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

artificial intelligence, growing technological demands, and the search for an alternative way to house Ledge are all tricky. Yes, that’s what I decided to call it.

“Ledge” is short for knowledge. It’s there to collect and process information, design steps we can take to hide where we’re transporting what we’re buying on the cargo side, create warehouse hangars to support production, develop countermeasures at a minimum cost level and with direct intervention, and look for operatives who can handle tasks that require an intermediary. Ledge is now also responsible for disguising our primary manufacturing complex, which is in the solar system’s outer asteroid belt. Neither I nor 99.9% of people have been there. Because the sunlight is too diffused, solar panels as well as inhabited space stations are pointless. Only lone miners head out on long-haul flights. For me, however, that’s perfect; the supply of different metals, minerals, and additives is practically untouched, and I already have two automated factories there mining and processing ore. The ship loaded with uranium and the nuclear generator will be showing up in a week. Once I get it there, it’ll be sufficient to handle my energy needs for the next few years.

∞ ∞ ∞

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I’m killed right at the respawn point. A group of angels ambush me under the cover of invisibility, noticing me before I see them. The death penalty doubles, and I’m switched to a random respawn point within 25 kilometers of where I died. But I only notice the bad news at my third attempt—the angels can track me via the mark on my mental body. The fourth time, I dive into the astral after dashing off in the middle of the battle and finding one of the many eddies in the magic space around the River of Life.

While I’m sitting in the astral, I wonder why it took me so long to realize that I could make a run for it. I died five times, after all. And why couldn’t I have avoided that fight with the archangel the same way? I have no idea why I didn’t look for normal magic space eddies. After the first attack, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to win, but I still let myself die four more times losing 40% of my experience.

I jump out into some backwoods town in Katain, find an auction, and buy four new stationary mana storages. I have a feeling I’m going to be dying a lot.

Next, I open a portal back to the astral and start rebuilding my source of strength there. The charge is half what it used to be now that I’ve died five times, though the supply of mana is still more than the ten best mages in the world could even dream of.

Dying a few times in a row tells me the level and kind of strength my opponents wield. Mostly, they resemble mage swordsmen with nearly unlimited strength pulls and divine bubbles. They’re interesting to fight. They have an interesting style, and I’m intrigued by the tactics they use. It’s perfect.

The basics of guerilla warfare were developed three hundred years ago. You strike in the back and then flee the field of battle. And the angels are more than enemies; they’re a valuable resource I can use to do some leveling-up. My sandman counter loves it when I take Carenius’ detachment out with an attack to the rear. I almost pull it off, though the archangel himself survives. The shock wave from his bubble sends me flying a good distance. The ten escorts die in the first few seconds; it takes true darkness to kill Carenius himself. I maxed out the spell just in case he threw up a magic shield. Unfortunately, I don’t even get any loot from his body, as the spell eats up absolutely everything in the area. Even the artifact hammer.

Things get so bad that I’m stuck in the game for up to three days at a time. Claude gets back at me by making me swim six kilometers, and my diet is modified, as well. I’m getting more meat and potassium-rich food now. In the month since the war began, I’ve gained a kilogram, and the med capsule is telling me that I’m building muscle, I’m cutting fat, and my nervous system is being pushed as hard as it will go. The latter point is because I spend every hour I can in between the magic space teleport spells working on Ledge. Subjectively speaking, at least a month goes by for every three days in real life. My meditation skill is maxed out, though I didn’t get anything. Did I miss something? Being on Tanatos shouldn’t block hidden abilities or gifts.

Over the four months I’ve spent fighting constantly, I’ve taken out a few thousand angels. They only have their amulets to protect them from surprise attacks, though primitive methods like that aren’t nearly enough to keep them safe from my strikes. Would a bulletproof vest keep a cockroach safe from a slipper? No, even if a titanium skeleton reinforced with tungsten carbide might. Battle follows battle, attack follows attack, and I’m able to push the front away from the River of Life to the flying angel cities. In that time, I’m killed thirty-six times, twenty by cherubs. They use unique blades, long-range spells, and equipment. Not only that, but they create 75-meter-wide areas where they can sense any spell, and they can also…teleport the blades of their swords. You’re sitting there waiting to ambush yet another celestial patrol when a tiny portal window opens right in front of you to reveal a sparkling blade. The angels figured out in the very first month that I can’t sense them more than around fifty meters away. Now, LJ is always on guard, responsible for defense. The chimeric shield that floats next to me is his second home.

A long time ago, back when I was sleeping in the city of the dead’s drainage ditch under Kkhor, I learned how to leave LJ