go wherever I want to go, even if I need to stare at the sun to get there."

The AI hummed. "You looked like you were extracting some sort of perverted pleasure from your enduring, Michael. Please make sure you don't become masochistic."

"We are way past that," Michael said, recalling how he had been cutting himself or causing all sorts of harm to his own body ever since he got the healing skill–pretty damn early in his dungeon delving career.