Gestation by John Gold (love books to read .txt) 📗

shouts to stop and the threats they’re hurling at me, I duck into where none of them will follow: the shroud.

Yes, it’s a risk, but it’s my only chance at survival.

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 800 (ignored: 455)

335/780

Weak healing!

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 800 (ignored: 455)

334/780

Weak healing

Damage taken: 800 (ignored: 455)

333/780

Weak healing!

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 800 (ignored: 455)

334/780

Got it! I can live in the shroud. Still, there’s fear and horror all around, along with earth under my feet. I run along the border of the shroud and see everything that’s happening in the Fields of Ash. The demons are circling, but I don’t run out. My meeting with Death did a lot to boost my mental resistance, so I can stay in the shroud so long as I continuously heal myself. It’s just a shame that my survivability isn’t high enough yet. Really, I could have come here earlier. It was just that I didn’t know what was here, and so I stayed over in those lifeless lands. I could last here a whole two seconds!

I continue running, a hand on my chest to heal away. Continuous healing is looking to become a habit, and I pick everything up as I run. I need an overload to boost my strength. Visibility is down to a meter.

Ten minutes later, a wave of fear rolls over me, and I run out of the shroud. There it is again.

∞ ∞ ∞

Companion of Death, Absolute Fear, ???

∞ ∞ ∞

It’s the amorphous haze with the ashen eyes, and it glances at me before flying away.

∞ ∞ ∞

Resistance to mental damage: +0.22%

Mental damage ignored up to 603/second

His aura alone is enough for me to change my mind about staying in the shroud forever. It’s a good thing Death didn’t use its aura. I run on, trying to get as far away from the demons as I can. The whole time, I’m running through the Fields of Ash, but then I duck into the shroud until Terror sniffs me out an hour later. I notice him much later than he spots me, and it’s a miracle I escape. When I leap out of the shroud, he’s an arm’s-length away.

The shroud isn’t doing any more damage to me, though I have no desire to go deeper into it. I can just tell that I’m not ready. For some reason, I can tell that things are so bad that I’ll die if I head in. An unpleasant premonition hits me when I think about running in that direction.

Two weeks later, I’ve covered a quarter of the first circle of Hell. That’s even taking into consideration the fact that I’m running faster and faster.

“Attribute window!”

Name: Sagie

Level: 0

Experience: 0/100 (100 left until the next level)

Race: Human

Class: None selected

Basic attributes

Strength: 200

Agility: 177

Stamina: 92

Intellect: 102

Wisdom: 99

Available attribute points: 0

…

It looks like I’ve found out what the limiter is. My strength won’t go past 200 even though I was running with an enormous rock in my arms to hit 90% overload. It turns out that you can’t put overly large items in your inventory.

From the logs:

∞ ∞ ∞

New world structure: 5th level

Demonification: 0.01%

Your soul is tied to this world, and your flesh is restructuring to match the new world order.

Fifth Sequence Limiter activated

Moving between structures multiplies or divides what you can do by ten. After the ritual, my limiter was replaced with the fifth sequence, which tells me that the Project Chrysalis world is 4th level, while Hell is 5th level. The limiter means that I can get my main and additional attributes up to 200, and my skills up to 250. But what is demonification? It hasn’t grown at all. I can’t tell what it does for me.

I can boost my healing and resistance to fire. There aren’t any other options right now. I need controlled damage to work on my stamina and Life Magic. Logically speaking, the farther down I go, the worse the continuous damage will be. What’s down there in the ninth circle? The exit, I hope. If that’s true, I need to make sure I don’t die the second I step into the aggressive environment. I need resistance to fire, cold, and lightning. I’m not sure what I’ll do with disease, parasites, or stench, but I’ll see when the time comes. They all impact the body, so I need to max out my physical resistance. The auras of Death, Fear, Terror, and Despair work on the mental body, so I’ll be able to resist them.

As I think about all that, I’m reminded of space cockroaches who can survive even in a reactor room. I can just imagine the face of the engineer when one of those little buggers crawls out of the nuclear core. The radiation is enough to melt your skin, though that thought is just my tendency to go looking for problems kicking in.

∞ ∞ ∞

Eliza was relaxing in her chair. She’d just finished a meeting of all the psychologists at the station working with the younger generation, her group of kids in the high-risk category. Even in that group, Anji… Well, he stood out. He was mature, but he was a child. He was working, but he lived in the orphanage. He could talk, but he didn’t. And people are built to develop by talking.

Anji’s thirst for pain and self-torture more than made sense, though the last two weeks of recordings from Project Chrysalis were enough to make even Eliza feel queasy. The monotonous landscape, the dark scenes, the wall of haze…

Then, Eliza saw something she hadn’t noticed before. Anji didn’t show the entire spectrum of emotions, just your basic negative ones like rage, fear, and annoyance. She’d never seen him express happiness, love, or sympathy. If she was right, the boy was pathological, though that didn’t explain his choice not to talk. There was, however, a complex test she could use to confirm her guess. At his young age, they hand children off to be treated. She just didn’t want him to grow up a psychopath.

∞ ∞ ∞

Today, I got to see my two least