Luca DR

The infinity dungeon 270

Chapter 270

Cardinal De Ponti eyed Don Casellaro’s reflection in the mirror warily. The plush, velvet seats of the room reminded him of his residence in the Vatican, although he knew that unlike at the Vatican, here the golden details scattered in the room were most probably fake.

“Why are you here?” he asked the man. 

The Don had waltzed into the cardinal’s room unannounced, as if he owned the place. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he had bought the whole hotel where t...

The infinity dungeon 269

Chapter 269

“And now, the only thing we are missing is covering the world with our domains and giving the system to everyone on the planet,” Icarus whispered.

Michael rolled his eyes. “I knew it,” he said.

Icarus laughed. “What? I’m just saying! We could add quests, and experience points, and boom! Everyone becomes an operator if we give them the right quest and the right incentive. Think about it!”

Michael could see the inevitability of what Icarus had p...

The infinity dungeon 268

Chapter 268

Connecting the spiral at the center of the inner space with the Origin system had been the missing piece to unlocking its full potential. Michael marveled at the thick lines of white data disappearing into the event horizon, then looked at all the other lines, straight and angular, half circles and orbit-like ellipses. The new lines were all free of taint, reducing its overall impact to nothing more than an afterthought and a warning not to abuse the dungeon mechanics again....

The infinity dungeon 267

Chapter 267

“Good save with that device,” Michael said after leaping down the half-destroyed house and joining the others downstairs. “You distracted the bishop long enough for Icarus to strike.”

Travis watched him heal himself, the wounds on his face closing at a visible pace and blood evaporating into nothingness. Beside Michael, Icarus was pacing and looking around, tapping his chin and sniffing the air like a cat.

“Glad to have been of help,” Travis said, scr...

The infinity dungeon 266

Chapter 266

Michael was suppressed. He had been unable to switch the spiral’s attention from the demonic portal to the priest quickly enough, and now the Faith was preventing him from using it to free himself.

A man emerged from folds of space, shrouded in a halo of golden radiance. His bespectacled face was full of wrinkles, yet he moved with surprising agility, sweeping the room with his sight. The red silk of his bishop clothes followed his movements, stilling only when he fi...

The infinity dungeon 265

Chapter 265

Michael was dozing off, more than two weeks straight spent awake and working taking a toll on his mind. It had not felt like this in the dungeon, but the need for constant alertness and intervention all over the world had left him taxed and at his wit’s end. Right as his eyes closed, and he felt the world escape down a tunnel of black, an alarm jolted him awake.

Travis stormed into the room, a projection already above the central table. A map.

“The broken mir...

The infinity dungeon 264

Chapter 264

“Clearly my power is not enough if a priest can suppress a portal just like that,” Michael said, kicking the wall. 

Around him, the bodies of the priests were scattered and broken. The battle that had ensued when he had arrived had not been pretty. The spiral allowed him to counter their Faith magic, absorbing it as it left their bodies, but they could still use it to empower themselves and produce effects in the outside world. Even without its cheat-like prop...

The infinity dungeon 263

Chapter 263

Buried deep in the data streams of the inner space, lurked the Origin system. It was almost unremarkable, data lost among data. It was just a prototype, a fledgling structure of logic and magic both, a spark that needed to be nurtured into a roaring fire.

Michael’s understanding of data and programs had grown by leaps and bounds after the merger between him and Icarus. He had gained the ability to manipulate the data, to build things out of it, to treat it the same w...

The infinity dungeon 262

Chapter 262

“Well,” Michael said. He and Icarus walked side by side, the warm sun of the Valley above them. “We totally forgot about going down to the eighth floor, didn’t we?”

Before Icarus could reply, they both detected something that made them stop in their tracks. Michael’s head swiveled, trying to locate the source of the disturbance, but it was gone before he could do anything.

“What was that?”

Icarus had already activated a million subroutines a...

The infinity dungeon 261

Chapter 261

The battle between Icarus and the Technomancer had always been one of attrition. Far from being equals, it was more akin to the struggle between an elephant and a nimble mouse, more stubborn than even a cockroach.

Whenever Icarus tried to move, to trap the obnoxious man and to delete him from the internet, he always found a way to escape. It irritated Icarus to no end, that a single person–or uploaded consciousness–could somehow manage to outsmart, elude and run ci...

