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The infinity dungeon 100
🕑 Added 2024-10-08 16:18:31 +0000 UTC100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chapter 100
Michael returned to the fourth floor with Drullkrin in tow soon after he finished talking to Johanne. He knew that once he left the dungeon, he would have to deal with the chest anomaly, along with Travis and a couple of teams, but before that he wanted to scout the floor a bit and, why not, perhaps even beat it in the process.
This time, instead of stopping by the hut as he had last time, they continued down the road. Michael noticed, as he passed, that the hut was once again empty and cold, the tree he had snapped for firewood restored as if he’d never touched it.
The rest of the hike took a few hours. Soon, a fissure in the rocky face of the second sheer cliff became visible, like the maw of a great beast. All around it, piles of rocks had accumulated over time as the peak slowly crumbled, ground down by the sharp alpine wind.
As Michael and the goblin general walked—much faster than any normal person could run on flat ground thanks to their magic and stats—they realized that what appeared close from afar was actually quite distant. They crossed icy creeks, coasted by banks of compacted snow and dirty ice, and were subjected to the same sharp wind that cut through the rocks of the plateau. Neither of them spoke much.
Michael kept his aura wrapped around himself, more as an exercise than anything else, but also because it offered solace from the wind that was slowly becoming rather annoying. Drullkrin studied the landscape, ever alert, unbothered by the cold thanks to his burgeoning Ice affinity.
They stopped for a quick rest at the entrance to the cave. The sky was overcast, threatening icy rain, and the wind howled as it passed through the rock. There was little vegetation up here, only alpine plants with rich smells and aromas Michael sensed from afar with his enhanced senses. The inside of the cave was utter blackness, as if something rejected the very light that tried to enter.
If this isn’t a boss room, Michael thought, I don’t know what is.
“Get ready,” he instructed Drullkrin.
“No need to tell me twice, my king,” Drullkrin replied.
Michael nodded. He had said it more for himself than anything else. Switching his [Magic Sense] from passive monitoring to active scanning, he solidified his aura as best he could. He summoned a Spirit Guardian to protect him and light the way and cycled air through his lungs to build up Chi. Several water bullets tainted with the foul power of rot materialized around him at chest height, hovering like sentinels, held aloft by the power of [Marksman] and supercharged by [Magic Manipulation].
The rest of his arsenal awaited activation. Feeling as ready as he could be to face an unknown challenge, he stepped inside.
As his eyes adjusted, quite slowly compared to what he had become accustomed to, Michael studied the cave's interior. Most of the space was taken up by a massive lake, with gravel beaches surrounding it like desert dunes before rising into the air as pillars that supported the ceiling. The water was dark, almost black save for the occasional white foam where tiny waves disturbed its surface. The waves looked tiny, but all sense of scale was lost from their vantage point.
Two small white dots rested on the surface like placid petals floating on a pond.
“What are they?” Michael inquired, squinting. Even with his enhanced vision, the shapes were hard to make out.
He saw Drullkrin use his Fae Network to enhance his eyes and quickly realized he could use an Unbound Cast of [Crude Body Enhancement 3] to do the same.
“Are those… is that a goose?” he asked.
Drullkrin seemed equally confused. “I think so, my king. The other one, isn't that what you call a swan?”
Michael hummed. “And what would they be—”
Suddenly, radiant light split the air, the whiteness so bright it hurt the eyes. Michael felt tears welling up as the light damaged his retinas even through his considerable resistances, peeling the layers of his aura off like the layers of an onion. Then it passed, and while momentarily diminished, his aura had held. He quickly healed the damage, and sound rushed back to his ears, making him realize he had also been deafened by the explosion.
Half of Drullkrin’s body was covered in burns—the half further away from the protection of Michael’s aura. He healed it with [Healing Aura], dead and charred skin flaking off as new green skin replaced it. As he did so Michael thought that perhaps, had he not kept his aura tight around himself, he would have ended up the same. Perhaps even dead. From now on, he thought, I’m keeping my aura tight at all times.
Not just inside the dungeon. It would be difficult to maintain constantly, but it was free training and with practice, he believed he could do actually manage to keep it tight at all times, unwinding it to its normal shape only when needed.
