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

After the conversation with her grandfather, Fiji started the Sagie Foundation. Releasing his letters brought out quite a few players willing to donate money in appreciation for the information the letters included on how to get achievements, while others donated by way of an apology. The League of Hunters dedicated a portion of their yearly proceeds to the hunt for Sagie in real life as well as the in-game world. Hawk’s group was the driver behind that movement. The league and its members knew the unique personality traits Sagie had that drove him to be the first to get to unheard-of places, and their introduction to Papilio quickly told them how valuable it would be to have someone like that in their team. It was a world in constant turmoil, which meant that it needed people capable of breaking the status quo and moving humanity toward stability and prosperity—not heroes, but people who could take responsibility for their actions.

The frontier ship was christened Sagie and launched into orbit around the Earth. In keeping with Anji Ganet’s last secret venture, it was made a health resort for orphanages throughout the entire solar system. Its life-support system made it identical to living on Earth: the gravitational pull was 1G, the air was filled with the smell of the forest, there was an enormous lake in the middle, and the many islands were littered with residential buildings. Sagie wanted every child who found himself there to be infected with the desire to visit the cradle of humankind: Earth.

The money earned by selling finished designs was donated to the Sagie Foundation. The operations were carefully monitored by Lunar to make sure the balance of power wasn’t altered, and they added compensation for disadvantageous sales of technology. The interstar drive was removed and sent to Lunar. Once there, the technology behind it was used to develop an entire series of drives for lower-ton ships.

Sagie’s final letter included the key to his accounts in the net. Over the year that had passed, however, not a single credit had been touched. Ledge wasn’t about to try any operations, knowing that Lunar would be keeping an eye out for them, and Femida couldn’t remove them without confirmation of Ribonz Almark’s death. It could have been faked, but she wasn’t about to get into that. She cared too much about the relationship they’d had. She wanted Sagie on the side of humankind, and he needed to see loyalty and good intentions rather than greed.

The most important event that happened in Project Chrysalis was the opening of pathways to Hell, the Gray Lands, and Heaven. In Kurg, in Lone Forest Field, three two-way portals opened in its living half. Three one-way exit portals were opened in the dead half. It was only after this that the players remembered how trees served as the axis of the world in all the mythologies , connecting heaven and earth, and that they were humankind’s pathway to spiritual heights. They represented the circle of life, death, and rebirth. Each of the portals had a primary and a secondary name.

Tree of life: Heaven

Tree of knowledge: Hell

Tree of good and evil: Gray Lands

Sagie’s records hinted that the second name could change when the player completed the trial. Tiamat, still in his role as death, had intimated to Sagie that the ninth circle in Hell was the path to Limbo, which was yet another trial zone offering special abilities to the players who went through it.

Sagie’s old friend Kirk, the one he studied with at the Academy of Magic, returned from Papilio and ventured into the Gray Lands in search of his dead fiancée. He was the one who discovered that players who died during the trials no longer lost their character. Instead, they just lost ten levels and everything they had with them at the moment of their death. This rule applied to everyone who had gone through the interworldly portal, so a wave of players looking to pick up the abilities Sagie had described poured back in from Papilio. Sadly, the percentage of them who successfully got through the first circle of Hell was extremely low, and the reward for beating the trials had also been split into the circles. You couldn’t work on your second stream of consciousness until you got through the first circle.

The discoveries pulled from Sagie’s notes led to a golden age for humanity.

In the chronicles of the Project Chrysalis world, Sagie came to be known as Limitless Sagie. Plenty of unhappy Hunters complained to Fiji about it, saying that the only player in the world who had ever been limitless was Reiji, the one who saved the planet from the asteroid. But one person in the argument, someone with the simple name of Izdier, had something to say that only the Hunters could understand.

Neither Sagie nor Reiji were limitless. There’s only one person worthy of that title, and that’s the one who killed Tser’Kareni Papir.

Fiji knew it was Reiji himself who wrote the message. He was the only one who knew the whole truth about humanity’s strongest player.

Over the entire year, Reiji wrote her just one message.

I’m going to find him. And when I do, we’re going to have a talk.

And that was the last anyone saw of Reiji.

Epilogue

It was a year before, the day the seal was broken on the interworldly portal.

In one of the more remote locations in Papilio, there was a flying island completely isolated from the world. It was a spatial trap impossible to get to or get away from. The tiny piece of land, just fifty meters in diameter, floated freely in the air, the vegetation sparse and completely lacking in trees and animals.

A five-meter humanoid creature sat motionless at the center of the island. It had two arms and two legs, but no nose or mouth. There were ten eyes scattered around its head. From its seated position, it could see the entire island without moving, and it was the