Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3) by John Gold (novel24 TXT) 📕

“You damn tree-lover! You could have warned me!”

“What are you cursing like a stevedore for? Did you unlock the achievement?”

“Yeah.”

“Then congratulations—you’re a tree-lover, too!”

We continue on toward the city. I want to see what the most powerful Life Mage spell is like with my current strength, though I have to wait for a whole day after using multiple streams of consciousness. The effect is greater than I could have dreamed. The island continues its accelerated growth, pushing higher out of the water. The roots reach the bottom and start drawing strength from the bowels of the earth.

Dawn is just breaking when we arrive at Kkhor, and the first fishing schooners are heading out. The children from the surrounding villages are taking the cattle out to pasture. The locals are starting to venture out into the sleepy, fog-shrouded city, while players coming in from a night spent hunting are lining up at the buyer’s stall. The market in the slums, which we make our way through, is already buzzing.

The old ladies are selling the morning’s milk and baked goods; the smell of porridge, fruit, and dried fish reminds me of my home in the village and my first trip to the market; and I can’t help but think back to my acquaintance with Bernard and the tournament I won.

We quickly find a house with a secret entrance leading to the city sewers. There’s a hatch in the floor just like the hidden door to the city of the dead, and my academy mage ring opens it easily. We head in without any hesitation to visit a spot where the living aren’t welcome.

After taking our blood tie potions, we get to work slaughtering all the undead we find. The twin brothers die simultaneously to a wind of death that also takes out three buildings. I leverage my magic manipulation and scaling for all my battle spells, boosting the area the damage covers from five meters to twenty-five meters. The reduced density is mitigated by the quadruple amplification my manipulation gets me.

As soon as we announce our presence and show off what we can do, a full-scale war breaks out. Respawn time is doubled, and we fight continually. Every five minutes, two raid bosses appear at the same time. Femida is a close-combat monster—she blocks both the raid bosses despite the 1800-level difference. She even laughs as I keep the crowd of ghosts away from her back. Not a single building is left intact in the whole block, and there isn’t a single ghost we haven’t killed at least once. Femida hacks away as hard as she can, deflecting swings with enormous hammers and blocking the blows aimed at me. Her times—ten body amplification, maximum mastery, and advanced swordplay skill mean she can defend against attacks that would kill a normal player.

A minute and a half go by, and nine special dissection attacks turn the tide in our favor. The possessed body of a demon with no arms left to hold his sledgehammer hurtles at us. He’s looming over the girl when she leaps to the side and uses dissection at the same time.

One swipe, and the demon’s head flies off to the side. The ghost inside him, however, is more than happy to let us know he’s there. A second goes by, then two, then three more, and he casts his first spell. Femida is saved by my magic shield.

“Jump!”

As Femida leaps, she brushes the ceiling above the dead city.

I use the dragon breath from my spell book. It’s followed by a wind of death a second later, and the combination kills all the ghosts as well as the bodiless raid boss.

The second boss takes ten-meter strides away to avoid the attack. Femida takes a shot from its hammer, though a hammer of brilliant light kills the boss. The whitish creature starts to appear just as Femida swings her sword down from shoulder to belt. She’s thrown all the way back to the other side of the square, demolishing a wall and dropping her health to about twenty percent.

“Dead sun. Maximum.”

That was probably overdoing it—the enormous black sphere wipes away the pavement, the remains of the houses, and the raid boss before starting to eat its way through the stone wall behind our opponent. It’s only two minutes later, once the sphere has bored ten meters deep into the brickwork, that it finally runs out of energy.

Femida climbs out of the remains of a ruined building laughing like a crazy person.

“God, I forgot you were that good!” Another fit of laughter interrupts the praise she’s showering on me.

We fall back to the safety of the tunnel leading to the city so we can rest where there are fewer bots. It’s only then that I realize how hungry I am, and Femida just laughs as I scarf down the day’s ration.

“Do you remember the administrator at our first trial for the Hunters? The swordsman mage with the dual mind blades?”

Of course, I do! “Little miss.”

“He said that status as a Hunter helps you use your body more efficiently. For example, your strength or stamina bar disappears, though you can see how you’re doing by how you’re feeling. If you don’t have much health, then your strength is lower, and it’s harder to run. If you do too much, you get hungrier faster. In your case, you’re ravenous because of the ridiculous amount of mana you spent.”

It’s surprising, but Project Chrysalis matches our style of play by sending us more and more challenges. We pick damage and mastery; our opponents reply with quantity and tactics. The longer we fight, the smarter our enemy gets. The raid bosses no longer jump out and start whaling away at us. Instead, they throw their hammer or do area damage to catch us by surprise. After their third unsuccessful