The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

The car sped towards Michael, its faulty headlights flickering in the rain. It didn't show signs of slowing down; instead, the roar of its engine pierced the sound of the rain, then moved past where he was hiding. The car kept speeding down the large road, turning right at a ninety-degree junction and almost rolling over. Tires screeched, then it was out of view.

Michael's face remained pressed against the sodden ground, his body on all fours, for a long while. The rain thoroughly soaked him, but he almost wasn't even aware of it, his focus stolen by the thumping of his heart. It was irregular, deafening, all-encompassing. The buildings and the skyscrapers in the distance bent towards him, looming over his helpless body as he lay in the rain like giants ready to fall and bury him in rubble.

He swallowed, feeling the burn of stomach acid. It took a while for the panic attack to pass, after which he dragged himself under the cover of one of the buildings and waited for the shakes to pass.

Lifting the flowerpot, the very same one he had carried all the way here from the orangerie, felt like lifting the world itself. Straining his weakened muscles, feeling something tear as a sharp pain stabbed into his side, he raised it up above his head and slammed it against the pharmacy window with all his might.

It simply bounced off, chipping the glass and breaking into pieces on the ground.

Michael slumped beside it, heaving for air. The rain washed the dirt from the ceramic shards.

"Am I really this weak without my stats?"

The glass was thick, but the chip in it was a fault line. Bringing over another pot, much smaller this time, Michael managed to crack the glass without slicing open his wrists.

Immediately, as he did, he retreated a few steps. Then he stopped, looking at the broken storefront window like it was a wolf ready to pounce on him. The rain eased.

"No sirens," he muttered, slowly approaching the hole in the glass again. "No cars coming. Nothing."

He bent, struggling to fit his body through the hole without touching the sharp edges.

The pharmacy was dark but dry. There was dust in the air, but it didn't smell of mold. He had to be quick: silent alarms could still have gone off, even though there was no sound of sirens or the like.

The actual good medicines were kept in the back, inside metal lockers. While searching for the key behind the counter, he noticed a stack of gym supplements. Among them, he recognized a huge bag of bulking powder.

A hint of a smile appeared on his emaciated, pale, and wet face. He remembered abusing bulking powder to get the most out of his healing ability back when he had first taken steps on his path to power. He snatched it, throwing it to the back of the shop and rummaging some more.

He found the key, stumbled towards the medicine lockers, opened a few of them, and started looking. Some meds he recognized; most of them he didn't. But that was because he had never really gotten sick, and even when he did, he had been too poor to go to the doctor, instead trying to tough it out until it went away.

It had worked a surprisingly large amount of times, but as a consequence, he didn't really know much about drugs. He wished he could ask Icarus, but he was alone with his mind.

He grabbed a few of them, those that didn't look too spoiled and whose names he thought he recognized. Had he still had his stats, he wouldn't have a problem perfectly recalling all he knew about the active molecules in those drugs, but like all other magic, his mental stats had evaporated into nothingness and left him his old dumb self.

There was a working sink in the restroom.

"All that prepping in the orangerie, and there's water everywhere in this damn city."

He laughed, knowing it was hysteria but choosing not to care. He washed down a cocktail of drugs with water and bulking powder. There were lumps in the beverage, but his arms were burning, and he couldn't shake it any more than he had.

"Well," he slurred. The room was growing darker by the second, the walls receding and spinning. "That makes food, water, and meds done. All that's left is…"

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He could just sit for a moment, recover some energy. "All that's left is shelter."

His eyes closed without his noticing.

***

Michael was jolted awake by the sound of pounding. Whatever was going on outside, the ground was shaking, and the windows of the pharmacy were rattling with every powerful pound.

"Shit," he cursed, "I must have fallen asleep."

Blinking the beady tears out of his eyes, he scrambled to his feet. Immediately, a wave of nausea threatened to send him back to the ground, and he stabilized himself against the wall.

The stack of powder, a dirty shaker, and several pill blisters were scattered on the ground beside him.

