Chapter 05

  The following day saw Michael up and about way earlier than his usual unemployed schedule, and by the time he would normally be having breakfast while struggling to make his brain work, he was already driving his truck back towards the section of the Trail closest to where he had found the dungeon. There was no way to know if the dungeon was going to be there again today, given his late-night thoughts that perhaps the dungeon sometimes decided to change location, it was a good place to start a search.

  He brought generous rations as well as rope, flashlights, and his new gun.

  He remembered going to the shooting range with his grandpa what must have been ages ago. He had been just a kid learning to handle a gun well before the proper age to do so, but now that muscle memory was going to serve him well. His aim might have deteriorated, but he had always had a good eye and a steady hand, and the dungeon would offer a lot of targets to practice against.

  The drive back to the parking spot was three hours long, long and dull enough to make his brain spin around in circles, always gravitating towards the topic of the dungeon. He fantasized about all the things he would do with magic, one day far in the future when all his worries were gone.

  He thought about what he would buy first once he managed to make enough money to not have to worry about food and rent anymore. Perhaps he could get rid of the beater truck he was driving, get a new ride. Even a temporary one, a step in between the beater truck and his dream car far in the future.

  Why stop at a car, though? An idea popped up, about buying property close enough to the Trail so that he wouldn’t have to go back and forth every day. Perhaps even on the Trail. He could become one of those Trail Angels, while also making sure nobody stumbled into the dungeon entrance and got hurt by accident.

  Or gained magical powers by accident, he thought, memories of how he felt when it looked like Josh might accidentally enter the dungeon coming back to the forefront of his mind. It was hard to predict what a random person would do if they suddenly gained the power to summon fireballs, but Michael was aware that there was more to it than that.

  He didn’t dwell on details such as how he was going to make the money he needed to make his fantasies come true. He knew it would become a necessity soon if he kept delving the dungeon, but he had no clear answer yet.

  He decided to take his problems one at a time.

  One step at a time. A saying that was especially relevant on the Trail.

  The hike from the new parking spot to the dungeon—thankfully it was still there—took only three hours, bringing the total travel time to six. Michael rushed down the trail so fast he was almost running. In case he fell, he thought, he could heal himself with the last dregs of his mana.

  He arrived without incident, but still spent the mana to refresh himself, feeling invigorated by the skill working its magic. He even felt the stifling sensation of being out of mana diminish by simply being close to the dungeon, as if it was the source of the magic.

  Which it was, he thought.

  Only a single goblin would be there to meet him in the first room, more than easy enough to handle with his gun, but he had to steel himself nonetheless. There was no transition between stepping into the darkness of the cave and the first room now, and no message to welcome him.

  Unexpectedly, though, the voice was back.

  “Oh? He brings weapons!” it sounded different, almost disappointed. Michael wished he was making things up, but it really did feel disappointed in him. “You think I haven’t seen a pistol before, twerp?” it went on, “people come in here all the time to die, and you aren’t different. Good luck, cheater.”

  Right on cue, the powerful flashlight illuminated Michael’s foes. Foes, plural. And they were not goblins.

  They were skeletons. Two of them. Almost six feet tall, they were made entirely out of polished bones, animated by a powerful magic that Michael could almost see with his naked eyes. It radiated outwards from their bodies, only to be replenished by the mana-rich air of the dungeon in a manner similar to how Michael’s own mana was replenished by the rich energy in the air now that he was inside.

  Since their magic consumption was lower than what they gained, the skeletons would never get tired. Like last time, the door had slammed shut behind Michael, trapping him inside with the tireless skeletons. He expected it to happen and despite what the dungeon’s voice had said, he felt confident that his gun could take care of a couple of slow-moving skeletons. They were just bones.

  The bones were not reinforced, not in the first room at least. Michael took careful aim—muscle memory slowly coming back to him. It was hard to miss a target so big as a humanoid head that moved so slow, and the high-caliber bullet smashed into it, pulverizing the bone plates and leaving two gigantic holes where it had entered and then left the hollow cavity of the cranium.

  However, while Michael was expecting the shot skeleton to drop dead, the necromantic construct only winced at the recoil and then stabilized itself. It resumed shambling towards him again, nonplussed. In fact, it looked like it was moving just a tiny bit faster now.

  It was still easy to walk in circles around it, but already Michael was seeing how this room could potentially be fatal. There were two enemies, and they had to be carefully herded like in a zombie video game, otherwise one could sneak up on him while he was focused on the other. Meanwhile, he also had to keep an eye on the ground. His powerful new flashlights allowed him to see much more than he could before with only the light of his phone and didn't even need to use his candlelight skill at all, but the ground was still treacherous.