It would, as a nice side bonus, make him nigh unkillable if he managed to keep up even while he slept. Only a Peak Silver, could kill him, or a Low Silver if he managed to get the drop on him.
Busted. Utterly unbalanced.
It wasn’t normal and he knew it. Even just changing his aura's shape had taken months, years of practice. When wrapped around him, it still extended out into infinity, with only the first several layers wound around Michael like a planet’s magnetic field, while the outer layers spread out like an electric field. With more practice, he could convert more layers, seemingly without limit.
The two animals were gone. Where they once floated, the water now frothed and churned, as if the lightning had awakened something deep beneath from its slumber.
A loud growl and a crash. A screech. The sound of splitting water preceded the appearance of something truly gigantic. At first, it looked like an island rising from the lake’s depths. Made of dark obsidian plates, it soon resolved into the shape of a head. Behind it, the tip of a stinger made of the same dark stone erupted from the water, followed by a long tail of interlocking stone links attached to a gigantic scorpion. Two pincers the size of buildings snapped in front of it, creating sonic booms. They dripped glowing green liquid that sizzled as it hit the water.
How is it floating? Michael wondered. Outwardly, however, he was focused. With barely a glance between them, both he and the goblin sprang to action. No words were needed to coordinate them, not after fighting together for so long.
As Michael ran towards the monster, Drullkrin did the same, the two converging on opposite sides of the creature. Michael activated his ultimate rotation of skills and abilities, the one designed to handle unknown and dangerous threats.
A new Spirit Guardian replaced the old one. This one, courtesy of the second level of the skill offering more flexibility, supplied Michael with a steady stream of unknown power. It was subtle, but potent. Simultaneously, he flared his [Magic Manipulation], further empowering his foul water bullets as they shot towards the creature one after another. With [Magic Sight], Michael realized that the creature was hollow, its buoyancy enhanced by magic. He corrected the bullets’ aim with [Marksman], the rot component of the spell eating into the rock and turning it brittle.
With each step, he gathered Chi, ready to be transformed into Jing. With each breath, he mumbled commands, carried through [Voice of Command], enhanced by [Magic Manipulation], and empowered by his aura to confuse the creature. [Presence] also weighed down on the monster like the mountain itself was trying to keep it submerged. Entire Silver coins worth of mana went down the rotation of spells in a matter of seconds, more than what any other magic user Michael knew could bring to bear even if given days to prepare.
By the time he reached the water, Michael was a storm of magic. He ran through it, sinking as he still ran as if it weren’t even there, while at the other end of the cave, he saw Drullkrin moving about on a platform of ice. Having arrived first, the goblin was distracting the scorpion with powerful blows, hands coated in ice gauntlets, creating showers of ice and stone shards.
Michael hit the creature moments later. In a single blow, all his stored Chi turned to Jing, [Okinawan Mastery] providing the technique for maximum force. A microsecond later, Fire and Ice elemental energies poured through the hole carved by the martial energy and into the creature, until finally, all its cavities in the immediate vicinity were filled with the repulsion fields of a stretched-out [Distortion Field], courtesy of its last level up.
The result was cataclysmic. The opposing elements reacted and, together with the lake water, created an explosion of steam that rocked the cavern. The [Distortion Field] turned the explosion into something far more dangerous, with shards of obsidian that were once the scorpion's protective plates now transformed into bullets of a makeshift fragmentation grenade. The Jing pulverized what remained, propagating through the stone.
Aura and [Presence] soon played their role, flattening the obsidian shards and what was left of the monster to the ground as if gravity had suddenly increased a hundredfold.
[Presence] reaches level 4. Infuse mana into your aura to create both physical and psychological pressure.
Michael hit his head on the far wall of the cave well before the monster was dead. The impact barely fazed him, however, thanks to his stats and his aura acting like an airbag. Drullkrin, on the other hand, had to be healed back to consciousness, but the Fae was resilient.
When the dust settled, the monster was obliterated.
The victory was short-lived. A bright light enveloped them. Michael, fearing another attack, saturated his aura with his remaining mana—less than a third of his total pool—but no attack came. When the light vanished, he found himself unharmed.
He had simply been transported back to the beginning of the floor. In the distance, the hut was cold and empty, and the lone tree beside it swayed in the wind.
