by John Gold
95 attribute points available for distribution
Achievement received: Titanbane. Thirty-ninth rank.
Kill an opponent 1950 levels higher than you.
Reward: +195 to all attributes
…
Achievement received: Titanbane. One hundred and forty-second rank.
Kill an opponent 7000 levels higher than you.
Reward: +710 to all attributes
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! That was unbelievable! I picked up 19 levels and +520 to all my attributes. All the attribute points available for distribution go straight to my intellect.
“Attribute window.”
Name: Sagie (Almark)
Level: 2896
Experience: 889660/30015620 (28192060 left until the next level)
Race: Human (demigod [unavailable])
Class: Mage
Basic attributes
Strength: 2271
Agility: 2271
Stamina: 10634
Intellect: 24542
Available attribute points: 0
Additional attributes
Speed: 500
Survivability: 1695
Derivative attributes
Physical damage: 1135.5 (strength/2, but no less than 1)
Carrying capacity: 5677 kg (strength*10/4)
Overall strength: 121590 (stamina*10+15250 from tattoos)
Mana: 91193 (overall strength*0.75)
Health: 30398 (overall strength*0.25)
Health and mana restoration: 16950/minute (mana*2)
Running speed: 184 km/h (1+speed/10)
Who wants a piece of this? Who wants to get shredded? I’m thrilled to see that I completely recover in just three minutes and can carry around more than five tons.
I love it when I can do the impossible. It’s been nine months and three weeks since I got to the Gray Lands, and I’ve gone beyond simply surviving to becoming much stronger even with an empty bag and my bare hands. My intellect is 25% higher; I know a bunch of new spells; I have new abilities, and a couple gifts have even found their way into my corner. I’m flying up in my gravitational well as fast as I can.
A kilometer in the air, my tree’s branches start, and I step off the “elevator.” I don’t have time to keep going higher.
When I get back down on the ground, I collect my humble trappings, including the table, the four chairs, the torches, and the wooden dishes. I’m a gourmet from now on!
I fill the mine in completely, worried that some kind of evil will emerge from it and come looking for me. No, it’s better off staying where it is.
After grabbing what I need for an altar, I dash over to the spot where I do all my experiments. It’s time to make some chimeric pets.
The bone hounds and wraiths are the fastest of the chimeric undead, so I make eleven dogs, each two meters at the withers. The perfect height for attacking humanoid races.
Undead, Hellish Bone Terror, Level 2896
They’re angry creatures, but they’re fun. And now, it’s time for my final preparations.
Logout
∞ ∞ ∞
I’m tired.
After sleeping for twenty hours and then swimming four kilometers, I’m surprised to observe that I’m enjoying the swimming. Even the two extra kilometers I have to do for missing appointments don’t exhaust me. I decide to permanently bump my daily quota up to four.
∞ ∞ ∞
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When I was working on my magic, I sometimes ran experiments for two or three days straight. I did that for a reason, developing my ability to tolerate rage in preparation for this exact moment.
Grunt, Ownie, the hirelings, the library, different tournament entrants, and a variety of other evil characters I’ve met during my travels all come at me. Extortionists, crooks, thieves, and marauders, they’re all here—the filth of the earth I was dragged through way back when. yet it worries me that I haven’t come across Leon, Bernard, or Rachel. Even Leon’s head of security, Nate’s ugly mug pops up, all the way at Level 9587. He has some kind of unique scout/killer class, though I’m still able to sense him. But where is Leon?
I’m so engrossed in my thoughts, trying to quell the rage and find a logical answer to my questions, that I don’t notice an unusual stone wall in front of me. If I didn’t have such strong resistance to physical damage, I would have broken my nose and cracked my skull. What’s a wall doing here?
Sometimes, it’s better not to know that the wall in front of you is actually the ankle of a giant 500-meters tall.
Titan, Bernard, ???, Large Pantheon God
The stone moves, and I realize that there’s no way I can win. I’m not good enough to kill a god from the large pantheon at the zenith of his power.
The hounds spread out, and I use a leap spell to get a safe distance away. Then, I dash off toward the edge of the trial zone. While I’m running, three of my chimeric pets heroically lay down their lives, and I realize I’m going to need a better arsenal if I’m going to beat the god of war.
Six hours later, I’m back at my altar at the edge of Crazyman’s Forest. Navigating by the sensation of rage is getting easier.
It takes me another five days to create a new beast. In that time, I sleep a total of just ten hours—there are all kinds of different chimeric pets to create. You can make eleven dogs hoping that they’ll tear your enemies to pieces, for instance, or you can make one monster that will carry you to victory.
Four thousand victims go into making the body. Another two thousand are for the flesh binding ritual as well as endowing the creature with a pseudo-life.
The abomination made of thousands of interwoven bodies begins to move, giving out its first roar to let the world know it has arrived.
Undead, World Eater, Level 2897
A worm! That’s what the creature looks like, and I have to use all eleven streams of consciousness to suppress its understanding. The monster disgusts me with the way it looks, its nature, and even the way it was born. How could I spawn something that loathsome? Its very existence defies the foundations of life. Vile filth!
