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

“I’m going to step over your dead bodies!”

Just then, ten meters behind Sagie, two portals opened simultaneously. The archmage in full battle array stepped out of one. Clusters of amulets hung around his neck, the legendary crown of surpassing strength was on his head, and he was wielding the staff of seven elementals and the sword of banishing. A quick count of just his fire demon familiars found twenty of them. Before five seconds had passed, he was covered in an entire coat of magic shields. Skeletons, elementals, and golems began crawling out of the ground.

An unremarkable mage stepped out of the second portal, though he turned invisible as soon as he saw the archmage.

With one incredible leap, Femida flew from the castle wall to land in the middle of the crowd. Sagie barreled toward the archmage. Lightning bolts rained down from every side, one of them hitting Femida and glancing off into the mob of players surrounding her. All of them were sent back immediately to the respawn. That left the girl free to sprint toward the group of crossbowmen clustered in an alley. Shouts broke out, buildings exploded, undead were raised, spirits were summoned, and blades clashed. The unfamiliar mage got up onto a roof and started hurling waves of white light at the defenders. The milky shroud enveloped everyone it encountered, killed them, and then dissolved their bodies. But right at that moment, the building he was sitting on collapsed. Then, it rotted away from a spell the archmage cast.

The light mage, who turned out to be a shapeshifter, took on animal shape and leaped to the next roof over. One might have been forgiven for thinking he was helping Sagie if it weren’t for the fact that the latter was doing his best to kill him. The stranger was killing everyone except the pair of outlaws attacking the castle. Just a few seconds later, Femida appeared next to the shapeshifter. She cut loose a whole string of attacks, each of which would have been enough to fatally wound a normal player. A feint, and a beam between the stranger’s legs was sliced clean through. Femida went for a hack next, though the stranger caught her sword just before it sliced into his throat. How strong must he have been to grab a sword in midair?

The warrior girl quickly gathered herself, slipped the sword into her inventory, and tried some hand-to-hand fighting. But the mage just grabbed the kicking girl and held her over his head. Throwing her down at his feet, he sent her crashing through the roof and down through to the first floor. The next second, a blow from Sagie’s sword lopped the building in two. The light mage dashed off along the roofs into an alley, and that was the last anyone saw of him.

The archmage sent his summoned creatures and a heavy barrage of spells at Sagie. Both of them yelled like madmen in their battle to the death. Insanity raged in their eyes, and fixated as they both were on their mission to kill their opponent, shatter his skull, and bathe in the glory of victory.

While Sagie was busy slaughtering the summoned creatures, six battle familiars rigged a magic negator around him. Nobody had ever said that only humans were capable of using them. They took mountains of mana, but the archmage couldn’t care less. A column of light smashed into Sagie, and the four buildings around him were flattened in the explosion, but the shield floating around him again absorbed the main blow and the wave of destruction afterward. The familiars with their mobile negator died. That left an opening for Sagie to cross blades with the archmage, grabbing the latter’s staff with one hand, but the archmage leaped into an incredible kick that sent him flying into the rubble of the demolished buildings. Another column of light hit him; again, his shield saved the day.

There wasn’t a single soul around, all of them afraid to get anywhere near the battle. Sagie looked around carefully, though he couldn’t find the mage who was firing off the diversionary attack. A second later, and every building in the vicinity was hit by a high-level spell—meteors, death stars, blue suns, dead suns, tornados, and fire storms. A white robe flashed between the buildings, and the next one was hit with something absolutely incredible.

The blast wave demolished everything within a hundred meters. The walls of the castle crumbled into the remains of the houses, and fire rained from the sky. But Sagie almost instantly found himself in a marsh up to his neck—the archmage was busy, too. Then, the marsh froze. Sagie was pounded down into the ice, which disappeared into the earth. The mage kept firing away.

But how was he doing it without taking recoil damage? The light faded into a single enormous drop above the earth, the area growing as dark as if night was falling. The archmage used a leap spell to get out of the impact zone; an explosion turned the spot where Sagie was buried into a gaping crater. There wasn’t a single building left standing anywhere in the vicinity. The archmage was breathing hard, drinking spells, and buffing himself. It was quite the battle.

The light mage was hiding somewhere in the rubble. His defense was apparently pretty incredible if he could survive an attack that razed an entire district.

A second later, Sagie appeared behind the archmage’s back. A stunningly powerful blow with his sword took out the four nearest buildings, while the remains of the energy surging from the blade destroyed the group of warriors fighting Femida. The archmage was saved by his amulets, though they were all shattered, and the blow sent him flying against and through the wall of another building.

Two seconds later, he was back on the counterattack. He used levitation to hang at the level of the