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

time, I grow a different kind of tree. The leaves have different colors, from ash gray to bright orange. We’re just two hundred meters from the remains of the god and the red stake.

The most surprising part is that the gods haven’t shown up in the last couple weeks. Also, the players who are also in this area ask my permission to shelter in the places of strength. It’s going to take them a year to get where we are at their rates, though there are already ten pairs of warriors and healers sitting at the edge of the spot covered by my first tree. But they don’t bother me, unlike the problem of how we’re going to get to the red rock.

I’m up to the edge of the red shroud. The mental damage inside exceeds 26 million, so I can’t just step inside. My magic shield wouldn’t last a second. Even if I combined all eleven streams of consciousness, it would last ten seconds at most.

The next three weeks are spent pouring all my strength into another tree. I only log out of the game for physical therapy, afraid of what Claude may do if I skip twenty sessions straight in the pool. Would he make me swim forty kilometers? He might! That’s a scary thought.

After the tree became a place of strength, I got the ten-minute keeper buff thanks to the constant damage, and it refreshes every minute. Two days after that, it became a middle place of strength, boosting the buff to 200%. The tree itself, of course, gets more Life Magic support with each buff, so it grows faster every day.

Every tree I plant is special in its own way. For example, the one I’ve been growing the past three weeks is always on fire. The leaves burn, though they never actually burn away. Chipped bark, broken branches, and torn leaves are all restored in minutes. The tree has enormous survivability and health regeneration. Even the fact that the leaves are burning has to do with how fast they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. At night, that stops, though it’s still an impressive sight. Femida, marauder that she is, strips the tree of everything she thinks might come in handy—leaves, bark, small twigs, and unopened buds. Once a week, the tree flowers, and she pulls tons of them off it.

Here in the desert people call Death Desert, in the heart of this anomaly of nature, the enormous tree throws out its branches. It grows so high, in fact, that you can see it as you approach the mountains surrounding the heart of the desert. Some of the spirit bots become material, and they show up twice as often. Their level has jumped from 1150 to 1410, threats to even the most advanced players. In other words, nobody besides Fem and me can even think about coming close to where we are. She, needless to say, is happy to see the bots. They’re a chance for her to make up the 90-level difference between us, something she’s hard at work doing. I have more important things to think about.

Today, the crown of the tree finally touches the red stake piercing the heart of the stone giant. Crawling out to the edge of the furthest branches, I jump. After flying through two hundred meters of air, I realize that I don’t know how to land. Even if I don’t take damage, I slide off the stone giant. For three whole seconds, I take 50 million damage and don’t heal the tree. Another twenty of those seconds, and it will die, though I’ve reached my objective—the red spike that killed the god and sent him off to be reborn is right in front of me.

Touching it gives me nothing. It’s one single object, and it isn’t highlighted as an item. On the other hand, the camera icon appears above the heads of the players in the distance. They’re filming, the bastards. Smile and wave! Everything is under control.

The whole red rock turns out to be a monolith made out of some material I don’t recognize. It isn’t palirin, it isn’t crystal, and it isn’t metal. It may be some kind of rock with special qualities. The dark red color… Could that be a hint? Blood malachite? Or something similar? If I had the time, I’d be able to figure it out. I don’t, however.

Fem, give me your sword.

Again?!

This isn’t the gate to the Gray Lands, though the material itself may be what you need to get there. The laws of physics here say you can’t have an item that can take more than 50 million damage. At least, that’s true for intelligent and higher creatures. Bacteria, mushrooms, plants, and trees have other rules. The overall balance may be shifted to increase the resistance to mental damage and cut the resistance to fire damage. But they aren’t immortal. That has to mean that nothing in this world is indestructible. This has to have a similar balance of resistances. It’s based on stone, so I need physical damage.

Femida doesn’t just give me her sword. She hurls it at the red rock behind me with all the strength she can muster. The tip buries itself halfway up the blade, and cracks run through the stake. Bingo!

It takes me two minutes, but I knock off a couple of fragments as long as my forearm. The stone itself, however, replenishes itself right in front of me. Whoa! It’s repairing itself!

The pieces I get turn out to be very odd.

Unique item received: Key

???

Type: Ingredient

Requirements: ???

Durability: 1/1

Weight: 40 kg

The second piece has the same description. Neither does mental or fire damage, and I’m more surprised by the weight than anything else. There are plenty of swords out there that don’t weigh that much, and these aren’t even that big.

The Hashan Desert was once