The infinity dungeon 260

Chapter 260

“Where do those lines lead?”

Michael floated close to the edge of the event horizon. Outside, the dungeon had spawned a terrible blizzard that shrouded the peak of the mountain, but the ice and snow failed to penetrate his aura.

The lines he was looking at were threads of data, like the ones connecting all the data rooms and creating a sort of scaffolding for the whole inner space. Except, these ones plunged deep into the spiral black hole, disappearing insid...

The infinity dungeon 259

Chapter 259

Michael did not immediately descend down to the sixth floor, despite being able to teleport there. He went down the regular route instead, so that he could use the shallow floors to warm up and get used to fighting with only the magic of the Site 00 domain.

He kept his aura up, taking his time and not caring about the loss of the time dilation. 

The situation outside should be stable enough, with me able to defend the Site even while down here.

The infinity dungeon 258

Chapter 258

Icarus’s white room slowly bled its brightness until all that remained around him was black. The data streams changed, arranging themselves into constellations and bright lines, clusters of information, video and audio feeds and telemetry from sensors picking up everything under the sun–and beyond.

It was not the doing of this particular thread of his consciousness. He simply let the room change around him while he worked on tracking the don, while the main him fig...

The infinity dungeon 257

Chapter 257

Michael caught Icarus as he fell to the ground. He called for the power of their domain, and the bleeding stopped, but the AI projection’s face remained pale.

He is not a projection anymore, is he? 

“Who isn’t?”

Michael gasped. “You’re back! You had me worried there, for a moment.”

Icarus smiled, but as he tried to get up his smile turned into a grimace. “Hurts,” he rasped. “Thank you for sharing the burden with me.�...

The infinity dungeon 256

Chapter 256

The coins floated in the space above the spiral’s event horizon for a fraction of a second before the black hole’s immense greed locked onto them. It pulled them toward itself, making them vanish beyond where not even the light could escape, forever lost in its insatiable gullet. A shockwave of power radiated from the spiral, reaching the Coin Vault where Michael and the Renegade were staring at each other.

It shook the stone of the walls, rattled the ceiling and c...

The infinity dungeon 255

Chapter 255

In a remote corner of Site 00, barely inside the dungeon’s Area of Influence, a strange current upset the normal comings and goings of the ambient magic. The flow from the dungeon was disrupted by an accumulation of Qi and traces of Intent, slowly probing the area around it.

Nobody reacted to the building of magic. There was no sign that the owners of the place had even detected the intrusion. The magic, despite being of a low tier, had done a good job at disguising ...

The infinity dungeon 254

Chapter 254

Icarus watched from his personal room in the Inner Space.

He watched, and he saw everything, or at least close to everything. Looking up with his physical body, he gazed at the brilliant splendor of the spiral black hole. With the accretion disk brighter than ever, he could see details and shades of color he had never even imagined before.

Then his sight moved to the shield projector ring around the Aura Accelerator. In truth, he did not have a singular point of ...

Chapter 253

Chapter 253

As the spiral at the center of Michael’s inner space slowly cloaked itself back in the impenetrable darkness of the event horizon, Icarus slowly powered down the enormous shield.

The shields around Michael in the materials world, instead, remained in place as he looked up at the sky. The blue was deep, and there were no clouds. The sun was warm, the air rich and fresh.

He felt what courage he had, courage that had allowed him to proudly proclaim that he was goi...

The infinity dungeon 252

Author note: man, I can't wait to release chapter 261. That's going to be a huge bombshell for y'all.

Chapter 252

Keeping an eye on the Renegade’s incoming teleportation while doing other things was easy, at least in the inner space, where neither Michael nor Icarus needed to physically be in the control room to access the data feed.

“Okay,” Michael said. “This time I'm going to give the Renegade a good old ass whooping.”

“Pride comes before a fall...

The infinity dungeon 251

Chapter 251

The platinum coins materialized in the inner space, spinning and clinking, almost showing off. Their shiny surface was bright silver, much more polished and refined than that of the silver coins, and even though they were compressed balls of energy, they released an enticing sort of smell, an aroma of magic.

The largest predator nearby was the black hole spiral, a hungry shark that had not missed the scent of the coins. It wanted them, yearned for them, desire...

