The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

The red lines were everywhere. They were like the logic pathways of a motherboard, all straight lines and sharp ninety-degree turns. They lined every single inch of the seemingly infinite walls of the sanctum, but it was around the skill fractals that they were the most concentrated. It was a tangle, a mass, a strangling vine keeping the fractals locked in a vice grip.

"The system," Michael said, "or what remains of it. I wonder if it became like this because I broke it, or if it had always been like this."

Moving away from his soul, Michael watched the walls fade back to stone. He sighed. There was no way to divine the lines of the system from memory.

"I need to find a way to move my soul around, use it as some sort of visor. And even then, I need to figure out how to deal with the lines once I can see them. This will take ages…"

***

"We're here," Travis' voice woke Michael from his trance state. He had not seen Rome from the sky, he had not even felt the plane land, and now it was slowly spilling its passengers onto the runway.

It was hot, humid and unpleasant outside. Three seconds into his trip, Michael had already erected a shield around himself and had filled it with cool air generated with his Hycean Ice element. His base stats would have allowed him to withstand the climate without breaking a sweat, but they didn't do anything for the discomfort and he wasn't feeling like suffering for no reason.

A car was waiting for them as soon as they were done weaving through the airport in search of an exit. Even though all signs were both in Italian and English, plus other languages, it was as if Italians made things messy on purpose. Finding the way took longer than either of them cared to admit, even with Icarus' help.

Outside, people tried to sell them all sorts of things. A subtle use of Aura cleared the street of all obnoxious vendors.

Wait for a yellow car with licence plate AA 228 GZ, Icarus informed them.

Half a mile away Mario Giovanni Terruso, a taxi driver, was lounging inside his vehicle. He had removed the TAXI sign, like many did when they tried to earn some cash to the side by doing unlicensed work. He was startled by a text message on his phone, followed by a wire transfer. It took a minute for his mind to unpack what just happened.

Someone had just wired him 500 euros, and all he had to do was drive two men around? He checked with his home banking app, fumbling the facial recognition until anger started to overcome him. He smacked the phone, which glitched and somehow unlocked itself. From there, it was smooth sailing.

"Tecnologia, heh. Stupidi telefoni."

Confirming that the bank transfer was real, he re-read the instructions in the text. Ask no questions, drive the two men from the airport to an address in the city, go away and pretend it never happened.

"Certamente."

Five minutes later, he was there. Michael and Travis got in, and he asked them no questions.

"This feels unsafe," Travis said. "Does everyone drive like a madman around here?"

"Si signore!" yelled the driver. He could talk when talked to, he figured. The car had the windows rolled down, letting the scorching air inside even though there was a functioning AC system—they checked. "No worries, signori. I am good driver, you are safe with me. Enjoy your vacanza!"

Michael shrugged, "When in Rome…"

They arrived at their destination more than half an hour later. With a nod, the driver pulled over and let them out of the car, then sped away without a word. More instructions came to him via his phone, to deliver their luggage to the hotel, and then deal with some other cargo they had brought. He, like many others had just unknowingly worked for Unity, coordinated via Icarus and connected to Travis' monstrous intel network.

Delta Squad arrived soon after. Two men arrived by themselves, having each taken a slightly different path through the maze of tiny roads, while the other two arrived together. Hand in hand, they looked like a stereotypical honeymoon couple, but as soon as they got in visual range with Michael and their boss they unclasped their hands, their smiles vanished, their wandering gazes that disguised them as tourists disappeared, and their faces hardened. Protected by Michael's Aura and Icarus' jamming of all surveillance, they were free to be Operators again.

"How are you dealing with mana fatigue?" Travis asked them as he briefed them.

"Lazarus is down one coin, everyone else is within parameters."

"Very good."

As they talked, Michael inspected his surroundings. The intel they got from their OA mole, Kavanaugh, had been vague to say the least. Just an address: an intersection of roads where a ramshackle house leaned dangerously into another building. Most buildings were like this in this neighborhood, where the roads were swallowed by five-story-high buildings like tiny carved grooves in a maze. It was dark and damp at the ground level, with a faint stink of sewage coming from the manholes that no tourist guide ever mentioned. The heat was humid, carried by a strong wind that wandered the meanders of the roads between buildings.

There were no people around. Most of them had been redirected somewhere else by Icarus, and this didn't look like a neighborhood where old grannies could lounge outside their doorsteps and gossip.

Stolen story; please report.

At the ground floor of the building the address pointed to, there was an abandoned workshop of some kind. The door and the windows had been boarded up a long time ago, but now the wood was rotted and covered in graffiti. Enough of it had fallen apart to allow a glimpse inside, but it was too dark to really see.

"The thing that bothers me the most is this faint magical aura everywhere," Michael said. He had felt it when he got off the plane, a sort of pervasive miasma that reminded him of the energy he found inside the biolab abominations.

It didn't belong in the Tier system like all other magic, and the more he tried to study it the less sense it made.

Travis walked up to him, "The boys are securing the perimeter," he said. Around them, the four people had spread out and were deploying devices at a certain distance.

At the same time, four Fiorino vans that barely fit in the narrow streets dropped roadwork signs and tape and completely blocked off their intersection.

