Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3)

by John Gold

  Any player who knew anything about Sagie knew that story.

  “You were one of the saboteurs inside the city. Before the siege began, your accomplices grabbed control of the control room for the stronghold’s shields, and they let you two in. The undead accomplices they’d already caught had been put in that house on Leon’s orders to ensure that they were killed. What, you murderer, you killed your own friends?”

  Something changed in Sagie’s face. No longer did he seem as calm.

  “Here are some facts for you, simpleton. I was the first player in the world who was able to wound a god. Half a year before the battle here, I fought Talamei during the trial for the Hunters in the dwarf foothills. I never joined a clan, never joined a faction, never participated in the wars or the undead invasion. The only reason I was here that day was because Leon kidnapped what I held most dear in the world: my entire family. As far as that last thing you said goes, the only friends I have are my family, Kirk. And what would you do for your family?”

  Two powerful spells slammed home right behind Sagie. Sit and Radidz were both reduced to sacks of flesh with the bones sticking out of one side.

  “Like I’m going to believe you! Why would Leon be afraid of some random player? Why would he try to kill him? Kidnap his parents? What kind of monster would you have to be to pull your parents and family into your excuses? Do you even have a conscience?”

  Femida, who hadn’t said anything the whole time, took two long leaps that landed her on the wall. Ten seconds later, the people watching realized that her target was the ballista aimed at Sagie. The mage himself stretched out an arm in the direction of another section of wall, leaving it to melt. The entire wall! Across eighty meters of fortifications, not a single player was left alive. The paladins switched on a bubble to protect Kirk from the unbearable heat.

  “I’m the legacy of the distant past, the very first days after Project Chrysalis was launched, when Leon was still just a player. A ritual was performed that elevated him to godhood and sent me to Hell. When it turned out that I survived, didn’t delete my character, and, most importantly, had decided to let the whole thing go, your little god decided to kidnap my family and lure me into coming here the day of the battle. I survived where others gave up. I fought for my life. But for some reason, people like me were branded as criminals and banished. Then, thanks to Leon, I had to watch my family die. And as you know, I was robbed even of the chance to bury them. They don’t have graves.” Sagie sighed, and a sword started to slide out of his hand. A shield flew out from under his shirt. “I spent years hoping I would wake up, the world would have changed, and everything would be different. But after the undead were annihilated, you all started looking for any mention of me, and I was found. I was found by the person I least expected to see. Then, I woke up and met you. I’m truly grateful to you for helping me find Femida, my last dear friend.”

  “You really think I’m going to buy that? Do you know how much pain I went through that day? How my life changed after just that one battle? And you expect me to believe that a god would be afraid of just some player?”

  “You’re the same worthless nitwit you always were. Stop shifting the blame to everyone else—nobody needs your whining. If you don’t believe me, go visit Orany, a village near Imir. I lived there for almost a month, and lots of the people there still remember me. Rachel’s father lives there, actually. Yes, that Rachel! Leon didn’t have the guts to exterminate an entire village to hide the truth. I joined Project Chrysalis two years earlier than what everyone says, and I spent that time in Hell.”

  That just couldn’t be. Nobody had heard anything like it.

  “And you showed up here just to tell me all that?”

  Sagie only smiled and shrugged. He was clearly waiting for something.

  “You flatter yourself. They sent you to the gate to keep me from getting into the heart of the castle, but I got what I came for.” Players poured out on every side, on the roofs, and in the streets. Magic negators and stationary weapons were rolled out of nearby buildings. The fighters all stood at the ready.

  Sagie just smiled once again. Happy to see the crowd, he addressed the players gathered there.

  “You think your world is in danger? Enjoy your last moments of peace and quiet. Your commanders have committed a crime I can’t forgive them for, and you are all at risk.”

  “So, what did you come for?”

  “Revenge.”

  “Oh, screw you!”

  Sagie covered himself in a magic shield, and the air around him buzzed.

  “I’m going to step over your dead bodies!”

