The Infinity Dungeon [LitRPG]

Michael was assaulted by the smell of wet earth, rotting plant matter, and putrid miasma the very moment he stepped out of the portal leading out of the white room. The very next moment, he found himself attacked by an almost solid cloud of insects of all kinds, ranging from giant mosquitoes to other less easily identifiable things larger than his own head.

Then, as if his situation wasn't unpleasant enough, the portal behind him disappeared, and most of the light was gone with it. The cramped space was plunged into darkness, save for a faint red light somewhere in the distance and the light of Michael's Force Lance. Between Michael and the light, other than insects, were layers upon layers of plant matter: gigantic dark leaves, vines dangling from the low ceiling, and algae that dripped from above in curtains that were half see-through and slick with rotting water.

His feet had sunk several inches into the wet, slimy ground. The sound of wings and buzzing insects was deafening, punctuated by shrill calls that reminded him of a jungle. During the brief moment where he could still see clearly, though, Michael had seen that this was no jungle. It was an enclosed space, cramped and tiny, covered in plants everywhere. They were not green but dark and ominous, as if adapted to absorbing whatever energy they could from the single source of dim red light that he could see.

The insects bit at his skin, some of them drawing blood that dripped in warm, sticky globules down his face and clothes. Cursing, Michael tried to use some magic to keep the insects at bay, recalling his attempts at doing the same together with Johanne back when he was learning unbound magic under his old system. He failed, tried again, and then had to ask Icarus for help.

Together they succeeded. Except, in the few minutes that it took Michael to finally be able to create some sort of repellent field around himself, he must have been stung a million times by the nasty vampiric bugs. Already he could feel his flesh start to swell as who knows what kind—and how many kinds—of venom clashed with his immune system.

It was itchy, hot, wet, and painful.

Cursing, he took two steps forward, towards the light, before slipping and almost falling face-first.

"Great, the ground is uneven and filled with fucking holes," he muttered as he extracted his left leg, which had sunk all the way to his knee, from one such hole.

He then looked at his right hand, which he had instead used to hold onto some dangling… thing while he had lost his footing. It was covered in strange slime, and it stank. In the dark purple light born of the fusion of the blue light of his weapon and the red light somewhere in the distance, it looked black. Of course, it looked black.

Michael wasn't sure he wanted to know its actual color. In fact, before entertaining the idea of creating a light using magic, he wiped his hand on his shirt, behind his back. It came out stained but no longer dripping ooze: an improvement.

He then snapped his fingers, willing a magical light to materialize above him.

"Aw, come on," he growled to the persistent darkness. "This shit all over again?"

He tried several times before he saw a flicker of light appear and then die moments after. It seemed that he was going to have to suffer through the very same tribulations in making magic manifest outside of his body that he had suffered the first time around.

"Not necessarily," Icarus interjected, "let me help."

The AI joined Michael's will in directing the magic, managing the tedious calculations that now came with the magic system inhabiting the Inner Space. Instead of complex fractals, there was now complex power grid management to deal with.

The light appeared suddenly and without warning. Michael had not even been trying his hardest to manifest it, busy as he was trying to understand whatever the hell Icarus was doing, so he was blinded and recoiled back until he felt squishy dampness against his back.

He cringed and removed himself from the wall, which seemed to squirm and try to pull him in. The light he had manifested was bright and cold, but the deep browns and reds of the foliage ate it up with so much greed that it was as if the room was made no brighter than it was before.

He ordered the little point-source of light to move around, scouting the area. It was as easy as breathing.

"Let me get this straight," he said in a low voice. The room was small, with every corner colonized by dark vegetation. A corridor opened up behind several films of algae and goop, where the red light was coming from. "It's the energy management that screws me. Once you took over that aspect, I found magic to be easier than ever."

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"That has been my observation also," the AI replied, "which is why I suggest you let me handle the calculations and the energy management. I make magic available to you, and you use it however you wish."

"Reasonable." It wasn't as if Icarus was going anywhere anyway. The planetoid that represented the AI was as much a part of Michael's Inner Space as the star at its center.

Pulling away films of goopy algae with the Force Lance, Michael made his way towards the corridor. The magical light trailed above him, shadows dancing and making the plants look more alive than they should.

A particular trail of plant matter managed to dodge the weapon being used to part it and landed on Michael's face.

