Limitless
Page 9
“There are dozens of micronutrients in the human body. Having too little or too much of any of them can make a person go crazy, losing their spatial orientation, clouding their consciousness, and leading to short-term memory loss. And those are just the less-serious things that could go wrong.”
“Why can’t the med capsule adjust them?”
“That only happens in emergencies—using dietary tools is much more effective. Physical activity stimulates metabolism, and that’s why I make you take vitamins right after you swim.”
“And you can’t just dump it into my body somehow? Or let me take everything right at once? Having that taste in my mouth all the time is starting to make me sick.”
“Ribonz, you’re a smart guy. What do you think would happen if your body had too many micronutrients?”
“It would backfire. The worse the balance is, the stronger the symptoms would appear: hyperactivity in certain areas of the brain, mood swings, outbursts of anger, cruelty, hatred. You use vitamins and my diet to correct my micronutrient balance.”
Claude is surprised to hear me list potential problems. What else would you expect from someone who’s spent their whole life taking care of their aches and pains?
After this conversation, Claude starts doing his best to explain the ‘why’ behind everything he does. I, in turn, try to master all the new information he’s giving me about neurophysiology.
∞ ∞ ∞
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Scouring Izhev doesn’t lead to anything. Still, I’m not worried, and I’m on to the next trial just a week later. If my parents aren’t here, they’re somewhere else. And if they aren’t in the world of the dead, they found their way out into the outside world. If worse comes to worst, I’ll go find death and get an answer from him. I have no doubt we’ll be meeting after the last trial.
Current location: House of Discouragement
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. It’s a bare desert of lifeless gray ash, a pale gray fog, and a mountain reaching up to the sky. Oh, yeah! The source of the discouragement is at the top, but getting there turns out to be awfully difficult. It’s three hellish weeks spent clambering up sheer cliffs, digging into the rock with my nails. My little piece of the Himalayas is hanging upside down and gently wobbling back and forth. Climbing up is brutal. Every day, I fall at least five times, using gravitational wells right where I fall to send myself rocketing back up. When I need a break, I hollow out a chamber in the rock and leave myself there.
For the first couple of days, I try to find a way up using Space Magic alone. But every time I get up, I find myself somewhere I can’t get away from in the usual way—overhangs, flat areas without a single spot to grip, crumbling rock, and a thousand other hints to just get back to work. I start taking cold damage at the end of the first week. At the end of the third, it’s up to 10 million. The constant feeling of discouragement sometimes plunges me into apathy. I’m disappointed in myself, in my life, in my actions, to the point that I’m ready to throw myself off. Just a quick shake of the head, however, and my concentration is back.
I have to wonder how warriors without resistance or magic can get through this trial. Femida would be able to, but that’s just because her survivability is up past 3000.
It’s a new city with an old story. No gods, no familiar faces, no family, just lonely old me.
Current location: House of Surprise
This is the first spot I’ve been in that really looks like the world of the dead. The River Styx flows through it, made entirely of souls. Strands of mist weave their way around terrifying figures, freezing the blood in my veins. Could the developers have been wrong? Maybe, this is the House of Fear. Demons, the undead, giant centipedes, skulls, bones, and other horrible beasts make their way into and out of the hellish mist. And against that backdrop, an eerie voice booms from behind me.
“How will you pay your fair, lost soul?”
Demon, Kapalus, Level 2941
The boatman! He’s an old demon missing the bottom half of his body who has simply grown into the bow of the boat. His wings are raised like sails, and his hands are on the oars.
“Do you take credit cards?”
The demon doesn’t react to my joke, and I have to ask him what forms of payment he does take. Again, there’s no response. I’m not about to offer my soul, but I do try everything else I can think of, starting with promises and ending with any items I have worth more than a copper coin. Seeing as how there’s nothing in the vicinity, I assume he mostly gets offered services.
“Would a piece of meat work?”
“Meat!” The boatman sinks his teeth into the piece of bobcat flesh, and I wait for him to finish it.
“Payment accepted. You can get in.”
He takes me to a small, lifeless island. On the other side there’s an identical pier and another demon. I exchange meat thirty-three more times, though I have to up the ante every time as the boatmen jump 500 levels higher.
“More! Payment too small!”
I hear that at every pier. Certainly, I could get through the trial by killing all of them, but that would take more time. It would also be excessively risky. I’m not feeling any surprise either—I’ve seen too much that would make a normal person’s hair stand on end to be surprised by anything here. The mist is one-of-a-kind, at least!
The last demon pushes his boat off into the mist, and I tumble out of the shroud into the outskirts of the city of Besarak. My parents aren’t here, so I keep going.
Current location: House of Anxiety
The most extreme form of anxiety is dread, and I get more than my fair share during the trial.
Everyone who works at the space port learns to cope with their fear of fire. Plasma engines can kill people instantly, and the fire scorches everything, even if you can’t see the plasma coming out of the nozzles. The brigadier made me learn all the possible kinds of fire before he let me start working off my debt.
