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

second floor, and Sagie looked away just long enough for a snake made out of light to swallow him whole and explode. Nobody had seen a summoned creature quite like it. Even after the explosion, the fragments of flesh and blood eroded everything they touched.

Sagie shook the remains of the slime off himself and set up a magic shield in time for a blue sun to smash into it. A fire broke out, the demolished buildings were set ablaze, and summoned zombies howled somewhere nearby. The archmage was raising dead players and sending them after Sagie as cannon fodder. Four suns had already blazed around him, burning everything nearby and melting the paving stones.

Sagie looked over at the archmage, paying no attention to the fire which even burned the air across an area fifty meters in diameter. The castle walls went up like candles—the shields were already shattered.

Turning around, Sagie tried to find where the light mage was. He couldn’t find him in the rubble, so he just sent meteors raining down to kill everything hiding in it. Enormous craters pockmarked the streets of the once-peaceful city.

Why did the boy give the archmage a breather? Why did he turn his back on him? He wanted to do more damage to the city.

Something slammed into the shield on the archmage’s back and exploded, leaving nothing but a bloody cloud in his place. All Kirk could see where Sagie had just been standing was a blurry shadow. But that wasn’t enough, and Sagie got to work burning the remains of the archmage.

An entire chunk of wall hit the outlaw in the back, burying him in the rubble. The light mage used telekinesis to lift a piece of a destroyed house, then another, then two, six, eight slabs of stone. Sagie and the archmage’s remains were left buried under them.

But a blue flame burst out of the debris. A javelin hit the light mage’s shield and exploded in a red cloud—Femida was getting in on the action. Sagie used a leap spell to teleport out from under the rubble to the spot where he’d destroyed the archmage’s amulets. Realizing that he was discovered, the light mage threw up a powerful, multilayer magic shield. Sagie hit the entire area with his two most powerful spells: blue helium fire and wind of death.

The light mage held out for about five seconds as his shields popped, one after another, and then he disappeared into a portal.

Sagie looked around carefully to make sure he hadn’t just used a leap spell, but he didn’t see anything. It was quiet. The light mage had left the field of battle.

The ground under Kirk’s feet began to quiver; the walls started shifting and folding over. The building, which housed the control room and all the mana storages for the entire city, eased its way into the air. Kirk watched as the Golden Hand’s main building was turned into a giant weapon, completely made out of stone and laced with enchanted metal. The fifty-meter construction had a city shield that Sagie wouldn’t have been able to puncture no matter how hard he tried.

The whole thing lifted into the air and then smashed into the enemy. Femida was able to jump to the side, though Sagie was held in place by a swamp some mage had casted. The shield that laid next to its master disintegrated into the air right as the blow struck home. The ground shook, and Sagie was thrown five meters away, though he was still alive. In fact, he hadn’t suffered a scratch. He was just lying there, calmly absorbing the hits from the giant weapon. Though Femida tried to break through the shield, it would have taken her forever. There were presumably several mages replenishing the mana storage faster than she could do damage. Sagie had apparently reached that conclusion as well as he didn’t attack the machine. Or could his mana have run out?

That theory was disproven when a string of enormous meteors landed. The first knocked the machine over, the shock wave killing everyone who was still alive. Kirk had been able to get away already—he was using a spirit eye to watch the fight. Leon had been smart enough to wait for the second Sagie was depleted to pull out the giant machine, the last ace up his sleeve. The god and St. Rachel were still nowhere to be seen.

Hit after hit rained down. The machine sank into the ground and was dragged backward by the force of its own shock waves. A powerful diamond shield had been thrown up to mitigate the shock waves from the meteor explosions. Just five minutes later, the machine and its shields, which were supposed to protect the city, were broken. And as soon as they popped, Sagie sliced off the machine’s two legs with one force blade. He’d broken through the protective dome, so further resistance was futile. Nate emerged from the control room.

“You won’t get anywhere with a trick like that, puppy! I’m going to strangle you with my own two hands. I’ll kill everyone you’ve ever cared about!”

“You’re right—I won’t get anywhere with it. But I’m not done yet, am I?”

All of Nate’s amulets protecting him from mental attacks shattered. The next second, he collapsed, unable to move. Even from a distance, Kirk could see the telltale signs of a paralyze spell. But it was staggering—each of Nate’s amulets could withstand 25 million damage, and Sagie had destroyed them all in less than thirty seconds.

A sepulchral howl broke out from among the ruins the light mage had piled up. The archmage had come back in the form of a lich, having already collected the pieces of his body that had been hacked apart. His skin was peeling, and the muscles of the most powerful mage in the world were laid bare, but he still had his crown, his