End of an Era (Project Chrysalis Book 2) by John Gold (popular books to read .TXT) 📕

Something like a comet streaks across the firmament and lands a direct hit on the boss. There’s a wild crash as the spider is flipped over and stripped of its escort. As its legs twist backward, it topples over. It still has plenty of health left, a good eighty percent, but it’s now missing three legs and everyone with it. The experiment is a success! I decide to try it again.

The second death star hits right next to it, minimizing the damage, and it’s still alive eight stars later. I use the remainder of my mana to finish it off with a dwarf hammer when the beast is only about twenty meters away.

Level 141 unlocked

Available for distribution: 550 attribute points

The death stars look like a small comet with a trail of debris streaking behind it. They’re perfect for taking out opponents with escorts, the only drawback being that they require 500 each for air, space, earth, and fire. I have a very limited version, but even this is strong enough to kill.

I kill Irhan the Great with a meteor. His escort is always nearby, so six of the ten are taken out with the first strike. Irhan himself comes at us like a freight train, pulling the part of his body damaged by the meteor behind him, and I can’t help but admire his survivability. Ten meteors and two dwarf hammers later, his run ends in a hole piled high with dead bodies.

Level 155 unlocked

Available for distribution: 620 attribute points

Verocil the Raging is the last raid boss. He looks like a lion made by an inept chimerologist, ugly and revolting even for necromancy. The monster has two mole crickets on his body as a kind of living shield, though they’re no match for a double meteor. To be fair, we have to do some work to kill the beast. Fem and the killers keep the escort off me while I restore my mana for another attack. They toss something like bombs at me that are only stopped by my shields. Half of my ritual victims are killed uselessly, though my guards are far enough ahead that they aren’t touched.

Level 170 unlocked

Available for distribution: 700 attribute points

These raid bosses are great! I’m picking up so many levels! I’m going to need to hunt them more often. Fem runs around collecting the loot.

Suddenly, I sense something really powerful yet again, but I’m not in the astral. What’s going on?

“Fem, a lich is about to come out, a really, really strong one. I can sense him already, so get out of there right now.”

The sky fills with clouds, thunder rolls, and lightning flashes. First, the ground starts to shake, and then there’s a rockfall that comes crashing down onto the trees. A cold wind kicks up. Seriously, what’s going on?

The enormous arms of skeletons three hundred meters tall come thrusting out of the ground. Once out of the soil, they freeze like pairs of trees. I lose count of them, and that’s when the aura of death breaks out, the sky turns crimson, and everything around us is bathed in the color of blood.

Fem was able to grab the loot from the raid bosses, so she’s back waiting for the lich with me. How naïve was I to think I could beat him?

Gates to the astral open above the valley, unleashing a torrent of beasts at sky-high levels. Happily, they’re all neutral toward us. But that’s when he comes out. The human form has no sexual organs, the musculature is powerful, and the skin is so pale you can see the muscle fibers underneath. Vertebrae poke out from the skin, while the skull’s empty eye sockets feed into the aura of terror. He stops a couple kilometers away from us.

Undead, Talamei, Small Pantheon God

Seriously? How am I supposed to kill him? It’s impossible, absurd.

“Well, kid, do you have anything that can kill a god?”

The first surprise is that one of the killers has talked. The second is more a problem: the god heard his voice and is now looking at us.

“Oh, come on, why couldn’t you be quiet?” We don’t have a chance. Well, what about a crazy chance?

I look around for Fem.

“I need three minutes, so distract him. Do whatever you want, but stay away from him. And when I say the word, run like the dickens into the portal. If you die, it’s your own fault.”

“Okay.”

The three minutes are for modifying the seal on the ground and drawing it on my own body. This is it - for all the marbles. I pull up my attributes and dump everything into intellect. Oh, damn! Almost 2000 intellect and 25000 mana.

The fallen god moves toward us. The killers follow Fem in that direction, trying to buy me time.

Fem activates her armor and slashes her sword at the god’s shin with ten times the usual amplification. He doesn’t so much as wobble; his health stays exactly where it is. Her sword shatters into a thousand little pieces, and the girl herself is thrown backward a dozen meters from the momentum of the blow. The killers try to hack away at his Achilles tendons, but the god completely ignores them. His empty eye sockets are fixed directly on me. I can feel him studying me, waiting to see what I’m going to do, the people around his legs meaningless to him. With a simple lift of his hand, a dozen streaks of lightning fly out, half of them smacking into Fem. Our mutual health drops into the red sector. Yeah, we need to work on her resistance to lightning.

“Okay, everyone, get out. Fem, pull the spikes out of you. It’s time to see what I can do.”

To start off with, I go for a meteor. The god looks up at the stone flying at