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

Sagie looked as though someone had stripped him of his skin. The bone mask turned toward Femida, and she felt a chill run through her.

“You’re with them? But…”

He interrupted himself when he sensed an enemy behind him.

∞ ∞ ∞

Miridia was the patron goddess of artifactors, so she knew plenty about weapons. She’d made herself a non-level blade back when she was still an artifactor goddess in Ferengar. After coming back as a wanderer, she became a mage swordsman and the blade helped her quickly pick up new levels. And where could you find the world’s best masters for armor, potions, maps, and training? She’d gotten all that set up for herself in the first year after Bernard was reborn.

A thousand years had gone by, and the wanderers still hadn’t shown up. That’s when she decided to make her own portal. She developed a theory and built a test model, but something she forgot to take into account led to a catastrophe that changed an entire continent forever. Miridia took full responsibility for what happened and set off for voluntary exile in Ferengar. A year later, however, she was back to her experiments and discoveries.

The items she made in the epicenter of the blast had unique traits that didn’t show up in the attributes. And the closer the forge was to the epicenter, the stronger those traits became. That’s when she got the idea to make a pair of swords for when the wanderers came back and she could be reborn.

But Miridia couldn’t wait ten or twenty years for a master to show up and reach the pinnacle of smithing and artifactory. They disappeared as soon as they maxed out their skills, and Miridia wasn’t about to develop one in her own smithy, keeping an eye on the craftsman with no guarantee that the end result would be worth it or that he would be willing to sacrifice himself.

Chimerology was the second way to create a non-level weapon. The goddess just guessed as much, though she didn’t see any reason why her idea wouldn’t work, and indeed it did.

Her first experiments working with animals pushed her skill up to the level she needed. She used dwarves to make the weapons, teleporting them to her temple as needed. Waiting for her victims to be alone, she would send them over and hide them in a prison cell. Meridia made an artifact that blocked the chat the day she came up with her plan for the weapons. The weapons themselves turned out to be not very difficult to make, and that was how a pair of unique, non-level blades with effects not reflected in their attributes were born: Heaven and Earth.

The key wasn’t even the damage the swords did; it was the fact that they were both longswords. She held Earth with both hands, Heaven floating over her head and attacking at will, often in the most unpredictable manner possible. She needed a familiar to wield the latter.

After creating the swords, Miridia lost interest in them, though she later saw Sagie with a similar weapon. Knowing their peculiarities, Miridia decided to pick up her swords and keep them for use only in the worst-case scenario.

That moment arrived when Miridia saw what Sagie, the boy she’d cursed eleven years before, had turned into. Fear that he may attack first and do irreparable damage spurred her into action.

When the boney sphere left the battlefield, and Femida decided to head over and try to calm Sagie down, she saw her opening. Her opponent had let his guard down; his back was toward her. Miridia used an acceleration potion to get over to him in two quick bounds, but he was able to react. The last thing she did was mutter the key words.

“The sword that soars higher than all. The sword that soars lower than all!”

Sagie caught the floating blade easily and counterattacked. Heaven came crashing down on his chimeric shield, Earth clashed with his bone blade. The chimeric shield split in half; the bone blade shattered at the handle. Sagie threw his head back to avoid a deadly blow. Heaven whistled past, while Earth nicked his eyes and blinded him.

A second later, Miridia was dead, her body disintegrating under the force of the raw strength released by the blow.

∞ ∞ ∞

Critical mental body injury from layers one through ten!

Energy channels critically injured! Your mental body’s magic space component was destroyed, and your stamina dropped 75% in line with the changes to your body’s energy-channel balance.

Class lost: Mage

New class: No class (demigod)

Ability lost: Chimeric parasite shield

Ability lost: Astral bone sword

Weaker healing [blocked]

Telekinesis [blocked]

…[blocked]

Ow, ow, ow! Why aren’t my eyes healing? Greater healing works, but it’s doing nothing for my eyes. What injury is this? It hurts so bad I feel like my eyes were jabbed out after all.

“Ah-h-h! I hate you all! You think I’m going to give up? I’ll kill you!”

∞ ∞ ∞

Femida could see Sagie’s face. Even through the red haze, the wound in his bone mask was clearly visible. Both eyes were gone, though there was barely any blood despite the serious wound. Sagie was howling from the pain. Why wasn’t he healing himself?

He got up and clasped his hands as if in prayer. Then, placing both of them against his forehead, he whispered something. The red aura started compressing into a thick cocoon around him.

After killing the demon attacking her, Femida looked over to see the ground around Sagie settle and collapse. The only thing that remained intact in the vicinity was the portal slab. She was standing right at the edge when Sagie threw a hand out in the direction of the keeper, still blind, but knowing exactly where his opponent was from the strength he radiated. The latter threw up a local magic shield and prepared for the attack.

All the light in the sky focused into a single drop hanging right above Sagie. The keeper knew exactly how much damage he needed to do to win, and