Chapter 01

  “What, you scared to explore a little cave, Mike?” Josh taunted, his voice reverberating through the wide tunnel leading to the open air of the outside.

  Michael cringed at the nickname. He wasn’t on such friendly terms with Josh, not yet. He was exploring a cave they found, using the flashlight on his phone to make sure he didn’t fall on a rock and break his legs.

  “I think it’s larger than just a little cave, Josh,” he retorted. He really didn’t want to be here anymore.

  He was about to turn and leave when Josh’s voice echoed to him from the entrance.

  “Come on! Where’s the guy who caught a rabbit alive and skinned it before cooking it over a firepit, Michael? Where’s the experienced explorer, someone who claims to have scared off a bear on the trail just the other day, huh?” Josh’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’m beginning to think that you didn’t scare off that bear, Mikey. Are you, perhaps, a coward?”

  Michael frowned, feeling heat rising to his face. Looking at the cave, he thought that maybe being labeled a coward would be the lesser price to pay, at least in this case. Looking back, however, he saw Josh’s silhouette standing at the entrance, and he thought of all the mocking and nagging and what-ifs that he would be subjected to if he turned back now.

  With a sigh, he steeled himself. This was just a cave. A silent, deep, dark, and foreboding cave, sure, but just a cave nonetheless. Josh, on the other hand…

  It was like the chosen one business his karate sensei always pulled on him, and he felt like he was being pushed to do something he would not otherwise do.

  He told himself, this time like every other time, that he was doing it so he could feel like he had conquered something he was afraid of, coming out a stronger man in the end. That a person didn’t grow without a challenge was one of Michael’s biggest tenets, after all.

  Michael had met Josh in person for the first time only a few days ago. The two had agreed to challenge a part of the Appalachian Trail together, and after long hours spent chatting on the internet, mentally preparing for the trip, they had finally met at a parking spot close to the section of the Trail they wanted to walk. It was going to be only a few nights out, nothing too fancy, to get to know each other and see if they had the right chemistry.

  Michael had not known at the time that Josh was much less experienced than he let on. His ego had been so big that, when chatting online, he had fooled even him. This meant that before the first day was even over, Michael had handled himself easily enough while Josh’s bluff had been exposed. It led to an embarrassing moment when Josh admitted to his lies, but it also bred envy, and envy is an insidious thing.

  Michael pushed on, partly because of his own insidious mechanisms and partly so that he wouldn’t hear Josh moping and whining for the next several days. It was supposed to be just a shallow cave, and there were no traces of animals or strange things nearby.

  As he walked, Michael began to think that perhaps his initial assumptions weren’t as correct as he believed. By the time he reached so deep that all the light from outside disappeared, lost in the gloom where the only source of light now was the feeble flashlight feature of his cheap cellphone, he knew for a fact that he had been wrong.

  He was about to turn around for good, deciding that hearing Josh’s mocking comments was the lesser of two evils, when a voice made him jump out of his skin.

  “A human! Do you seek power?” the voice said, and it was sinister, like that of a devilish creature, speaking from the depths of the cave where light did not reach. “Welcome to the Infinity Dungeon, human. Prove that you deserve the power that you seek.”

  Disaster struck as soon as silence once again descended in the darkness of the cave.

  A terrible noise accompanied the rumbling of the earth, making Michael lose his footing. He bruised his knee, his teeth clenched, and his muscles contracted. Rolling to his back, feeling the sharp stones, he realized before the dust had even settled that something had fallen from the ceiling behind him, locking him into the cave.

  He got up, groaning. The entrance was barred by a strangely smooth slab of stone, airtight, and no screams for help made it to the other side.

  He almost didn’t hear the soft steps behind him. He turned around barely a moment before he was struck square in the chest with a blade. The only thing that saved Michael from certain death were his reflexes, honed by martial arts that, up until now, had been nothing more than a hobby he picked up on a whim.

  He twisted, putting his hands between his body and the offending implement, earning pain beyond belief as his left hand was pierced by the short blade that was meant for his gut. His phone fell to the ground, the flashlight still on, and the dusty air was lit in spasms that revealed a horrible green and misshapen body, brandishing the blade and ready to strike once again. The edge was rusted all over, and had torn chunks of meat from Michael’s left hand with its jagged cold metal.

  Adrenaline kicked in. When the monstrous green form prepared to strike again, Michael snarled and grappled it. He was bigger and stronger, although unarmed, and only got cut once more before he managed to snap the arm wielding the knife, breaking bone and joint with the first real application of a technique he had practiced thousands of times in the dojo.

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  The goblin, for it could be nothing else but a filthy goblin like in the stories, was not deterred by pain and struck again, snarling, spittle flying everywhere. Michael reacted reflexively, grabbing the fallen knife from the ground. He had never trained with a knife, but he knew that the sharp end went into the soft flesh, and it was enough. Its tip met the creature’s neck, the goblin short enough that its neck came at the exact height Michael’s hands were.

