The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

The next few days passed at a glacial pace. Michael was slowly getting better, and when he didn't feel feverish and weak, he set out exploring.

He learned that while the city was empty of people, this didn't make it completely empty or immobile and static. The truck and car he had seen on his first day had been but the appetizer.

Plenty of things were going on all the time. The pharmacy window had been repaired a few days after it was broken and he even saw a truck restock a small corner store full of supplies. That's where Michael gathered some actual food and tools, and it prompted him to check something. Flipping one of the ibuprofen packages, he read the label.

"Expiration date, October 29th 2619", it said. In the spur of the moment, it didn't tell him anything concrete, but as his mind cleared, he realized something important.

He had nearly died. Not only that, but he had put all his faith in some random medicine he found in a pharmacy in the middle of an abandoned city. Medicine that he had been well aware could have been long expired, even while delirious and on the verge of death.

Now that his mind was clearer, he realized how lucky he had been. He doubted he would have survived taking expired medicine. The nausea and vomiting he had been subjected to would have been nothing compared to the consequences of a cocktail of expired drugs. This meant that the meds were relatively new, and the Lair or some entity was resupplying the city even though its inhabitants were gone.

Perhaps the date on the label was accurate, and this was some strange alternate reality's future.

Michael looked up towards the sky. The central spire loomed over everything, like a thin needle piercing the heavens. Leaning out of the window to take the whole tower into his field of view, he could see its tip almost touch the top of the shield. He could also see the rustle of leaves all around the park. After squatting here for several days, he had learned to read the changes of the wind, the air now carrying the scent of moisture and a slight chill.

Even though he had never ventured far from the park and the orangerie, his only safe haven, Michael had learned a lot about the city. Most of his observations came from climbing to the top floor of some empty office buildings, or from cross referencing what he saw with his memory of the city seen from above before he entered the shield.

The place was so massive, he concluded, that a whole micro-climate had developed inside the shield. It explained the rain that was coming, as well as the wind.

By the time the first large drops of rain were falling, their tip-tap against the flat roof of the building echoing in the empty room, Michael had collapsed to the floor. Several days of being sick to his guts and barely moving had left him lethargic and weak.

He eyed the shaker and the half-empty bag of bulking power with a roll of his eyes and a groan. The rest of his supplies were gone–it was time for another run to the store. It was fairly close, and there wasn't much automated traffic between there and the orangerie.

Michael formulated a route in his mind, massaging his chin and feeling the stubble grow around the nasty scar that was developing as the wound slowly healed. Suddenly, he stopped, two fingers still pinching the edges of the wound where the itchy skin transitioned into painful flesh.

"What the hell am I even doing?"

He was thinking about supplies and even about dragging pillows and towels over to the room he was living in.

"But why?"

He was almost healed, and while he could still recover some more, he wasn't suffering from debilitating injuries anymore. He was stalling for time, he realized. The city, the emptiness that wasn't really empty, the hollow buildings, the empty vehicles, the shimmering shield, the heat and dust in the air that only cleared when it rained, the faint smell of smoke and gasoline… this city gave him the creeps. Only when sealed shut in his room did he not feel watched by some malignant entity.

Was this how people always felt when inside the dungeon? If so, it had been enough to paralyze Michael for several days already. He could see why Operators and even Travis and David had been struggling at the beginning. Hell, why they were still struggling, unless something had changed in the weeks he had been out of commission.

Lightning flashed. "I've been an idiot, haven't I?"

He pushed them, disregarded their feelings, acted superior because he had simply been unable to understand what they were going through. But now that it was his turn to feel the dread, he was behaving like a coward. At least they had tried, in the end. They had pushed through.

He too would have to push through. Sooner rather than later, too. Infy was counting on him.

He wasn't used to this, he realized. He was old… older than his body looked, and time had lost meaning to him with how much of it he spent inside the dungeon. Meditating, thinking, wandering the floors where it was safe and even where it was not. Sure, the real world had been chaotic, but he could always retreat to the timeless safety of his dungeon and spend as much time as he wanted there.

He could not do that now. He was inside the dungeon and he was on a timer.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

He looked outside, sighing. As soon as the rain cleared, he would make another run for the store and loot it of anything he might need to venture deeper inside the city. Then, he would come back to the orangerie one last time, sleep in his makeshift bed one last night, and set off towards the central tower.

***

The sliding doors opened as soon as Michael approached the store, slithering close to the wall and keeping as far away from the road as he reasonably could. The rain had eased, but the lingering thunder still echoed against the edge of the shield, less than a quarter mile away, giving the illusion of an all-encompassing storm.

Inside the store, the air was dry and almost too cold. Making the rounds through the aisles, Michael gathered the basic necessities he thought he needed for the journey. He grabbed a large backpack from the sports aisle, then filled it with non-perishable food, water, and other gear as if he was about to go on a camping trip. The only thing he didn't take was sleeping gear, which he replaced with a hammer, screwdriver, tools and a couple of blades.

