Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3)

by John Gold

  The previous day during his hunt, somebody had tried to attack him and steal his prey. Death to thieves and marauders! His body reacted faster than his mind could, and the thief paid with his life for trying to steal the fish.

  The mean lady showed up every morning and evening. She was always tense, always wanting something. LJ couldn’t stand that—people like her were the worst. Always around to ask for something, they never give you anything in return. After the battle with the thief, she yelled at LJ. He had a hard time understanding why protecting his prey was a bad thing.

  Ultimately, they sent the cat to another house. There were fewer humans there, though they were much more dangerous. They moved differently, felt different, even thought differently. On the second day, he had to run away from two of them as they chased him around the whole island.

  On the third day after the move, LJ was treated to a fish for the first time. Not just one, in fact—the kind girl shared her meal with him and even petted him. But then some mean people walking by decided to attack her. LJ always repaid good with good, so he killed four of them even though his bracelet started itching after the first one. The girl killed two more, and that was when the poor cat woke up at home, completely alone. He didn’t want to eat; he wanted to yowl at the top of his lungs. The kind girl was gone. By that evening, however, she found LJ’s home and fed the cat some fish. LJ was happy to see that there were kind people in such a terrible world. Tears streamed down his face. His heart ached, and his head hurt, though LJ didn’t know why that was. And he didn’t want to remember. There was a great pain hidden deep down, and he didn’t like getting that close to it.

  The poor cat slept twelve hours a day, though he still never felt rested. As he relaxed, all he could do was doze fitfully with endless nightmares. All his dreams in that world were colored red; all his mind understood was pain. He was always running away from ten red people who called him, whispering in his ear, though LJ could feel how painful the words they used were when he listened to them. Always, he ran around an endless field of battle where everything was covered in blood. Giants stood on the battlefield and at the center of all his pain—they were the ones LJ spent his dreams running away from. Every time he got close to one of them, the voice of the bloody ten sounded louder, flooding his consciousness with pain. The cat couldn’t sleep. Even after the one-eyed slumber he suffered through, he awoke in tears.

  The girl’s name was Milisandra. She was good and kind. Every morning, she fed LJ fish, and then they walked around the island together. LJ understood everything she said, though he never replied. Cats don’t talk, whispered an inner voice. That same voice told him that animals don’t understand dreams, though they do sense the moods and emotions of other people. When an animal likes a human, it shares their emotions. They share grief and happiness, and keep humans company when they’re relaxing. They help people when they’re hurting, feed them when they’re sad. LJ was great at understanding people, which was why he gave them his attention and love when he liked them. Only Milisandra had been kind to him, however; all the other humans were mean and weak. LJ understood people better than they understood themselves, in fact. He understood that people get angry with and attack each other because of their own weaknesses, trying to convince themselves of their own value. Humans are so weak, so stupid, so incapable of understanding that the path they take demands constant victims. And it only offers temporary respite from their self-condemnation in return. It was painful for the cat to live on the same island as them. They were weak, they caused him pain in his heart, they brought tears to his eyes, and only Milisandra saved LJ from the endless hurt. She was a ray of sunlight in a kingdom of cold, weak people.

  Milisandra invited him to go for a walk to the island’s highest point. The day had just begun, and that meant Alice had already come, so he didn’t have to worry about their walk getting interrupted by the portal.

  Three men came out of nowhere to attack him and Milisandra, right at the foothills of the mountain. The strongest warrior came after LJ—he clearly understood which was the more dangerous of the pair. Around thirty, he was well-built. He had no gray hair, there was nothing remarkable about his face, and he kept the distance and stance of a swordsman who fought with two swords. LJ’s inner voice always whispered louder in situations like this, sometimes fusing completely with his consciousness. His mind reacted faster than his body. The bracelet started itching.

  “I’m going to gut you today, cat. Amaga armor!” Transparent plate armor with barely discernible contours appeared to coat the man’s body. It was quite the ability—magic armor based on a magic shield.

  LJ’s intellect took a back seat to his reflexes. In moments of danger, he acted unbelievably cruelly, overpowering his opponents with brute force and dirty tricks. He would retreat, break an arm at the elbow, slam home a kick to the body, and go to town on their face until they stopped moving.

  Anger, rage, cruelty, and the desire to kill and break their will flooded through LJ’s mind. That was how his brain protected itself against trespassers. Nobody could say what might happen to LJ if he lost his temper.

  It was scary to watch Milisandra fight. When she was attacked unexpectedly, a defense mechanism kicked in for her too: wounds opened up on her body to release terrifying beasts. She wasn’t physically strong, and her opponents used that against her. The first man leaped on her from above to bring his whole weight pressing down on her. He started groping away, and that’s when Millie squealed. A wound opened up on her stomach. Out of it crawled an enormous snake, which wrapped itself around the man’s leg, crushed his bones in its rings, and then sank its fangs into his head. Sensitivity at the clinic was turned up to fifty percent, something the men pawing at Milisandra were only too happy about. On the other hand, feeling your bones break and then a snake biting your head is quite the price to pay for a second of pleasure.

