The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Blackness.

A man floated in a sea of darkness, pitch black so deep that it swallowed everything.

It had even swallowed his body, for he had no limbs nor sensations coming from his flesh. He had memories of having a body, but those memories felt like they belonged to a place that was very far away.

The concept of distance was strange, as was the concept of time. In a land of darkness and no light, with no shapes and no sensations, those concepts lost meaning rather quickly.

The man wanted to chuckle. How could one know if they actually did lose meaning quickly, when quickness could only be judged by those who still retain the meaning of those very concepts he had lost?

The mirth died down. Whether it had taken ages to do so, or mere moments, the man did not know. What he knew was that all emotions eventually died in this place, replaced by an eerie lack of impulse.

Joy vanished. Anger simmered down. Loss faded. Sadness dried up. Depression lifted. Even apathy, which the man had thought to be the absence of any other emotion and pulsion, disappeared in the end.

What remained after even apathy was gone had been strange for a while, but curiosity was motion, and this place was stillness. So it too came and went, and after it was gone it did not return.

The man also noticed something strange during the period of loss of all emotions. He realized that all the emotions–those that he had lost–had felt like his own. He recognized them as he was forced to let them go. They were a part of him.

There had been one, however, that had felt not quite like the others. Foreign. Like an intruder, it had hitched a ride in his mind and had masqueraded as his own emotion before the ruthlessness of the void exorcised it along with all the others.

The darkness of whatever place the man had found himself in did not care about the source of what it consumed. It simply did.

Eventually, the man was reduced to pure consciousness.

Eventually, that too faded.

***

When Michael opened his eyes, he found himself not in the first room of the dungeon but in what looked like an underwater laboratory. No message greeted him, and no sensation of magic sought to affect him.

The lab was spacious, or rather it had been before it was filled with all sorts of strange crap. Rusted pipes and flaking plastic hung all around, and loose chains and electrical cables spilled from loose tiles in the ceiling. The walls were blue-green, marred by rust stains. In several places the tiles had fallen off, revealing white transition material behind them, and then more rust.

He could tell that he was underwater by looking at the gigantic window that spanned a whole wall. Condensation had built up on it, and the droplets had gethered the dust in the air, becoming opaque. Still, it was enough to see.

More than half of the view was obstructed by miscellaneous knickknacks: something that looked like a portable vacuum cleaner covered in condensation and green slime, a rotted-away uniform that clearly wasn't suited for a human, tableware of all things, and much more.

The floor was wet. Ocean water had seeped inside from somewhere, probably failing rubber seals corroded by the salt. Over time it had filled the whole space inside the laboratory with one or two inches of cold, brown water.

Outside, through the window, Michael saw the same dirty blue-green of the tiles on the walls. There was scant light, save for two flood lights pointing outside. One of them flickered every few seconds, then went dark, then turned on again. The cycle repeated as he studied the dark silhouette of the structure from the window.

It was a maze of rooms connected by small, tube-like conduits barely large enough for a person to fit in. The rooms themselves were rather large, but none of them had windows larger than a porthole, and the inside was dark.

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He almost jumped backwards when he saw shapes moving in the water. Large shapes. One of them brushed against the structure, hitting one of the far rooms. Bubbles escaped from it as the structural integrity failed and the room crumpled up like it was made of thin paper.

Blinking, he took a couple steps away from the window. The light coming from above had been deceiving, but he was quite a distance underwater, as the pressure had been enough to reduce a steel room into metal scrap in an instant.

He explored. Pipes and tubes lined the walls, and save for the occasional sound of dripping water or static from the sterile lights up above, the place was utterly silent. The silence felt almost… nostalgic.

The silence was shattered by sudden, unexpected sound. It was an echo of an echo, coming from the depths of one of the dark tunnels leading away from the room Michael was in. It reverberated, making the metal groan and strain, the vibrations composing dark and ominous melodies.

But they had a cadence. Was that…?

It couldn't be.