  Just then, ten meters behind Sagie, two portals opened simultaneously. The archmage in full battle array stepped out of one. Clusters of amulets hung around his neck, the legendary crown of surpassing strength was on his head, and he was wielding the staff of seven elementals and the sword of banishing. A quick count of just his fire demon familiars found twenty of them. Before five seconds had passed, he was covered in an entire coat of magic shields. Skeletons, elementals, and golems began crawling out of the ground.

  An unremarkable mage stepped out of the second portal, though he turned invisible as soon as he saw the archmage.

  With one incredible leap, Femida flew from the castle wall to land in the middle of the crowd. Sagie barreled toward the archmage. Lightning bolts rained down from every side, one of them hitting Femida and glancing off into the mob of players surrounding her. All of them were sent back immediately to the respawn. That left the girl free to sprint toward the group of crossbowmen clustered in an alley. Shouts broke out, buildings exploded, undead were raised, spirits were summoned, and blades clashed. The unfamiliar mage got up onto a roof and started hurling waves of white light at the defenders. The milky shroud enveloped everyone it encountered, killed them, and then dissolved their bodies. But right at that moment, the building he was sitting on collapsed. Then, it rotted away from a spell the archmage cast.

  The light mage, who turned out to be a shapeshifter, took on animal shape and leaped to the next roof over. One might have been forgiven for thinking he was helping Sagie if it weren’t for the fact that the latter was doing his best to kill him. The stranger was killing everyone except the pair of outlaws attacking the castle. Just a few seconds later, Femida appeared next to the shapeshifter. She cut loose a whole string of attacks, each of which would have been enough to fatally wound a normal player. A feint, and a beam between the stranger’s legs was sliced clean through. Femida went for a hack next, though the stranger caught her sword just before it sliced into his throat. How strong must he have been to grab a sword in midair?

  The warrior girl quickly gathered herself, slipped the sword into her inventory, and tried some hand-to-hand fighting. But the mage just grabbed the kicking girl and held her over his head. Throwing her down at his feet, he sent her crashing through the roof and down through to the first floor. The next second, a blow from Sagie’s sword lopped the building in two. The light mage dashed off along the roofs into an alley, and that was the last anyone saw of him.

  The archmage sent his summoned creatures and a heavy barrage of spells at Sagie. Both of them yelled like madmen in their battle to the death. Insanity raged in their eyes, and fixated as they both were on their mission to kill their opponent, shatter his skull, and bathe in the glory of victory.

  While Sagie was busy slaughtering the summoned creatures, six battle familiars rigged a magic negator around him. Nobody had ever said that only humans were capable of using them. They took mountains of mana, but the archmage couldn’t care less. A column of light smashed into Sagie, and the four buildings around him were flattened in the explosion, but the shield floating around him again absorbed the main blow and the wave of destruction afterward. The familiars with their mobile negator died. That left an opening for Sagie to cross blades with the archmage, grabbing the latter’s staff with one hand, but the archmage leaped into an incredible kick that sent him flying into th
e rubble of the demolished buildings. Another column of light hit him; again, his shield saved the day.

  There wasn’t a single soul around, all of them afraid to get anywhere near the battle. Sagie looked around carefully, though he couldn’t find the mage who was firing off the diversionary attack. A second later, and every building in the vicinity was hit by a high-level spell—meteors, death stars, blue suns, dead suns, tornados, and fire storms. A white robe flashed between the buildings, and the next one was hit with something absolutely incredible.

  The blast wave demolished everything within a hundred meters. The walls of the castle crumbled into the remains of the houses, and fire rained from the sky. But Sagie almost instantly found himself in a marsh up to his neck—the archmage was busy, too. Then, the marsh froze. Sagie was pounded down into the ice, which disappeared into the earth. The mage kept firing away.