  He needed to look down whenever he moved, giving the skeletons ample time to ambush him from behind. Their slow walk was not as slow as it first seemed, their pace picking up while he had to split his focus in many different directions.

  Then there was the problem of how to actually kill them. They didn't seem to have any weak spots, not any that he could actually recognize. Smashing the skull of the first skeleton with a bullet had barely slowed it for a second, so what else could he do with the remaining bullets in his magazine before he had to reload?

  He finally understood the real danger of the room, and why the voice of the dungeon was so sure he would die this time. A normal person who had never been to a dungeon before would probably panic at this point. Without a powerful gun like his, or a tool sturdy enough to break bone with, they would have to hit the skeletons with their bare fists, or with a rock. Then the uneven ground and the skeletons’ mechanical persistence would have the best of them.

  Unfortunately for the dungeon, he was not random people. He simply stepped back, took aim and shot at the closest skeleton’s tibia. The first shot missed its target and he cursed, but he knew he was a lousy shot when adrenaline made it harder than usual to aim.

  He shot again, grazing his target. Then again and this time the tibia exploded in a shower of splinters, making Michael think that perhaps he wasn’t that bad of a shot if he could hit a moving target that small. The skeleton fell, its balance destroyed, and after a couple of tries it realized that it could not stand up again and started to crawl. It had fallen dangerously close to Michael, who had almost entered his range to secure his shot. Perhaps he wasn’t that good of a shot either if he had to get so close to hit the monster.

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  Seeing the crippled bag of bones, a wicked smile came upon Michael's face as an idea came to mind. He crippled the other skeleton much in the same way and stepped back. Now came the truly dangerous part. The skeletons had yet to attack him, but he knew that he was in danger of being lured into a false sense of safety by the sight of them crippled and crawling on the ground like impotent misers.

  “Not gonna make that rookie mistake,” he muttered, picking up a large rock and throwing it at the crawling skeletons.

  He could heal his sore muscles all he wanted, now that he had access to mana and a lot of food. If anything, all of this could be classified as a workout, making him stronger. He didn't know for sure, but he had the feeling that healing his muscles was the same as resting, and that the proteins in his food would go there to make them stronger and bigger. Building muscle was something he had always struggled with, so he welcomed the workout as he threw rock after rock until all that was left of the skeletons was dust.

  Once the last of the monsters was gone and they had evaporated like usual, the door appeared, beckoning him to the depths of the dungeon. He looked around in search of loot and noticed with great disappointment that there was none. For a moment he wondered whether he had missed it, and had gotten reabsorbed. But no.

  The dungeon had mentioned rules it had to follow, last time Michael was here. Had there been no rules, then the dungeon could simply kill him, or torture him. Surely it wouldn’t give him any loot.

  Then he remembered his own mindset. His mantra has always been about overcoming hard challenges and being rewarded with power. Train hard at the dojo, and become a better martial artist. Survive a dangerous encounter and come out of it a little bit wiser. Endure a tough situation and grow as a person. Perhaps it had been something he told himself in order to avoid depression at the lowest points of his miserable life, but with time he had found meaning in those words.

  In the outside world, the mantra was just a little something he told himself. Sure, he could stand up to Phillip at the dojo, and receive a beating. He could grind at his job—former job—and delay the inevitable moment when he would have to return to his parents, defeated and begging. But it was inside the dungeon that the mantra, that those words really acquired a deeper meaning.

  Modern life was nothing compared to the risk of death, true and permanent death, that suffused every moment he spent in the dark caves of the Infinity Dungeon. By bringing the gun, and tossing rocks at powerless enemies, Michael had gone against the spirit of the dungeon.

  The question was: would he be better off being cowardly and receiving almost no loot, or should he take more risks, and gain more loot?

  He pondered over the question on his way to the second room. If he kept going through the dungeon without ways to become more powerful, he would soon meet enemies too strong for him to handle. Then no cowardly tactic could save him. In the end, cheating would only bite him in the ass later on. Instead, doing things the proper way could only benefit him.

  It was with resolve painted on his face that he faced the next room. There were four skeletons waiting for him there, and they were taller and bigger and stronger and meaner than the ones he faced before. He could still defeat them without too much danger, he thought, because they were slow. If there was a time to try more risky tactics, it was now—he had food, a healing skill, and a fallback option in case he screwed up.

  A grin appeared on his face without him noticing as he braced himself, holstering the gun and taking out his shield. He bashed it against the first of the skeletons, applying his newest skill, [Distortion Field], to it. For the first time since his tests, he could feel what it meant for a skill to exact a toll on his mana system in an instant, and he knew how a moderate mana cost felt like.