The infinity dungeon 250

Chapter 250

Michael huffed, looking around the empty forest as if hoping to find something. Mana rushed to his eyes, coating the world in colors. Sensations reached him, because seeing mana was more than just vision, and the action of bringing mana to his eyes was mostly symbolic, its true effect much larger than just a sight enhancement.

There was nothing but the residual Qi from an aborted teleportation, and not even a lot of it. Had it been a huge waste, at least Michael would ...

The infinity dungeon 249

Chapter 249

This time, the chaos spilled in. There was no moment of temporary peace, no eye of the storm, no delay before the rush of things happening too quick for the mind to properly process overwhelmed Michael.

He saw a spiderweb of cracks expand to what was left of the undamaged sections of the boundary. He got a glimpse of a terrible wave of void, like roiling clouds of purple and magenta vapor spilling in.

It was almost faster than he could fly. The ship, responsible ...

The infinity dungeon 248

Chapter 248

The sight of the half finished Flagship was enough to make Michael want to work on it before he did anything else. Icarus had done a wonderful job with it, and even in its half completed state, it was a sight to behold.

The ship was huge. Easily the largest thing in the inner space, save for the Aura Accelerator and the mark-two structures. A bulky thing, with girders and rough metal panels, it reflected the aesthetic of functional, no-nonsense space travel.

Ther...

The infinity dungeon 247

Chapter 247

Michael arrived at Johanne’s lab feeling rather good. His conversation with Icarus had left him in a very good mood, and he felt closer to his AI than ever. The good mood didn’t last long however, because when Johanne brought up the topic of space, saying that she wished to launch missions up there with the aid of magic, Michael's fear of the deep void resurfaced and he panicked.

“NO!” he said, not even realizing that he was shouting. “No space! I’m not goi...

The infinity dungeon 246

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Chapter 246

In the gigantic cave under the ice of the mountain where Michael and Master Yu had played their strange game, in the sixth floor of the dungeon, was an altar. Qi swirled around it, an impassable storm of energy.

Around the altar, four pillars made of solid gold stretched from the top to the bottom of the cave. Three of them were dim, their gold surface covered by an opaque layer of frost. The one closest to Michael was different, however...

The infinity dungeon 245

Chapter 245

Even from a distance, Travis’s silhouette was hard to miss. His buzzcut and wide cheekbones, thick neck, gigantic shoulders and arms were pretty unmistakable, as was his propensity to walk about Site 00 dressed in military gear and bulletproof vest. Despite his desire for protection, however, he also liked to show off the goods–his arms were bare and the bulging muscles flexed as he walked, responding to subconscious stimuli.

“Another gold card,” Michael said. ...

The infinity dungeon 244

Chapter 244

Unfortunately, Infy did not respond to Michael and Johanne's summons, and a strange buildup of energy forced Michael to return back to the surface as soon as possible, but not without a promise to Johanne that they would try again so that she could get her audience with the spirit.

When he appeared in the surface world, he immediately locked onto the energy signature and teleported, but he was too late. There was nobody in the patch of forest at the edge of the dungeon...

The infinity dungeon 243

Chapter 243

Johanne and David returned from their respective delves at roughly the same time. The two met up with Travis in the Valley, enjoying what little time dilation still affected them before returning to the outside world.

The air between them was strange, as if they had nothing to do with one another save for their shared point of connection: Michael. With him absent, the three didn’t know how to interact.

The truth of the matter was different, at least between Tra...

The infinity dungeon 242

Chapter 242

Walking around Site 00, Michael realized that despite all the time he had spent here, he had never found his true place. He had never made himself at home. 

The Valley felt more like home than Site 00 did, despite being a location inside a strange, extradimensional dungeon that wanted nothing more than to kill him and eat his soul.

At least, some people thought the dungeon wanted to kill people and eat their souls. He really didn’t know, and the only perso...

The infinity dungeon 241

Chapter 241

Author note: 

Well, I just started reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower for the second time, and coincidentally also watched a couple videos on how to improve my prose. Expect changes! And let me know if you like the improvements, or if you prefer the old prose. Of course, my prose is always evolving in one way or the other, influenced by external factors and my emotions, but I always make an effort to listen to my readers’s feedback.

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