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

Even in the raging battle, I hear Femida’s shriek.

“Dissection!”

She cuts immediately and straight through several bodies at once; Beelzebub, already massive, gets even bigger. The situation is perfect for Ekron’s current visage.

My side of the battle is hit by true darkness, a hurricane personified, meteors, death stars, superior elementals, mental incinerating whirlwinds, death whirlpools, fire storms, tornados, and dozens of other less spectacular spells. I get a message from Femida in the chat.

Show-off!

Maniac!

The battle is still raging around the whale, and I have a crowd of attackers trying to encircle me and shove me under the water, magic shield and all.

“Fire of Gehenna! Maximum!”

Femida and Ekron leap into the air as the water under their feet boils and then bursts into flames. Nothing is left alive within a hundred meters, though the steam billowing into the air obscures the Kraken’s attack to the point that I almost miss it. His eye goes from white to yellow as a stream of light shoots out of it. The blow is taken by my chimeric shield, even if it can’t take the entire force. Three seconds later, it bursts.

Damage received: 23050037 (ignored: 25000000)

51523/51523

The attack lasts five seconds, a stream of light five meters in diameter doing 50 million damage. I crouch to lessen the area damage. The 23 million I take is actually pretty dispersed. With the charge my chimeric shield has, it could hang in there for twenty seconds, but there’s no guarantee that I’d be able to take cover behind it in time.

An explosion of steam leaps from where the Kraken’s ray hits the water. The sea around me instantly starts to simmer, soon bursting into a full boil.

As soon as the monster notices that I survived his attack, it starts slipping under the water, a transparent eyelid closing over its eye. Ah-ha—that’s its weak spot. I fire a bolt of lightning at one of its tentacles, though damage below 25 million does nothing whatsoever. His tentacles grow back too quickly, as well.

I spend the time waiting for the Kraken to resurface by raining spells down on the whale. The fortress on its back is in ruins ten seconds later, and Femida and Ekron are finishing off the guards. Roni is even biting their heads off.

But as that happens, I miss the Kraken’s next attack. He springs out of the water with his jaws already around me.

I activate a gravitational well, though I mess up the direction and send myself hurtling down into the creature’s mouth. Somewhere near the glands, grabbing hold of the gills, I start methodically putting together a delicious dish of fried squid. I’m not afraid of anything, as my supply of air is good for another thirty minutes. It’s just a shame that my most powerful spells aren’t off cooldown yet. But I have other options.

The poor beast is eaten alive from the inside out by dozens of creatures summoned from the astral. Yet by the time he’s down to just 10% of his health, I’m ticking away my final minute of oxygen. I turn into a lightning generator to burn through the flesh and monsters around me. A message appears in the chat about the experience I picked up, followed by a window with the loot, and I push up against the Kraken’s remains with my head until he’s floating on the surface.

The whale, on the other hand, was able to kill Femida and Ekron. As soon as the fortress on its back was destroyed, it started singing, the wails doing 50 million damage to everything nearby. The bodies of its defenders were pulverized, and the two furious girls were killed in the first couple seconds. Even Ekron in her Beelzebub visage couldn’t take it.

The whale has one blind spot where the damage from its area attack doesn’t exceed a million. The remains of the fortress on its back acts as a vibration damper, so I get up there and start going to town with my bone blade. Force blades finally kill it when my final blow cuts the beast in half. That took almost an hour, and it did everything it could to fire off area attacks at me. Thanks to the fact that I’d taken out their fortress, the guards didn’t respawn.

Femida decided not to go with me to Tanatos.

“At this point, you’re the strongest player in the world. Neither Roni nor I can match your strength or experience, and you’re the only one who can get to Tanatos. And because there aren’t any respawn points, you’re the only one who can stay there.”

She’s right about everything. But what will happen to her team?

“Aren’t you afraid Leon will keep coming after you?”

“Nope. The demonstration by the Spring Forest was enough. I made sure information got out that you’ll punish any headhunters who come after us. Don’t worry. The players are all full of themselves ever since the invasion ended. For two years, everyone was leveling-up constantly, they had sieges every day, and they were fighting back attacks. The average level is 2500 now.”

“How long ago did the invasion end?”

“The last battle for the stationary portals to the Inferno was four months ago. After that, we had two weeks of fighting on that side, and there are now four player cities setting up raids on the fortresses of the higher demons.”

“Is Anri Diuval still alive? The last time, they scapegoated the demonologists.”

“You won’t believe this, but he went missing. Nobody can find him. His protection detail lost him after one of the fortress battles, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him in the last six months. Maybe, he anticipated what you’re talking about. Maybe, he was killed in a dark alley.”

Femida’s team teleports off to Ovidius, where she wants to do some work in the dungeons that appeared by Airis Castle after the three gods were killed. Only players at her level can go down there, making it one of the safest places