Limitless
Page 19
I don’t feel any sympathy as I hear his touching story. I learned back at the orphanage never to trust anyone, and the Gray Lands practically turned me into a paranoiac. But one good turn deserves another. Reiji is the only person who knows about the secretive Aurin, and he’s living proof that the guy exists.
“Reiji, give me the best protection you’ve got, and get ready to curb your emotions. I want to show you something.”
Rage, rage, rage, more hatred for people. I’ll kill you all, bury you in your own blood!
Fourth-order resonance activated
As soon as the world descends into shades of red, Reiji bursts into a smile and then passes out.
Fourth-order resonance deactivated
Yet another weakness: my new friend loses consciousness when he’s overwhelmed by feelings he’s never experienced before.
I learned how to activate the resonance when I was still lying on the cube. It occurred to me that the portal could lead to a fourth-order world—the source of the energy it emits. I’m able to use the effect it has on me much farther away from it now. My body and mind have also changed, and with that has come an intuitive confidence that a resonance won’t kill me immediately. I’m able to turn it on now, if only for three minutes. Leaving it on any longer than that leaves me with a message about the critical state of my central nervous system. If I don’t turn it off in time, I wake up in the clinic, and not in my med capsule. It’s just a shame that I have to activate it using such a revolting method, switching all my streams of consciousness over to hatred for human beings. I’m sure a simpler way will come with practice.
My new friend and I fight constantly. He’s a simple guy, and I can see the logic in the conclusions he draws—he won’t betray me until it’s absolutely necessary. I even give him money so he can regenerate his body. That boosts the limit of our trust, and he’ll tell me first if someone else tries to buy him or if he starts to have doubts. His logic is both intricate and simple.
A month of continuous fighting goes by. In that time, he isn’t able to kill me once, and I get the experience of battling a unique opponent. He even catches a meteor and has it explode in his arms. All the clothes he’s wearing burn away, revealing his cut figure, though I hit him with a rainbow sunset the second after that. He’s a monster! Standing on the molten remains of the mountain, he’s holding an enormous bolder. It doesn’t explode, so it’s perfect for him to train with. His goal is to feel strength beyond his imagination. I demonstrate power he can’t cope with, pushing him beyond the limits of his mind. I’m not sure how much each rainbow sunset boulder weighs, but even Reiji’s strength isn’t enough to hang onto something created with divine strength to the tune of 30 million.
“I can’t contain the joy! It’s incredible! Every time! Every damn time, you just hit harder and harder. That last stone sphere was so…so…wonderful!”
“Reiji, would you like to sense how strong all the gamut of emotions can be? Believe me, you’re far from the emotionless animal you think you are. You do feel them, just weakly. But there’s a place in Project Chrysalis where you can actually immerse yourself in all the emotions. The point of the trial is to learn how to control them and turn them off, though dying just once would mean losing your unique character.”
“Lead the way…”
I have no idea what Reiji could be thinking. How could you volunteer for a trip to the Gray Lands? The chance to experience emotions is much more important to him than his character and all the achievements in the world, and talking with him makes me realize that I care more about my digital parents than all the money I’ve earned, my ships, and my streams of consciousness. Happiness for me is my family and their well-being. I’ve stopped by Nela’s several times over the past two years with presents, and I chat with Rosie even if I can’t stay for more than an hour.
“Sagie, when will you come back? Kinai from the street over doesn’t believe that I have a brother. He says I made you up.”
“Well, as you can see, here I am. Do I look like a dream or an illusion a mage cooked up? Nope. Okay, Rosie, I have to run. Father and mama will be coming back soon, and then, I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
I hear her calling after me as I’m leaving.
“Sagie! Sagie!”
“Yeah, Rosie?”
“When will you be back?”
“Really soon. Just wait a little longer, sweetie. I’ll be back soon, and I won’t be alone, so hang in there.”
The next day, I perform the ritual with the sefirot seal and send Reiji to the Gray Lands. Then, I follow him. We’re in the same group, so we land in the same location just the way I planned. The hardest trials are hate and rage, where he just about kills me. The fact that he’s never experienced all these emotions before means he doesn’t know what to do with them. But Reiji’s consciousness is very different from mine. He quickly makes himself a scale to assess the emotions we’re feeling, and once he does that, it turns out to be pretty easy for him to adjust his sensitivity to them. The difference between us is that I spent my time looking for that zero point, and he’s already there. That’s why self-control is much easier for him than it was for me. It takes us about a month and a half to get through all the trials, though we spend a week each on the House of Happiness and the House of Love. They’re the most valuable emotions for anyone, but especially for someone who has never experienced them. We all want to be loved, to love, and to know that we’re loved, to love not because of something, but despite everything. To understand that even a simple smile on the face of someone we care about is an expression of love. Reiji practically goes crazy with happiness, having spent his life looking for love from his parents, his fellow soldiers, and the other people around him. And there we are, standing on the street with everyone coming up to pat him on the shoulder and tell him how proud they are of him. His grandmother comes over and kisses him on the forehead.