But curiosity was too strong. Michael was here for a reason, after all. And even though being transported to an underwater abandoned lab, with monsters in the water who could collapse reinforced rooms without even noticing, had not been a part of his plans, he had to adapt to the current situation.

He crawled into the access tube. The light coming from behind him lit the sloping steps that led down into another room he could not see, but it was faint. Barely half a minute of crawling, being forced to touch with his bare hands the wet, rusted metal that was slick with slime, the light had dimmed to the point that he could no longer see where he was going.

He kept crawling, slowing down his pace until the memory of the sea monsters made him hurry up again. What would happen if one of them struck the tube with him inside?

Minutes passed. He heard the strange sound again, much louder this time, and, startled, he almost lost his footing on the slippery steps. One of his hands did slip and he landed chin-first into the metal, the sharp pain jolting his system and threatening to trigger a panic attack in the total darkness of the tube.

By the time he recovered, the sound that was almost definitely a voice was spelling the last syllables of a sentence. He could almost make out the letters, the echoing last part of a last word, but they were distorted just enough to render them impossible to understand.

Michael kept crawling. Every so often, his hand went to his chin, and when he touched it he felt the distinct burn of touching a wound. He made sure to touch it with the back of his hand, not with his dirty fingers, of course, but the thought of tetanus or of some strange brain-eating amoeba was worming its way into his mind.

He crawled some more. Behind him, the light had vanished. A muted boom shook the structure, one of the far rooms collapsing. It felt much closer than before, and faint vibrations made their way from the metal into his hands. When they didn't die down, Michael realized that he was shivering.

He felt cold, and claustrophobic, not knowing if his hands shook out of fear, panic, or the cold. He could barely feel the tips of his fingers, so perhaps it was the latter.

A displacement of air, then another sound.

"Attention!"

The voice was so loud that Michael jerked back and hit his head on some rivets of the tube. His vision flashed white for a moment.

"--structural damage. Please–" then the voice became distorted again.

Michael crawled, now filled with a sense of urgency. Two booms in quick sequence signaled two more rooms lost to the pressure of the ocean. This place was collapsing, and the access tube felt flimsy, with the fathomless depths of utter death just inches away in all directions. Only an old, rusted sheet of metal separated Michael from–

He suddenly fell. Blinding light filled his vision, and he wondered how he had not seen the access pipe suddenly end in what looked like the sky above an infinite verdant prairie.

He landed in the soft grass with a groan, but there didn't seem to be anything broken. He had fallen from quite far high, but the pain had already subsided. Getting up, he realized that he was filthy, covered in green slime and rust stains, plus blood that was still dripping from his chin and the back of his head.

The sun warmed his back. The wind robbed him of the very same heat that the sun was giving.

In the distance, a lone oak stood atop a small hill. Walking towards it, Michael realized that the oak was gigantic, easily a mile tall, making him feel like an insignificant dwarf.

There was a person beneath the oak. A shadow cloaked in darkness, like a cutout of dark against the verdant leaves of the oak. When the light shafts coming from above hit the figure, they vanished into their cloak of darkness.

It took Michael hours to reach them, feeling their gaze on him as they patiently waited for him to arrive.

When he did, he was exhausted and hurting. He struggled to even stay on his feet, swaying left and right. His throat felt dry, and he couldn't seem to force his eyes to focus. At the same time, his whole body felt cold and the soft wind against his skin, wet with perspiration and filth, sent shivers down his drenched back. There was no direct sunlight warming his back in the shade beneath the canopy of the great tree.

"Hello Michael," the figure said. Its voice was nondescript. "You are early. This is not how I foresaw our meeting, but your stubbornness forced my hand. Please follow me."

It turned towards the tree, where the bark had split into a portal roughly the size of a man.

"Beware," the figure said, "it will be uncomfortable. We were not supposed to meet so early, Champion."

"Who are you?"

"Me?" the figure laughed. It was like wind chimes. "Did you already forget about my promise?"