Luca DR

The infinity dungeon 183

Chapter 183

Michael felt the temperature increase by the second as his own body heat, brought by rising panic, was exchanged with the limited air in the small, confined space. The glass fogged up, small droplets of water forming on its smooth surface like on a car window after being shut inside for too long.

The corridor Michael had come from had all but vanished in the darkness, while ahead the many doors looked identical to each other.

Running his finger on the metal handl...

The infinity dungeon 182

Chapter 182

There were several seconds of utter stillness. The underground warehouse had been full of moving machines and noises, trucks with roaring engines, soldering bots welding parts together in showers of sparks, grinders breaking down pieces, blocks of asphalt being loaded up and down by tall cranes that almost reached the ceiling.

Now it was silent. Even though the machinery did not have eyes, Michael felt the pressure of a thousand gazes upon him. Plus another, bigger and...

New chapter release schedule

Hi everyone,

i have decided to be much more consistent with my releases. It will be hard, I have a full time job and family and friends, but I will try my best to publish chapters 3 times a week!

You will be able to enjoy them for the same price as always, of course.

Release times will be Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 7:00 PM CEST (which is Central Europe Summer time, GMT +2 i think??????? should be, yeah. i think. yeah, should be.)

Aaaaanyway. I hope you will find...

The infinity dungeon 181

Chapter 181

The next few days passed at a glacial pace. Michael was slowly getting better, and when he didn't feel feverish and weak, he set out exploring.

He learned that while the city was empty of people, this didn't make it completely empty or immobile and static. The truck and car he had seen on his first day had been but the appetizer.

Plenty of things were going on all the time. The pharmacy window had been repaired a few days after it was broken and he even saw a tru...

The infinity dungeon 180

Chapter 180

The car sped towards Michael, its faulty headlights flickering in the rain. It didn’t show signs of slowing down; instead, the roar of its engine pierced the sound of the rain, then moved past where he was hiding. The car kept speeding down the large road, turning right at a ninety-degree junction and almost rolling over. Tires screeched, then it was out of view.

Michael’s face remained pressed against the sodden ground, his body on all fours, for a long while. The...

The infinity dungeon 179

Chapter 179

When Michael turned his gaze back towards where Infy had been standing, all he saw was the copse of trees and the sparse undergrowth of the clearing. The sun was high in the sky, its warmth a welcome change from the cold that had crept into his bones.

His jaw hurt, and his hands were bloody. Pulses of pain radiated through his tissues, deep in his muscles and tendons, and pus oozed from his wounds. The respite from pain he felt while he was talking to Infy had been tem...

The infinity dungeon 178

Chapter 178

“What promise are you talking about?” Michael asked the figure.

They had stopped before the portal, mostly because Michael was wary of following a strange figure wrought in shadows through a portal leading who knows where, when he had no power to defend himself.

The figure laughed. “You ask a question, but there are rules that I must follow. Power and knowledge cannot be freely given. They are given as rewards.”

“Rewards…” Michael parroted the...

The infinity dungeon 177

Chapter 177

Blackness.

A man floated in a sea of darkness, pitch black so deep that it swallowed everything.

It had even swallowed his body, for he had no limbs nor sensations coming from his flesh. He had memories of having a body, but those memories felt like they belonged to a place that was very far away.

The concept of distance was strange, as was the concept of time. In a land of darkness and no light, with no shapes and no sensations, those concepts lost meaning...

The infinity dungeon 176

Chapter 176

“It's clear that this is not working.”

Michael paced around the laboratory, watching yet another experiment yield no result. The absence of magic, the nothingness where the Sanctum once resided, had been a burning hole at first. Over time, the pain had faded and with it, the memory of how it felt to have magic.

Nowadays, it felt like depression.

Michael looked at himself in the mirror.

“I don’t recognize the asshole looking back at me,” he m...

The infinity dungeon 175

Chapter 175

“Perhaps you should go back to the lab, where it’s safe.”

With a single sentence, Michael had been effectively thrown out of the loop. Of course he still had the undying loyalty of Johanne and Icarus, and with them he could exercise his will and take back control of Unity in a matter of hours if he wanted. Every day that passed it would be a little bit harder, but as long as Icarus remained his it would never be impossible.

As he sat in the sterile lab, on ...

