The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

"With the bullshit out of the way," Michael announced as soon as Trevor and Jennifer arrived. "Let's actually start this strategic meeting. We have wasted more than enough time and I'd hate to see it get sidetracked again. First order of business!"

He snapped his fingers. Everyone looked at him, but his gaze was glued on David's face. The tall, muscular man slumped for a moment, blinked, and as his body straightened up again he was like a puppet whose strings had just been swapped. His eyes widened, he looked around then blinked again.

"Whoa," he shook his head as if to shake water from his ears, "thanks. It was like I was drowning in a sea of raw emotions."

"It's only temporary," said Michael, "not enough power in my Sanctum to alter reality like this even if I wasn't injured. You'll revert, then it will be on you to find the way back to clarity again, but this should buy you a few hours of clarity to focus and help you establish a baseline. I also just told Kavins, that the drug needs to be fixed before we commercialize it. No more rejuvenations until then, and keep a close eye on the two Vanguards you recruited."

"You really see everything, don't you?"

David's somber voice, much more subdued than he had been after his rejuvenation, reminded everyone of his old self. It was as if they collectively breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that the David they had all come to know and respect was still there.

"I see more than you all think," Michael said. "So much so, that it sometimes becomes hard to notice blind spots with all the noise. Which brings me to the point at hand. Italy was a major fuckup: strategically, tactically, and many other technical terms I don't really know as well. The only excuse is that we had no idea we'd be countered this hard, but even then…"

"It's not really an excuse," Travis finished for him.

"We all have to share the blame here. Well, except Trevor and Jennifer I guess." He turned to them, "but with your permission, from now on I'd like to bring you two into the fold. The reason is simple. I had ample time to think about this after the Liff and WITCH fiasco, and the Italy disaster all but crystallized the conclusion in my mind. All the people present here, observers not included, will be part of the decision processes. Icarus will make it possible for you all to be included, no matter where you are or what you are doing, using technology and magic I have been keeping secret from you all."

He looked at them all, "It's time we stop being amateurs. It's time we step up our game. Let the strategic meeting begin."

***

After the meeting, which lasted well into the night, they each went their own way. Some of them, those who still needed actual sleep, went to bed. They wouldn't be sleeping much, not after what had been said in the meeting. Some were too excited to wind down, others too worried, others still focused on the things that needed to be done.

Those who didn't need to sleep went to work.

"It is almost ready," Johanne said as she showed Michael a room hundreds of feet below the normal hubbub of Site 00. Shielded by bedrock and concrete, only she and a handful of others knew of its existence. It could be cut off from the rest of the world in a matter of seconds, and it was utterly undetectable.

He followed her into what turned out to be a massive chamber. Immediately, his eyes were drawn to the glowing cubes at the center of it. He squinted, "15-nanometer inscriptions. Huh."

Johanne grinned, "We did it, my liege. We managed to use laser engravers normally used to create advanced silicon microchips to inscribe specially primed condensed mana crystals."

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Michael hummed, pacing around the glowing cubes. There were nine of them, stacked in three rows of three, and they reached his hips. There was space, assuming the geometry was going to be symmetrical, for a total of twenty-seven in this chamber alone.

"Now the acquisition of a majority share in TSMC and NVIDIA makes sense," he said with a nod. "I was wondering why it had been authorized. I mean, taking over the world is a loose goal and you can totally do it by acquiring companies, and the tech sector is hot as ever but now it makes much more sense."

"Nothing escapes your eyes, does it?"

"You all need to stop trying to flatter me," said Michael, "again I will say that lots of things escape my eyes, even with Icarus helping me sort through everything that I sense. My Status makes me seven times as intelligent and five times as good at memorizing as a normal human, and my Mind Dantian core boosts this enhancement even further, but Unity and Site 00, not to mention all the far reaches, have grown much faster than I have."

She nodded. "I see."

"Ingenious design, this distributed node. It is only the first of many, am I correct?"

"You are," she said. Pointing at four tunnels that extended outwards, one of which they had taken to get here, she continued. "Four more will be placed three point zero-two-five miles out in each cardinal direction. The tunnels are complete."

"Show me."

They ran. Even with his injuries, Michael traversed the cramped tunnel with the speed of a bullet. The woman was no weakling, however, using her mastery of Time together with her budding mastery of Space to keep up. He didn't wait for her when she eventually had to stop, instead arriving at the Eastern Site 00 node and running up a wall and ceiling to bleed his momentum.

Johanne appeared in a whirl of magic moments after, right where Michael was looking.

"Sorry, my lord. I had to use Major Teleportation or else you would have been forced to wait."

"I know. I was waiting for it. I'm glad to see that your mastery of the Elements is making the spell faster and much more efficient." Then, he turned to face a tunnel opening that was much smaller than the one they had just traversed. With the central node behind him, this tunnel was to his left while another had been carved to his right.

He could see the curvature of it, barely perceptible with the absent light and monotone features. Until he switched to his magic sight, that was. With his injuries, the sight worked at less than ten percent its usual strength, but it was enough.

"Do the inscriptions run the whole circumference? With the nodes acting as focus points?"

"Indeed," Johanne said. "This will be the radius of the first shield prototype once we finish inscribing the cubes and the circuits."

"Computronium magitech cubes providing focus for the shield and an inordinate amount of computation for Icarus. Inscriptions setting the boundary…" his eyes lit up, "You are setting up some sort of domain for him. Brilliant."

"With that," her eyes also lit up, but the light was much more sinister, "we shall have complete authority over our territories. This shield shall be the first of many, my lord. You will see."

"I'm impressed," he said. Then he remembered about her Time affinity and abilities, and things made much more sense. He wondered if he could do the same himself, provided he managed to master Time to the same degree.

"I am not sure," she said once he told her about the idea, "I have observed that the magic required to hop through time at a whim: it increases exponentially every time I grow in power. That is why I am not pursuing personal power right now. It would be counterproductive, the price far exceeding any possible growth."

"You will find a way around it, I'm sure." Michael said with a laugh, "you always do."

"I'm glad you think this of me. I shall work to meet your expectations. Speaking of which, I am close to reverse engineering the perception goggles you retrieved in Rome. I have big plans for the magitech that will come out of them."

"Let me guess, the launch tower you are having built under the guise of a NASA contract?"

"It is a real contract. It will also serve our goals," she said with a shrug. Her smug expression, coupled with the low blue light of the magical inscriptions, made her look like a playful spirit. "Imagine: satellites capable of seeing everything. Any and all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum with a resolution of millimeters. Gravitational waves, neutrinos, all particles known and unknown. Plus, of course, magic. No longer will we have to guess where Travis' pesky red dots are on planet Earth. Nor their power and what they are up to. We will know for sure."

He smiled. It was a lofty goal, one that had many obstacles. People could hide from perception powers, Rome had been proof of it, even ones as sharp as his own. He doubted that mechanical technology could circumvent the problem, although with Icarus and the strange nature of magic, nothing was impossible.

"Total control inside the shield, total surveillance outside," he muttered. "The game is set. Let us hurry, our enemies won't wait for us to gain the advantage."