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

The rings are mostly useless. My survivability is already as high as it will go, though they do all boost my overall strength and mana.

Wild hunt necklace

Once a year, in Crazyman’s Forest, the bobcats gather for hunting and mating games. The female belonging to the strongest male receives a unique gift and a new title: the Wild Hunt.

Effect:

Agility +494

Survivability +494

Requirement: Scalable item

Durability: Indestructable, with damage to it taken out of the owner’s health

It’s undoubtedly the most useless item I’ve ever made. What do I care about agility? Or Survivability? I don’t have anything else, however, so I have to settle for it.

Left engagement bracelet

Wild shapeshifters use matching bracelets to cement their unusual marriages. Congratulations—you’re the lucky winner!

Effect:

Stamina +494

Survivability +494

Requirement: Scalable item

Durability: Indestructable, with damage to it taken out of the owner’s health

Any guesses as to who has the right bracelet? I have to congratulate myself. I’m marrying me at me, the only altar in the woods and a demigod. By way of vows, I promise to love myself forever and live happily until the end of my days. The solitude is getting to me.

“Attribute window.”

Name: Sagie (Almark)

Level: 2462

Experience: 22560/25 313 620 (28192060 left until the next level)

Race: Human (demigod [unavailable])

Class: Mage

Basic attributes

Strength: 1575

Agility: 1575

Stamina: 10114

Intellect: 20938

Available attribute points: 0

Additional attributes

Speed: 500

Survivability: 1095

Derivative attributes

Physical damage: 787.5 (strength/2, but no less than 1)

Carrying capacity: 3937 kg (strength*10/4)

Overall strength: 116390 (stamina*10+15250 from tattoos)

Mana: 87293 (overall strength*0.75)

Health: 29098 (overall strength*0.25)

Health and mana restoration: 10950/minute (mana*1)

Running speed: 184 km/h (1+speed/10)

Spells that cost 100000 mana are now on the table. I’m not going to use health borrowed from the tree to cast panacea anymore, as I get the feeling my soul is slowly being pulled out of me.

It’s time to work on my other key skills.

I begin with necromancy thanks to the sheer amount of material I have to work with. The ritual dagger with runes is made out of the bones of a hapless bobcat, though I’m unable to control more than eleven things, just like with the summoned creatures. Even locations like the Gray Lands have their upsides and downsides when it comes to progressing your skills. To avoid tarnishing the woods with emanations of death, I head out into the ashen fields to do my experiments. More than two thousand bodies are churned across my sacrificial altar every day to make zombies. Even for me, with my well-prepared psyche, it’s still difficult. The hardest part is the monotony—kill; stick the body on the altar; raise the zombie, skeleton, or ghost; and kill it with magic. That way, I’m able to work on my necromancy and ritual magic as well as my Fire and Mind elements.

It’s during the second week of the nightmare that I give up and move on to chimerology. Emanations surge from the altar to the tune of an aura of death doing a million and a half damage. I have to go out farther looking for my victims, otherwise they won’t show up.

Making chimeras is much more fun, giving my brain something to do while I’m at it. The ritual magic process involves drawing runes on the part of the body that will be the base and armor. As a rule, it’s a bone base, a body made out of muscles, and the rest made out of armor. But that’s only for weaker chimeras. My dog in the Stygian swamps was much trickier, and it also helped me boost my skill much faster. With that in mind, I use ritual magic to create bone snakes and rhinoceroses. They all have reinforced skeletons and powerful musculature, and I make insects the same way.

In two months, I’m able to max out my chimerology skill. Reaching a goal I set cheers me up, as does the fact that my brain is starting to lose the craziness and think clearly again. I was sleeping with one eye open even in real life, afraid of seeing the bone-and-flesh monsters I’ve been making. But as I push myself to the line separating lunatics from normal people, I finally do hit that limit.

Chimerology +1

Your chimerology skill has reached the maximum value

New ability: Creator of soul and body

Once a day, you can create the soul of a unique chimeric pet that will serve you faithfully. If it dies, you can possess a suitable body with its spirit. Doing so does not cost experience or skills, though it does cost you 50 levels.

Any pet owner in Project Chrysalis would happily give their right arm for an ability like that. Something tells me that the pet can’t be taken or sold, and so it can only be used by the chimerologist. Also, 50 levels is too much to pay for a pet that’s definitely going to be Level 1, meaning that it’s a fairly useless ability for me.

Working on my necromancy, I toe the line of insanity for the second time.

Necromancy +1

Your necromancy skill has reached the maximum value

New gift: Necrification [0/10]

Some exceptional necromancers spend their lives building the foundation for immortality. The necrification gift lets you replace your bones, musculature, and ligaments with powerful necrotic tissue, slowing the ageing process and tripling your strength and agility. Each stage of necrification replaces 10% of the body part you choose to give you a 20% boost.

Finally, I know the secret that was hidden by Tiberius Sen, the former archmage. I could’ve gotten his title and rank, but it would have involved lots of responsibility at the Academy of Magic: meetings with the academy’s highest officials, bowing to kings and emperors… No, I’m not looking for fame, position, or money. My path lies in the shadows, where nobody can see me, and the title of archmage is counterproductive where that’s concerned.

∞ ∞ ∞

Femida was standing quietly by the stairs in the reception area for the Academy of Magic’s Kkhor branch. Sagie’s supervisor was sending another student off to go take Fire Magic courses, and he did a fun little dance when he was finally done with work. The sick, tubby old man