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

left. His palm is above my tree and it looks as though he could swat me like a fly. The darkest of dark reigns around me to the point that I can’t even see my own feet. Even the sound of the ocean and the rest of nature is gone. It’s just me, three supreme divinities, and my tree. All of us glisten with a silvery light. They’re all beaming divine energy, something that is clearly supposed to tell me something as they speak with each other wordlessly. All I can do is stand there wondering what they want from me. Maybe, they’re going to offer me a quest. I’m going to turn them down if they do. I have more important things to worry about.

Just like last time, Azami appears in my consciousness rather than speaking to me.

“Why do you shine like a god but behave like a normal wanderer? You have a stable material form, though you also have a source of strength in the astral. You aren’t an angel, you don’t belong to any of the ancient races, and you aren’t a supreme demon. Why do you hate everyone but show love to them also? What are you?”

That’s quite a few questions, and he’s the kind of interlocutor I can’t ignore.

“I’m a demigod.”

Azami flashes sadness, as if I’m some kind of careless child.

“You aren’t an angel, you aren’t ancient, you aren’t a demon. You’re human, and you haven’t been through a single rebirth ritual. You only have one material form. What are you?”

So, you can only become a demigod after you go through a rebirth ritual? That means it’s possible, and I could have competition.

“Prayers are gestures of the heart. In the heart, feelings take form. In the heart, feelings bear fruit. You said that. Those who seek strength find it, and I was able to combine my body with an astral source. I made myself a demigod without any ritual.”

Again, Azami is grieved. I sense sadness and sympathy.

“You’re taking the path of destruction, not harmony. You wish only for your own prosperity rather than the mutual flourishing of all beings. At the Lone Tree, you showed the character of one following a path of strength and gratitude for all things, giving life, shelter, and gifts, while punishing villains. You respected the dead and were unafraid to kill. But still, that was done in harmony with the world. Now, you embody hatred toward human and god alike, though a tiny part of you still loves the children of nature. You could tip the balance of harmony in your own mind by taking on divine strength.”

“I spent two years swimming in madness, and I know for sure that I won’t be showing off my newly acquired powers for the sake of it. Because of that, there’s no reason for enmity between us. That’s what you came to find out, isn’t it? You can sense that I have no emotions whatsoever in my mind.”

Silence hangs heavy in the air. Even the darkness changes slightly, growing thicker. The eagle’s feathers turn dark blue as he starts flashing open aggression, to which LJ instantly reacts by throwing up a magic shield. My bone blade starts sliding out of my hand. We silently look each other in the eye amid the complete darkness. Azami definitely knows that I’m not experiencing any emotion, though he also knows that I’ll attack the second I have reason to. He and Rogue say nothing as they watch the quiet standoff. But when the tension reaches breaking point and the air hums like some kind of power station, the eagle suddenly turns black and stops exerting his power. Azami turns and leaves, the eagle flies off, and the darkness starts to lift. I’m not sure where the Ent went. Something that big couldn’t have walked by without me noticing.

Once again, I hear Azami’s voice at the edge of my consciousness.

“Peace cannot be won by force. It can only be won by understanding.”

When the darkness finally disappears, I can’t find a single trace of the gods. The only change is that the grass and shrubbery have dried up as if squeezed of life. That tells me that similar changes happen for plants and other living creatures when they’re within range of concentrated, raw, magic strength. Plants do their best to survive by boosting their internal processes, leading to their own exhaustion. Small animals die prematurely of old age. And just like that, I learn another secret about magic.

My new tree didn’t take any damage. Instead, it grew a little while it was under the Ent’s palm. I wonder if he could teach me that trick. I need a new combat advantage, and my tree would certainly fit the bill, boosting my overall strength pool, giving me the tree keeper buff when the fighting starts, and upping my chances of survival. And that is how my personal invasion of Tanatos begins.

I spend days growing my tree until the crown covers the stone giants. To get it that big, I have to boost the power and scale of my life aura ten times over. It also gets some juicy fertilizer every two and a half hours in the form of a panacea spell. But that’s just the beginning. When my combined health clears a billion, my face breaks into a smile that doesn’t bode well for the local bots. Ablom shows up on the second day. Yep, that’s his name.

Monster, Ablom the Progenitor, Level 8110, raid boss

 

Two hundred years ago, back on Earth, there were movies about an enormous lizard that breathed fire. I’m meeting the prototype for those movies. He walks upright, and his roar crushes stone and my bones, even if he doesn’t breathe fire. Femida had already informed me that similar beasts are ravaging all the continents. Unhappily, this one is striding toward me from a ravine between two statues, an angel and a demon the same size as the stone giants down by the coast. Ablom