  The second man decided to jump her as she was getting up, but LJ blocked his path. He turned and ran. The girl didn’t look good—the wounds on her body caused her pain, as did freeing her pets. She was pale; her face and body bled freely. LJ could feel her hurt, so he licked her and pointed at their fleeing enemy.

  “Don’t touch him. The crows will catch him and finish him off.” Milisandra hugged the worried cat. Crows pulled themselves out of her forearms to perch on LJ’s head and shoulders, though it cost the girl an incredible amount of effort to let nine of them free. Her face turned into a bloody mess; her hair turned red.

  “Don’t worry—that always happens when I push myself to the limit. My monsters protect me though, and I love them for it. If they’re always with me, I don’t need to worry about losing them.”

  Bird, Swamp Crow, Level 415

  Lose them? Protect? LJ realized that even if she was a human, at heart, she was just as much a cat as he was. His soul yearned for peace; hers yearned for security.

  LJ looked closely at one of the crows. It polished its beak on his shoulder. The bird felt like part of Millie and loved her, doing its best to help. The cat wondered to himself why he understood what the bird was feeling.

  “Animals, birds, large fish, and other living organisms with rudimentary intellect are managed by their base instincts and desires. Their primitive minds are cloaked in a kind of protective emotional buffer that lets them feel the emotions of others, something humans also have even if they rarely use it consciously. The buffer boosts the sensitivity animals enjoy, and that’s why they get tired faster. It’s the same with the mental and emotional exhaustion humans experience.”

  His inner voice sometimes read off whole speeches like that, but that time something in LJ’s soul stirred. There was something his inner voice was up to…something that wasn’t good.

  The crows flew off after the assailant, following the command Milisandra gave them with her mind. The cat slipped the girl on his back and dashed quickly up the mountain. Bounding from stone to rock, running over uneven grown, and crawling up overhanging walls, LJ was l
ike a real cat as he gripped holds and used his monstrous strength. Everything seemed so soothing and familiar that he didn’t even feel the weight on his back. The girl gripped him as tightly as she could, though that didn’t cause him any discomfort. Millie was afraid to scratch the cat until they took one especially long leap—she realized she couldn’t hurt him if she tried. LJ could grasp the sharp edges of the cliff and keep going without worrying about cuts.

  At the very top, an enormous eagle lived in a rocky crag. Its wingspan was eight meters, its muscles were knotted, and it was brown-winged with a white head. It was the strongest bot on the island, and the only living thing that could fly away. Milisandra wouldn’t have been able to deal with it on her own, but she had a shot with LJ’s help. A pet like that could help her get off the island.

  The eagle perched there, surveying its domain the way it always did. As LJ clambered up the cliff with Milisandra on his back, the eagle noticed them immediately and kept a close eye on their progress. It cared little for Milisandra, but it looked into the face of the cat. In return, the cat listened to its emotions. First, came threat; then rage; finally, it settled on fear.

  Bird, Muusan, the King of Fitz, Level 1415

  The eagle took fright and flew off, staying at least a kilometer away from the cliff. It didn’t bother LJ, who was more occupied with having found a good spot to relax. Milisandra and her cat spent the whole day looking out over the island and waiting for the eagle to fly back down. It didn’t, however, just wheeling overhead and occasionally screaming. When it did, Milisandra got a debuff; the cat didn’t react. They had a warm rock, a sea breeze, the smell of the tropical forest, and fish and fruit in their bags.

  It was evening when Milisandra was teleported home. Soon, LJ got the same treatment. The psychologist showed up to ask for something the way she usually did, and LJ could sense that she was starting to get angrier, more annoyed. The cat wasn’t sure what she expected to get without giving anything in return.

  The next day, Millie and the cat headed up the mountain again, though the eagle avoided a confrontation with LJ one more time. When Millie came alone, it attacked and killed her. When LJ came, it flew away and didn’t come back.

  The battle to see who was more patient lasted a week, and the eagle eventually won. Milisandra gave up.

  “That nasty bird just won’t come back. If I made him my pet, I’d be able to fly away from here. It’s so boring here—not like in the outside world! When the war with the undead finished, new quests and places to hunt were unlocked, new dungeons and races. Everyone’s probably having fun over there while we’re stuck here until they tell us we’re psychologically fit. Last time, I had to sit quietly for a month before they’d let me go.”

  The cat could feel how sad the girl was, and he wanted to help her. First, he thought about launching something at it, his arm even stretching out in the eagle’s direction. But that just made the bracelet get itchy. LJ himself had no idea what he wanted to throw, though he did suddenly get the idea to just swim across the ocean.

  He tossed Millie on his back and ran off toward the water.

  The girl was already used to wild leaps off the mountain, having stopped screaming the second day, though she felt the same terror she felt that day. The cat hurled himself as far as he could go, a distance that would’ve earned any normal person all kinds of debuffs for injuries. LJ sprinted as fast as he could, and they reached the water in just ten minutes.

  The cat gestured his suggestion to swim across the ocean.

