The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

There was a gap of at least ten feet between Michael and the robot. This gap extended into a hole several hundred feet deep, at the bottom of which Sitea's shield was slowly turning metal into molten slag.

Not only was the fall deadly, but there was lava at the bottom.

Making it to the other side of the gap would have been trivial had Michael had a decent amount of magic. Instead, he found himself carefully calculating the risk of jumping on the uneven, unsteady shattered upper body of the robot.

100 Copper Mana were more than enough to allow him to make the jump, but they were going to be powerless in stopping his fall should he lose his grip on the smooth plates. Nor would they offer any protection if he landed on one of the sharp tubes jutting out of the wreck, like spikes planted on a battlefield to stop horses.

He toyed with the idea of simply not jumping. Perhaps he could sit down, close his eyes and expand his magic before making the jump. Then image of the chained rabid dog flashed in his mind, a surge of adrenaline suddenly flooding his system. He had no idea why his brain had interpreted the presence of the Lair, mediated through the Icarus connection, and transformed it into that image. The sheer fear it instilled in him was more than telling, though.

He could not afford to waste any time. He still had to reach the mainframe, grant mercy to Lloyd Cromwell, and find a way out of here.

In the end, he relaxed his body and jumped. He landed awkwardly, which was just about what he could expect given the landing site's condition. He slid down the metal, but used his two hands to grab anything he could and eventually halted his fall. Luckily he had not been stupid enough to jump with the Force Lance still on his left arm.

Sliding down some more, this time slowing down his fall with a sharp piece of metal he grabbed from the mangled body of the metal giant, he reached the nuclear reactor. With mundane sight, it was a marvel of engineering but little more. It wasn't even hot, nor did it hum with power. There were no signs of its dangers.

He didn't dare switch to magic sight. He still remembered what he saw from a distance, and from up close he feared he would lose his precarious grip on the metal.

Instead, he coated his hand in magic. Ten copper every second, it took him ten seconds to drain the battery in his Inner Space. Again, mundane sight betrayed nothing. There wasn't enough magic to really cause visible consequences in the fabric of the world. He did feel some tingling, but that was it.

Before he could overthink it, he plunged his hand into the reactor. It slid inside the solid material like a ghostly apparition, making no contact with the cold hardness of the metal Michael could see with his own eyes.

The Nuclear Element surrendered without much fight. It appeared inside Michael's inner space, at the edge of the sphere around the central star.

After making sure it wasn't doing anything dangerous, Michael opened his eyes and climbed back up. The jump to safety was easier and much more welcome. He felt no different, truth be told, than five minutes ago. Almost as if he had not just absorbed a gigantic source of one of the most exotic and dangerous Elements he had ever encountered. Behind him, the robot looked the same, immobile and dead. Except, this time it was also dead to magic vision.

A weak tremor swept through the city. Michael saw flashes of the rusted bolt holding the rabid dog back loosening, the chain growing slack. The dog barked.

"Icarus. Where's the mainframe?"

The trickle of magic directed towards Icarus' planet allowed the AI to interface directly with Michael. A building lit up in his vision, an unassuming warehouse that looked like most others in the city.

"It's all centralized there?"

Icarus hummed, "not too smart, don't you agree?"

Michael hefted the weapon and slotted his left arm in it. It was still warm, but he could eke out a shot if he needed.

The sky opened up. Leaving the central district of Sitea behind was like exiting a forest of metal and glass. It had been torn up by the battles and the robots, but the sheer amount of buildings had meant that even when turned into mounds of debris and scrap, they still loomed high like little hills that blocked the sun and the view of most of the sky.

The outer district was much more open, with short buildings and wider roads.

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Stuff moved at the edge of perception, little robots and automated machines closing in on him as he moved closer to the highlighted warehouse. They surrounded him, only to scatter away and disappear when he aimed his weapon in the general direction of the mainframe, the threat of total destruction more than enough to discourage any hostilities.

The moment he dropped the weapon, they were back, though, and their dance began anew.

Dusk approached fast. The dying light left whole streets shrouded in darkness, especially the narrower alleys between warehouses, where only service trucks and delivery vehicles usually went. Now, red eyes prowled those streets, the will of a machine mind gone insane made manifest.

The darkness was eerie. All around, it was much deeper than normal, because the Lair had made it so the lights did not come online almost as if to spite Michael. Guided by the last remnants of lights, he reached the warehouse.