"We have forty minutes before the authorities come asking what the hell is going on with traffic around here."

"That's a long time," said Michael.

Travis laughed, "Italian reaction time, messy city, plus some Icarus tampering with navigation software and traffic lights. Add a couple changed signs and deviations here and there, and you can get away with blocking a whole block for almost an hour. Can't say we won't get nosy people coming in much sooner, though."

"Do we have to deal with that?"

Travis frowned, "The Italian authorities are a bit weird. Lots of overlapping jurisdictions. We managed to slip something in, making use of their messy systems not to draw eyes to us. Won't hold for too long, but we should have the Municipale covering us until either the Polizia di Stato or Carabinieri take over. Forty minutes to several hours, depending on how badly their systems work today."

Someone started shouting. Almost immediately, someone else joined him: it was the guy driving the Fiorino van. The short, tan man had been unloading the fake roadwork supplies when some random tourist stopped him and started to complain about roads being closed everywhere making the city unlivable for tourists and Romans alike.

The driver, in typical Italian fashion, started with a string of expletives in the Roman dialect that not even a native would have been able to decode, then started to gesticulate while talking even faster. He had not been paid to do it, it was simply how Italians–Romans in particular–behaved. You don't mess with them for free.

The tourist with his shaky Italian could not compete, and soon left but not without flipping the man the finger. Then, as if nothing had happened, the man nodded at Travis—who was approaching to see what was going on—and went on with his business.

Meanwhile, Michael approached the abandoned shop. The sign was completely unreadable, covered with graffiti and stickers, but from what little was left of the original supplies it looked like some sort of woodworking workshop. There was dust everywhere, and the light was coming in thick shafts from the outside.

There was something else. Weaving through the haphazard mess of things, Michael found a door that led to the basement. It creaked on its hinges as it swung open, caught a raised beam on the floor, and ground to a halt with a whine. Dark steps led down, but what caught Michael's eye was a thin tendril of magic coming from the depths.

"The fuck is that?" Travis called from the shop, "Catacombs?"

"Whoever was here is long gone with all the ruckus we made."

From below, Travis' steps on the creaky floorboards were clearly audible.

"That's what the Delta Squad's for. They are waiting at all the nearby exits of the sewers and catacombs."

"That we know of. This place is older than our civilization by a wide margin. No way even Icarus knows its real layout and size. Plus, there's magic at play here. Weird magic."

Michael squinted in the darkness before snapping his fingers and making a small flame appear above his finger.

"Woah," Travis cried out, "Are you sure it's safe? There must be all sorts of stuff down here, and I wouldn't exclude flammable gas from the list."

With a frown, Michael surrounded the magical flame with a small spherical shield. "There."

"Thanks."

They followed the magic. Behind them, they heard voices again, arguing in Italian and broken English. Then came the reply of Delta Squad's sole woman operator, first in stilted Italian and then in English when someone came over to translate.

Icarus wrote in Michael's field of vision and on Travis' phone: "Sent people to deal with the problems; it should delay for a while. But be quick."

They both knew that in a normal situation, Icarus was more than capable of making them disappear from any police radar or detection system. Even though the AI's weak spot was people, because Icarus couldn't hack people, bribes were well within his capabilities. That it asked them to be quick meant that something was moving in their direction that their AI could not deal with remotely, or without causing a ruckus they wanted to avoid.

They went in deeper. Soon, the voices behind them were only muffled whispers. The tendril of magic was strange, like a snake leading them to its den to devour them.

"We are in too deep," Travis said, "We are losing signal even on our enhanced radios."

"Tell Delta to disperse and monitor. Icarus will coordinate them. I want to go deeper."

Travis leaned in, "That was not the plan!" he whispered, managing to yell even in such a low voice.

"It is now," Michael shot back. "Kick the anthill. Didn't you and Icarus create a cell of sleeper agents in the city for when we need them? Use them."

"We didn't have time to gather many agents," Travis said through gritted teeth, "It's only been a few days since Icarus became fully capable."

Michael inhaled, "Okay, you go out. I'm going deeper until I find the source of this magic."

Travis nodded, "Fine. You're the boss. But keep your eyes open, and don't let them see you. We still don't have the level of control needed to keep this quiet, and we don't want any of the red dots on the world map to know about us."

Michael gave Travis his wallet, phone and sunglasses. "Here. Anything that could identify me. Even if they catch me, they won't know who it is. I'll be running Aura Masking all the time to confuse people and devices."

"It can do that?"

Michael snapped his fingers. The skill, which had been at the cusp of leveling up for a while, suddenly grew and stretched.

Icarus made words appear in Michael's vision. Aura Masking reaches level 4. Now level 5. Level 6. It stopped at level 7.

A description followed, but Michael didn't need his AI's poor man imitation of the system to know what the skill could do.

"It can now."

"And how will you rendezvous with us?"

Outside, more voices joined the chorus. Michael's phone vibrated in Travis' hand as a message arrived, but was ignored.

"Icarus is in my fucking head, man. I don't need phones to connect to the web or to talk to you. Go."

"Alright. See you outside."

With a nod, Travis left. Michael ventured deeper.