Eighty meters of undead flesh wriggle off after Bernard, the latter sitting down on an improvised bench. The worm’s dull red eyes stare straight ahead in hopes of finding something it can devour. Its emotions revolt me—I’m a life mage! A mage of nature, earth, water, and the spark of life, not that thing. Still, it owes its incipience and existence to me alone.
Quelling the rage and maintaining my calm is quite the assignment given the feelings I’m experiencing towards my creation. I’m not prepared to deal with such unnatural emotions, and so I quickly feel psychologically worn out.
This time, I notice the giant’s foot much earlier—I know now what to look for. The world eater, wriggling around the god’s leg, starts climbing, and I probe our opponent for weaknesses. If 50 million damage takes off less than 1%, I don’t really have a chance of beating him with my usual methods.
We are barely up to the half-naked giant’s shoulder blade when my transport is thrown off with a single motion of the giant’s arm. A gravitational well keeps me suspended in the air, and then I keep going higher up the god’s back. Judging by the convulsive movements and the world eater’s pitiful-looking health bar, Bernard just squashed it with one foot.
The back of the god’s head is right in front of me, though I can’t reach it. Bernard starts looking around in an attempt to find the worm’s owner. I see my chance, but I turn my gravity off just in time for the giant to stand up, and I land on his shoulder rather than the back of his head. Our eyes meet.
He starts to laugh, his hand reaching up to brush off the little rider. But I’m faster, and that’s exactly what I’m waiting for. Just one shot at this!
My whole body tenses up, I track his stone lips as they move, I wait for him to turn toward me, and then I leap.
After floundering around for a bit in an attempt to get around the teeth and tongue, I wedge myself in by the tonsils.
“Dragon b
reath! Maximum!”
The giant howls, and the powerful wave of sound rushes through my entire body.
Damage received: 22550130 (ignored: 25000000)
30398/30398
I never would have thought someone could die from a sonic wave. At the same time, the giant’s health drops, and melting stone flows down his throat. I can do 50 million damage across an area expanded by a factor of seven these days. The throat is red-hot, so I turn to face the mouth. Sagie here, with a unique offer to disinfect your oral cavity free of charge using pyrolysis! Today only, and just for you, my dear Bernard.
The giant’s suffering ends twenty minutes later as his head topples off his melted neck. I have to jump as he falls to avoid being crushed to death.
The first thing I do when Bernard’s health drops below 1% is order myself to calm down. There’s still that three-second respawn time. Back on the ground, I wait almost a minute as I swallow my rage. Finally. Okay, where’s the exit?
While I still have my wits about me, I keep going in the direction of the intensifying rage. A worried feeling gnaws at me, and twenty minutes later, I realize what the problem is.
Human, Rachel, Level 10496, Holy Priestess of Leon
Just one look at her, and the dam that’s holding my rage back breaks. No opponent, no saint, no local boss, nobody is going to stop me. The only ace she has up her sleeve is a paladin bubble…which she can somehow use. But I’m still stronger and better in every way.
Chopping her head off, leaving her bleeding to death, breaking her neck, quartering, crushing her skull… I revel in rage and the blood of my enemy.
It’s only a few hours later that I come to, deep in the rest area. A nervous LJ is tiptoeing around a t the edge of my consciousness. He’s worried about my peace of mind, and I think he’s the one who pulled me out of the trial.
I’m covered in blood from head to toe. And it isn’t just spots and dashes, either. Even my hair is soaked and sticking out in all directions. The timer shows that it’s been six hours, and that I killed Rachel…ninety-six times? And I was even taking it slow!
Logout
∞ ∞ ∞
My head hurts, and I’m not hungry. First, my med capsule, then Claude, and finally I notice that my body doesn’t feel good at all. I have a nosebleed again, I’m lethargic, and I’ve lost a good amount of coordination. Both the nurse and the doctor recommend a change of diet and prescribe vitamins. In their minds, what’s going on has something to do with the experiment I’m supposedly taking part in. Really, the problem is Project Chrysalis and the Gray Lands. Even what little I know about neurophysiology is enough to tell me that I’m exhausted and overworked. Better food and vitamins will mitigate the symptoms, but they won’t fix the problem.
I sleep for more than twenty-four hours this time. The rage and the last five days of chimerology have me drained, wondering whether it’s even possible to feel such strong emotions. Is it okay to kill the same person for six hours straight? Regardless of everything she did to me, I don’t hate her to that degree.
The thought gives me an idea as to what the final trial is going to be. Yep, it’s going to be his bare skull, all right.
Claude notices that I swam four kilometers straight, so he makes me do it twice. Eight kilometers of breaststroke in two sessions, with a four-hour interval. He’s a monster! He swims next to me the whole time, and then he tells me how to keep an eye on my salt balances and stress level. In the year and a half I’ve been here, he’s taught me enough for me to start drawing my own conclusions.
∞ ∞ ∞
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I’m back on the lifeless fields of the Gray Lands. Dozens of questions roll around in my head: why didn’t anyone tell me that there are bots higher than Level 10000? If players are capped by a ceiling, how can there be Level 20000 opponents? And if this is just the House of Rage, what are the other houses? I certainly have no doubts that there are, in fact, other houses.
