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

“Well, if you insist on coming to our aid, I’m prepared to accept your assistance.”

The next day, a young man and a girl show up at the wall that rings the Spring Forest. Femida is wearing her unique armor, the way I’ve remembered her the past three years, and I’m in my bone suit. She has her Valkyrie suit; I have my bone blade and chimeric shield, the latter loaded up with so much mana that’s its akin to a lesser magic fortress shield.

All the military might of the Spring Forest comes crashing down on us a minute later. My chimeric shield takes the heavy-duty spells, while the rest burn up in my magic shield.

Sitting down in my pose for meditation, I ask Femida to eat a dumpling to merge our health pools. I’m going to need a lot of mana to break through their shield, and Fem has it all. She’s a close-combat fighter. The fact that Isaac gives her another 75% bump is just the icing on the cake.

Izara, the oracle, does her best to press down on us with the shield. We’re enveloped in roots, although we’re already sitting down, and then she tries to poison us through them. An area-damage spell comes next. All we can do is laugh when we feel ourselves pressed down into the ground, as we have absolute defense, and we’re putting powerful psychological pressure on our opponent.

Once every thirty seconds, a spell hits the Spring Forest shield. Personified tornados, maxed and spread as wide as they’ll go, crash into it, unleashing entire barrages of lightning bolts. Then, on the other side of the shield, a thick, true darkness appears that’s also as strong as it will go. There are too many meteors, death stars, dead suns, and whirlwinds to count. It’s just a shame I can’t summon creatures from the astral. I’d love to see how they would respond to a Level 10000 snake.

I use a gravitational well to pull the oracle out of the forest. Then, using telekinesis and a piece of wood, I knock her out of the well and over to where we are. She’s really nothing special, at least, besides the title. Probably the natural gods’ version of a saint.

After a quick series of negotiations, we exchange prisoners and earn ourselves a promise of eternal torment in the roots of the tree god.

We get to my empty home on Feng Island that evening, and Femida and I have an important conversation.

“I read the news from Kurg. You were able to get Rosie back. Where is she? Why aren’t you bringing her out? I haven’t seen her in years!”

Femida pouts, but I’m not in the mood for jokes.

“Because I don’t trust you.”

“What are you talking about, you idiot? Who could you trust more than me? Who pulled your butt out of the orphanage? Who got you out of Arpa? Who’s covered for you all these years?”

“That’s a good question. Who was able to change my biometric passport without changing my DNA? Who made a clone, even though it’s illegal? Where did he come from? It had to have taken at least a year to make him. And why hasn’t there been a single question about the ‘experiment’ I’m supposedly taking part in over the two and a half years I’ve been here at the resort? Why does Claude let you know how I’m doing? Why does the data from my capsule get sent to Lunar? I mean, obviously, that’s where you’re from, but the encryption is a good step above civilian technology.”

Femida radiates alarm, uncertainty, excitement, and a modicum of fear.

“I can’t tell you, Sagie. You’re really important to me, my chosen one. Your fate, what you do, your strength, and what you’re going to achieve in the future are important for…us.”

“Are you speaking for yourself or for Lunar?”

“For everyone. You have no idea how important you are, so please let me stay with you.”

I have to laugh.

“In all the world, you are the only one, my goddess of justice, who hasn’t turned your back on me no matter what I do or what people say. Because of that, I’m not going to turn my back on you. You don’t want to hurt me, and that’s good enough.”

The conflict passes, but our relationship has changed. Femida’s team logs out as I head to the astral. My chimeric shield needs to be charged, as does my astral source. I’m going to need them for my trip to Tanatos.

Kill a dragon? Kill a god? Simple, so long as you have enough mana. Killing monsters the size of entire islands, however, is a bit harder.

The next day, we all leave Feng for Tanatos. Because I have to use three streams of consciousness to keep everyone walking on the water, I’m left with barely enough strength to kill our first two assailants.

Monster, Kraken, Level 5770, raid boss

Monster, Whale Island, Level 5775, raid boss

I think back to the Kraken spawn we came across near the shores of Ovidius. Its two hundred meters had nothing on its kilometer-long father, to say nothing of the entire army of escorts.

Mr. Whale Island is already an acquaintance thanks to our visit to the bottom of the Sea of Madness. This one is smaller, though he still carries an entire fortress loaded with defenders on his mile-and-a-half-long back.

Femida sets up low and dashes toward the thickest horde of opponents. Ekron takes on her Beelzebub visage, looking awfully monstrous herself, and runs over to where Femida is already fighting. In that form, Ekron gets a whole lot of extra survivability when she’s surrounded by bodies.

They start to fight their way through to the whale, leaving the Kraken to me. Its tentacles are already reaching out toward my friends, its only eye flitting back and forth between us nervously, as it somehow senses our strength.

A dead star takes out some of the Kraken’s defenders who are on their way to Ekron. The monster takes that opportunity to switch