Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3), John Gold [free e books to read online .TXT] 📗

the center and activate a dragon breath with maximum strength and dispersion. After a few walks around the glassy lake, I realize that it’s going to need to be bigger for the ritual to work. The deeper the earth bakes, the better.

Without giving the glass time to cool, I even out the area to create a perfect circle. Setting up walls is next. I use the remains of the melted glass, building layer upon layer around the perimeter of the circle until I have a five-meter wall. Telekinesis serves as my shovel and fastener. With sand as the base, fire melts everything into a single whole. That, incidentally, is how they used to make things out of concrete on Earth, though nobody ever used glass the way I do.

The hardest part is erecting a dome over where the ritual is going to be held. Everyone makes mistakes, especially when they’re trying to estimate angles, but Isaac helps with the exact calculations. I wasn’t aware he knew something about engineering.

Femida can’t wait, so she finally asks what we’re going to make.

“A shield!”

“Why? You’re impossible to kill as it is.”

“You’re forgetting that there are deadly strikes, battle machines that stab you to do higher damage, critical hits, and areas that partially ignore your resistance. The eyes, the mouth, the throat, almost all mages protect them. And some attacks are just simpler to block with a shield than with magic.

Femida doesn’t like what she hears.

“So, you want to get a shield ability? Wouldn’t it be simpler to just enchant a normal shield?”

“Nope. People can take normal items from me, but there’s nothing they can do about abilities. I still can’t understand how the devil was able to take my sword.”

“Maybe, he had a good reason for doing that. Think about it! If it were that simple, why would you need maxed skills for blacksmiths, carpenters, jewelers, and artifactors? Just take Isaac—he’s helpless without someone good to wear him.”

“What are you getting at?”

“You can’t just get strength, special items, and abilities for free. If you make something like that, you have to pay for it.”

“I’ve already made two non-level items, and nothing happened. Are you sure you aren’t all worried about nothing?”

Femida can be stubborn when she thinks she’s right. This is definitely one of those cases.

“Sagie… Any power is like the sword of Damocles. You’ll get something unbelievable, something that blows the mind, but how are you going to pay for it? What are you going to have to give to get it?”

“Nothing. That’s how it was before, and that’s how it will be this time. Do you have any facts that might prove the opposite?”

“No, just theories and conjecture, but I’m rarely wrong.”

“Enough. We don’t have time for this.”

The laboratory is ready, and all I have left to do is make exits to the surface. Four pipes point in the four directions. Then, we bury my laboratory inside the crater. All that’s left on the surface are four large openings.

Logout

Everything’s going well in real life. My nervous system is recovering well, and Claude thinks I’ll be able to implant a neuronet in a month. I’ve waited so long! Still, I have my two kilometers a day.

Login

We rest for a day before beginning the ritual. Both of us need to get our sleep, as we have a ton of work ahead of us. Before I log in, Femida has time to run to the heart of the desert, find our trees, and bring back what she needs to make a spear.

“It’s worth a try.”

“You want me to make you a non-level spear?”

“I need a powerful ranged weapon, and a spear would be perfect for that. I don’t need an ability. Hey, Sagie, how do you pick what the end result will be?”

“It’s all about the central portion of the seal, which is where the activation happens. When I was in Hell, I figured out how seals work. The key is the magic symbols. Concentration and dispersion, shield and blade, durability and destruction, almost all of them come in pairs. The part in the middle of the seal tells you what the form will be and what you’ll get. For instance, I cut concentration symbols and the edge sign into my bow. When I used it, an astral pocket was formed that sucked in all the energy freed up during activation.”

“Is the weapon itself tied to you?”

“Yes. Making the astral pocket is…is… Well, it’s like a bubble full of mana forming in your mental body. When the weapon is activated, all that built-up strength is released.”

“So, can the bubble stretch to infinity?”

“Nope. In my case, it was linked to my mana. The durability is based on your stamina.”

And with that, the great soul harvest begins. We’re able to collect our first batch of two and a half thousand in two days, and I use stakes I bought from a blacksmith in Sural. I purchased the metal right there; I always have some blood malachite on me. To be fair, I only had enough for three thousand stakes.

We distribute the bodies around the passageways. Given my supply of mana and blood magic skills, the charge is enough for a week. The blacksmith was a master who was able to find the perfect balance of durability and number of uses. Thanks to that, the paralysis lasts longer, though I can only use each stake three times.

The first set of victims is finally ready. Femida doesn’t like the idea of the ritual, but she won’t turn down her new javelin. The bodies are piled to the ceiling of the laboratory, the five-meter arches at the edges of the dome perfect for the stacks of minotaurs. They live in groups, which is why Femida was able to lug lots of them over each time