  But how was he doing it without taking recoil damage? The light faded into a single enormous drop above the earth, the area growing as dark as if night was falling. The archmage used a leap spell to get out of the impact zone; an explosion turned the spot where Sagie was buried into a gaping crater. There wasn’t a single building left standing anywhere in the vicinity. The archmage was breathing hard, drinking spells, and buffing himself. It was quite the battle.

  The light mage was hiding somewhere in the rubble. His defense was apparently pretty incredible if he could survive an attack that razed an entire district.

  A second later, Sagie appeared behind the archmage’s back. A stunningly powerful blow with his sword took out the four nearest buildings, while the remains of the energy surging from the blade destroyed the group of warriors fighting Femida. The archmage was saved by his amulets, though they were all shattered, and the blow sent him flying against and through the wall of another building.

  Two seconds later, he was back on the counterattack. He used levitation to hang at the level of the second floor, and Sagie looked away just long enough for a snake made out of light to swallow him whole and explode. Nobody had seen a summoned creature quite like it. Even after the explosion, the fragments of flesh and blood eroded everything they touched.

  Sagie shook the remains of the slime off himself and set up a magic shield in time for a blue sun to smash into it. A fire broke out, the demolished buildings were set ablaze, and summoned zombies howled somewhere nearby. The archmage was raising dead players and sending them after Sagie as cannon fodder. Four suns had already blazed around him, burning everything nearby and melting the paving stones.

  Sagie looked over at the archmage, paying no attention to the fire which even burned the air across an area fifty meters in diameter. The castle walls went up like candles—the shields were already shattered.

  Turning around, Sagie tried to find where the light mage was. He couldn’t find him in the rubble, so he just sent meteors raining down to kill everything hiding in it. Enormous craters pockmarked the streets of the once-peaceful city.

  Why did the boy give the archmage a breather? Why did he turn his back on him? He wanted to do more damage to the city.

  Something slammed into the shield on the archmage’s back and exploded, leaving nothing but a bloody cloud in his place. All Kirk could see where Sagie had just been standing was a blurry shadow. But that wasn’t enough, and Sagie got to work burning the remains of the archmage.

  An entire chunk of wall hit the outlaw in the back, burying him in the rubble. The light mage used telekinesis to lift a piece of a destroyed house, then another, then two, six, eight slabs of stone. Sagie and the archmage’s remains were left buried under them.

  But a blue flame burst out of the debris. A javelin hit the light mage’s shield and exploded in a red cloud—Femida was getting in on the action. Sagie used a leap spell to teleport out from under the rubble to the spot where he’d destroyed the archmage’s amulets. Realizing that he was discovered, the light mage threw up a powerful, multilayer magic shield. Sagie hit the entire area with his two most powerful spells: blue helium fire and wind of death.

  The light mage held out for about five seconds as his shields popped, one after another, and then he disappeared into a portal.

  Sagie looked around carefully to make sure he hadn’t just used a leap spell, but he didn’t see anything. It was quiet. The light mage had left the field of battle.

  The ground under Kirk’s feet began to quiver; the walls started shifting and folding over. The building, which housed the control room and all the mana storages for the entire city, eased its way into the air. Kirk watched as the Golden Hand’s main building was turned into a giant weapon, completely made out of stone and laced with enchanted metal. The fifty-meter construction had a city shield that Sagie wouldn’t have been able to puncture no matter how hard he tried.

  The whole thing lifted into the air and then smashed into the enemy. Femida was able to jump to the side, though Sagie was held in place by a swamp some mage had casted. The shield that laid next to its master disintegrated into the air right as the blow struck home. The ground shook, and Sagie was thrown five meters away, though he was still alive. In fact, he hadn’t suffered a scratch. He was just lying there, calmly absorbing the hits from the giant weapon. Though Femida tried to break through the shield, it would have taken her forever. There were presumably several mages replenishing the mana storage faster than she could do damage. Sagie had apparently reached that conclusion as well as he didn’t attack the machine. Or could his mana have run out?