The infinity dungeon 174

Chapter 174

“What?” Travis said while laughing, “you thought that we would–”

His words were cut off by a powerful hand lifting him and body-slamming him into the reinforced wall. Surprisingly, it had not been Johanne but David. The man had risen to his full height, and was holding Travis by the neck so that they were face to face.

“Look at me,” he said.

Travis struggled, his legs dangling more than two feet off the ground as he was lifted up again to allo...

The infinity dungeon 173

Chapter 173

Michael drifted in the empty space, watching the ruin of what had been the foundation of all his power grow smaller and smaller. All that he had built was gone, replaced by chaos itself.

Complex emotions fought for dominance. He understood that it had not been the System and its red lines making him unstable, at the very least. Grasping at the empty space and finding no purchase, he realized that he could only work on his own emotions because everything else–even tho...

The infinity dungeon 172

Chapter 172

After he was done catching up and doing the rounds with everyone, Michael rushed to the dungeon. It was a critical time, with a storm brewing at the horizon, but it was not on their heads yet and he thought he could afford to take ten minutes to sort out his own problems. His outward appearance was fine, but his Sanctum was a mess and his magic was in disarray.

It was more than evident when he tried to clear the first room of the first floor with overwhelming Fire and ...

The infinity dungeon 171

Chapter 171

“With the bullshit out of the way,” Michael announced as soon as Trevor and Jennifer arrived. “Let’s actually start this strategic meeting. We have wasted more than enough time and I'd hate to see it get sidetracked again. First order of business!”

He snapped his fingers. Everyone looked at him, but his gaze was glued on David’s face. The tall, muscular man slumped for a moment, blinked, and as his body straightened up again he was like a puppet whose strin...

The infinity dungeon 170

Chapter 170

“That’s the big boss, huh?” a young man, perhaps in his late twenties, asked.

They were sweeping through the Site, as ordered.

“That’s him,” the leader of the team of three said.

“He must be what, twenty?” the third person said with a scowl. “You’re telling me we have to listen to what he has to say?”

“Have you taken a look at yourself lately, Jackson?” asked the first.

“Ah fuck, you’re right. Shit, I almost forgot....

The infinity dungeon 169

Chapter 169

Ducking, Michael narrowly dodged a bullet that had been shot his way. It flew past him, breaking a window and smashing tableware in an empty apartment with a vista. Ignoring the damage to somebody’s second home, he climbed onto the elevated portion of the roof above the apartment and then lunged to the neighboring building.

A similar scene unfolded there. Goons with guns were waiting for him, already on the roof, and as he came down from the jump from the higher roof...

The infinity dungeon 168

Chapter 168

Compared to the vastness of the Sanctum, the area affected by the detonation was minimal. It was a fraction of the huge, empty rock space that encompassed everything. What was more, it was the portion farthest from all the skill fractals, since Michael had elected to start from there and work his way inwards, not willing to risk the more vulnerable parts of his inner space while he was still inexperienced about the process.

When the explosion happened, any notion that ...

The infinity dungeon 167

Chapter 167

A small flicker of light was all Michael could see. A pinprick in the distance, white and blinding against the dark dome of sky above him. Getting up, he realized quickly that he was not in his own body anymore, lacking any sensations coming from it. He knew from his experience inside the Sanctum that he was in some sort of inner world representation of himself, and did not panic, although the total lack of sensations was strange. Usually, he would feel some things, just mut...

The infinity dungeon 166

Chapter 166

Deep in the catacombs below the city of Rome, the tendril of energy that Michael had been following seemed to take on the form of a flowing river of magic. The flow was visible as Michael walked right into it, the magic parting around his aura without much resistance.

If his hunch was right, the general direction of the catacombs was the center of the city.

“The Vatican, more accurately,” Icarus said, “assuming the catacombs don’t wander away from their c...

The infinity dungeon 165

Chapter 165

As soon as he was out of the oppressive shallow depths of the Roman catacombs, which he never would have guessed could be accessed via a random shop on the street, Travis began barking orders. He assessed the situation quickly, and realized that in true Italian fashion his plans had been derailed by the most random occurrences–things that not even Icarus was equipped to deal with.

“Of course, signora,” he heard Gonzalez say, the Delta Squad operative who had stay...