"Ugh, this sucks!" he screamed in frustration. "Tastes like rot and shit."

He spat. The weapon was covered in the stuff. He almost wished to shoot it, clear up some space. Yet, something prevented him from doing so. Something more powerful than simple common sense, which was being eroded by the second. No, it was something more primal.

He approached a wall, trying to look for the source of his discomfort. The wall was soft, covered in plant matter, but Michael gritted his teeth and plunged a hand inside, searching for solid matter.

His eyes widened when he found something he did not expect. Or rather, "There is no wall. The plants, they are the wall."

Suddenly the whole room, and the corridor ahead of him, turned ominous and treacherous. Now the walls seemed to shift and move, and this time Michael had a hard time knowing if it was a figment of his imagination, a product of his point-like source of light, or perhaps him discovering the secret had triggered something, some change, some horrible truth of this place.

The urge to shoot the gun disappeared in a wave of vertigo and nausea. The place had felt claustrophobic before, but now it looked like a brown, rotting tomb of diseased plant matter. The smell had been rancid, barely bearable before. Now all of a sudden it was strong enough to make Michael dry heave and almost vomit. He sealed his nose with magic, tapping deep into his regeneration, making him wish he had built more collectors and batteries. But as the smell diminished, he deemed the expense worth it, as long as it did not tap into the magic stored in the batteries.

The nausea did not go away. If anything, the sudden lack of the strong smell made the place eerier and stranger. Michael tried to imagine where he was, and his mind conjured up rooms upon rooms of gooey, barely solid plant matter all stacked one upon the other in a rotting, smelly maze that extended up into towers or across vast distances. Perhaps he was underground, deep beneath the earth. Perhaps he was in the sky. Perhaps he was on a planet whose whole surface was like this. Shooting the Force Lance in any of those cases would be a death sentence.

He crawled towards the corridor and its lone red light, wondering where the heck Infy had sent him. What was this place?

Darkness ahead hid the rest of the passage. There was another plant matter film, this time much thicker than the ones Michael had cut through before, forcing him to manifest a little claw of pure mana to slice through it. It cut like a knife through butter, making him feel like a true mage for once, one capable of neat tricks and handy feats without the hurdle of a rigid and tightly bound system. It was all thanks to Icarus, of course, and even this little trick cost him a shit ton of mana from the batteries, but as regeneration kicked in it made a smile appear on his face.

With the obstruction gone, the light illuminated a larger chamber. There were pods, made of the same sticky bio-matter as everything else, connected to dark tubes that slithered down the leafy ceiling. The walls of the pods were green, the first green Michael had seen since coming here, but dark veins of what looked like rot crawled on their shiny surface, turning the sleek material goopy and foul smelling.

There were rows upon rows of them, extending past where the light reached and into absolute darkness. Weaving through them, Michael noticed that the corruption diminished the further he got from where the portal had deposited him, patches of green becoming more common, and the plants now looking much more like normal plants than mutated monsters of rot.

There was a corner of the room where a lone flower had even managed to bloom in the darkness. Cutting the magic feeding the light for a moment, Michael watched in awe the vibrant violet color of its bioluminescent leaves.

He considered sitting down in this oasis of peace before braving the rot again in search of an exit, but a tremor suddenly shook the whole room and the rooms beyond, plant matter vibrating like jelly, undulating as the seismic waves propagated through the viscous liquid material and rotted matter. Chunks fell from the ceiling, actual cave-ins that exposed thinner sections of wall. They were dark, half-translucent, and beyond them Michael thought he could see the twinkling lights of the night sky.

The room lurched again, gravity flipping almost entirely before the walls liquefied one last time and returned to a semblance of order. The damage remained, though. The plants were unable to cope with the destruction of whatever was happening, especially where the rot had inhibited their self-repair abilities.

The roof sagged, touching the pods at the center of the room, like plastic half-molten by a heat wave. Beyond the layer of plant, foul liquid pooled and made the blister bulge larger and larger, ready to explode. Twinkling stars shone beyond.

Michael hefted his weapon, considered what to do, and then lowered it down again. He could shoot his way out; indeed, he could see the sky from here, but something held him back. Instead, he considered the wall. It was translucent in some sections, and one of the sections was different from the others.

"Is it me, or does this look like a door?"