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

systems crumbled soon after. Another sixty years went by before humankind was advanced enough to travel between planets and live in virtual reality with virtual capsule cartridges changed only once in a while.

“And finally, Lunar was able to offer access to Project Chrysalis. Humankind was sufficiently cultured and technologically advanced to go through the second trial and unlock access to the outside world and the game. Of course, there were some aggressor nations who wanted to attack Lunar and win for themselves the technology that was the secret of our success. Those who knew me thought I gained access to Akashi’s information field and pulled tech and other assignments from there. But the truth is much worse: humanity is still one of the least advanced civilizations in the galaxy.

“But returning to what you found in Project Chrysalis, there’s the world’s beauty, its realism, the laws of physics and magic, its incredible complexity and fascination. Honestly, you don’t know a tenth of it. The locals, as you call them, are an artificial life form. They’re as real as you are. And all of us here in this world obey the general rules. For them, the attribute panel is just as natural as food and water. They aren’t just realistic ArtIns; they are real, living creatures. This isn’t a game. It’s an artificially created world that helps different civilizations make contact and understand each other’s culture and language. Call it a galaxy-wide game played by hundreds or even thousands of civilizations from other planets and worlds.

“Let’s talk about what’s going to happen next in the world of humans and in the Project Chrysalis world. Lunar will still be a closed nation and will continue to do its best to regulate interstate conflict. On the other side of the interworldly portal, you will find the Papilio world, or the butterfly world if you translate it from the Latin. It’s a third-order world, which means you will be starting over with a clean slate. Don’t feel bad; don’t be afraid. You will take one tenth of the attributes you received from achievements here with you, and your future children will receive half of your joint heritage. It will be added to their natural development ceiling. For example, if you added a thousand points in this world, you will keep one hundred. The natural development ceiling in all other worlds is twenty points, so yours will be one hundred and twenty.

“Your skills will be lost completely. Your abilities will be hidden, affecting your physical and mental bodies directly. Call it a predisposition toward whatever that area is. For example, fire mages who selected a body-transformation ability that has something to do with fire have a better chance of discovering an aptitude toward Fire Magic and everything connected to it. The more abilities you have in a certain area, the stronger the legacy effect will be. Some skills have a 100% legacy effect that takes the form of abilities or the density of your magic in the third-order world. One hint I’ll give you is that they aren’t the most popular or well-known skills. Gifts don’t come up as often, always depending on the situation. While abilities and gifts aren’t displayed in your attribute window, experienced mages can recognize or confirm them. There are no classes or professions in Papilio, only you, your skills, and your attributes. The number of skills you can have is unlimited. You can learn and acquire them yourself if you’re smart enough to figure out how. There are, however, five unwritten avenues for development: warriors, mages, craftsmen, managers, and scouts. No avenue contradicts another, so do whatever you want.

“Remember this though: your body in the game can grow old if you use your skills or gifts, or if you do anything else that expends your life strength. For example, necromancers need their victims to give up their soul to create soul stones. The more they suffer, the more of their soul they’ll give up, though the coefficient will never exceed one. Necromancers can sap you of your life strength by damaging your mental body and using it to exert influence on your physical body. There are berserker abilities that boost your strength, though they accelerate the ageing process. Mages can leverage their life strength when they run out of mana. In these cases, you have to go through the rebirth process, stripping you of your levels but bringing your body back into a healthy state.

“You can also get fat if you eat too much. You lose weight when you don’t eat enough. You can find yourself covered in sores if you don’t heal diseases. You’ll smell terrible if you don’t bathe. I’m telling you all this to make sure you understand how harsh the world on that side of the portal is. But you need to understand that there are civilizations in the universe with slavery, caste systems, monarchies, kings, and queens. The Papilio world prepares you for that by demonstrating the difference in culture between humankind and the other worlds.

“The pain threshold in Papilio is pushed to 25%—it’s both cruel and difficult. You might be captured as a slave, sent off to the mines, raped, skinned, or experimented on. If the consequences are serious enough, the only thing that will save you is rerolling. Also, in Papilio, mastery is more highly valued than your level. You can’t level-up your swordplay skill simply by hacking away at a post or waving it around in battle. You’ll be scared, you’ll be hurt, you’ll be fascinated, and you’ll have fun. Papilio is more developed on a fantasy and technological level. Some of the locals there are from this world, having achieved the pinnacle of development in their class abilities. You’ll find cannon, constant battle, and how hard it is to become a mage, a hundred times harder, in fact, and I’m not exaggerating. You can only become a good warrior if you join the army. Being a healer is a way of life,