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

haven’t even come across tracks left by anyone. In this room, however, there are eight corpses. The far corner features a large self-sacrifice seal with seven mages at the tips and one at the center. Collective suicide to boost the power of a spell… What do you have to do to a demonologist guild to get eight of them to do this?

Judging by the way the room is laid out, it’s a fortified laboratory. There’s a small couch, a pair of bookshelves, and a desk with a book on it. A small mana storage crystal keeps a magic canopy cast over the book, so it looks brand new.

If you’re reading these lines, the guild has fallen, and we are dead…

After that comes a small story about the demon invasion. One of the demonologists was able to find a half-ruined temple to an unnamed god from the Inferno. And he read the prophesy…

The wanderer will come, the darkness to bring,

Us to outdo, an era in to ring.

The fallen first, who once did lead,

Become the steps, the soil, the seed.

Following the first ones, they’ll surpass,

Going further than us, bringing darkness at last.

Evil will awake, what has always been here,

Virgil, the demon, from sleep will peer.

And three continents will bathe in blood.

The war will begin, faith undermined;

The demon will everywhere victims find.

The first will be sent on a journey to slog,

The first guard to the Stygian bog.

The first of the demons come to naught,

Younger brothers the gate will slam shut.

With the strength of the first ones, evil spirit driven out,

And thus ends the age in which darkness was sought.

Part of the prophesy was lost, and I’m not sure where to find it. That’s probably the part with the key to beating the demons.

The prophecy is already deciphered, and it’s pretty easy to work out what it means. The “first” are the gods, the “younger brothers” are the demonologists, and everything else is just noise. On the other hand, there is one couplet that I find incredibly valuable: Younger brothers the gate will slam shut. With the strength of the first ones, evil spirit driven out… So, the demonologists will use the power of the gods to open a gate between worlds which they’ll use to drive the spirit of the demon back into the Inferno. Only the gods can open an ordinary portal there. There’s some kind of idea or magic requirement I don’t know about, but the fact that the Gray Lands and Hell are in a different world means the key to getting there is a god’s intervention. I got there by being a sacrifice on the altar of Teurus, which confirms that theory. There are other principles and requirements here, but I can’t dig into them yet. I need to get my brain working the way it’s supposed to or find someone who can help me understand interworld portals. And since I don’t have any friends like that, I’m going to have to get my brain working again.

I have to take the note to Anri, but I’m going to keep the book for myself. It was what they used to summon the demons, including information about the seals used to summon the higher demons of the Inferno, and, if my memory doesn’t betray me, those seals were lost. If I’m right, my find is an incredibly valuable one.

A look around the room doesn’t uncover anything else. The only valuable things I’ve found in the dead city have been the note, the book, and the stationary mana storages.

The quest is done, and I have six more days in my back pocket.

I decide to get some rest. The demonologist guild’s building was preserved better than anything else in the city, and it’s deep underground, so nobody will bother me. The most important thing is to pick a good hiding place.

I jam the door to the basement closed on my side, wedge a chair up against the door to the room I’m in, and lie down inside the sofa bed. It’s in good shape, though I doubt it would survive a second nap. I remember my time in Hell and how I had to hide in the ground when I slept.

As soon as I dive back into my dream world, LJ returns. Part of me still thinks of myself as a cat, keeping an eye on the world around me as I sleep.

I see the field of flowers and the girl again. It’s odd, but I’m not afraid of her, calmly following her into the unknown. Peace and quiet reign in my soul the way they’re supposed to.

My dream, however, is rudely interrupted by a sound coming from the corner on the left. A rat got into the room, and it’s currently sniffing the furniture in search of food. Happily, it ignores the couch, though the bodies of the dead mages are an unexpected treat. The crunch of dried bone is unusually revolting. It’s almost like it’s gnawing on my bones, and that makes catching a glimpse of the feast even scarier. However things play out, I’m going to have to kill the creature and get out of the building. Opening the door made the room part of the location, apparently, and so bots can now spawn here.

As soon as everything around falls quiet, I sense an incomparable terror. The rat is so busy chewing its bone that it doesn’t notice a stone go missing behind it, followed by another one. I’ll be seeing those enormous hands with peeling skin, hearing the quiet, and sensing the strength for a long time. The wall behind the rat is slowly taken apart, stone by stone, in complete silence.

The air starts to fill with moisture, something that doesn’t escape the rat’s attention. Turning its head from side to side, it looks around and squeals