End of an Era (Project Chrysalis Book 2), John Gold [ebook reader online txt] 📗

“Excuse me…are you an assassin by class?”

The waiter glances at me for just a fraction of a second, but that’s enough time to make me take up a fighting position and brace for a hit. What a difference in experience! I can’t help but admire him… And he’s just a waiter?

“You’re mistaken,” he replies with a light smile before turning away and continuing on.

Yeah, sure, I’m mistaken. He’s a killer, and a fantastic one. No, he isn’t a marauder, an assassin, or a thief. He’s a killer, even without the class. Incredible! His staggering mastery shines through every movement, every word, every gesture. I can’t help but notice how he doesn’t make any extra motions. His stride is flawless.

We take a wide staircase down to the basement. On the outside, it looks like an excellent restaurant, what with all the tables, the candles, and the smells. Curtains hide the entrances to private rooms, and the “waiter” leads me over to the one all the way on the left and pulls back the curtain. On the other side, there’s a portal. I certainly wasn’t expecting a stationary portal in a bar located somewhere in the slums.

“Go ahead. The trial will start in ten minutes.”

“Do I have to go through the portal? There are a lot of people looking for me, and I don’t want anyone to see where I’ve been.”

The waiter smiles kindly.

“It’s not part of the portal network, so no third parties see the data from it. You don’t have to worry.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck, boy.”

Ah-ha! He knows I’m not who I appear to be. The shimmering film of the portal lets me through.

***

A week had passed since the undead invasion began. All the surrounding villages were evacuated, the villagers brought to the cities. The clan management was working around the clock.

Finding food and shelter for all the believers had been hard, and they’d had to work with the people in the cities to build homes and provide supplies. For the farmers in Katain, which hadn’t been touched by the catastrophe, the invasion was nothing short of a boon. The gold-heavy contracts rained down on them.

Leon could have moved part of the population to Katain, but that would have lost him believers. They would have started worshiping the old gods in control over there. The old gods had no qualms about playing it dirty, killing priests and destroying temples, so they definitely wouldn’t have missed that chance to pick up a few adepts. There was no sense even talking with them. It was a question of life and death, and the old gods were only too happy to stick a knife in your back when you were at your weakest.

Avoiding direct participation, Leon just coordinated his commanders. His avatars protected the cities while everyone was being moved into them, though the players they settled into didn’t get any experience. The small squads were getting wiped out, too. It was like someone was whispering in Leon’s ear, telling him that he would have to use all his strength to emerge victorious. Death was the only other option. The undead were able to easily outmaneuver their opponents on a tactical and a strategic level, pulling players into ambushes where they mowed them down. They were playing with Leon, demonstrating their superiority in skirmishes, not to mention the war as a whole.

“Leon, Leon, wake up!”

The god shook himself out of his contemplation and looked up at Merlen, who was shaking him by the shoulder.

“I’m telling you, it’s ready. We built our first war machine! You were right from the very beginning, back when you were talking about your hunches and building up the alliance’s craftsmen.”

As soon as the first bells had sounded, Leon had given orders to the clan and the entire alliance to start putting their craftsmen through their paces. The clans’ storehouses were full two weeks later. Everybody in the crafting wing worked as hard as they could to level up their skills but the climax came when magic and crafting fused to create the first war machine. It was a nine-meter colossus controlled by several mages and designed to do physical damage to the enemy. Every hit left a dent in the earth, not to mention dead or severely wounded opponents. It turned out to be too much even for the undead.

The problem was the cost. Just one machine ran to about two million gold, as they were made out of tons of different components. The process took blacksmiths, metallurgists, artifactors, life and mind mages, alchemists, and many more masters, too. Right then, it was time to give the machine its first try.

The machine rushed out of the gate and crashed into the undead army standing right outside the castle shields. For twenty minutes, it crushed with sheer force everyone standing in its path. Nobody in the field could stand up to it. Then, suddenly, the undead pulled back in an orderly fashion, creating an open area around the machine. The mages stopped their masterpiece as they tried to figure out what their opponents had in mind.

An enormous chimeric worm, its body the flesh of different creatures, tore out of the ground and hurled itself at the machine. The battle was an unequal one. The worm was much larger than the machine.

Undead, Small Chimeric World-Eater, Level 713. Raid boss.

Everyone watching from the walls of the castle dropped their arms in shock. The worm, nearly a hundred and fifty meters long, dwarfed the machine, and the mages tried to get their baby back behind the cover of the shields. They were almost successful, but the worm bit off one leg before disappearing back underground. The machine crawled over to the walls of the castle and collapsed.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Merlen asked, depressed.

“Why are