The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Michael felt the temperature increase by the second as his own body heat, brought by rising panic, was exchanged with the limited air in the small, confined space. The glass fogged up, small droplets of water forming on its smooth surface like on a car window after being shut inside for too long.

The corridor Michael had come from had all but vanished in the darkness, while ahead the many doors looked identical to each other.

Running his finger on the metal handle, then on the glass and the seams, Michael found no hidden mechanism to unlock the door. His already rising panic took a turn for the worse, making the air much more suffocating than it really was, amping up the sound of blood in his ears to deafening levels, and robbing his body of strength.

"Deep breaths, deep breaths," he muttered, leaning against the glass.

"Let's conserve oxygen."

He dropped to the floor, sliding down the damp glass pane. The ground was warm, just like the rest of the room, offering no respite.

Time passed. The air grew staler. Michael could smell his own sweat, but at least the ringing in his ears had subsided.

His eyelids felt heavy. He was about to doze off, with no idea how long he had spent in the oxygen-deprived room, when he heard a clang. It took a moment for his mind to register the change, sluggish thoughts still trying to figure out if it was really the lack of oxygen or the accumulation of carbon dioxide that was going to kill him.

"I think it's the carbon–"

He fell backwards. A rush of cool, fresh air was like a balm to his struggling soul. Sprawled on the floor, he heard a series of clangs and clicks as all the other glass doors suddenly unlocked and the lights above flickered on.

Looking up, the illumination of the neons above was dimming and returning as if someone was playing tug-of-war with the circuits. A battle of wills might very well be going on, he realized, remembering what the old man said about the Lair.

He sprung to his feet, summoning what weak strength was left to his body, and bolted down the corridor. One last door, opaque this time, separated him from the room ahead. He slammed into it, fumbled with the handle, managed to make something click, and entered the room. The moment he crossed the threshold the corridor behind him was plunged into darkness.

He thought he saw a blinking red light at the end of the tunnel of darkness. It reminded him of the murderous repair bots in the underground garage room.

"Fuck," he shut the door closed. Its metal felt like flimsy protection against the might of an enraged, crazed machine. "And what did the man say? The Lair will blame me for its predicament?"

Panting, feeling the cold metal of the door against his damp back, Michael took in the entirety of the room. Focusing on the problem at hand was better than worrying about the AI that controlled the whole city wanting to kill him.

"Focus on the things you can change. The room. The man said the particles should be here, right?"

His gaze scanned the fathoms of the room. It was a gigantic semicircle, a dome easily hundreds of feet tall with a black sphere in the middle. A slightly raised platform wove a path from the door to the black sphere, avoiding patches of slick moss and stalactite growth. Above, Michael could see that the dome was made of interconnected triangles, but water was dripping down thick candles of mossy growth that had managed to find a home in the seams.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Once he was reasonably sure that the room was empty, he zeroed in on the black sphere at the center.

His steps echoed in the vast space, lost to the slight mist that hung close to the ceiling. He was halfway to the center when he thought he heard the rustle of metal, the drone of electrical circuits and a clang of something big approaching from the door behind him. He sped up, breaking into a half-run, considering for a moment stepping off the path but deciding not to at the last moment.

There were no handrails, and the ground was wet in places, so he struggled to run while making sure he didn't slip and break a bone on the hard concrete. The sphere grew closer, and now that he was much closer he realized just how big it was, easily one and a half times his height. There was something propped up against its surface, a long metal instrument painted silver, white, and blue with lines like runes running along its length.

Michael ignored it, thinking it looked like a weapon but not having the brainpower to deal with it. He focused on the black sphere, eager to get his hands on some magic after so long, feeling his mind and brain salivate while his body broke into a cold sweat of anticipation, like an addict seeing a dose after a long withdrawal. His heart thumped, and he didn't know if the irregular rhythm was panic or something else, but as he circled the sphere he felt his stomach sink with each step.

Eventually, he was back where the strange weapon was. The sphere had no opening. It was smooth, of an alien material that felt like metal but looked like polished stone. It was cold and unmoving. It did not budge when pushed, nor did it respond to any stimulus Michael's panicked mind could conjure.

The thing on the ground might be some sort of key, he thought, picking it up and feeling it thrum with power, the blue runes lighting up. There was a hole, fit for an arm. He slipped his arm inside, fighting to dispel the image of his arm eaten up by some sort of malignant mechanism; instead, he found something like a trigger at the bottom of the hole, deep enough to have sunk his arm inside up to the elbow.

That's when the door was literally torn off its hinges by an abomination of metal, hissing steam, blades, and lights.

Michael, startled, didn't even know what came upon him. All he knew was that he lifted his arm, device still around it and humming with desire and power, aimed the shell-like far end of it towards the door and pulled the trigger.

A wave of pure force, deep blues and violets, energy thick and dense that did not feel like anything that should belong to this world. It exploded out from what Michael now knew was a weapon, a weapon utterly unlike magic and science and even the strangest of fiction.

The door disappeared. Along with it went a quarter of the room, walls and all, pushed back several hundred yards through solid stone.

When the dust settled, Michael saw a pitifully small opening in the stone, among the rubble, and recognized the wreckage of the many sets of doors he had rushed through and almost died in.

He then looked at his arm, then back at the destruction the device had brought. It still hummed with power, hungry for more destruction.

Michael dropped it to the ground, examining his arm like it was an alien appendage. It didn't feel wrong at all. It looked fine. It didn't even tingle. He had not even felt any recoil from shooting the wave of force. Feeling no recoil when firing a weapon had sent his mind for a spin. It felt… wrong, to bring so much destruction and not even feel a slight feedback.

Was this… was this the power of Demiurge Particles? The weapon didn't feel like magic, nor did its power source feel diminished in any way, but then again what did he know about Demiurge Particles? He had never even seen them. He had barely even–

The rubble moved. Head snapping to it, he was sure he saw it move. Michael rushed to the weapon, wore it again on his arm, and shot three times at the rubble. The hole ended up being so big that it caved in. Nothing was moving after the collapsed stone stabilized.

A faint beam of light illuminated it. Squinting, Michael could see that the rubble was not stone but a whole building that had collapsed, bringing with it the road, the sewers, and everything in between.

Water was beginning to spill.

He ignored it all, looking at the black sphere. While the weapon he had was formidable, it was far too destructive to be wieldy, and if the Lair had found him once it would find him again. This time, it would come in force.

In fact, Michael thought he could hear the tick-tick of tiny machines coming. They would be the bane of his weapon, scuttling everywhere until one of them reached him and slit his neck.

Unfortunately, the black sphere was just as silent as before. Michael had hoped that the weapon might have been a key. He tried all that came to mind but… nothing.

Meanwhile, sounds reverberated. His eyelids felt heavy. He was hungry. The machines were coming. He was panicking.

With no other option, he aimed the force gun at the black sphere.

And pulled the trigger.