Gestation by John Gold (tohfa e dulha read online .TXT) 📕

hauling rocks, pieces of iron, and the bodies of other people. Everyone’s carrying something, and they’re all overloaded. When they bump into each other, they start fighting. Okay, so the most important thing here is to avoid touching anyone. The mental damage I’m taking from the auras of rage and annoyance tell me that there’s a fortress here, and that it will only intensify as I get closer. It’s a good thing the mobs are provisionally neutral.

I don’t actually take damage, though I feel anger building up inside me.

Plutos gave me two rings and a necklace, all with hidden attributes. I take my spikes back and toss the body away. It’ll disappear in an hour anyway. It’s time to work on my resistance to mental damage.

As soon as I find the right damage level, I start looking around for victims. There are two Level 280 profligates near the cliff where I’ve holed up, and I use them. The heavy work they’ve been doing has done them good. During the ritual, our combined health totals 229520. They’re beasts, with ridiculous stamina! Excellent.

I’m very close to the spot where mental damage really picks up. It’s easy to see. There are the same red waves the crystal on top of the fortress in the first circle of Hell gave off. The whitish barrier is about five meters away.

The closer you get to it, the more damage you take.

Once again, I spend 50 hours in the game, completely engrossed in my artifact work and blood magic. Until the last two months, I didn’t know the extent to which you can learn by reading, but there it is! The most important part is to never forget to heal myself. I already caught two victims, so I have plenty of blood.

Artifactors create items that affect the mental body, giving it new skills or boosting its attributes. The mental body, in turn, affects the physical body. For now, I’m using bones, wood, and pieces of metal to create simple items, then drawing runes on them. It’s the usual kind of artifact creation, only with ritual, blood magic instead of normal magic.

My next job is to max out my blacksmith and carpenter professions. If I can do that, I’ll be able to create items with a +200% bonus. I don’t have a crafting skill, so I’ll just be able to make high-quality items with basic bonuses taken from the materials. I have much better ways of making my own bonuses.

Ritual magic is built on items of power: mana crystals, sacrifices, herbs, animal body parts, and so on. In my case, they give me a +200% bonus, along with the little bump I get from my blood magic.

Master artifactors work the same way, while ritual magic only uses mana crystals. The methods I use are too bloody and ancient.

I need a bone-carving knife, so I’m forced to make one in the primitive conditions I’m in. One of my healing spikes serves the purpose. I end up with something between a knife and a file, though I can throw it, at least. I use it to carve rings out of bone, something that turns out to be very easy. When I stop growing as quickly, I move on to carving runes out of bone. Then, it’s bone needles, knives, spoons, and doorknobs. Finally, I’m out of bone, so I break them all down into bone meal I can use in rituals.

Working with metal takes some doing. I can’t make slender strands for rings or chains, so I have to make forms out of stone and pour molten metal into them. The fact that I can bend red-hot ingots with my bare hands turns out to be a nice plus.

I focus everything on making thin rings. All the usual items I get are broken down into their components, with cloth thrown out and metal kept. The only things I don’t touch are valuables with hidden attributes. Those I keep.

I have to kill my victims and stop working on my mental resistance as I need new materials. Collecting them is all I do for the next two days.

The profligates, misers, moneylenders, and other sinners have a veritable mountain of material, and I drag everything I find back to my plateau. Stealing iron chests full of rocks and running away is hilarious. And I really need the metal.

I’m having so much fun that I don’t even realize it’s been fifty hours. Hurriedly, I dig myself into the dirt, leaving just my eyes and nose above it.

∞ ∞ ∞

Eliza had been keeping an eye on Anji for almost seven months. The whole time, she played in Project Chrysalis, too, watching how her charges played. For all of them, the new world was one of discovery, a ray of hope. They were happy to find parents, even if they were in-game, as they seemed real. All the many projects that had been created before Project Chrysalis were like four cardboard walls in comparison, and all children and in-game parents were offered the opportunity to move there after the beta test ended. When the children logged in, they found themselves with the same family, only in a different world.

Anji was an exception to that rule, although his psychological data said that he was feeling fine. Eliza didn’t believe a word of it. He’d spent seven months in a location where it was always evening, and where the sky was blanketed in black clouds outlined in red. First, he laid there without moving for ten days, and then he ran along the ash desert for two weeks. Finally, Eliza stopped watching. It was terrifying just to think how the boy had tried to make friends with the creatures in the misty shroud. Could that be a cry for attention? Then, he ran away on his own. It looked like a kind of hell, though she wasn’t sure how he’d got there.

He ignored all her attempts to break through to him, and threats only made it worse. Even silence