There were no guns for sale in the store, and even the hardware section was strangely anemic.

Once he was done, Michael made the trek back to the park. He avoided a couple of empty cars speeding down the street on the way, but the place was empty as usual.

Except, it wasn't. Rounding a corner, he saw several vehicles parked close to the small side entrance he used to get in and out of the park all the time. He immediately stopped in his tracks, heart pounding in his chest. The feeling of being watched intensified, bordering on paranoia.

He couldn't get close, and it was hard to tell from a distance, but through the foliage of the sidewalk trees and from a reflection in a nearby building, he tried to piece together what was going on. The yellow stroboscopic lights were blaring with almost real noise, and the idle engines of the trucks were deafeningly loud.

Then, with the sound of hydraulics and the whirr of an engine switching from idle to high gear, a huge bladed arm extended out from one of the trucks. It extended towards a nearby tree, going over the park wall, blades coming to life, rotating like a blender of death. They cleaved through the foliage of the tree, reducing its top to mulch and then working their way down, shredding branches and bark, reaching the trunk without stopping and then going down, and down.

Michael could not see due to the wall obscuring the park from view, but the hydraulic arm and its blades sank deeper and deeper, and the truck's engine groaned while a cloud of black smoke rose from behind it. After a long minute, there was an ear-splitting sound of metal tearing and the smoke increased, growing thicker, the engine struggling, before another shriek of metal and a clang.

The hydraulic arm receded as if nothing had happened, folding back towards the truck with its blades bent and torn, the paint stained with green and the brown of wet dirt, little pieces of concrete and stone embedded in the mechanisms.

The truck sped away. As it did, the other two switched into high gear, moving a few trees down the road and repeating the same process all over again. When they were done, with mangled equipment and half-melted engines, they just sped away in a hurry to who knows where.

Michael was about to leave, to find someplace else to spend the incoming night when he saw lights moving towards his location. Curiosity got the best of him, and thinking himself safe he stayed where he was, watching.

The lights soon resolved themselves into the headlights of another truck. Behind it was a bizarre thing: a rusted platform hovering in the air on its own, and above it were three saplings bundled up in landscaping fabric, with dirt still clinging to their root balls.

Michael snuck closer. There was no sign that he had been spotted, or if he had, that the vehicles were reacting to him in any way.

The driver's cab of the truck was empty. There was no wheel, and there was no seat. It was just there for aesthetic purposes, and it made sense because the truck did not need a person to drive it.

It could be an opportunity. Skulking closer, hiding even though he wasn't really sure what he was hiding from, or from what angle, Michael approached the door and opened it. Nothing happened.

He threw his backpack inside. Again, nothing happened. He was about to climb, but he froze when the truck suddenly started to move and shake. His mind spun a mile a minute. The movement ceased with the rocking of suspensions. It was then that Michael noticed that all three trees were gone from the strange levitating platform, leaving it empty.

The truck shook again as the hydraulic arm finished retracting.

Michael jumped up and inside, just in time before the truck began to accelerate. It picked up speed, pushing Michael's body towards the rear end of the empty cab as the truck reached truly insane speeds. The city whipped past them, changing subtly as the truck left its periphery and entered more central areas. Each turn was violent and dangerous, with nothing to hold onto and insane g-forces making Michael feel like he was inside a washing machine with only sharp metal around him.

In the end, during a particularly long straight patch of road, he managed to get up. Massaging his bruises, which he was sure were going to be many and all over his body, he rolled down the window and held tight to the metal frame.

More of the city passed him by. The changes, which had been subtle at first, became more and more noticeable. Now the buildings looked straight out of a sci-fi movie, made of white stone and glass and metal, filled with water and plants. But something was horribly wrong with them: they were empty, and the automated systems in charge of their upkeep had clearly gone awry. Just like the strange happenings near the shield, with the roadwords and the grinding of trees, the whole city had been subjected to strange and nonsensical treatments over the years.

Patches of buildings did not match the original style, growing like badly fused tumors upon the original design. The road switched from asphalt to stone to concrete to something utterly futuristic. Benches and trash cans were… wrong.

It was hard to explain, but as Michael got closer to the center of the city, the sensation of wrongness increased. Worse still, he could not get off the truck, because it was going so fast that jumping out would be suicide.

An abrupt turn left made him lose his grip on the bare metal, which had become slick with his own blood where it had cut his hand. Tumbling to the ground, he saw the sun disappear much faster than he had expected a sunset to be.

When he got up, he understood why it was so dark. He was underground, in some sort of vehicle deposit filled to the brim with malfunctioning machines cannibalizing each other. One of them was approaching the truck he was in.

They passed it, and Michael breathed a sigh of relief.

It was short lived, though. Ahead of them was a tunnel inside a tunnel, like a living wall filled with tools for cutting, soldering and dismantling.

The truck slowed down to a crawl. Michael jumped out, and all the machines froze.