“I love you, baby. And I’m so happy you grew up this healthy, and even normal. You don’t need to hide from the neighbor’s kids anymore. Go get a regular education, baby.” She sniffs, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m so happy! You’re such a good boy, so grown-up, so normal. I’m so happy.”
Reiji says nothing, but there are tears in his eyes, too. He isn’t smiling; he’s crying silently. As his father puts his arm around him and whispers something in his ear, he covers his face with his hands and sobs. A group of men wearing space marine uniforms greet him with respect, a few even hand him medals. Something changes in Reiji with each new medal he accepts, with each second that goes by, and with each new person. It’s like wax clutched in a fist beginning to melt and seep through the fingers. I sense emotions beginning to awaken in him. Here, in the House of Love, he’s experiencing fear as he watches his army mates walk away and knows he has to keep going. More than anything, he wants to be loved, to have friends, and to have the family he never had—parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, and even the people he saved while he served. All his desire for happiness has gotten him is pain. He did his best, but he was always turned away. He was the faithful dog who never bit anyone. Still, he was beaten and kicked out. That was the story of Reiji’s life.
“I’m staying here.”
His phrase is so predictable, and my smile so open and honest, that he doesn’t notice me activating my paralysis spell. Then, it’s time for my thickest earth shield, a soundlessness spell, warm water, and darkness. My friend doesn’t yet know what this trial has taught him.
This happens three more times just in the House of Love. Each time, I strip him of his happiness and send him into the dark. By the seventh day, at the very edge of the House of Love, I wait to be sure that he can block out emotions when they’re forced on him. It’s only then we keep going. Reiji turns to me before we head into the next city.
“Thank you. I promise you I’ll repay you for the great gift you’ve given me. Nobody has ever been so kind, honest, and severe in protecting my best interests. I know it was hard fo
r you to take my happiness and love away. You did it time after time though, dragging me forward when I lost consciousness.”
Feeling the pain and happiness of others is complete empathy. I feel all the emotions doubly, straight through until we reach the palace of death. My goal here, after all, is to talk with Tiamat, and not to help my new friend. But in the palace, Reiji doesn’t budge as I fight the thirty-two pets. He’s bewitched by Tiamat’s strength, and his skills are useless here.
“I get Reiji, but why are you back here?”
Yet again, I’m battered between the ceiling and the floor. I have my shield this time, however, so I’m not worried about dying.
“I’d like to trade my destroyer and necrification gifts for my parents.”
“Denied.”
“But you purposely said nothing about how I need five hundred people to unlock the portal!”
“Does that somehow contradict our agreement? Did I promise to give you complete information? Although… I’m prepared to resurrect your parents if you go through another couple trials.”
“Depends on what they are.”
“There are two Hells, and each of them offers their own set of abilities. You went through the fire version, though there’s also the icy Hell. Both of them lead to the seventh-level trial: Limbo. You need to get through icy Hell and Limbo.”
Are you kidding me? It took me more than a year and a half to get through Hell, almost two for the Gray Lands. I’m less than six months away from unblocking the portal, and I’m only here to speed up the process of getting my parents back. And now this, four years without a guaranteed victory.
“No, thanks. I’ll have the portal open in half a year, and you’ll complete your end of the deal by resurrecting my parents then.”
“All right.”
A portal opens to our left, and another of Tiamat’s waves of strength tosses us into it. How do they break the world’s rules like that? You’re not supposed to be able to use telekinesis on objects that have their own aura. You can lift corpses, but not living people. You can pick up a branch, but not a blossoming tree. But Tiamat and the devil both proved that it’s possible.
We have to head back to Tanatos. Reiji starts experiencing emotions, only now with the ability to control them. And he keeps following me no matter how much I try to tell him not to. Femida was able to rehabilitate herself and Ekron in the eyes of society, so she’s been helping get the seven gods’ alliance ready to move on Tanatos. But if Reiji is noticed and outed as my new companion, his new life will be ruined. Still, I can’t convince him to go his own way.
“I owe you, and I don’t care what other people think.”
There’s less than a month left before the strongest fighters in the seven gods’ army have leveled-up high enough to help with the portal. I spend that month getting ready to meet my potential adversaries with everything I have, building on my current advantages.
I grow seven or eight new locations for the herald of the creator achievement, turning to crazy paratrooper once it’s maxed out. Reiji gets a huge kick out of the name and the way you have to get it. As I go through the ridiculous experiment, he asks to keep me company.
How high can a tree grow when you spend a year actively feeding it and stimulating its growth with Life Magic? Not to mention the explosions of evolution it earns when I activate the resonance and use my panacea. I never would have thought that a tree could have roots forty kilometers long. It takes us days to climb up to the top, after which I use a gravitational well to send us flying seventy-five kilometers up into the mesosphere. We take continuous mental and physical damage, and I realize what killed Talamei in the Gray Lands. There’s no air and you can’t hear anything.
