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

staff, and his sword. As soon as he pulled himself out of the ruins, he used a cursed earth spell. It was so strong that the soil all around him instantly turned into lifeless dust, while the burning remains of the buildings Sagie was standing under collapsed. Everything they touched burst into flames.

The lich had no idea how Sagie managed to get behind him, but the boy started hacking the lich to pieces with his sword. Kirk noticed the undead’s torso try to run off, but it was split in two a second later. Sagie collected the pieces and burned them with the white, all-cleansing fire of a light mage. The lich’s body disintegrated into a black goo that Sagie kept scorching until the pool wouldn’t have filled a glass. Suddenly, Kirk saw an arm reach out and try to grab Sagie, but the latter just stepped to the side and turned up the heat.

All that was left of the archmage was his staff, and Sagie quickly swept it into his inventory. With a final swipe of his white sword, Sagie chopped the archmage’s legendary sword in half.

Femida handed her friend Nate’s paralyzed body, and Sagie turned to look directly at the spirit eye Kirk was using to watch the battle.

“Hey, Leon! I’m coming for your main altar. Stop me if you can.”

Sagie opened a portal and stepped into it with Nate. Femida walked in behind it, and it closed. That was the last time Kirk ever saw the Golden Hand’s chief of security.

***

Leon, Rachel, Merlen and their best hundred paladins had teleported to the god’s main altar in Imir as soon as Sagie had shown up at Castle Airis. The altar had been erected in place of Teurus’, who Leon had been able to kill three years before, thereby just about earning his ticket into the large pantheon.

The city itself was protected just as well as the fortress, and it had been Leon’s primary residence for working with the locals for the past eight years. Right then, the city was on a war footing. The gates were closed, nobody was being let in, and the city teleport was turned off. The guards all knew exactly what Sagie and Femida looked like.

Despite that, Leon got information from Nate that Sagie and Femida were already inside the city and standing outside the door of the main temple.

The first group of paladins wasted their bubble on the first three minutes, expecting the attack. Some of the buffs were wearing off, and Sagie still hadn’t stepped into the temple.

Leon was standing near the altar when Sagie and Femida came rushing out of the basement. The paladins were attacked from the rear; their battle formation was shattered. With one blow, Femida killed three high-level fighters. Rachel tried to keep up by resurrecting the paladins and removing their debuffs. She and Leon were the keys to the battle. Back in business, the resurrected paladins rushed in to attack.

A minute went by, and then a second and a third, and it began to hit Leon that he was losing troops. They weren’t dying; they were disappearing into portal-like flashes. Nobody could tell what was going on or where his guards were disappearing to. As their numbers kept dropping, he still couldn’t figure out the answer, and he didn’t have time to read the message he was being sent.

Finally, there were just ten dead paladins left. Sagie stood there waiting for Rachel to resurrect them.

“Go ahead, I can wait.” She had no idea what was going on, but she decided against resurrecting them. “Fine. In that case, I’m going to go have a talk with Nate.”

A divine spear, a spell from the large pantheon arsenal, slammed into Sagie’s back, doing fifty million physical, electric, and mental damage. The stained-glass windows all shattered; the remains of the paladins were smeared across the floor. The façade on the walls crumbled, and chunks of ceiling fell to the floor.

The dust settled to reveal Sagie standing right where he’d been hit by the divine spear. His shield was hovering behind him—that was apparently what had absorbed the damage.

“I figured you’d take a shot at my back. Actually, I’m more surprised Rachel didn’t join you.”

But how? How was it possible to survive a hit that did 150 million damage? There wasn’t a shield in the world capable of that, to say nothing of all the magic shields belonging to the gods in the large pantheon.

The only part of the façade that survived the strike was, by some miracle, the main temple doors. The three-meter wooden constructions swung open to reveal two statues resembling Sagie and Femida. Nate, paralyzed, was lying face-down, only able to see the shoes on their stone feet.

“Well, Nate, time’s up. Remember that altar? Remember how you sacrificed me on it? No? Come on, I’ll remind you.”

Femida silently watched Sagie drag the grown man over by the scruff of his neck. Rachel made just the slightest move, but that was enough for Femida to place her long sword at the saint’s neck.

“Don’t be stupid. You’ll have your turn.”

Rachel could do nothing but stand where she was. She couldn’t even log out of the game—your character stood there for another hour if you logged out during battle, a completely defenseless shell any woman could kill. Each death meant losing 10% of her divine strength, and she’d already died three times. It wasn’t worth risking it for nothing.

Leon blocked Sagie’s path to the altar. He’d already realized that the mage had somehow been teleporting his players somewhere else, and he’d decided to kill Nate himself before Sagie could. Leon was already readying the divine sword he’d made, aiming it for Nate’s head, when the stone under his feet turned into a bog. His swing missed. Sagie kicked Leon into the filth.

“You have no idea how to