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

The situation changes slightly as the gods move around and get into position for a new seal. They’re going to kick in some more debuffs, and even the mental resistance I have now won’t help.

The mana incinerator is a surprising siege spell. The wider the area, the stronger the mages casting it have to be. Also, the more mana it takes. The gods are throwing debuffs at me to try to wrap this thing up.

Using my magic vision, I see two barely visible eddies in the island’s magic space. I have to focus to see their contours. The nearest and most convenient was in the mine, about thirty meters down over the railing. My magic space portal spell works.

“Fem, do you see that black portal?”

“What… Wait, why is it black? How?”

“Okay, so you see it. I’ll go first—jump in after me.”

It takes a careful leap to land in the portal, and Femida follows me so closely that she’s practically wrapped around my neck. She’s with Isaac… Or in Isaac?

I’ve never really understood the darkness in the astral plane. As always, we’re on a small island, though there isn’t a bubble like the ones I saw when I made my weapons and items. So, it’s not a main island. Impenetrable darkness surrounds us, flooded with all kinds of different creatures. None of them attack us, though they would kill us instantly if they did. As our scrap of land disintegrates, we’re forced to keep moving. A wide path made of glowing dust leads us into the darkness, and we set off along it after testing to see how firm it is.

A quarter of an hour later, we’re still walking along in complete silence. Thousands of similar paths gleam in the darkness. Enormous astral beings walk the floating city, while others ride horse-drawn carts or high-speed trains. Nobody pays any attention to us. In fact, it’s almost like we’re part of this world. The only unpleasant part is how that thing keeps following me—again, it’s watching out of the depths of the astral.

“I hate that thing.”

Femida decides that I must be looking to break the endless silence.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s there and it isn’t. Something is deep in the astral, and it has the kind of power that would let it kill death and Hell together if it wanted to. Nothing is its equal.”

“Seriously, what are you talking about?”

How do I explain this?

“I can feel strong beings looking at me. I know for sure they’re keeping track of me, and I can tell what their strength is—the one I’m talking about lives here in the astral. It’s so strong! Every time it comes back, I have to deal with more problems. It’s just watching us curiously to see what we’re going to do this time. It could kill us in a heartbeat, and it knows it.”

Femida looks at me in horror. She’s scared that I can sense that thing? Weird.

We continue walking along the countless ups and downs. It feels like time is stretching out, while my own senses are blunted. Do I need to rest? Femida glances at her watch, and her emotions tell me that she’s very surprised.

“What’s up? Did something happen?”

“Time goes slower here.”

“And?”

“Sagie, you knew that? Why didn’t you ever tell me? That’s a huge advantage. Do you have any idea what you could do if you had more time than anyone else? One player day is worth nine. Yeah…”

Femida yammers on in an attempt to ease her nerves. We’ve been across a good dozen little islands, though the path keeps leading us deeper into the astral. We find our own island five minutes later—forty-five astral minutes.

As soon as we do, Femida unleashes a deluge of questions that have been building up over the past five years. This time, I tell her everything, from beginning to end, complete with Hell, Leon, and Rachel. Her eyes grow wide when I tell her about what I found in the middle of Hashan Desert.

“Bernard was a god who was able to be reborn as a normal person?”

“Yup. And that means there’s a way to and from the Gray Lands.”

“You want to find it? How are you planning on getting there? Damn, that’s crazy! Do you even realize you’ll be diving into the world of the dead?”

“Crazy? Fem, when have we ever done anything normal? A normal quest? Anything?”

“Okay, I’ll admit you’re a nutcase dragging me into the pit of insanity.”

“Ah, girls. Like you put up so much resistance. But hey, the important thing is that it’s my fault.”

Femida smiles and nods as though I just paid her a compliment. We’ve been talking for almost two hours in real time, so Femida is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information.

After the battle with Talamei, she got the same achievements I did. The problem was that she wasn’t able to keep leveling-up after that. There were a few opportunities to work on herself in fits and bursts, like how she was able to get her amplification up to 1000 to compensate for losing her armor, though after that she just focused on her fighting skills. She spent the last year working on her battle and movement mastery. My trifling attempts at swordplay were nothing compared with her artistry, and I can’t help but remember the dreams I had when I was LJ. They were memories of how Femida moved. Her battle skills are really next-level.

The conversation gradually draws to a close, and we keep moving.

One surprising feature about the islands in the astral is how you can teleport to and from them. Each island has one way in and lots of ways out, and their size depends on the stream of mana coming in.

We leave the island along one of the channels mana uses