The infinity dungeon 164

Chapter 164

The red lines were everywhere. They were like the logic pathways of a motherboard, all straight lines and sharp ninety-degree turns. They lined every single inch of the seemingly infinite walls of the sanctum, but it was around the skill fractals that they were the most concentrated. It was a tangle, a mass, a strangling vine keeping the fractals locked in a vice grip.

“The system,” Michael said, “or what remains of it. I wonder if it became like this because I b...

The infinity dungeon 163

Chapter 163

The airport runway sped past them as the plane accelerated and took flight. The moment of turbulence that followed lasted for longer than usual, and the passengers reacted to it in the usual fashion of a crowd: panic.

Michael stared lazily out the window, thinking about the long flight ahead. He had plans on how to spend the time, but even then it still felt like wasted time when he could do the same amount of work in the Dungeon with only a handful of minutes passing ...

The infinity dungeon 162

Chapter 162

“Will David grace us with his presence?” Travis asked.

Michael shook his head. “Nah. He’s running around the country all the time, doing his stuff.”

“I noticed,” Travis deadpanned. “Doing what exactly?”

There was an implicit meaning in the question. Travis had asked Icarus about it, which is the first sensible thing to do around Site 00 whenever you have any question—even if stupid—and Icarus had not told him.

“Recruiting veter...

The infinity dungeon 161

Chapter 161

“I finally managed to gather all my old Uni friends,” Michael said with a nod aimed at his phone. “All it took was some rather… hands-on manipulation from Icarus to make it happen. I never thought normal people would have such busy schedules. I understand now why friendships shrivel and die when people grow old.”

Stephan looked at the tranquil lake with longing, thinking about his own past. “It’s true,” he said. “Things always get more complicated. Tr...

The infinity dungeon 159

Chapter 159

Millions of the things. Tiny beings, little critters that were everywhere. Looking at them could render a person insane, or kill them. They lined the tunnel, they were on the walls and in the walls, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Their shape was hard to pin down, like a blur of double-vision that just got worse the more you stared at it.

Michael could see them as he walked through the corridors leading back to the main section of the dungeon. As he g...

Chapter 158

Chapter 158

There was no standoff, nothing. The moment the younger David saw that Travis was about to attack him, he sprang into motion. Travis, who had realized who this younger man was and had aborted his attack, had to scramble to do something.

His eyes widened at the sight of David’s savagery. He didn’t hesitate one moment before reacting with all his might, fists glowing with Blackstone and another Element he did not recognize, powerful legs cracking stone and pulverizing...

The infinity dungeon 157

Chapter 157

Michael’s fists pounded on the ground, cracking the strange concrete-like material and digging small craters.

“How dare you die on me!” he screamed.

David was a fallen giant, his body lying to the side with long limbs like gnarled tree branches. He was a statue: ponderous and immobile.

Then a blow of magic caught Michael’s eye. It was more annoyance than anything at first, and he wanted to curse at the dungeon for daring to distract him in a moment ...

The infinity dungeon 156

Chapter 156

A girl sat, alone at night, staring at her computer screen. Her parents weren’t home. They never were these days, it seemed. They had better things to do than to spend time with their teenage daughter who just refused to go out and play with the other girls her age or do whatever it was that teenagers did. She was too much work to deal with, and thus they did not deal with her at all. They even stopped forcing her to go to school, and on her bad days she would spend the wh...

The infinity dungeon 155

Chapter 155

Michael jumped to the side, avoiding a projectile and then weaving out of the way of the vicious whipstrike that followed. He spun into the air, jumping several feet high thanks to his stats granting him monstrous power. He created a Hycean Ice bullet that he shot towards the boss monster, then retreated and prepared another attack in a never-ending barrage.

The boss was a gigantic mountain of muscle, sinew, bone and mortar. There were entire bricks embedded in its str...

The infinity dungeon 154

Chapter 154

“That old fool,” Travis muttered.

Michael watched him idly. He would be surprised if the man hadn’t dug a trench in the concrete floor by the time David returned, with his frantic pacing back and forth.

“He wants to be a hero,” he went on, “We only have one serum and the doctor still hasn’t figured out how to replicate it!”

Michael looked up. “Liff is dying,” he said.

“I know!” snapped Travis, “I know. I’m not saying that h...