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

were filtered through my body and then yanked out. It’s a method I don’t think I’m going to use unless I absolutely have to.

My island of life has grown to a hundred and twenty meters, and there’s a small tree right in the center. LJ shows up as soon as I notice a good spot to lie down. Nope! I need to keep pushing my advantage. I need the forest to be way bigger!

It expands over the next five days. The central island grows much slower, though the amount of health in the root system keeps climbing. And as soon as it gets to be a kilometer in diameter, it’s recognized as a new part of the location.

Current location: House of Rage. Crazyman’s Forest.

 

The admins have a sense of humor. Maybe, they predicted what I was going to do.

Not far from the central hill, I get to work on the construction of the century: it’s time to build a mine. The forest created a sustainable black earth five meters deep, and I dump the ash that comes after it into my empty bag. It all goes into a single slot—the total weight it can hold is more than three tons. A large piece of bark serves as a shovel, and I scoop the ash into my materialized bag. The aura of life stimulates the tree’s root system to grow deeper into the tunnel, serving more or less as walls. I dump all the ash out on the other side of the forest. Finally, fifty meters down, and just before I’m about to give up, it ends in rock.

Over the past two weeks, the forest has grown another thirty meters, most significantly thanks to the regular charges of panacea. They’re my expression of thanks for the service the roots are doing me in the mine.

Why do I need stone? Well, where else am I going to brew potions? Where else am I going to get the sand for the glass to make the vials with? The forest is a wonderful area for farming—the soil is rich with minerals, the plants are full of active ingredients, and both are extraordinarily great to work with. My island is a small place of strength, and I notice lots of plants with enticing question marks in the descriptions growing around it.

Unlike most players, I have the patience to chew through any amount of complex work. Growing the forest and digging a fifty-meter mine, all alone, isn’t a problem for me in the least. I have my end goal, I have ten intermediary tasks to complete, and two weeks of work is just the beginning. It’s the first step toward creating my advantage.

The pace of the work slows a little when I hit rock, as I’m forced to smash it into little pieces and load them into my inventory. The system automatically separates the nuggets of useful material away from the waste.

One week later, I have enough metal to make a bronze cauldron, and I also strike black sand.

Black sand

Type: Ingredient

Class: Legendary

Requirement: ???

Durability: 1/1

Weight: 433 kg

Who would have thought to mine for ore in their own grave? Oh, pick me! I’m not sure how to use the black sand or what it’s good for, but it certainly makes for high-quality glass.

It’s time to farm all the culinary ingredients I can find in the area. I grab everything: mushrooms, herbs, barks, roots, shoots, buds, leaves, fruit, and everything I can get from the little animals. It’s a shame a pond didn’t show up.

I’m able to build a new knowledge base for my cooking skill using trial and elimination. In a departure from my last time in Hell, I’m able to pull on the information I already have from Project Chrysalis. There are ways of figuring out which ingredients go together, as well as how to mitigate negative effects. For each hundred points of cooking, I can use one more ingredient and one catalyst or inhibitor. The latter impact how long the potion will last.

Over the next month spent just brewing potions, I’m able to get my skill up to 600. One discovery I make is that the black sand produces black glass with a special effect: it can hold a small charge that gives the potion inside it a 10% boost. On the other hand, my potions start to have an expiration date, and it’s sooner for shorter-lasting potions.

Most of the sand goes towards making vials as well as an enormous cauldron. When you add silicon and a couple of minerals to the glass, it becomes much stronger, to the point where you can use it to make alchemical glassware. I don’t have enough strength or mastery to make retorts or alembics, though the big cauldron turns out fine.

I build a new laboratory under the roots of the enormous tree. Every day, I gift it a panacea in appreciation for the wonderful crown it spreads over my head, and potions by the ton are poured onto its root system. Due to the fact that I base them on my own blood, very unusual plants start to grow. They’re all predatory! A red fern ensnares insects and birds that fly too close; vines paralyze their victims before pulling them somewhere up higher; and the normal grass turns into sharp needles that do their best to pierce the feet of unwary travelers. None of them come after me, apparently in recognition of whose blood was used to feed them. They’re all around Level 500 with rare ingredients to offer.

Could it be that they’re appearing because I’m making ritual seals to intensify my magic rather than because I’m using blood magic to brew the potions?

The biggest problem with the Gray Lands is the complete lack of loot you get from normal opponents. On the other hand, there is an unlimited quantity of them. After taking out a couple dozen victims, I drag them down into my lab, less two tons of useful meat, and more a pile of free necrotic