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

What set erdo apart was its duration and infinite scale. The more divine energy was invested in it, the larger the area it covered, gobbling up the light around it and exploding when it reached critical mass. Their fear of Idzumi had pushed the gods to expend all their prana on it the last time, and it had been strong enough to destroy an entire nation.

That time, all the warriors in the field died in the first second after the explosion. The trinity’s avatars lasted another four, though even their shields were powerless to stand up to the destructive power. All three of their visages were thrown to the ground by the shock wave. The siege machines were crippled, the army camp was razed to the ground, and the fertile soil layer burned away to reveal the rock underneath. Only the old god stood tall, maintaining his magic shield. A moment later, and he was standing atop one of the trinity’s visages.

“Worthless creatures calling yourself gods! Know the wrath of a true god!”

The eyes of the man lying on the ground grew wide with fear.

“Please…”

Global notification: Artos, a god of the small pantheon, is dead. The trinity has lost one of its visages.

The sharpened end of the old god’s staff plunged into Artos’ eye. Vulnerable points were just as vulnerable as ever, and the young gods had grown careless.

The effect of erdo ended a second later, though the old god headed tenaciously for the next trinity visage lying on the ground. Each of the gods knew that this one was the last—it was time to pull out all the stops. As Artos’ body disintegrated into a pile of sparking dust, eight pillars of blood-red light shot up into the sky to cover the entire battlefield and all of Pragada in a gigantic eight-sided seal.

Global notification: Veresal, a god of the large pantheon, is dead.

Global notification: Finerius, a god of the small pantheon, is dead. The trinity has lost one of its visages.

Global notification: Bargan, a god of the small pantheon, is dead. The trinity has lost all of its visages and is no more.

Global notification: Beelzebub was summoned to the real world by Ekron.

Global notification: Ekron received the Visage of Beelzebub and Body of Beelzebub abilities.

Global notification: Satan was summoned to the real world by Ekron.

Global notification: Ekron received the Visage of Satan and Body of Satan abilities.

Global notification: Lucifer was summoned to the real world by Ekron.

Global notification: Ekron received the Visage of Lucifer and Body of Lucifer abilities.

Global notification: Petbe was summoned to the real world by Ekron.

Global notification: Ekron received the Visage of Petbe and Body of Petbe abilities.

Global notification: A demon invasion has begun in Katain. The Hellish Gate has been opened.

Everyone taking part in the siege on Pragada fell victim to the ritual that summoned the higher demonic beings.

Not a single human god remained in Katain, though legions of demons did start pouring out of the four large infernal gates.

***

Philip Polanki was born into a family of engineers and designers. His father Rolan had been invited to work for Lunar more than forty years before, and that was where he met a girl working on the same project who would become the future Mrs. Polanki. Fifteen years would pass before Philip was born.

For the first ten years, his father had hidden from his mother the ailment that kept him from standing out as an engineer. The doctors had diagnosed him at a young age with delayed latent thinking. On the one hand, that made him seem slow in everyday life; on the other, it enabled him to look at things from a bird’s-eye view. He could glance at a plasma engine and understand what it was made of and how it worked. Rolan couldn’t control this, however, and so it sometimes took him dozens of hours before he’d wrap his head around the equipment he was working on. Even after he finished his basic education at eight, he still had no idea how the outside world worked. He became a qualified specialist in six different areas related to space ship engineering at fourteen, and he earned his doctorate in space ship construction at eighteen.

But that was just a cover hiding the lonely, sensitive genius. For all his conscious life, Rolan suffered from his retardation. Only two people at the bureau knew what he looked like—the director and the scientific advisor Rolan had come to for his dissertation. Everyone else actually thought he was a janitor at what was a very promising project.

One ordinary day, just the same as any other, a guy came over with a question for him about the thermodynamic characteristics of the RJS-134 alloy used to make plasma engines. Rolan, without immediately realizing it, took the cup of coffee out of the stranger’s hand and started reciting a passage from his dissertation. The man just smiled and pointed out a dozen mistakes in his theory. But afterwards, holding out his hand, he said what any young scientist wanted to hear.

“Rolan Polanki, I was instructed to invite you to move to Lunar. We’re interested in your research and potential.”

The man everyone thought was just a janitor was lost in thought for a minute. Smiling again, the stranger said he’d send the official invitation via the infonet.

A week later, Rolan was already up and running at his new job. Lunar had given him everything he needed for his research.

The only person he was given as an assistant was Rosa, another scientist invited to Lunar. The miniature girl with the Asian features was hard to miss even in the darkest room. She accepted the young genius and his quirks unflappably, saying that they just made him more fun to