The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

The raw ore orbiting around Icarus' planet shifted, a gravity wave perturbing the almost perfectly planar ring of multicolored material. Magic spread through the cloud of iron, gold, carbon, and many other elements, seizing its bulk and pulling it towards a small area in the middle of empty space.

Three small dots could be seen far ahead. A silhouette of a man, a strange cube, and a flower of shiny reflective material with a dark center. They didn't move, for motion was not a naturally occurring thing in this space. The ring's own motion had been an anomaly born of sheer belief and a touch of magic.

Therefore, when the ore reached its destination, it stopped there, waiting.

Michael gave the mental command, and in his field of vision, the green holographic skeleton of another Solar Collector appeared beside the already-built structure. With a flex of will, the ore began to float towards it.

The stream of materials slowly sank into the structure, turning the hologram into tangible matter. Without magic, Michael realized, he would have had to transport it all by hand: from the asteroid to here, and then he would have had to figure out how to coerce it into becoming a fully built structure. It would have taken ages.

Instead, in a matter of minutes, a second collector had joined the first. A red beam, like a laser yet visible even in the vacuum of space, connected the two solar arrays. Michael immediately felt his magic regeneration double.

"Two Copper units per second," Icarus said. "Remember that your battery can only handle up to ten per second."

Michael nodded, "I know. I was already thinking of adding another. What do you say?"

"Good idea."

Ten minutes later, the second battery was done. It linked up with the first and expanded Michael's capacity to 200 Copper—or 2 Silver.

Unfortunately, it also used up the last of the readily available ore. Already, Michael's dreams of building thousands of collectors and batteries and quickly reclaiming his lost power were proving to be just that, dreams.

There was still some stuff in Icarus' orbit that Michael could use, though. The larger debris he lifted from the asteroid: beams of concrete and bent metal, frames of destroyed structures, and tangles of wires and meshes. They looked like the broken remnants of an old civilization, damaged by battle and then perfectly preserved by the vacuum of space. They were half corroded by radiation, the other half protected by the asteroid's gravel entombing most of the material.

Grabbing a smaller concrete pillar with his mind, Michael began to pull it apart with magic. Even with his increased capacity and regeneration, it took a long time to turn the pillar into piles of stone, sand, iron, and carbon that he could use.

"Damn," he sighed when he looked at the end result, "much less usable stuff than I hoped."

"It was a small pillar." The AI was a planet, and it had not moved, but Michael got the impression of a shrug from it.

Michael got to work. He disassembled another pillar, then a strange wire mesh, some metal plates, and a red box full of circuitry for the rare metals it contained. A cloud of stuff was building up around and behind him, slowly growing as the pile of junk and debris slowly shrank.

"I'm exhausted," he rasped after what felt like hours. "And the white room won't last forever. How much material did we gather?"

"Enough for another collector and a battery," Icarus said.

"That's not much."

"You didn't process all that much material, Michael."

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Michael was thinking about cursing, but then another thought struck him. Why not build a machine that would help him process the scrap faster? Before he could express his thought, the AI spoke again.

"Or, instead of building a machine that requires you to be here to process the stuff manually, you could automate the process."

"Like an idle game?"

Thoughts of those games where you log out and after a few hours come back to vaults full of resources came to mind. He never really liked them, requiring too much patience to progress unless he was willing to fork out money, and the idea of turning his Inner Space into one of them left a bad taste in his mouth.

"Think of it more like one of those games where you could do things yourself, but you can also have machines do it for you. Satisfactory and Factorio come to mind."

Michael turned to the AI, taking the whole planet into view. "First Stellaris, now these two other games. How many consciousness threads were you wasting gaming?"

The answer came several seconds later. "A couple."

"Whatever," grumbled Michael, "I never played those games, care to explain?"

"Sure. We'll come up with a blueprint for a machine that uses a set amount of magic—plus all the magic you can spare after you've filled up your batteries—to turn the scrap you collected into ores. It won't mean you can't do it yourself, it's just a little extra help. It's not like it will limit you, you know?"

Michael hummed, "I get it, I get it. It's just an extra help, huh?"

"That's right."

They spent the next two hours designing and building the machine, using the last readily available supplies and even turning the rest of the scrap into ore to cover its massive cost.

Floating back, Michael beheld his creation. It was large, a monster of cranes, arms, a red-hot foundry that ate scrap and belched sparks, with a conveyor belt spitting out neat and impossibly clean piles of ores behind it. Its size made no sense when one considered its material cost, and Michael wondered where all the extra mass came from, before shrugging and deciding that messing with the fundamentals of magic had cost him too much already.

The machine burned 0.1 Copper units every second just to keep it idle, but it could be fed as much mana as Michael wanted to make it process stuff faster.

The inefficiency ramped up with more mana, but like the collectors and batteries, the Scrap Foundry had also been designed with upgrades in mind.

"Now, all that's left to do is feeding it."

The trip to the asteroid took less time than it used to take, now that Michael could burn more magic to fuel his flight. He had to be mindful of the magic going to Icarus and the Foundry, but the AI had provided him with a handy number at the edge of his field of vision to keep track of it and the state of the batteries.

He could see this turning into one of those nightmarish grand strategy games where one had to manage a gazillion resources. In the end, his new system could end up being not at all simpler than the one it was replacing.

At the asteroid, he pulled deep from the reserve mana in the batteries, using the full output of the battery packs.

"Michael!"

He stopped, head snapping towards Icarus' planet in the distance. Around him, scrap of all sizes orbited him like a storm suspended in time.

"Shit," he muttered, realizing his mistake.

The orbiting material stilled. In the distance, the dim orb of Icarus' planet brightened. Beside it, the Scrap Foundry reignited in red-hot flames and sparks.

"You gotta watch the output, man."

"Yeah," Michael said, "sorry."

"Look at the UI. All the numbers are there. Just mentally select the magic and you'll see."

He did that. The number expanded, showing all the information he needed to decide how much magic to use for a task. Battery Capacity: 200/200. Regeneration: 2/sec. Magic used by essential systems: 0.35/sec. Magic used by secondary systems: 0.10/sec. Spare magic: 0 (1.55/sec currently diverted to the Scrap Foundry).

Michael blinked and recoiled as if struck. "Hell no, man. I am not going to deal with this."

"I can do that for you, no problem. Just don't cut my power unless you really have to."

"You better."

Getting to work, he hoped this was only a temporary phase and that soon, he wouldn't have to worry about this mess of a magic system at all. Let Icarus deal with it. At least the AI liked it.

After emptying the asteroid of almost all its precious elements, plus a great deal of raw stone and gravel, Michael returned to his budding base. In the distance, behind even the asteroids, a lone light pulsed against a backdrop of pure darkness. The Nuclear Manifestation loomed even though it was smaller than the tiniest of specks, whispering haunting things, drawing Michael's thoughts and worries to it.

He ignored it, feeling another tug at his consciousness, this one stronger and much more urgent. Depositing the debris he gathered close to the Scrap Foundry, where its arms could reach, he returned to the real world. The white room was collapsing, it was time to go.