Limitless, John Gold [best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

get going. First, however, I’m going to do what I’ve been preparing for this whole time.

I build a chain of ten ritual altars in Crazyman’s Forest. The first and last are each designed for ten maximum-strength skills, while the ones in between are all for single use. Why so many? Why spend so much precious time? It’s simple. I want to summon a Level 10000 raid boss.

From my spot seated at the altar, I dive into the astral. A minute later, I find myself in the ninth layer, right at the border where the strongest astral creatures live. It’s even hard to tell how far away and how big objects are here. The snake I pick looks like the most harmless of the bunch, as everything else around here is simply gargantuan. The mistake I make, however, is in thinking that it’s fairly small. Actually, it’s enormous, just incredibly far away. My second mistake is the strength of the spell. I pour as much strength as I can into it, and the result turns out to be mortally dangerous.

Monster, Aarokh the Pale, King of the Ice Terrors, Level 9998, raid boss

 

The semitransparent snake with the single eye immediately wraps itself in ten layers of shields and activates an aura of terror. The plants around me start to wither away; leaves fall from the trees; the soil dies, and the seal with the bodies of my victims is destroyed. The powerful, seventy-meter-long body slides smoothly through the air, making its way right around the trees. I’m able to fire off just one spell before the seal is destroyed and the ritual is broken.

“Punisher! Maximum!”

I dump ten times the normal amount of mana into the spell, bloating the sword in the sky to the size of a small mountain. The ritual amplification gives it so much power that you can feel it in the air, even from half a kilometer away.

The sword falls a second after I use a leap spell—they’re available again. There’s an explosion and a wild roar that’s soon swallowed up by the shock wave. Part of the forest dies, though the king of the ice terrors just loses its shields and a mere 10% of its health. How much does it have?

Its guards materialize in the air, and the whole group tears after me. In response, I cast a canopy of invisibility over myself and hide behind the altar. Twenty guards go flying, and then the raid boss’s entire body comes and hangs over my head. He can’t see me, though he definitely knows I’m around here somewhere. I sense its power—like I’m standing next to a nuclear reactor. Every cell in my body revels in his strength.

“Tornado personified! Maximum!”

It wouldn’t be fair to just call me an idiot. No, that would be too simple and imprecise. When you use borrowed health and turn it into mana, it’s incredibly painful. I used to think that it was like having strings yanked out of me. Now, it’s more like leaving the nerves in place and tearing the meat and bones off them, it hurts so much.

The tornado takes on incredible power and starts sucking in everything nearby, pieces of tree, soil, other vegetation, and even a couple of curious bodyguards. In what is probably a stroke of luck for me, I’m pulled into the funnel and spat out half a turn later. The personification takes on the form of a giant wrapped in stormy armor, and the aura of lightning instantly attracts the snake’s attention.

When I pull myself out of the undergrowth which the force of nature hurled me into, I dash over to my next altar. The raid boss is locked in a desperate struggle with the cloud giant, physical attacks having no effect. It doesn’t look like the tornado does mental damage. Time for me to jump in.

“True dark! Maximum!”

The body of the snake is enveloped in a thick covering of wiggling darkness. Its head disappears completely, its health dropping precipitously, and the raging giant continues to go at it with lightning bolts and wind blades. But I wasn’t expecting what happened next. The snake’s jaw unhinges, cutting loose a thick stream of light that shatters the substance I summoned. His special attack!

The true dark disappears as soon as it is hit, and I take off running to the next altar. The snake activates a new ability that sends ice spears raining from the eye. My magic shield is enough to protect me from them, though it doesn’t stand a chance against the snake a couple hundred meters behind me. For a monster of that strength, we might as well be standing right next to each other.

As I run, I activate the altar with the self-destruct seal. I’m thrown forward by the explosion three seconds later, and I hear my enraged assailant roar from behind me.

I can feel with the eyes on the back of my head that there’s a powerful spell coming my way, so I cut sharply left.

The area attack freezes an entire section of the forest, killing everything it touches. But six altars, ten minutes, and kilometers worth of exhausted nerves later, our battle begins to wrap up. My last altar, the one designed for ten spells, is just twenty meters away when the snake destroys it with its ray of death. It guessed what my weakness is. Screw that thing!

I duck left, toward my tree, and let my opponent get in front of me. It flies past, snapping its enormous jaws rakishly, and turns around.

“Light spear! Maximum!”

I aim for its only eye, though it’s one step ahead of me. A second eyelid, this one armored, snaps shut, leaving the spear to hit the thick skin. All I can do is break through the outer layer of armor. The snake writhes from side to side, panicked by the flash of bright light. Just one good hit with another light spear would be enough to take off the last 15% of its health, but I