  “No, that won’t work—there are bots in the water Level 1500 and higher. They attack everything that swims farther than a hundred meters out from the bank. I tried that a bunch of times, and it always got me killed. Ships and lone swimmers just sink. Portal scrolls don’t work, either. The only way off the island is the portal in the administration building, and the clinic director has to activate it personally. That’s why I was thinking about making the eagle a pet—he’s my way off this accursed island.”

  The cat’s face fell as he saw how Millie was suffering from being locked up. His inner voice told him to walk out onto the water, so he obeyed. Sure, his head hurt a little, but that feeling seemed awfully familiar—it was almost as though he’d spent a lot of time in the water. The harder he thought, however, the louder the voices got, and the more his head hurt. Rage, sadness, and regret filled his consciousness until he stopped thinking. His bracelet didn’t fizz, and he stood calmly atop the surf.

  The girl stared at the cat, her mouth hanging open.

  “How? You have the ability to walk on water? How much is the recoil?”

  The cat just shrugged, with only a vague idea of what was going on. Instead of thinking, he put the girl on his back and ran off toward freedom and happiness for Milisandra, and therefore for him, as well. That’s all he needed, just a quiet, peaceful life.

  ***

  The clinic employees all got an alert about the two runaway patients. The alarm went off as soon as their bracelets crossed the barrier surrounding the island.

  Sam Walton, the director of the clinic, paced his office. He hadn’t been worried about anyone trying to escape, as runaways were usually killed by sea monsters within the first hour.

  “Father, can we track them?”

  Alice was in the director’s office as the supervisor of one of the two patients, and she was expecting a showdown.

  “They’re wearing negator bracelets, so we know exactly where they are in the world at any time. That’s what we use for teleportation.”

  “What if they take them off or break them?”

  “That’s the problem. They won’t be able to get them off, but the bracelets’ durability is 100000, a special alloy of reinforced metal that neutralizes spells and battle equipment. From what I understand, however, LJ is a close-combat fighter, so he can break them if he really tries.”

  “Why didn’t they break them on the island?” Alice, as a newcomer, was experiencing her first jailbreak.

  “The whole island is covered by a field that instantaneously restores durability. That’s why the patients all think the bracelets are indestructible. It’s the same with their clothes—as long as they’re wearing them, nothing can happen. Alice, I realize what you think about completely isolating patients in the game, but Lunar is against it. Patients smart and strong enough to get away will do just that. We’re a resort for the mentally ill, not a prison. Lunar left loopholes open, and that pair just exploited one of them.”

  “Yeah, how did they get away?”

  “They ran across the water… Bak Kvan was able to do it without breaking the rules about magic. From what I remember, he has seals tattooed on his body—he prepared specifically to run away. If all his tattoos are for running on water, they’ll fall in twenty-five hours from now. One tattoo gets you one hour. So, that won’t give them enough time to get out of the Sea of Monsters. There are plenty of aggressive beasts out there ready to introduce themselves, so there’s no sense getting worked up about this yet.”

  ***

  LJ was running for the second day straight. Millie, unused to the pace, got tired quickly, and was sleeping as she gripped the cat tightly. The constantly attacking monsters no longer worried them—they were out of the Sea of Monsters and looking for the floating cities Millie knew about. They could get the negator bracelets off there.

  Running along the River of Life brought back a vague feeling of déjà vu, something about sleepwalking, voices, and children crying. The cat quickly switched to a different topic, forgetting everything he’d been thinking about a moment before. As he just continued to run, LJ lost his sense of reality, no longer knowing where he was. He only came to the next morning when Millie yelled in his ear that they’d just dashed right past one of the floating cities.

  Once again, kind humans were there to greet LJ. Nobody asked questions about why they’d gotten to the floating city the way they had, and they helped get the bracelets off without asking for anything in retur
n as soon as Millie told them they were runaways. There was a blacksmith on one of the ships who did the job. They left him the shattered piece to thank him, safe in the knowledge that nobody could find them anymore.

  “Hooray! Freedom! Dungeons, adventures, social life, experiments!” Millie shrieked happily, even giving the troll blacksmith a quick peck. LJ wondered how it was fair that she thanked the blacksmith but not him—he was the one who’d gotten them to the ship. However, the joy she was glowing with was enough for him. She was happy, so everything was right in his world. He needed nothing more.

  He didn’t care where they were as long as Millie was nearby to pet and praise him every so often. She enjoyed her freedom and started thinking about plans for the future.

  “LJ… A great cat like you needs a better name. I’m going to call you Algeron—that sounds more majestic.”

  “…”

  “Hey, what’s your level, by the way? With new clothes, we’re practically new people. Nobody knows us, and the doors are all open.”

  Human, LJ, Level 817

  Millie reacted oddly: her face fell when she saw LJ’s level. She smiled, but the cat could sense that she was disappointed. She’d just praised him by saying how great he was, and then she thought he was weak. But could his level really show how good he was? His inner voice told him that it was a plenty high level, that the girl’s disappointment was inexplicable.

  Human, Milisandra, Level 1182