  The knife went in and out before Michael’s conscious mind could intervene, coming out of the wound in a spray of blood. Michael felt a weight press down on him as the goblin attacking him went suddenly limp. Knife forgotten, he ran over to retrieve his phone—the only source of light.

  When he turned around again, the corpse of the monster was gone, and for a moment it felt like it had all been a dream, save for the fact that Michael’s hand was throbbing with pain and bleeding from where the flesh had been torn from bone, and ligaments and nerves cut and frayed. There was blood on his clothes, his own blood being only less than half of the total volume of it, the other half being a putrid dark ooze that had come out from the goblin before it vanished. The putrid blood seemed to be slowly evaporating, but it could have been his imagination in the low light.

  Where the corpse had been, Michael saw the glow of a small green stone. No larger than a fist, its light cast shadows across the cave, hitting rocks that looked giant, like boulders.

  “Well,” the voice was back, coming from all around and making Michael suddenly feel very unsafe, like it could jump out of a wall at any time. “This might be interesting,” it went on, “take that skill stone. You earned it. The rules are clear. Make it far enough, and I might just root for you!”

  Michael’s hand twitched with pain, little spasms renewing the burning sensation of exposed nerves as the blood just refused to stop flowing. He was a savvy person in the bush, normally, knowing what to do in almost all situations. Here, though, he found himself panicking. There was no light save for his flashlight, the air was stale and still and hot, the only way out was closed, and the room was so small, he felt his breath come in short, needy gulps that failed to oxygenate his blood. He was having a panic attack.

  He had nothing to stop the bleeding. He fumbled with his phone, bloody hands staining the screen and making its contents illegible, messing with the capacitive display and pressing all sorts of icons and apps. Even when his trembling fingers managed to enter the unlock code, he saw that there was no cell signal.

  The thing was dead, useless without a connection to the internet. He couldn’t look up ways to bandage his hand, nor could he call for help. He only had his clothes, not even the knife the goblin was wielding after it fell who knows where.

  He couldn’t use his clothes to create makeshift bandages, stained as they were. Who knew what goblin blood might do to him, even after it allegedly evaporated. Looking at his hand, shedding light onto the wound with his slippery phone covered in coagulating blood, he was fairly certain any major arteries had been spared the worst of the damage or he would have been bleeding out by now.

  He tried to calm down. Taking a deep breath, his thoughts slowly converged on the small piece of glowing rock that had taken the goblin corpse’s place. It was a piece of deep green jade, and the way the light from the phone hit it made it almost shine with inner light, creating beautiful swirling patterns.

  The voice had called it a skill stone and as he reached for it, it felt like the voice’s attention was back on him, like it was watching him.

  He grasped the stone, the agony of accidentally touching it with the wrong hand making him curse under his breath, feeling like he was entertaining the evil entity with every panicked misstep and bad decision, brought upon by pain and blood loss. As soon as his bloody fingers closed around the stone, however, a message appeared in his vision, and for a moment the rest of the world seemed to go still as he read the text floating in midair like it was the only thing in the world that could save him. It might very well have been.

  There was no other information, but Michael didn’t need any. He distractedly wondered whether this meant that magic was real, and what it might entail, but most of his conscious mind was occupied with other matters to care about such questions.

  Without even knowing how, he immediately activated the skill stone and felt a short-lived wave of euphoria wash over him. Something fundamental about his very being was changed in an instant. He knew, from the depths of his being, that he was suddenly more than he had ever been, and the skill he had just learned was only a part of what had changed about him.

  Then, he instinctively knew that by focusing on it, he could make the description of his new skill appear at will.

  The skill was active before he had even finished reading its description. Blinding pain assaulted him as he did. So sharp, and unexpected, that for a moment Michael thought he blacked out.

  The pain of being stabbed all over again rushed through his mind in a split second, followed by more pain and itching as the flesh started to stitch itself. The process was quick enough that he could see it happen in real time, but he was granted no time to be awed by the power of magic before a wave of vertigo, nausea, and deep, gnawing hunger robbed him of his footing, making him scrape his knees against the sharp stones of the ground.

  He was about to heal himself again when some instinct stopped him. The hunger, he guessed, was probably because the healing had taken something from his body to fuel the process, something he would need to restore before he could use it again.

  Michael wondered, for a moment, if he had lost some of his hard-earned muscle. Ignoring that, he looked inward in a way he couldn’t properly explain, and he could feel that there was something missing now, something more than just the mundane matter of muscle and fat.

  It had been present for only a few moments between when he took the power of magic and when he used it, but already its lack made him feel queasy. He also noticed that this something was ever so slowly coming back to him.

  In the games and novels, they called this magic power mana.

  Grabbing the phone, its screen now cracked and battered, he went to find someplace to sit and wait the headache out. As he did, the mana seemed to return, although the hunger did not go away. Then, a quick bout of healing later, he headed down the only path he could take in search of an exit.

  Deeper inside the Infinity Dungeon.