It’s time. A little more, and all this will be for nothing when we leave my tree’s zone.
Sagie, has anyone ever told you that you’re crazy? Who in their right mind would jump from the mesosphere, from seventy-five kilometers up? Gravity is barely holding us in orbit.
You forgot about acceleration, my friend.
What acceleration?
Fourth-order resonance activated
This acceleration!
My base speed is 5 m/s, my amplification spell gets me to 50 m/s, six streams of consciousness to 300 m/s, and activating the resonance…to 3 km/s.
Fourth-order resonance deactivated
Congratulations, Reiji! You’re going to be the first person to get the crazy space marine achievement.
You’re out of your mind! We’re almost at orbital velocity!
We dive head-first into the crown of my tree, shooting right through it. Reiji is out ahead of me to cut a hole in the mountain with his head; my feet come flying in behind him. The locals presumably think a meteor just struck. Reiji weighs around a hundred kilograms, coming in faster than a shell from a Gauss rifle. The second-and-a-half difference at the beginning results in a difference of four and a half kilometers at the end. In fact, I land in the rocky rubble his powerful head left behind.
Achievement received: Crazy paratrooper. Seventy-fifth rank.
Survive a fall from a height of at least seventy-five kilometers.
Reward: +750 to all attributes
Picking up a new cockroach rank would be easier than surviving a fall like that, so I decided to be done with it and spend the rest of my time writing this letter to you, Sagie. Humanity is going to have its fight with the keeper of the portal in the next couple days. It isn’t the future that scares me; it’s how uncertain everything is. There are too many questions, and the stakes are too high. So many factors go into saying what will happen after we open the portal. Death could use my parents as leverage to get me to do things; Leon and the old gods could send seekers to kill them again. Plus, there’s that thing that’s been watching me from the astral ever since I first noticed the energy coming from the cube. But what if it’s the one instilling in me the value I place on my family and parents, how much I care for their love, and how important they are to me? What kind of capability does it have in terms of emotional manipulation? What kinds of methods does it use? How do you tell the difference between emotions placed in you and the ones you feel naturally? If I love my parents, how do I make sure it isn’t because I’m being forced to? And why am I so tied to them? If you ever read these lines, just forgot about my doubts. Love isn’t experienced for the sake of it. It’s all about harmony, and parents and family create that harmony. We all have free essences that can be harmful when we don’t have a family or significant other to ground us. The desire to be recognized, to love, and to be loved is key to those free essences. People who can’t find an outlet for that desire retard their development, eventually even destroying their personality. A long time ago, Femida’s company saved me from becoming a bloodthirsty psychopath. Then, there was LJ and his undivided love for people regardless of the pain they inflicted on him. Reiji and Claude came after them, although I didn’t recognize what was happening at the time. I craved their recognition and love, I gave them gifts, and just enjoyed talking with them. But they were all just surrogates for my parents and a significant other. It’s your family that gives you harmony, that soothes your mind, and gives you confidence in everything you do.
I take off my equipment to see how far I’ve gotten with my achievements and the other work I’ve done on myself.
“Attribute window.”
Name: Sagie
Level: 10000
Experience: 0/0 (0 left until the next level)
Race: Human (demigod)
Class: Mage
Basic attributes
Strength: 14435
Agility: 14435
Stamina: 15470
Intellect: 60415
Available attribute points: 0
Additional attributes
Speed: 500
Survivability: 14435
Derivative attributes
Physical damage: 7217 (strength/2, but no less than 1)
Carrying capacity: 36087 kg (strength*1
0/4)
Overall strength: 179700 (stamina*10+25000 from tattoos)
Mana: 134775 (overall strength*0.75)
Health: 44925 (overall strength*0.25)
Health and mana restoration: 288700/minute (mana*2)
Running speed: 184 km/h (1+speed/10)
Defense: -5
Resistance
Physical damage: 100% (damage ignored: up to 25 million/second)
Poison: 12.60% (damage ignored: up to 47368/second)
Fire: 100% (damage ignored: up to 25 million/second)
Electricity: 100% (damage ignored: up to 25 million/second)
Mental damage: 100% (damage ignored: up to 25 million/second)
Cold: 100% (damage ignored: up to 25 million/second)
Skills
Cooking: 1000
Trap setting and disarming: 88
Archery: 252
Swimming: 670
Breath-holding: 851
Stealth: 253
Life Magic: 1000
Mind Magic: 1000
Space Magic: 1000
Earth Magic: 588
Water Magic: 411
Fire Magic: 1000
Air Magic: 1000
Light Magic: 1000
Dark Magic: 1000
Meditation: 1000
Hand-to-hand combat: 348