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

Ra’Ilmir didn’t come close, and he dodged ranged attacks. He was, in fact, much smarter and stronger than the previous raid boss. His attacks were focused on LJ, with the players busy forming up and killing the second wave of demons. He tried spears of darkness, rain of death, hellish swamp, and even curses. None of them broke through the cat’s enormous mental resistance.

Using a cloud of darkness as cover, R’Ilmir flew down and used a dragon breath at almost point-blank range. Everything within twenty-five meters died in the first few seconds. However, what the demon didn’t know was that LJ could feel movement anywhere closer than thirty meters, and so he knew the enemy was closing in. The dragon breath barely singed him. In reply, however, LJ hurled two brilliant light spears in an attempt to rob his assailant of his ability to fly. He was at least partially successful. One spear completely destroyed a wing; the second was blocked by the demon’s magic shield. He’s so strong!

Ra’Ilmir started whispering again, and that wasn’t going to mean anything good. But a dwarf hammer smashed through his shield to interrupt the spawn of Hell’s spell. That distracted him for a couple of seconds, and the demon didn’t see LJ get around behind him. The cat ran noiselessly, using any cover he could find. Time slowed, and the demon was all LJ could see. A second went by, and his target started looking around in an attempt to find the cat. By the third second, he’d turned around and met LJ’s glance. The cat’s heart pounded.

Dragon breath! Maximum!

LJ poured all his mana into the attack, almost killing himself from the recoil. Ra’Ilmir, on the other hand, did lose his head—it was simply swept off by the powerful stream of fire. The attack did almost 20000000 damage, and the demon’s natural resistance wasn’t enough to save him.

The players regrouped and went on the offensive, the mages taking the high ground and starting to shell their targets while the close-combat fighters got to work. LJ’s help was no longer needed, which was good—he didn’t care anymore. All he’d wanted to do was keep the tree and tavern safe. They needed to stay in one piece so Milisandra would come back.

He took the sword with him to give to Arkham, otherwise the innkeeper would stop selling him food.

LJ ran over to his tree. His enormous strength and agility, coupled with his amplification and the buff, enabled him to get up the smooth trunk without much problem, and he set to work putting out the fire in the branches. Without even realizing it, he used an air fist to smother the flames.

It took him three hours to put out the fire. The crown had taken lots of damage, though the tree itself survived the attack.

For a few days, LJ sat on one of the highest branches and thanked the tree for its help. The poor cat really did feel sincerely grateful. His memory had come back a little, and LJ was starting to think of himself as a very smart feline. In fact, he had realized that the appreciation he showed the tree and the help he gave the animals was nothing other than Life Magic. Still, he thanked the tree. Nothing had changed in how he felt about the place. He was still a cat who was grateful to the tree and wanted to pay it back.

Each of those three days were spent lying there watching the tavern door. He was exhausted, mostly mentally, from the difficult battle and the voices that had formed a chorus in his head. Sleeping was even harder—the bloody world and war stayed in his dreams to scare him. When LJ was asleep, he was just as full of rage, wrath, and panic as the other red people. He did everything he could to run away from the red giants with naked skulls, though there was always a different enemy disguised as a human waiting for him. All the poor cat could do was run and hide in a peaceful forest where nobody would look for him. Every time LJ ran there, he realized that he’d forgotten something very important. Whatever it was, it made him human, was everything to him. Every day, LJ understood things a little more clearly, though his way out was laced with pain.

LJ didn’t come down out of his tree for a whole week. The city guard rescinded the charges for the attack and started guarding the tree, letting nobody by except the owner of the tavern. The cat tossed the sword down, though he continued sitting on the very edge of a branch with sadness in his eyes. In the evenings, the innkeeper came out to tell him that his companion hadn’t arrived, speaking to nobody in particular but knowing that LJ was listening carefully. The cat did nothing besides eat and lie there. He was sad, though he didn’t know why. His heart hurt, and he wanted to cry, but that didn’t help.

On the tenth night, the sky was clear, the moon distinct around the few clouds. It was absolutely quiet—even the guards watching the destroyed wall had fallen asleep, their snores heard by LJ a good two hundred meters away. Suddenly, he realized that something living had appeared in the field under the tree. LJ knew it was a great being who could sense him and knew exactly where he was. Even the air glowed, а light tingling sensation running through the cat’s body. It was familiar and unpleasant, a sensation that drew rage.

It was a hundred and fifty meters to the ground, so LJ didn’t risk jumping. Instead, he dashed over to the base of the branch and started climbing down.

A glowing deer stood in the pitch darkness. It had two pairs