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

Beelzebub’s visage enables her to control up to eight different modifications.

Spy, scout, warrior, and defender—she’s a universal fighting machine. Beelzebub’s visage makes her enormous, though her body is hideous, and she has weak wings. Also, her complete inability to fly like that makes her an ideal target for ranged attacks. On the other hand, she has incredible reserves of health and survivability, a hundred times more than a cockroach. Her health regeneration is intensified when she’s by a fire and there are fresh corpses nearby, too. Even if it were possible to cut her head off in that form, it would take another finishing blow to chop through her skull. Otherwise, she’d regenerate from just the head.

Lucifer’s visage gives her added strength, covering her body in wide red stripes. It turns out to be something very similar to the amplification the League of Hunters offers. In that visage, she has a pair of working wings and two scythes she can only use up close. But she leans on that ability to fly pretty heavily.

Petbe’s visage doesn’t change the way the girl looks; it just means that the locals are more loyal to her. She turns into a spirit protector, the symbol of vengeance. Petbe’s visage enables her to completely ignore all kinds of damage, almost as if she doesn’t actually have a body.

She can’t pass through things, though she would be entirely capable of surviving a meteor or dead sun. The visage lasts for a minute, and she can’t use it any more than once every twenty minutes. Really, it’s better than the bubble paladins have, as theirs takes an hour and lasts just twenty seconds.

Everything’s going well. The girls are exchanging interested glances, Isaac realizes what’s going on and is rethinking his relationship with Femida, and I’m thinking that I just met a very strong ally. Of course, she wouldn’t join a group—she’s too independent and distrustful for that. But as a warrior and a fighter, she’s incredibly powerful. Her fighting abilities, her incredible wealth of experience in battle, all the spells she knows, her sharp mind, her impeccable will that is every bit Femida’s equal, and her personal qualities make her better than the swordswoman. She’s a surprising person combining strong intellect, independence, and will. Really, she’s the female version of me, and, as I can see, much more attractive to Femida. I figured out where her tastes lie a long time ago.

Suddenly, I can sense another presence, even though there definitely isn’t anyone for a hundred meters around us. A portal!

Oh, no, this is it! LJ is scared out of his mind.

Our peaceful little gathering is interrupted by the academy’s archmage. Tiberius Sen has a magic shield up before his feet touch Katain soil, a staff in his right hand and a light longsword in his left. He’s wearing dozens of single-use amulets; there are two belts lined with potions around his waist, a crown is on his head, and his shoes give out so much power that I feel like I was just hit with a divine attack. His four-elemental shield, six lizard familiars, and fire aura are impressive. Just a glance is enough to realize that the mage is giving us time to prepare for battle.

LJ reacts first, throwing out a maximum shield. By the third second, I’ve already left our little picnic area. Femida finds herself being hurled toward the castle wall, which she breaks right through. It’s a neat trick, throwing the ground your opponents are sitting on.

Ekron uses her Petbe ability to absorb the first six attacks. The fact that she can ignore the damage gives me time for a counterattack, and I shoot off a swamp, freezing, and a maximum dead sun. Just the aura is almost enough to kill me. But the archmage hurls enormous strips of soil at the black sphere, and it’s gone five seconds later. Ekron switches to her Beelzebub visage and starts peppering away at the mage’s shield. The latter looks me in the eye, paying no attention to the rampaging demonologist. It’s just when Ekron takes a leap in the air, aiming to squash her opponent, that he looks away. She’s big enough to squish the whole castle, not to mention the mage.

But he looks back at me and just waves a hand. A titanic boulder slams into Ekron in midair, pinning her against the remains of the castle. One more lazy gesture, and an entire barrage of gravitational blows rains down. I’m not sure what kind of survivability she has in her demon visage, but the sound of bones crunching turns my stomach. The archmage just raises an eyebrow when he sees my reaction.

Femida leaps out of the cloud of dust to land a blow so hard that the mage’s shield is demolished immediately. Crossing his staff and sword, Tiberius blocks her next strike, and gives her a kick that sends her flying back to the remains of the wall. My dwarf hammer should finish off the defenseless mage, but all it ends up doing is shattering a few of the amulets hanging on his combat mantle. While he’s busy with Femida, I unleash a string of spells, but his amulets absorb them all. It turns out that he’s protected against all kinds of magic, and that buys him enough time to get his magic shield up. His familiars keep him safe from the recoil, and his powerful shield is going to protect him from quite a few attacks. My mana will run out before I can break through it.

Femida is covered in stone and rubble, and that’s followed by cooling and fortification spells that lock the girl in a stone tomb made up of the remains of the wall.

The sound of stone cracking is coming from the castle courtyard—Ekron is starting to come to. The archmage looked up at the sky and