I’m not afraid of the dark, spiders, heights, or any other little things like that. But I’m terrified of fire! Here, everything around me is in flames. Even the wind is scorchingly hot.
Almost all of the House of Anxiety is taken up by a burning forest. The fire damage is constant, the animals shriek as they die in the flames, and the red-hot air makes it hard to breathe.
My feet sink into the soil as charred trees fall all around me.
As I head deep into the forest, I come across smoldering peat bogs twice. If I were wearing armor, I’d have been baked by the heat a long time ago. I have to use Dark Magic to destroy everything around me and crawl up out of the remains.
When I fall a third time, I almost die under an avalanche of ash. I’m on my way through a ravine when the ground under my feet collapses, and I fall a good three meters underground. Ash, coals, and earth then fall in on top of me. The more I use Dark Magic, the more everything collapses down on me. A few trees fall at the end of the ravine. I panic when one of them hits me on the head. A wind of death sweeps everything away on all sides, and I’m almost killed when I very nearly spend all my life strength.
After that happens, I have to stop and get a grip on my anxiety. I keep going once I’m able to deal with the panic. From a psychologist’s point of view, I’m a masochist, as I consciously go places where the level of pain and suffering intensifies. That being said, bitter medicine is the best for you. The more difficult it is for my psyche, the stronger and more resistant I get.
One of the fields gives me an unexpected gift: natural sunlight. It’s just one ray cutting through the smoke and clouds to fall on a small patch of ground, but for the Gray Lands, it’s a divine miracle.
I sunbathe for a little while, only now realizing how much I’ve missed the sun.
Logout
∞ ∞ ∞
I really need a break from all the trials, so I grab some food, my pillow, and a blanket, and head up onto the roof. My inconspicuous corner is an excellent spot for reading.
To understand
how the brain works, problems with transitional periods of development, and how to deal with stress, I log into the infonet and start looking for books on psychology. Then, I create a new knowledge bank and copy over all the information on ship-building from my old file.
I can read using one stream of consciousness or split them to read several different books at once, though my retention drops considerably in that case. Ultimately, I just go with the old tried and true method. But combining streams of consciousness does mean that I can better understand what’s in the books: methods for fastening beams, requirements for material quality, applicable thermoalloys, ways of combining different generations of technology on the same ship, and much more. The more I read, the more I realize how much I enjoy ship-building and how sky-high my potential is as an engineer.
My consciousness logs onto a secure infoserver via a closed channel. I’ve already bought out the company that provides the hosting in the infospace to make sure I’m absolutely secure. It has continued to provide the same services to the same customers in the same quantities, though my drafts go through a network of compilers to a separate server with single-person access.
I have an idea for an enormous mother ship that can serve both as a station and a colony. The complexity of the project is off the charts even for my powerful intellect. Nonetheless, instead of giving up, I dive into design books which tell me where to start.
When I realize that I’m being gnawed at by a feeling that something is wrong, I pull myself away. Right on the edge of the horizon, I see a black spot—a ship. Maybe, an island. But I do know it isn’t a hallucination, like Claude said. Making a note of the location and time I saw the ship, I go back to my books. My first project is going to take mountains of cash.
Twelve hours later, Claude finds me to tell me that I’ve missed three meals and swimming sessions. My stomach grumbles—I haven’t even eaten any of the food I brought with me. My head hurts from all the information I’ve been cramming into it, and my lower back feels a little achy.
∞ ∞ ∞
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Taking a break turns out to have been really beneficial. By the second day, I’ve gotten to the edge of the trial zone. A small village is burning, the flames leaping skyward in a suspiciously synchronized fashion. Separate tongues lick their way along the streets as though the enormous fire is picking and choosing where it wants to go. As soon as I unleash a tsunami on the village, the fire takes form in the sky as a winged demon.
Elemental, Fire Geyel-Flesh, Level 19941, raid boss
His health bar dropped 5% when the demon took off, his feet in water up to his ankles. But as soon as he wheels around the roofs of the burning houses, it climbs back up to full. I remember being told at the academy how elementals have low regeneration unless they’re in their native element. How am I supposed to beat a creature like that when there’s fire all around?
Always control the situation.
Always have an advantage over your opponent.
Those are the two axioms for survival I follow in every battle. With that in mind, I dig up a lake that’s deep and big enough to fit a whole forty-meter elemental. Then, I fill it with water and lure Geyel in. Gravitational wells work in both directions—the fire elemental knows that for sure. His body is crushed into the earth at the very bottom. Water boils, though his health only drops to 80%.
When I focus my eyes on the flames which are even bursting through the water, I realize how bad things look.
Flame of the original fire
This flame is the basis of life for all higher elementals. The stronger it is, the larger the radius over which the elemental has to remain united with fire.
