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

the source of strength in the roots, and after an hour of working laboriously in the pitch dark, I’m able to latch the roots onto a ridge on the seabed. Judging by the intensifying aura of death, its source is somewhere farther down.

Using magic for almost the whole day has burned through just about all of my astral source. Without coming back up, I open a portal there. I climb into my tree and drift off.

LJ appears and starts pumping mana into the source so I can sleep.

It’s been almost four years, and I still haven’t figured out why I keep having the same dream. The girl in the white dress is leading me through the field the way she always does. Every time, it gets clearer, almost like it’s turning into reality. The warmth of her skin, the luxuriousness of her hair, the petals on the flowers, the light breeze playing with her locks… I follow her, the rest of the world be damned.

The dream always ends exactly the way it begins. I never get to the other side of the field, and I never see the girl’s face. Oddly enough, even though she’s just a dream, I miss her.

I sleep in the astral until Femida gets back. It takes half the day to get back to the island in the ocean, and I use panacea again to make sure my island will be wide enough for us to work on our resistance beneath it.

While she has the chance, Femida dives without Isaac. His living armor gives her too much resistance, though she puts him on once every ten minutes to make sure he doesn’t start rusting.

We get down to about a hundred meters. The sunlight doesn’t filter down to where we are, and it’s so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. The water-breathing spell changes our metabolism for a little while to the point that we don’t need air. It sounds strange, but we’re breathing water. The deeper we go, the harder it is to breath—the water pressure is getting stronger. Still, humans are nothing if not adaptable, and we’re no exception to the rule. Difficulty isn’t the same thing as impossibility.

Our first dive is coming to an end when our legs touch the layer of slime only little plants can grow in.

Damage received: 28500 (ignored: 12581422)

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We’ve only gotten a hundred and thirty meters down, where the damage is three-quarters mental. Our survivability is more than enough to cope with it. And considering Fem’s monstrous survivability, I have to imagine we could take a lot more.

Just in case, I turn on my life aura to make sure the plant life keeps growing.

We’re walking along the edge of the underwater ridge, our legs barely moving. It’s so hard to move that we have to use amplification. Yesterday, when we were preparing for the dive, we thought about it. The more we use amplification or battle skills, the faster we’ll get hungry, so we have a month’s supply of food in our sacks. Hopefully, that will be enough for today.

The firefly I pour strength into six times over does a good job lighting up everything around us. At the edge of the ridge, we start heading lower down. The plants hinder more than they help, though I still don’t turn off my life aura.

Twenty minutes slip by, and we’re still going down. New inhabitants of the sea abyss greet us the farther down we go. There are predatory plants, giant fish, enormous crustaceans, overgrown squid, and even shells that try to eat us. We end up having to work on our resistance to electricity sooner than planned.

At a depth of seven hundred meters, only three types of magic work: light, dark, and air.

Lightning proves to be most effective, as it’s guaranteed to strike home. The only disadvantage is that the charge is dispersed over an enormous area. Lots of new and deadly opponents are attracted, and I kill them with Dark Magic while Femida holds them off. The light scatters too much for me to do full damage, so killing them takes longer.

Damage received: 422750 (ignored: 12581422)

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The last mollusk disintegrates, and Femida starts collecting the loot. While I have time, I think to myself about what’s coming next. The water pressure is rising exponentially. Magic shields are useless, swept away in seconds, which is why all the local predators have enormous survivability and resistance to all different kinds of damage. They’re quite the opponents. We’re up to Level 1700, and they’re just getting stronger. They have the advantage, too—even if we have our arsenal for attacks and defense, they’re in their natural environment.

We’re surrounded by darkness and the plants my Life Magic is growing. With no light to speak of, they take it on themselves to create it, so there are phosphorescent corrals, anglerfish, shimmering plankton, and other ghostly, glimmering fish. Life Magic transforms the lifeless depths of the sea. That puts me even more on edge, however, and my perception strains so hard I start to feel vibrations in the water fifty meters away from us.

Perception +1

Your perception skill has reached the maximum value

New ability: Synesthesia

Sometimes, people are born with phenomenal sensitivity and cerebral function. They can see sounds, feel the taste of water with their skin, smell pure strength, sense everything, and be everything. They aren’t to be envied.

At first, it’s like someone hit my whole body with a sledgehammer. The lantern shines so brightly that it burns my skin, even though I don’t take any damage. LJ pops up in my subconscious to switch over from my life aura to lesser healing. It’s painful, unpleasant, nasty, cold, and hot. Are my bones broken? Why is my arm rising and falling by itself? Oh, that’s the current! What I’m feeling in my bones is apparently the