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It was frustrating having to pound levels while the others were off doing God knehat She was running through new fields of power, frisking through theet on to whatever it was the rest of the to run ahead, and Iris had to drag her back and h the levels in order I ly obvious that if you took the kinetic elements from level 112, and borrowed the reflexive bits fro spell at level 44, then you had a basic working round But that wasn’t till 166, and level 166 was 54treated like a little kid around whoe Whenever she looked out theof the Long Study it seeed in as obviously theconversation in the history of spoken coh even in France Asmodeus was practically jailbait, so whatever--or there was soh to be cut in on Conversations went quiet whenever she walked into the dining roolad to see her, it’s just that she had apparently developed the ability to instantlythem instead to make some remark about the weather or the coffee or Asht she woke up fro--she was so tired froht up to her rooht there was a phone ringing in her room on vibrate, except that she didn’t have a phone Then the vibrations got stronger than that, stronger and stronger to the point where the whole house was throbbing every five seconds or so It sounded like when cars rolled down her street in Brooklyn with the bass cranked up and tooto rattle It was like giant footsteps were approaching the house, over the sleeping fields of Murs

The whole thing took er until whatever it as right on top of her The s rattled till she thought the old glass would crack On the final beat her bed vibrated a foot to the left, and she could feel three-hundred-year-old plaster dust sift down fro did shatter, aor a plate Light burst soundlessly out of the lower floors of the house, illu the row of cypresses across the lawn

And then it was gone, just like that, leaving behind it only a ringing, burnt-out silence Later, itup to bed As about how they asting their ti everything was as it had been Nobody copped to anything having happened at all Though Fiberpunk was now sporting a ripe purple bruise on his temple Hmmmmmmmm

When Julia hit level 200 they baked her a cake Teeks later, six weeks after she’d driven into Murs, she went to bed having hit level 248, and she knew that tomorroould be it And it was: at three in the afternoon Iris walked her through a co that, when properly done, rolled back entropy in a local area by five seconds The effect was very local, a circle a yard across, but no less spectacular for that

The theory behind it was a rat’s nest of interwoven effects She could hardly believe soy even worked, but Iris could do it, and after a few hours so could Julia She knocked down a pile of blocks She cast the spell The blocks knocked theain

And that was level 250 When she dropped her hands Iris kissed her on both cheeks--zo Fransh--and told her they were finished She could hardly believe it Just to be sure she offered to run the full set, 1 through 250, to Iris’s satisfaction, but Iris declined She’d seen enough

Julia spent the rest of the afternoon just walking the shady lanes that ran in coles between the sun-baked fields that surrounded the far meal--it was the first tiry She spent an hour playing coht Fiberpunk cooked them an elaborate bouillabaisse, with monkfish and saffron, and they opened a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape with dust on its shoulders and a really boring-looking label that didn’t even have a little line drawing on it, which ly expensive Before they went to bed Pouncy told her to co Study, the Library

She woke up early It was midsummer, but the heat hadn’t corounds for an hour, startling weird French bugs out of her way, studying the tiny white snails that were everywhere, getting her shoes soaked with deaiting for everybody else to wake up It was likeon her birthday Superstitiously Julia avoided the dining room while the others ate breakfast At 7:55 she snatched a roll out of the kitchen and gnawed it nervously on her way over to the Library

The day she’d stepped into that elevator in the library in Brooklyn, she’d dropped into the void Itever since But it was alain She could barely even reed, on the salass as everybody else

She’d tried the door to the Library once before but it hadn’t opened for her, and she hadn’t bothered trying to hack the locking char locks She stood in front of the door for athe second hand of the clock in the hall

At the appointed hour the door opened by itself Julia lowered her chin and went inside

They were all there, sitting around a long worktable The Library was clearly the crowning achievement of whoever had renovated the Murs farmhouse They’d hollowed out the space completely, cut away three floors and exposed the roof beah tall thin s Bookshelves soared along the walls, all the way up, which would have been totally impractical except for soside them, ready to hoist the browser up to whatever level he or she wanted to be at

They stopped talking when she came in Nine faces turned to look up at her Some of them had books and folders of notes in front of the, if the corporation were Random Genius Freaks LLC Pouncy sat at the head of the table There was an open seat at the foot

She pulled out the chair and sat down, al? They just looked at her calmly, like a parole board

So She’d met their expectations It was tiot Read ’e?"

"What would you like to do?"

It wasn’t Pouncy who spoke, it was Guy You tell me, Julia wanted to say You’re the pyschic She was built like aand severe to be really beautiful Julia couldn’t place her ethnicity Persian?

"Whatever comes next Whatever comes after level two hundred fifty Two hundred fifty-one I’m ready"

"What makes you think there is a level two hundred fifty-one?"

Her eyes narrowed "The fact that there were levels one through two hundred fifty?"

"There is no level two hundred fifty-one"

Julia looked at Pouncy, Failstaff, Asmodeus They looked back at her patiently Asmo nodded

"How can there be no level two hundred fifty-one?"

"There’s nothing after two hundred fifty," Pouncy said "Oh, you can craft more spells We do it all the ti blocks, all the basic co to have The rest is just per base pairs on the double helix The power levels plateau"

Julia had a weightless, floating feeling Not a bad feeling, but like she’d been cut adrift So this was it As mysteries went it wasn’t exactly a showstopper