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

could find. The best of the best! I crave battle, I crave strong, smart, superior opponents, the kind that can force me to my very limits. Enemies like that help me outdo myself, they find my mistakes, and they use them.

Drunk with delight, I get to the remains of the dorm. There are all kinds of players and locals milling around. Everybody wants to see where the stranger attacked in the middle of the city, and my dean is sitting with Kirk under a canopy. They’re waiting for me to get back.

“Is there something you want to tell us?”

“Good morning to you, too, Kirk. Hi, Anri.”

“What do you know about the trespasser?”

“He appeared in the middle of the night and started attacking me immediately. There was a short, one-sided battle, and he killed me at the end. He’s a shapeshifter, a light and space mage. Also, he used Air Magic, Dark Magic, Fire Magic–”

“Enough. Just tell us how you survived the attack that destroyed the dorm.”

All that was left of the three-story building was the far wall. The stones were black with soot, and all the surrounding buildings were scorched. The shapeshifter’s final attack had incinerated the whole building. In the center of the ruins was a pit, and, judging by the remains, my corpse was in the center of it. It was fried by Light and Fire Magic to a crisp. So, he killed the lich, too—that’s good. The corpse was so far gone that it wasn’t recognizable as undead.

Ew, you can see the bones!

“I was able to hide behind one of the walls and throw up my shield. That didn’t really help, on the other hand—as you can see, he still found and killed me.”

Nobody was blaming me. The quarter administration received a report on the destruction of their property, the guilty party listed as Krash, a wanderer. Everyone was moved to the next dorm over. Kirk is thrilled—the building is full of girls, many of them players.

I’m not worried about the move. No, I’m very well aware of how dangerous it is to be near me, and people are better off the further they are away. The shapeshifter definitely knew who I was, though he was alone. He can’t be working for Leon; he’s doing this for himself. Judging by what he said, he’s looking for a strong opponent or just seeing what I can do.

Today, I have my battle for the title of first-level mage. Kirk told me about the changes in the exam trials—I need to take out an opponent at my own level. In other words, two students are brought out to the arena. That change was made once players started hitting Level 500.

My opponent tried to find a crack in my defense, but there was nothing he could do. The system gave me someone at my level with a Life Magic skill of 50. He was a player going through the trial to reach the first rank, and the battle lasted less than a minute. He threw lightning, stunning, and fire balls at me. But after the battle I’d just been through the night before, that one couldn’t have been more boring. It was like a three-year-old child trying to kill you using a pillow when he doesn’t even come up to your knee. I killed him with my fists. If I’d had a stick or a rock, I would have used it.

You are now a first-level life mage.

Life Magic spell effectiveness: +5%

Anri hands me a first-level mage ring that I’m required to wear.

The job for Kirk and me today is to clean up what’s left of the dorm. No matter what I do to hide it, my Life Magic constantly heals me, healing the ground underfoot when there’s nothing else. I have to make sure I keep walking around so Kirk doesn’t notice the grass growing up between the stones in the road.

With the work done that evening, we’re sent to the wing of the building that houses life mages.

And I thought I’d already learned a lot. There’s an enormous library, biographies of life mages from all over the world, laboratories for all the different ways you can use Life Magic, and all in one small building.

Kirk explains what we need to study. Modification changes the mage’s mental body, which then exerts influence on the physical body. That’s why life and mind mages work together. Elementalists can also change the end result if that’s needed.

One question eats at me all day.

“Kirk, how do swordsmen change their bodies?”

“All close-combat fighters have modifications, mostly to boost their strength or stamina. About a quarter of them do modifications for their agility. For sword masters, they decide what the bonus will be. For example, the ones who have a dual style up their agility; the ones who prefer axes, maces, pikes, or hammers up their strength. Swordsmen, shield bearers, and spearmen focus on their stamina. If you aren’t a sword master, you have to use alchemical potions for that. A complete change takes a hundred days—you can drink one potion a day, each giving you one percent of the modification.”

A hundred days for a modification sounds awfully familiar, though I had to eat demon young rather than drink potions.

“What about shapeshifters and chimerologists?”

“Chimerologists can change their physical body, including with bone armor, spikes, swords, and tails. I’ve even heard of hair and chitin armor. I’m sure you know well enough, however, that nobody really likes chimerologists, and they do their best to keep their abilities under wraps. There are books somewhere in the library for life mages that describe the ritual for changing your physical body. Only masters and grandmasters of our kind of magic are allowed to read them.”

“And shapeshifters?”

“Everybody hunts shapeshifters. Why, you want to be one?”

“Well, that depends on the bonuses. Do you have