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

Damage received: 54570 (ignored: 81422)

6400/6400

Just a quick backhanded blow with his left hand throws me against the next building. Yeah, I wasn’t ready for this.

The demon gets up and dashes toward me, sledgehammer in hand. A quick swamp spell causes him to lose his balance.

“Dwarf hammer! Maximum!”

I’m out of mana, my spells are on cooldown, and I need a few seconds.

Leaping to my feet, I sprint off down the street toward the next district. I won’t survive a direct hit from that thing.

Rats are running ahead of me with zombies off to the side, but the most dangerous enemy is the completely silent one behind me.

My teeth clench, my ears strain, my eyes are wide, and I look like a hunted animal. Monster!

He teleports to right in front of me, and I bowl right into him.

The demon looks at me with his one eye. Only half his facial muscles remain, still, I’ve never seen that much venom and malice before. The sledgehammer whirls above his head…

“Firefly!”

The bright light hits us both, but it saves me and slows him down for a second. The sledgehammer crashes to rest on the road where I stood just a second ago. That trick won’t work twice.

“Light spear! Maximum!”

I can only boost the spell four times, but I have the demon down to about twenty percent. What a beast!

I’m almost out of spells, I have no mana, and there are enemies all around, but I want to live. While the demon is pulling himself together after the hit from the light spear, I run off. If I can buy myself just one minute, I’ll have a chance of surviving.

What could be worse than having your enemy disappear from behind you? The demon is gone almost immediately after I take off.

Silence once again reigns on the streets of the dead city.

A second goes by, then two, three, five, ten… I run up to a corner where the road takes a turn, but my perception saves my life yet again. He’s on the other side of the corner!

Right in front of me, the building shatters under the weight of the sledgehammer.

Through the cloud of dust, I see the demon take another swing, his weapon filling with ghostly light.

Damage received: 78560 (ignored: 81422)

6400/6400

The demon pounds his hammer into the ground to create a shock wave. The houses within a fifty-meter radius are reduced to ruins, and I’m thrown into the mouth of a cave. That hurt!

How am I supposed to kill this monster? He teleports, he does area damage, he has complete silence, there are traps, and, of course, he’s wielding that enormous sledgehammer… He’s the maniac of the dead city.

I have two-thirds of my mana back up. The demon comes rushing at me, sledgehammer dragging, and I’m having a hard time seeing how I’m going to survive. It’s time to use a spell I have for just this kind of situation.

“Power of darkness!”

We’re enveloped in a sphere of darkness twenty meters in diameter. Neither of us can see or hear…but I have my imp eye.

Seconds tick by. We move around the pitch black silently, never stopping in one place. The demon can sense where I am too, though not as well as I can sense him. The problems start when he realizes he can herd me up against the ruins of the buildings. As soon as I trip, he leaps forward and engages.

He barely has enough time to lift his sledgehammer before I attack.

“Wind of death! Maximum!”

It lands with full force. The hammer disintegrates; the demon’s body starts to fall apart. First, I see the skin and flesh rot away before my eyes. Then, the bones disintegrate, and finally, all that’s left is the ghost that used to possess the dead demon.

It’s the ghost of a man in a dark-red mage’s cloak. I’ve never seen a color like that.

Ghost, Piroxis Aransky, Level 2788, raid boss

There’s no chance I can win a fight with a mage two thousand levels above mine. I’ve always been able to get away with expertise and my ability to leverage the unexpected, but that difference is just too big.

The ghost, however is calm, just the faintest smile on his face. He brushes some nonexistent dust off his shoulder, looks over at me as if I don’t exist, and walks off down the street.

Achievement received: Titanbane. Thirty-eighth rank.

Kill an opponent 1900 levels higher than you.

Reward: +190 to all attributes

Level 874 unlocked

135 attribute points available for distribution

Is it really luck when you’re let off the hook by someone who could kill you at any moment? When your teeth are chattering, you’re bathed in a cold sweat, and your body has stopped obeying you? When your heart is skipping beats right and left, when tears are pouring from your eyes? What’s wrong with me?! The hormones… I’m a coward! Come on, keep it together!

There’s a sepulchral silence reigning in the district I’m in, though the creatures living there are starting to appear now that the raid boss is gone. I hear rats squeaking, dried-up zombies murmuring, and doors to the houses around the corner creaking. The possessed demon wasn’t the only one, either. I counted at least three on my way here, which means I need to hide and catch my breath.

Two deep breaths clear my head, sharpen my perception, and push me forward.

Filthy and soaked with sweat, I run quietly up the street using stealth. My bare feet slip across the cold stone, the ghostly light coming from the stone arch above illuminating the roads in the city of the dead.

Three small districts later, I still haven’t found the guild building. The quiet has me more scared than the zombies grumbling or the giant rats squeaking. Even