Limitless by John Gold (best e reader for android txt) 📕

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.