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

bubbling up inside me gets so bad I don’t even notice it when I crash into Grunt, who’s crouching on the ground. It’s my old friend from Orany. Wait, is Rachel here, too? He’s grown over the past nine years, ending up right around my age.

Human, Grunt, Level 2561

 

As I’m pulling myself up off the ground, he throws himself at me and starts beating me with his bare hands.

Damage received: 51220 (ignored: 25000000)

9138/9138

I’m not cocksure enough to skip throwing up a shield. Strength like that could just spit on me, and that would do me in. Happily, he just does physical damage, already using six different attack methods on me. Why didn’t I sense him? Why didn’t I see him? Why is his level on par with mine? Why is he here? He’s even wearing the same clothes he wore back in the village nine years ago. I think back to the time that I broke his nose at the fair.

Killing him is a pleasure, and I finish him off with an amplified blow to the crown of his head with my elbow. My hand-to-hand fighting has nothing to do with combat techniques; it’s the art of killing, plain and simple. Rage! So many years have gone by, yet I still remember how those two followed Rachel around. I finally have my chance to get some revenge.

Three seconds later, I get kicked in the back of the head. The kick is so strong that I’m thrown through the air before tumbling a few meters across the ground. I land awkwardly, face down, and my assailant exploits the fall. It’s Grunt yet again, even as his lifeless body is lying next to me. It’s almost as though I didn’t kill him.

The first, the second, the tenth, the hundredth… They come at me one after another without ever disappearing, three seconds after I killed the last. He never tries to say anything, and he dies within ten seconds if I paralyze him.

Grunt isn’t local, so he must be part of a test. But what test? And why do I despise him so thoroughly? Sure, he looks like a little bandit kid, but he never evoked in me this feeling of all-consuming rage.

Listening in on my own emotions, I realize that the rage isn’t receding. It should have left me after the first dozen, but it’s only growing stronger, and there are a couple hundred bodies all around me.

Using trial and error, I’m able to figure out which direction I have to go in order for the rage to intensify. If I run in the opposite direction, it softens slightly.

Okay, so that’s navigation. In the Gray Lands, apparently, there’s only one direction, and it’s based on emotions. The fact that it’s the House of Rage implies that I need to go in the direction the emotion is coming from. I wish I had a scale to see how far I am from the center. It reminds me most of mental auras and the way they act on emotions, something that makes perfect sense—I’m in the afterlife.

Just to see what happens, I run perpendicular to my vector, just turning left.

Damage received: 500 (ignored: 25000000)

9138/9138

I start taking damage from a new aura. This time, the rage is joined by pain that doubles after a minute’s run. Two minutes later, it’s up to ten thousand. It’s a million and grows quickly after an hour. There’s no guarantee that the source of the aura isn’t moving, though it’s also protecting me from most of my potential opponents.

Really, I need to relax and think for a bit. The rage is eating away at my strength, I’m sagging, and I feel my body starting to go limp. I can feel my body struggling with the emotional overdose. The med capsule released a sedative into my blood, and I’m feeling sleepy.

I could use some battle intelligence and an understanding of the logic behind the test. If I need to kill each opponent a thousand times, I can do that without much problem, but that can’t be it. The solution must be more complicated—just to get here, you have to make your way somewhere with 50 million damage. I needed the sefirot seal, too, and I haven’t seen that anywhere else. The test has to be something more in-depth.

To get the information I need, I take off running in the direction the rage is coming from. Two hours later after dashing along lifeless plains in complete silence and oppressive anger, I come across Grunt yet again, though definitely not where he was the first time. He and I have both jumped a level, meaning that our levels are linked. Even though I killed him two hundred and ten times, only the first ten counted. The rest of the kills got me less and less experience. This time, I just slice his head off on the run and keep going. I need to know what’s closer to the source of the rage.

A little while later, I kill Grunt again, because he’s been chasing me. He neither gives me experience nor backs off. The respawn interval is still three seconds.

Suddenly, I sense somebody nearby and stop sharply. Someone is hiding in stealth mode close by, which means they must have the marauder or assassin class.

I send dragon breath scorching around me, and Ownie comes running at me out of the flames. That little moron always did hang around Grunt. It comes as little surprise that he’s my next opponent.

Human, Ownie, Level 3062

 

He’s 500 levels higher than me, and he has invisibility, does piercing damage, knows some dangerous moves, and even offers some poison. In a word, he’s a very awkward enemy for a mage like me. I activate my shield, pouring all of my mana into it. I’ve been trying to avoid using it ever since Femida got worried that breaking it might injure me. In that way, the shield is a lot more vulnerable than I am, especially now that I don’t