Effect: Links the health of its owner with all fires in a radius of 399 meters (out of 1994.7 meters)
And there I was thinking that this was going to be simple. I had a whole lake for the bastard. Over the past five minutes, his health hasn’t even dropped five percent, and the lake is more than half boiling. So, the lower his health goes, the more area he covers. My chances of beating him the normal way are nil unless I can change the balance of power.
“Iceberg! Maximum!”
The basic version costs 10000 mana, though amplifying the damage by ten and expanding the chunk of ice by a factor of four bring the cost high enough that I’m left with just 2% of my overall strength left.
I sit down in my meditation pose and start chuckling evilly at the poor elemental.
+813% strength restoration speed
It takes just 10000 mana a minute to keep the elemental at the bottom of the lake, and I’m restoring 623000. In other words, it takes me fifteen seconds to fully restore my supply of strength.
I’m emotionally exhausted from the horror when the elemental finally dies ten hours later. Everything around us is covered in enormous chunks of ice, and even the edges of the artificial lake are crumbling into it. There is no longer a fire burning in the forest or the village. Right at the end, I was forced to send tsunamis crashing over the forest to knock off the overgrown elemental’s health restoration speed, as it speeds up the more area his original fire covers. How are you supposed to kill that thing? Block its ability? Put out the fires for two kilometers around it? Kill it with one blow?
The dread releases me from its clutches, and I head through the empty village to the source of the anxiety. It looks terrifying after the fire and brutal battle. The darkened windows of the houses peer deeply into my soul, and the crash of buildings collapsing sounds like the last nail being hammered into the coffin of my sanity. It’s unpleasant, but at least I don’t feel the anxiety anymore.
The shroud begins right in the middle of the empty village, and it drops me into the next city of the dead. Eraga is an exact copy of all the other cities. My search yields the same results, too. Nobody’s seen or heard about my family, though I’ve only done eight of the sixteen trials so far. Either father got them much farther than I thought he would, or he’s ended up somewhere else. I do my best to avoid even thinking about that latter option.
Logout
∞ ∞ ∞
Femida stopped by for a visit. When I climb out of my capsule, she’s talking with Claude. He’s clearly giving her the low-down on my physical and psychological condition.
She finally notices that the med capsule is open and I’m sitting by the window enjoying the warm breeze when they finish up.
“How are you feeling? Claude said your brain was going through exhaustion from being overloaded, and that you spent three days in the clinic.”
The breeze is gently caressing my skin, and my nose twitches from the salt in the air.
“I really took the rage trial hard. Since then, I’ve had disgust, unfounded loathing, and contempt. Do you know what it’s like when you turn off synesthesia and sense the revolting smell of blood with every skin cell in your body? When just seeing someone makes you want to destroy everything around you? After that, I got completely apathetic and almost killed myself. The regret trial almost did me in with all the self-incrimination I had going on. It felt like I was guilty of absolutely everything negative in the world, and after that I had to deal with a dizzying trip across the Styx and the unforgettable terror of having fire everywhere. Believe me, if half of that happened in reality, I would’ve turned gray a year ago.”
“But you almost died! Don’t rush it—you only get one shot at this.”
“It’ll be fine. You should focus on yourself and Ekron. How are things in the outside world?”
She sighs loudly and throws herself onto my soft bed.
“Long story short, things are bad. More specifically, Roni’s having problems with some of the alliances in the game. They put an incredible price on her head, and we’re now being chased all over the Inferno. We’ve actually spent the past month back out in the world, down in some caves. There aren’t any players in the world besides the three of us who can work in those conditions without a problem: Level 3500+, fire-aura damage up to 25 million, and the kind of
bots that raise the hair on the back of your neck.” Femida falls silent for a second before continuing. “Sagie…finish up soon, would you? We can’t keep living like this.”
I know and understand Femida better than she thinks.
“What you mean to say is that you can’t get to where you want to go without me. Or that it’s just really hard. Hey, how is Isaac? The poor guy has to listen to you two girls chattering on all day long. I’m surprised he hasn’t gone insane.”
“Idiot!” Fem snorts into the pillow. “He’s fine, and Roni loves talking with him. They’ve taught me so many new curse words that I could hold my own with anyone down at the docks. You should hear what they call each other, though I think that’s just the way they’re comfortable talking.”
Femida is maturing, starting to see different facets of the truth.
“Ekron is much older than she looks. In the game, I wouldn’t say her character even looks twenty-five, but she’s actually a good bit past forty. Talking like that is normal for her. It could be from an old job, or maybe it’s just the way her family talks. Regardless, she feels comfortable cursing up a storm like that. Isaac is just happy she’s talking with him. You just watch—he’ll keep trolling you both until he finds something else he enjoys doing.”
“And you think that’s normal? Both of them are going to fry their nerves!”
“In your little trio, Ekron is the strongest personality. You follow her, just with an eye on your own goals. Isaac… I’m not even sure what to say. He loves you platonically. You’re more than just a partner in the game for him and you’re smart enough to understand that.”