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

malice-filled roar. For the first time, I regret having my empathy, the ability to understand the emotions living creatures are experiencing. The very fabric of space vibrates under his roar. Spirits start to pour out of his body, though none of them attack me. The demon cuts loose a wave of pure mental damage.

Damage received: 10000000 (ignored: 12500000)

6400/6400

My eyes fill with tears. It’s just for a second, but I see terrible pictures and souls suffering the way they did when I was in the shroud. The trees and grass crumble, the soil turns to sand, and I sink into it up to my knees. Everything living on the island dies. The demon’s captive souls are starting to abandon it, and it’s only now I notice that he’s chained to a black stump. The stump starts to pulsate; the demon starts to pulsate, too. He continues shrieking, filled with hate for humans.

“Hammer of brilliant light! Maximum!”

I overdid it a tad. My hammer slams down on the demon, driving his whole body underground, but then it explodes and throws me back fifty meters.

I’m going to have to buy new clothes. The ones I’m wearing are already ruined.

The roar stops, and the aura of hate dies away, but the island is dead. Just over half of the crystal demon is left. His legs have been torn off, but he’s still alive. Even with just one or two percent of his health, however, he couldn’t care less.

It’ll be eleven minutes before I can use my light hammer again, so I just polish him off with a dwarf hammer.

Achievement received: Titanbane. Twenty-fourth rank.

Kill an opponent 1200 levels higher than you.

Reward: +120 to all attributes

 

There’s something interesting in with the loot.

Ra, MoroKrai’s heart

Fortress mana storage, stores 100000000 mana

Class: Unique

Durability: 1000/1000

 

The fragile, delicate heart gets slipped carefully into my inventory. A unique fortress mana storage I got from a local boss for a unique quest!

In the cave, I find a small book covered in cryptic writing. It’s leather-bound, and the words are written in blood… I decide to take it with me so I can have them analyze it at the academy.

The whole battle was strange. Why was the demon chained to the stump? Why was he suffering when he could do ten million damage across such a large area?

The island is dead, just a chunk of lifeless rock. My feet crunch across the gravel. Even the fish in the surrounding water are dead, their corpses littering the beach.

I get back to Kkhor without incident. In the port, I buy new clothes, though I take care to dirty them up so I still look poor. Then, I stop by the slums for some fresh produce—I want to celebrate finishing my quest and unlocking my second specialty.

It’s an early winter morning, it’s snowing, and the market smells of delicious food. All of Kkhor is enveloped in a white fog.

When I get back to the room, I see Kirk sleeping on the desk, as is his wont. Half an hour later, the smell of food wakes him up. Of course, it could also have been the noise I was making gnawing on roast chicken and fresh vegetables.

“How long have you been back?”

“Half an hour. I already drank a liter of milk and ate a meat pie—you were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake you.”

“What??”

“I’m just kidding. I dozed for a couple of hours, and then I sat down to eat. Anyway, business. Have you found Femida?”

“Not yet, though I can tell you for sure that she isn’t in Radaam. The spirits haven’t checked the other continents, but don’t worry. You gave me a good enough description for them to find her. There shouldn’t be any mistakes.”

As soon as we have some free time, we get back to work on Kirk’s body, getting him up to the eighth level.

And that is how the two illicit doctors spend yet another winter morning.

For lunch, I go see Anri and hand him the strange book. He’s revolted when he sees it and asks me to give him a detailed account of everything that happened on the island. I decide not to tell him about the 10000000 damage, figuring that would give away the modification I did. We schedule the battle for my second specialty for tomorrow.

“If you win, you can fight for the title of scholar. You haven’t used magic in the arena yet, but you’re going to have to this time. Your opponent will be a mage swordsman—don’t underestimate him.”

I just lie in the snow until the evening, off by a new flowerbed. My aura of life is pumping at full power, and I doze off, carefully hidden behind one of the beds. There aren’t many people here, so I can rest after my long journey.

Spell scaling +1

+88% spell area

The aura has a radius of about nineteen meters and approximately the same effect as my weaker healing. As the area grows, the density of the magic and its effectiveness fall. Right now, it’s almost half as strong as it used to be, though the nature around me is still livening up. Everything is blossoming, despite the fact that it’s winter, by the time I walk away.

Finishing up Kirk’s body modification takes half the night. He hasn’t been this happy since the day we met, and watching him is an interesting experience. First, I just enjoy seeing him fall asleep with a smile on his face. Then, I start to envy his ability to sleep. My emotional field is always heightened, and I can relax the tension when I snooze. Kirk goes through stronger emotions, kind of like a child, and he goes to sleep happy and emotionally worn out. I used to hate wasting time sleeping; now, I realize how