  It was literally ripping chunks of magic power out of him with each skill activation, not painful save for the sensation of emptiness that followed, meaning that the skill had to be used sparingly. He could not see his mana reserves as a number like in video games, of course, but he could feel how close he was to full or empty and act accordingly.

  The skeleton exploded in splinters and shards of bone, the shield producing a conical tornado of dead matter being forced to die all over again. The grin on Michael's face grew bigger. This was more like it; this felt right.

  But then the other three were upon him and he was forced to defend himself and stop thinking. Thinking too much in a fight would cost him his life, he knew. He had learned as much against the goblins the previous day, and that knowledge had been something that no amount of training in a dojo could ever teach him.

  He raised his shield to defend against a strike, retaliating but forgetting to activate the distortion field due to inexperience. Then he had to twist away, finally understanding how the skeletons were meant to hurt him. Not just by blunt force, but by reconfiguring the bones in their hands and feet so that they could become bludgeons or sharp claws. Claws he was barely avoiding. He ditched his travel pack, realizing now that the meager protection it offered wasn’t worth the cost in mobility. Rookie mistake, but he was no fighter and he was learning. With it went the dagger, useless, but not the gun, which he kept.

  Michael threw a fist at the closest skeleton, chest height, then activated [Distortion Field], choosing to use the skill in its bubble version rather than shield version.

  The distortion field appeared right in the hollow space of the monster’s rib cage. The little sphere of repulsive force could not be summoned inside a solid material, but the rib cage wasn’t all solid, and the punch had been aimed right at the space between bones.

  It was just the first phase of the risky plan Michael had concocted. In order to act, the field had to touch something, but the field itself could not be moved. Then the skeleton moved just enough that its bones touched the sphere before the bubble popped. When it happened, the repulsive force flung all the bones outwards relative to the center of the bubble, with a force that was much bigger than it would have been if they had been hit by the shield. Michael thought it might be because the surface area they were touching was smaller. Whatever was the case, the result was explosive.

  Michael learned the hard way how dangerous shards of bones could be. He created some space between himself and his foes, then with a grimace he pulled several fragments out of the flesh of his cheek, refusing to think about what sort of pain he would have experienced had the shards hit him in the eye.

  He rethought his approach and took out his gun. It might make the fight easier and reduce the amount of loot, but it was a calculated tradeoff. Nobody had spelled the rules to him, so he didn’t know how much loot he was sacrificing but he felt like he had learned a lot from this room already, and he was aching for a heal.

  Too bad he had lost sight of one of his foes for just a moment. Thinking it wasn't a big deal, he prepared to strike against the one in front of him and was met with a sharp pain in his back. He realized in shock that he had been stabbed by a sharp claw, ripping out a chunk of flesh from his side. And while he was dazed, shock and pain and adrenaline making his vision blurry, the skeleton in front of him managed to get past his clumsy defense.

  It struck his arm, going around the protection of the shield, and Michael’s bones snapped as if they had been hit by a steel pipe. Then he understood. The skeletons he was facing were not constrained by muscles or tendons: they could strike at an angle and at full strength, without silly things like biomechanics stopping them.

  Michael screamed in pain as he rolled backwards, ignoring what the sharp stones on the floor were doing to his back. After the fight, he would have all time in the world to lick his wounds. He didn't even heal, too much of a waste of mana now that he was quite low from repeated use of [Distortion Field], instead making use of the short window of time during which the shock made the pain almost feel like it was far enough away that it wouldn't affect him.

  He raised his other hand, ditching the shield completely. He knew he was too weak to take another hit even with its protection, and instead made a repulsive bubble appear inside the closest skeleton’s skull. It exploded, as if it had been touched by death itself. Then Michael turned to face the last skeleton, hesitating for a moment as he took a step back. He felt for his mana. He thought he had enough in him for another use of the skill, if barely. That was the problem about not being able to quantify mana well enough, especially not in the heat of combat. Only practice would solve this issue.

  Then his thoughts were cut short as the cool rock of the dungeon pressed against his back. He tried to raise his hand, but the skeleton was suddenly too fast for him to react to. His only good arm was shattered in an instant. Had Michael seen it coming, he could have reacted with a distortion field, blocking the blow and making the skeleton hurt itself in the process, but he had been too slow and using the skill was too new a thing to be a defense reflex.

  The bubble appeared after he had been hit, but his aim was off. The skeleton stumbled for a moment, then righted itself.

  Arms useless, panting and out of mana, Michael stared at the manifestation of his own death in the face, unable to do anything about it.