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

all disappear. Even the normal sexual markers become far less pronounced, while the bone mask that appears has just one slit for my eyes. It turns out that the amplification my skill gives me is the same as what my demon appearance does. Unfortunately, that means I can’t doubly amplify the same muscles.

In my demon shape, my hands are once again covered in blood. The bone blade and chimeric shield have the same color, the picture enough to make anyone who sees me turn and run.

I grow the tree for four months, feeding its root system every day with load after load of dead bodies. Each day, I fight the monsters popping out of the portals around the cube to make sure I maintain my edge. The demon look improves and modifies my coordination, and even enables me to move through space differently. For instance, jumping into the air in front of someone faster than you is a terrible idea. As you fly upward, they get a guaranteed shot at your center of gravity—the lower half of your stomach or your hip bones.

When I tell Femida about my discovery, she just laughs.

“Sagie, that’s just the basics of close combat. But still, good job getting there.”

I start predicting how my opponents are going to move the next day, following their center of gravity to see what they plan to do next. For snakes, that’s the head; for arachnids, it’s the body; for shapeshifters, it’s the shoulder girdle. But they’re all slower than me when I’m in my demon look. It helps me think faster, and merging all my streams of consciousness makes it feel like I’m controlling the entire field of battle. It’s like I’ve graduated to next-level thinking where every action I take is the perfect solution to bring about victory. I realize that I’m almost always able to push up off the ground again after jumping to change my direction. I’m moving faster than my speed attribute says I can, though that’s only here in the portal circle with its indestructible rock. Normal soil slips underfoot, preventing you from moving with complete precision.

After every battle, I drag the bodies of the creatures I’ve killed over to a special spot right next to the roots of the tree. They wrap themselves around their “fertilizer” and drag it underground. I don’t think my tree is normal, in that it’s becoming quite the gourmet. Every morning, I feel it watching me as I step past the field underneath it. Its mobile roots gently brush against me as if hinting that it’s waiting for guests.

“Gardening” and fighting in the portal ring take up about six hours every day. Another six hours is spent charging my astral source and chimeric shield. In astral time, that’s two days, so each actual day feels like three to me. I’ve gotten away from working on my frontier ship production project, spending all my free time developing Ledge’s main and secondary functions as needed. The more I try to envisage, the more complex its mechanism gets, and the more it changes from what I first pictured. It needs a primary goal to serve as the reason for its existence, and I give it that goal. Understanding the problem lets me see unlimited ways of directing it, and I give my ArtIn self-recognition to keep the system from falling apart. The point of human life is to find a mission and then live for it. The point of my ArtIn’s life is to do what I ask it to do and try to rethink my assignments. The main job will be done regardless, but the way it’s done will depend on how far along the process of self-recognition Ledge goes.

It’s the fifth month when the crown of my tree finally overhangs the cube in the center of the portal ring. Just a week ago, it hit a kilometer in diameter, though it’s only now that there are branches strong enough for me to put my plan into action. After switching over to my demon look, I push off from one of those branches, reach speeds exceeding fifty meters a second, and land on top of the cube. I end up with broken legs, ribs, spine, and hip bones, I’m stunned, I lose my vision, there’s blood everywhere, and just about every bone in my body is fractured, but I’m alive and on top of the portal.

Even feeling just 10% of the pain makes it a terribly unpleasant experience. Basically, I smeared myself across the top of the portal cube, and I lie there unable to move, most of my body paralyzed. But the most important thing is that the portals on the four sides didn’t open. I feel the thing in the astral watching me, though I catch just an echo of its emotions. It’s something like when someone is unhappy with you but doesn’t show it.

Ten seconds later, I’m as good as new thanks to the panacea I had ready, though I would’ve been fine without it in just two minutes. The post-injury debuffs would be gone in ten minutes. Still, I wanted to make sure I had my panacea just in case the portals opened, and I was lying here injured.

Still lying on the cube, I cough and get my breathing back. My last few broken ribs seal up. I lift my head, and the portals open. That’s weird. I put it back down, and the portals close. So, the perimeter starts fifty meters away from the cube and stops forty centimeters from it. Once you’re in that area for more than a second, the portals are triggered.

I lie there for at least an hour before I figure out what’s bothering me. When my perception hit the limit and I got synesthesia, I started being able to get a better feel for my opponents’ strength. Then, I hit Level 10000 and began to feel my own body’s physical limits. It was at that point that my perception