The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Michael clutched the Force Lance with his right hand, while his whole left arm was sunk inside the weapon itself, fingers gripping the trigger and ready to shoot.

The doors opened with a ding. They were slow, agonizingly so, while the whole tower shook as the booming voice of the Lair reverberated through the city. The elevator was thankfully empty, with sterile light and a mirror, and garbage faux-marble brown walls.

There were only two buttons.

Michael's finger hovered above the one with an arrow pointing up. It was green, blinking and inviting. His ticket out of this challenge, onto the next. Infy was presumably waiting for him there. Or perhaps she was already gone because he had taken too long figuring out how to regain access to magic.

The other button was red, leading back down. To the lobby, eerie and strange and not befitting a Central Spire. He pressed it.

"What are you doing?" Icarus hissed as the elevator hummed to speed. Michael pictured the antiquated lobby awaiting him downstairs.

"I made a promise to Lloyd Cromwell." The words were heavy. "I can't leave like this."

"You'll die."

Icarus's voice was conceited. Indeed, his fate was deeply tied to Michael's, and after his recent evolution, he seemed to be much more intent on surviving his master's idiotic decisions.

"We'll be quick. I have a powerful weapon, and some magic."

"Magic? What can you do with half a Copper a second of pure mana? Up to a full Copper, if you decide to cut the flow going to me."

Michael dodged the question, for he didn't have an answer. "Just a quick in and out. Get to the mainframe and wreck the thing."

"You don't even know where the mainframe is, Michael. Be reasonable. Press the UP button and get the fuck out of here."

A ding signaled the door opening. Michael aimed the weapon, sweeping the lobby and finding nothing moving there. He relaxed slightly, getting out of the elevator but not leaving the perceived safety of the raised platform behind the empty wooden desk by the windows.

From what little he could see of the street, it appeared empty.

"Say what," Icarus said. Michael was trying his hardest to ignore the AI right now. "Why don't you bunker down somewhere, build a few more collectors? Even just one would double your magic, you know?"

"Don't have time," Michael said with clenched teeth. He knew his AI was right. "Infy is waiting for me. I can't spend days in here taking it slowly."

"Didn't seem to bother you when you spent all those days lazing in the orangerie."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Michael checked the street again. No movement.

"I think we are clear."

Icarus said nothing. Without actual magic, Michael was as blind as a regular human, and a single Copper wasn't going to change that. He sprinted towards the doors, looking left and right, then he was in the street.

He ducked before he heard any sound. Call it preternatural instinct, or perhaps Icarus' help, but a projectile hissed through the air right where his head had been. Then a boom, and Michael rolled forward. Groaning in pain, he shot to his feet and sought cover. As he ran across the street, he aimed the weapon in the general direction of the shots and fired.

He did not stop running. The absence of recoil from his weapon meant that he could just wave it around and blast the whole area as he ran. He fired seven times before reaching the other side of the street, where he stopped and looked at the damage he caused.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The noise seemed to reach him all at once. A tall skyscraper had been carved up, its whole base missing with the top beginning to lean to the side under the effects of gravity. Its fall was eerily slow, the building rotating on its sole remaining pillar before spinning down into a hole.

There used to be a wide road there, several lanes of neat asphalt and trimmed trees. Now there was a giant chasm, deep and dark with sparks and rivulets of water from severed power lines. Things moved in the depth of the hole, but they didn't manage to get very far before the skyscraper buried them all in rubble.

A cloud of dust was kicked up by its fall, loud and final.

Michael didn't stop to admire his handiwork. He ran in a random direction, managing only several dozen paces before the dust cloud reached him and plunged his world into yellow mustard darkness.

"What's the plan, champ? Shoot up the whole place?" Icarus cried in his ear.

He kept running, aiming his weapon left and right every time he reached an intersection. The Force Lance made no sound as the waves of gravitic purple energies traveled down the avenues and boulevards, hitting faraway places inside the city. One of them impacted the shield, making it ripple and wobble. It was deflected back, almost back at Michael, slipping past him by pure chance and luck and hitting the Central Spire square in the foundation.

The groan of metal bending and stone exploding told him to run faster. He sped up, using the meager magic he commanded to crudely enhance his body, feeling like he was back to the beginning of his adventures.

Several blocks and neighborhoods flew by, but the Spire loomed above, Michael's legs pumping as he struggled to clear the last of its height before it buried him. When he realized he wasn't going to make it, he stopped in place and looked up. The metal tip of the Spire was descending on him, dark against the bright sky.

He aimed the Force Lance, at a slight angle so the shot wouldn't be reflected back at him by the shield, and fired.

The falling building disintegrated, the waves of force turning it into dust and debris. They kept traveling and were reflected by the shield, scattered across the city in distant places where they carved holes in the ground and flattened everything indiscriminately.

Realizing the benefit of the strategy, Michael kept shooting.

Screams of anger and pain filled the air. The screech of metal, and the distorted voice of the Lair reached his ears like nails grinding against a blackboard.

"You are ruining this city! MY city! I showed you nothing but hospitality and THIS is how you repay me?"

It screamed obscenities at Michael, making the ground shake.

"Where are you keeping him?" Michael shot back, unsure if the Lair was even capable of hearing him.

"Who are you talking about? I will kill you!"

Reaching the top of a small hill, Michael saw giants looming in the distance. Monsters of metal, looking like giant robots made of rusted junk and polished titanium in equal parts, misshapen and yet deadly. They rose from the ground all around him, distant for now, but immediately starting to devour the distance in great strides that flattened buildings and sunk several feet into the neat roads, doing as much damage as Michael had caused.

They converged towards him from all directions, two dozen metal giants ranging from a hundred feet to tall enough to reach the shield.

A few of them were taking aim.

"Fuck!" Michael cried out, shaken out of his wide-mouth gaping by the awareness that he had precious little time.

He aimed his weapon and spammed fire at all the robots taking aim. The immense offensive capabilities of the implement were soon evident, turning the deadly machines into scrap metal that flew like a shotgun blast towards the far edges of the city. He shot again and again, missing more shots than he hit, but it didn't matter. The weapon didn't seem to care about his abuse, happily humming with power.

When the last of the ranged robots was down, Michael turned to the larger ones still closing in on him. They followed the same fate, obliterated by overwhelming power.

Before Michael knew it, there was only one robot left. It was the biggest one and was also the slowest. It strode towards him with cocky confidence, exhaust ports ejecting smoke and steam behind it like a billowing cape, nuclear reactor spinning in its chest while a sinister red light shone from its depths, visible in the gaps between metal plates.

Michael took aim. Unlike the other robots, which had kept on walking even as he tore them down one after the other, this one reacted to his action. It raised one arm, holding it sideways against its body and head, preparing for impact.

"Futile," Michael muttered, emboldened by the reassuring presence of his weapon. His only offensive tool, yet all that he needed.

He pulled the trigger. Time stretched as the robot seemed to smirk at him. He was sure it was all in his mind, and kept on being sure of it until the last moment.

A shield, much like Sitea's own massive shield, sprung to life from the raised arm. The wave of force hit it, and the robot swatted it away like an annoying fly, redirecting it to wreck havoc somewhere unimportant in the far reaches of the sprawling city.

Michael paled. He shot again and again in a frenzy, trying to hit spots where the shield could not reach: the legs, the feet, the face.

The arm moved with speed uncanny for a machine so big, intercepting all the shots as the robot closed in on Michael's location.

"I think you're fucked." Icarus said.

Michael stared at the machine of death. From this close, it looked taller than even the Central Spire when it was still standing.