  That theory was disproven when a string of enormous meteors landed. The first knocked the machine over, the shock wave killing everyone who was still alive. Kirk had been able to get away already—he was using a spirit eye to watch the fight. Leon had been smart enough to wait for the second Sagie was depleted to pull out the giant machine, the last ace up his sleeve. The god and St. Rachel were still nowhere to be seen.

  Hit after hit rained down. The machine sank into the ground and was dragged backward by the force of its own shock waves. A powerful diamond shield had been thrown up to mitigate the shock waves from the meteor explosions. Just five minutes later, the machine and its shields, which were supposed to protect the city, were broken. And as soon as they popped, Sagie sliced off the machine’s two legs with one force blade. He’d broken through the protective dome, so further resistance was futile. Nate emerged from the control room.

  “You won’t get anywhere with a trick like that, puppy! I’m going to strangle you with my own two hands. I’ll kill everyone you’ve ever cared about!”

  “You’re right—I won’t get anywhere with it. But I’m not done yet, am I?”

  All of Nate’s amulets protecting him from mental attacks shattered. The next second, he collapsed, unable to move. Even from a distance, Kirk could see the telltale signs of a paralyze spell. But it was staggering—each of Nate’s amulets could withstand 25 million damage, and Sagie had destroyed them all in less than thirty seconds.

  A sepulchral howl broke out from among the ruins the light mage had piled up. The archmage had come back in the form of a lich, having already collected the pieces of his body that had been hacked apart. His skin was peeling, and the muscles of the most powerful mage in the world were laid bare, but he still had his crown, his staff, and his sword. As soon as he pulled himself out of the ruins, he used a cursed earth spell. It was so strong that the soil all around him instantly turned into lifeless dust, while the burning remains of the buildings Sagie was standing under collapsed. Everything they touched burst into flames.

  The lich had no idea how Sagie managed to get behind him, but the boy started hacking the lich to pieces with his sword. Kirk noticed the undead’s torso try to run off, but it was split in two a second later. Sagie collected the pieces and burned them with the white, all-cleansing fire of a light mage. The lich’s body disintegrated into a black goo that Sagie kept scorching until the pool wouldn’t have filled a glass. Suddenly, Kirk saw an arm reach out and try to grab Sagie, but the latter just stepped to
the side and turned up the heat.

  All that was left of the archmage was his staff, and Sagie quickly swept it into his inventory. With a final swipe of his white sword, Sagie chopped the archmage’s legendary sword in half.

  Femida handed her friend Nate’s paralyzed body, and Sagie turned to look directly at the spirit eye Kirk was using to watch the battle.

  “Hey, Leon! I’m coming for your main altar. Stop me if you can.”

  Sagie opened a portal and stepped into it with Nate. Femida walked in behind it, and it closed. That was the last time Kirk ever saw the Golden Hand’s chief of security.

  ***

  Leon, Rachel, Merlen and their best hundred paladins had teleported to the god’s main altar in Imir as soon as Sagie had shown up at Castle Airis. The altar had been erected in place of Teurus’, who Leon had been able to kill three years before, thereby just about earning his ticket into the large pantheon.

  The city itself was protected just as well as the fortress, and it had been Leon’s primary residence for working with the locals for the past eight years. Right then, the city was on a war footing. The gates were closed, nobody was being let in, and the city teleport was turned off. The guards all knew exactly what Sagie and Femida looked like.

  Despite that, Leon got information from Nate that Sagie and Femida were already inside the city and standing outside the door of the main temple.

  The first group of paladins wasted their bubble on the first three minutes, expecting the attack. Some of the buffs were wearing off, and Sagie still hadn’t stepped into the temple.

  Leon was standing near the altar when Sagie and Femida came rushing out of the basement. The paladins were attacked from the rear; their battle formation was shattered. With one blow, Femida killed three high-level fighters. Rachel tried to keep up by resurrecting the paladins and removing their debuffs. She and Leon were the keys to the battle. Back in business, the resurrected paladins rushed in to attack.