"I didn't even take them on an empty stomach…"

He stumbled towards the counter. Truth be told, he felt like shit. Which made it a good twenty percent better than he had felt before falling asleep. From the counter, he could see the smashed window.

The pounding resumed, together with a hiss and the rumble of an idle engine. Stroboscopic yellow light flooded inside the dark pharmacy thrice every second, lighting a corner, then the whole room, then the other corner, then vanishing.

Leaning to the side, Michael saw a gigantic yellow vehicle smack in the middle of the road right outside. At the rear, some sort of drill bit was being pounded into the asphalt by none other than a huge metal hammer. Pressurized steam hissed at every strike.

The strobo yellow light was enticing. Looking at it, Michael felt his vision blur and reality fade.

He slapped his cheek and retreated to the back.

"Why the fuck are they doing roadwork in an empty city right here of all places!"

He paced around, searching for a solution. He didn't want to leave through the window, because even though he had seen no people around the vehicle or anywhere in the damn city, he was sure that there was someone or something controlling them.

And they might see him leave. And if they saw him, who was to say that they would be amenable to his presence?

The vehicle was probably here because of some glitch in an automated system that detected the damage to the store window and, instead of sending something to replace the glass, decided to work on the plumbing beneath the street.

"Fuck it."

He grabbed the keys. He distinctly remembered there being more than just the key to open the drug locker. Indeed, there were several. One of them must open a back door or something, and indeed, he was right.

He stumbled onto the road, once again lit by the sun against a clear sky. The clouds had disappeared who knows where, impossible to tell when surrounded by buildings everywhere. Holding onto the bulk powder, the meds, and for some reason still carrying the keys, Michael ran back to the park and the orangerie.

He didn't stop at the ground floor. Instead, he ran to the second story and claimed one of the empty rooms there, the one with only a single window instead of windows everywhere, and the furthest from the stairs. He threw his stuff there, hearing the keys jingle against the floor tiles, ran down to grab some water, then back up.

There, he dragged a rotting desk, propped it against the door so that half of it was covered, and sat against a wall so that he could keep both the window and the door within his field of view at all times.

That's when the pounding headache truly set in.

Michael breathed and waited for it to pass. When the sky outside started to turn dark, he took some more meds. He considered flipping the light switch, but what if someone saw him? The roadwork truck had stoked his paranoia to truly outstanding levels, and through the haze of sleep deprivation, exhaustion, a meds cocktail, and hunger not truly sated by the bulking powder, which was not made for the purpose, he felt watched. Whatever was looking at him felt sinister in the same way everyone used to describe the Dungeon Gaze, except it was also evil and twisted and strange.

"The Lair. It must be the Lair."

Michael blinked. Light was coming in from the window and the door, revealing a blue sky made milky by the dome shield up above. He must have fallen asleep again, this time propped up against the wall.

His muscles and bones sure hurt like he had.

Peeking out, he saw nothing moving. The park was as empty as it had been. The orangerie was silent. There was a soft breeze, but he wasn't shivering from it as much as he had been yesterday. Popping another few meds, he made his way down to the ground floor.

His stomach growled in protest when the pills mixed with the concrete-like bulking powder. He hoped he wouldn't vomit today, but he didn't count on it.

What he did count on was not sleeping on the floor another night. He didn't feel like leaving the safety of the park until he was healed, not with the food, shelter, and a supply of water. His wounds still hurt, and there was pus coming out of his hands and face. A single day of antibiotics won't fix that.

He gathered leaves and tried to make a makeshift bed. The thing came out awful and somehow managed to be even worse than it looked when he tried to lie down on it.

"I've slept in the forest plenty of times, but now I can't even begin to make a bed out of leaves? Am I really nothing without my magic? How do normal people do it?"

He thought about survival videos he used to watch on YouTube at night sometimes. He thought about his hikes where, even though he had equipment, he still considered himself good at surviving. Now, he could barely sleep inside a dry and safe building.

Had he grown so accustomed to being superhuman that he had forgotten the plight of the common man?