When I first found areas without opponents, I had the crazy idea of running along the rest area and popping out near the finish. But no matter how long or far I ran, I was just five minutes away from where I started. Space is distorted here. At least, that’s the only explanation I can think of.
I use a panacea spell to grow a field with trees. Back when I was looking for a way to destroy that hateful crystal giving out the aura in Hell, I noticed the effect they have. Trees and other plants mitigate the effect on your consciousness, even if they don’t do anything to the aura itself. My island of salvation allows me to pause and take a look at the world around me. As I leave the field, stepping out from under the crown of the main tree, I’m gripped once again by uninhibited rage. I step back, and the rage disappears as if it were never there to begin with. It’s almost indescribable how the emotion is so powerful that it makes me lose my mind, erasing the moral and ethical boundaries I’m usually guided by. When I get slightly used to it, LJ takes me off into the rest area. I need practice maintaining a calm center if I want to be able to keep going.
I spend all my time in the trial zone, growing and destroying plants with Dark Magic. This helps me practice my concentration, Dark Magic, and point of calm. When I get tired of that, I start jumping around to work on my body amplification, sending powerful spells smacking into the gray ground as I do. This also helps my concentration and amplification.
The earth here is definitely unusual. A dead sun I send with ten times the usual charge into the ground makes it just a meter deep. If the ground were normal rock, the sun would have burrowed down a good thirty meters. Sadly, my Dark Magic really doesn’t want to progress quickly, so I have to go back to creating and destroying islands of life.
On the third day, my willpower gives out and I nearly lose it. I come to on the border between the rest area and the death zone. A wall of thick, white fog delineates the two, and that’s how I see the death zone and the two ashen eyes peering out of it in my direction. It’s Lord Terror, though his aura doesn’t affect me in the least anymore. Happily, the log tells me that LJ pulled me into the rest area when I was out of it so I wouldn’t do anything stupid.
Logout
∞ ∞ ∞
Twenty-four hours of sleep in my single room, and I’m feeling on top of the world. People really are adaptable. I’m the perfect example, after all, how many people are there in the world who can smile and shake the hand of their mortal enemy? How many of them can keep themselves in check when they have the chance to kill him? Very few. But if they spend their life like that, they develop a line in their brain between reason and emotion. My wall, my emotional shield, is just taking shape, and my brain is about to build that wall.
∞ ∞ ∞
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Today, I figured out a hygiene solution for the Gray Lands. Using a telekinetic shovel, I dug out a pit for a pool, spending less mana than I was restoring, happily. Then, I cast a tsunami to fill the pool and warmed it with Gehenna fire. Voila! I have myself a jacuzzi.
The water relaxes me, enabling me to focus entirely on my thoughts. I build that wall in my mind as I lie there. The central stream of consciousness is responsible for concentration; three more are for suppressing the rage; and, in the meantime, I do my best to be as abstract as I can about the controlled way I train my subconsciousness to cope on its own. Four magic barriers, an enormous granite sphere, and my personal chimeric shield protect me. LJ has taken charge of my chimeric shield as our last line of defense, and he’s also keeping an eye on what’s going on around me. The darkness is absolutely silent. My body is covered in an opaque earthen barrier and immersed in water, which is at about thirty-six degrees Celsius.
Having what amounts to a sensory deprivation room gives me complete control over my rage. I force my subconscious to work on its own, building shields and staying unemotional. My free streams of consciousness are occupied with something that amounts to nothingness. The hardest part is forcing myself not to think, though I am able to make that happen.
Five days go by, and I’m able to run around the trial zone completely impervious to the feeling of rage. In fact, I actually have to put a little effort into making sure my opponents keep appearing. I end up with something like a switch in my brain that turns emotion off when I need that to happen.
I head back to where Rachel is and kill her without much problem. Thinking back, I remember how I acted when I was affected by emotion — the extra movements, the missed strikes, the irresponsible fighting style, and the complete lack of coherent strategy. Now, my opponent takes a step and swings their sword. My torso turns twenty degrees, leaving my second arm to swing backward, compensating for the momentum. My eyes, chin, throat, and Adam’s apple were all open for exactly a second and a half. But that’s not a mistake; it’s a weakness inherent in the one-handed, short sword fighting style. Huh, interesting! I’m more interested, however, in the fact that I can see that now. I recognized it before, though I didn’t know what I was looking at. Even when father was teaching me to observe and analyze constantly, I only focused on finding these kinds of problems when things were bad. Conscious control over my emotions expands my consciousness, albeit making it drier, more lifeless.
It takes me just one day to get to an opponent at Level 15000. But now I’m seeing all of my mistakes and looking at specific moves in different contexts that give them different interpretations. I finally understand what Femida meant about true mastery being something completely different. She was talking about real battle experience, understanding tactics, and drilling counterattacks until they’re automatic. That’s her fighting style. I’ve always used brute force, and it’s only now that I’m coming up against opponents I can’t beat that way. I need something different.