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

right and meets a friend. The eyes and folds of their skin glisten with a green color, making them even more terrifying. All my experience hunting tells me that they’re running from an unknown enemy.

I didn’t think things could get any quieter, but they do. Everything that could make a sound freezes in expectation of whatever the creature is. I hear my heart, a drop of sweat making its way down my cheek, the blood pumping through my veins. Still, I don’t hear his footsteps, movements, or breath. Nothing.

Undead, Piroxis Aransky, Level 2788, raid boss

The demon’s body is heavily damaged. The remains of a spear stick out of his left shoulder, and one twisted horn is broken. His wings have been reduced to stumps, his muscles are already rotting, there’s a hole in his chest covered by transparent flesh, and the skin has sloughed off his left hand completely, leaving bare muscles on display. The sledgehammer he’s dragging behind him doesn’t make a noise, even if it throws up sparks as it scrapes along the remains of the paved road. The stones kick up and fall soundlessly. An evil spirit has found refuge in the body of the dead demon, and it’s enjoying a sadistic game of chasing the rats.

The demon stops and turns slowly to look directly at me. He can’t possibly see me in the gloom, at this distance, in the empty house. A green light flickers in his dead eyes as the demon tries to find the unbidden guest. A rat squeaks from the street, and the raid boss jerks his way into the dark alley without looking back.

Air reserve running out in 5 seconds… 4… 3… 2…

I breathe in, breathe out, and calm down. Anri and Greta’s response to my accepting their quest makes perfect sense now—an ordinary player would grow gray and die of fear without making it a block. And I’m supposed to find the demonologist guild with monsters like that walking the streets of the dead city.

The doors are too creaky, so I climb out the window. Any sound is like a siren, attracting the locals to run up and attack. Giant possessed rats and crazy ghosts hunting them. And this is just the entrance to the dead city.

I walk through the complete silence, using stealth and glancing around constantly to see if I’m being followed. Every time a ghost happens to notice me, a dog barks noiselessly, or a splinter makes the slightest sound, I get jumped. Still, even during the fights, I’m the only one making any noise. The local ghosts are incapable of making a sound, though they hear each other perfectly. It’s like I’m the ghost who can’t hear anything, there to plague the people living in the dead city.

The second thing I notice about the city is that new ghosts appear startlingly quickly. I barely have time to dive through a window and leave a building behind me than I’m already being chased by ghosts from another building I’ve already cleared. Half a minute later, I’m getting beaten up by a familiar crowd. During one battle, I hear the clacking of claws coming from the intersection—their owner is on its way.

“Rose of death! Maximum!”

The black flower blossoms in my hands, and a second later the whole crowd is covered by a cloud of black pollen. The ghosts turn black before disintegrating. Ten long seconds later, and they’re all dead.

Level 852 unlocked

25 attribute points available for distribution

I dive into the broken lattice of a drain. The water is long gone, leaving just dry dirt and piles of old trash behind.

The scraping sound gets up to a couple of meters from my left before continuing on down the street. My heart practically stops when the demon steps on the grate above me. A second later, he’s off after the rat, leaving the same way he came. His sledgehammer catches on the grate, knocking off some shards that drop right onto my face. The demon walks off in complete silence, leaving me hiding and afraid to breathe. The quiet is starting to get to me.

The street is a twisting one, and I pull myself up and leave the accursed place as soon as the demon rounds a corner. The road signs tell me that the bank is behind me, Fateful Intersection straight ahead. In my hurry, I don’t let the words written on the dried-out board sink in, something I almost regret when I just about step out onto a small crossroads. It’s just one step, but the air is much thicker. It’s a perfectly round area with a well in the middle. I get the terrible sensation that something is about to pop out of the well, almost feeling the space down there getting a little cramped even if I don’t hear anything. Whatever’s down below comes up, attracted by the smell of a human.

Ghost, Evil Water, Level 2411, local boss

The enormous, nasty pile of ectoplasm oozes over the side of the well and makes a sharp, prolonged sound. I realize what the yell meant when a crowd of ghosts comes dashing out of the houses straight at me. There are several times more of them than usual, and they start doing more than a million damage. Pressing in, they kick me as they yell soundlessly, the Evil Water getting closer and closer. When it’s just half a meter away, I unleash the best weapon I have against ghosts. Fire!

“Fire storm! Maximum!”

There are still too many of them. The Evil Water starts to drown me in ectoplasm, and I can’t help but think of the time I drowned Tullius in melted glass during the tournament. The ghosts continue kicking me, making it impossible for me to get up and throw off the local boss.

Dragon breath incinerates everything around, leaving me to sink into the melting stone making up the