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

As soon as I get out onto the water, I switch on my life aura, using ten streams of consciousness and boosting the area it covers. Even the water around me changes, becoming somehow more pleasant. Duckweed and other floating plants appear instantaneously. The wake I leave behind me is covered in seaweed.

Life Magic +1

Life Magic spell effectiveness +827%

I haven’t had much time to work on my skills lately. I’m only able to boost my Life Magic by 16, though that’s pretty impressive for such a short time given the fact that it’s already above 800. One stream of consciousness keeps my seal for walking on water going, which means that my Space Magic is climbing slowly, as well.

I’m running along the Ocean of Darkness, the second largest in Project Chrysalis. Radaam stretches out along the right side; the Ocean of Terror is on the left. Legend has it that death itself fought with an unknown enemy somewhere around here. Nobody knows who the winner was, but the traces left over after the battle are still visible—enormous cracks in the seabed and islands, an aura of death and light, craters, and even a couple of waking volcanoes.

The water is glassy, night falls, and the stars reflect their light off the waves all around me. The smell of salt is in the air; astral creatures fly all around me. Sometimes, it’s like I turn off as I’m running, distracted by what’s swimming under the water. Imagination fills out the picture, and I sense fish, monsters, sea serpents, and even whales.

I get to Nemida early in the morning, and the first thing I do is climb up a tree to doze. At least, I doze with one eye shut. The other keeps watch on my surroundings.

Around noon, I wake up when a vine flies past my face. I take it to be an attack, jumping up and nearly falling out of the tree. It’s only then that I realize how lush the tree has grown in the six hours I’ve been relaxing in it. I forgot about my aura of life, and it just went on healing the tree and the plants growing on its trunk. I look down to see vines and moss, with ivy weaving its way through the crown.

When I climb down to the ground, I realize what I didn’t like about this place. Life has drained away from it. The trees have withered, there are no birds or animals, and the grass is dry. I don’t feel Death or Dark Magic, but everything’s about to die of old age. Switching to magic vision tells me that the problem is the crystals littering the island. They’re sucking in all the magic energy, depressing the natural field. The plants have to work harder to survive, and that has led them to age prematurely.

This is the first time I’m seeing a demon of this kind. He feeds less on souls and more on the mental strength they’re made of.

Barely visible eddies of air swirl everywhere in the sky. The magic field is stronger in them, almost as if they’re releasing constant flows of raw magic strength. I’m going to have to ask them at the academy what those are.

Just in case, I start shattering the vampire crystals. If they’re the demon’s source of strength, I need them gone. I head unhurriedly along the bank, destroying all traces of the demon that I can find.

Animal, Turned Wolf, Level 917

I notice him before he notices me. The wolf meanders brazenly out of the forest, studying me and waiting for a reaction. The same crystals I’ve been finding are jutting out of his body, only a little smaller. There’s no life in him. He’s just an empty shell the demon is controlling from a distance, meaning that he can feel me destroying the crystals.

The wolf rushes at me, though he’s dead a second later. I kill him with a dwarf hammer just in case my opponent is measuring me up.

A second wolf, which was watching us from the bushes, runs off into the depths of the underbrush.

An hour later, this part of the forest is clear of crystals. It’s a grove of deciduous trees, and the crystals are all dark red. Suddenly, the world turns different shades of red, the whole grove enveloped in a bloody fog. I can’t even see my own hands. My magic vision is useless, and it’s just my imp eye and advanced perception that help me spot and kill the animals rushing at me from different sides. The demon is using the bloody fog to provide cover for his attacks.

Twice more, I trip traps loaded with bloody fogs, and once, I hit a large group of bots, but the forest is completely clear of crystals by the evening.

I continue slowly around the island, shattering all the crystals I can find. There’s a cove with an abandoned village on the other side. No people or animals are left, but their boats are still there. The mages must have opened emergency evacuation portals.

The demon itself is sitting by a mine at the base of the island’s only mountain. His entire body is made out of the same kind of red crystal that was scattered all over the island. He’s three meters tall, with a humanoid body and hair made out of green crystals.

Demon, Ra, MoroKrai, Level 2077, local boss

His health is in the orange, less than half of what it should be, which means that the crystals I’ve been destroying were part of his body.

As he gets up, black and red smoke billows around him. His body clinks, the sound getting louder every second. I feel like I’m standing next to a huge resonator.

Damage received: 16000 (ignored: 81422)

6400/6400

The demon lets out a wild,