He traversed the dark corridors lit only by the light of his Force Lance. Things were moving beyond the walls, a great lot of things, but none that Michael could see. From inside the facility, he didn't even need to take aim to destroy everything and the Lair knew it. Despite the threat, however, the energy in the air was one of open hostility, of barely restrained rage.

The Lair, Michael thought, was broken enough that it might try to kill him in a single strike. No machine would ever do it, game theory dictating that the threat of destruction was infinitely larger than the reward of the kill, but the Lair did not play by the rules of game theory. It was capable of hatred and spite, and it hated Michael very much.

A door finally opened into a server room. Racks upon racks of server towers, lit by bright lines and runes, occupied the gigantic space of the warehouse. They were packed, making the place feel claustrophobic, while up above powerful AC units kept the temperature of the place under control.

It was evident that they had been added later, and not by human hands. Their positioning was strategic, with no care for looks or design or symmetry.

Going deeper through the server racks, Michael began to see signs of damage. The hardware was increasingly esoteric, mixing technology and magical circuitry. Cores of some kind, spherical nexi of energy, began to connect the machines together. Blue and red energy coursed through them, and then into circuits and runes.

The damage deepened with every step. At the same time, mundane technology began to grow sparse and then disappear. The Lair had begun as a magical machine, but something was contaminating the cores, corrupting the circuits, like cancerous growths mutating and changing the magical hardware.

To survive, the Lair had added increasingly mundane and outdated technology to its mainframe, adding cooling units to keep the temperature down as old CPUs churned away to keep it alive. By the looks of it, it was a losing battle.

"There," Icarus said as a specific server was highlighted in Michael's view.

Lloyd's consciousness was a crystal disk. A hard drive of data connected to the machine via a tendril of pure corruption. The disk was mottled with stains like blotches of ink, more corruption wearing away at the old man's personality and memories.

"The very same corruption that allowed me to help you," a voice cut through the silence.

In the distance, Michael thought he heard screeching. Barking. The rabid dog, he figured. It was yanking the chain, loosening it. The old man, whose projection had appeared and illuminated the place, was pale and almost see-through.

"I came here to fulfill my promise."

"I know, kid. Thank you for this."

Michael shook his head. "Are you sure there's no other way? I can take the disk, offer you a way out. I have magic, and an AI–"

"There's no need for any of that," said the man. "I have reached my decision long ago. Please, let me decide my fate while I am still myself. The day I change my mind, is the day Lloyd Cromwell is no more."

"Alright." Michael said. "How do I do it?"

"Shatter the disk and burn the shards. You can do that?"

"I can."

"Good. Before you do it, let me reward you for taking the time and effort to help an old man out."

Lloyd snapped his fingers, and a doorway of light appeared. It cut through the darkness, making the far-away barking sounds recede while also increasing in intensity. The dog was angry and impotent, it seemed.

"Do not thank me for the door," Lloyd said before Michael could open his mouth, "this is not the reward. This is just me following some old rules I inherited with this place. You broke the Spire, and needed another way out. Now my reward, my thanks, is a little snippet of Truth."

The old man winked as he said Truth, then chuckled.

"I see recognition in your eyes. And some healthy fear. Don't worry about how I know your secret. Now, some Truth for you: magic is holistic. You saw that when you coated your hand in mana and plunged it in a nuclear reactor to steal its Elemental energy. How can something like that make any sense? Beware though."

He eyed Michael up and down, and his gaze seemed to bore through his soul, reaching his Inner Space.

"The system you have built inside of you is a paradox. It works only thanks to the holistic nature of magic, but it has also crystallized into a structured universe. It has no rules, but you better follow its logic. Don't go and touch that Nuclear Manifestation you absorbed until you're ready to control it. If you brute force it with magic, remember that once you leave your Inner Space and your holistic influence ceases, it's going to explode and kill you. If you don't want to die, you better find a way to incorporate it in the system you've built."

"I will."

Lloyd nodded. "That is all, lad. I wish you the best of luck."

The hologram disappeared. Michael destroyed the crystal disk containing Lloyd's consciousness, the brittle glass-like substance shattering into a million pieces. He gathered them in his pocket to burn them later, and stared at the door of light.

Behind him, the rabid dog barked. Impotent.

Michael stepped into the light, and left Sitea behind.