by K. T. Hanna
“We will be embarking on a new raid in about five hours. I need for you all to log out and power nap the fuck out of yourselves. Shower, pee, do whatever you need to do, but sleep and get refreshed enough, because I think we’re going to be at it for a good chunk of time once we log back in.” He eyed every single person in the room, as if challenging them to argue with him.
Daiyou didn’t disappoint. “What are we doing?”
Risk eyed him up and down before snorting out his answer in amusement. “You? Nothing. You’re not forty-eight yet. As for anyone who is forty-eight—make sure you’re a death or three clear of the line. I think we have what? Eight of us?”
A low murmured consensus ran around the room, and everyone eyed him warily. Risk clapped his hands together, a greedy glint hitting his eyes before he spoke again. “Excellent. We will be joining Fable and Exodus at Vahrir, to take down the first of the big dungeons. Get on it. We’re going to server first this shit and show the gaming world we are on an even keel with the renowned Fable.”
“There should be a rule about raid trash outside of a dungeon,” Merlin grumbled as he loosed another arrow. “Like none.”
“Less than none. Like I would gladly give the system loot so there weren’t any mobs out here,” Jinna agreed, yanking one of his daggers out of the strange creatures they were killing. “I hate it when my blades get stuck on bone. It blunts them.”
“Nice problem to have.” Sinister laughed as she deftly wove her spells. Her damage output had increased noticeably since their incident in Telvar’s lair, and Murmur loved seeing her friend have so much fun with her class.
Perhaps the class assignment had been an excellent idea. For all of them. Everyone appeared to be perfectly comfortable with the class they were playing, happy even. Considering she was extremely happy as an enchanter now, it appeared that way. Her regret at not playing a healer was non-existent now.
She Mez’d another Cirician soldier as it approached them, glad it wasn’t a marshal. The Cirician soldiers and the Cirician marshals were difficult to fight. They fought with all of their appendages like some strange sort of martial arts dance. The back portion of their bodies was segmented more like an ant than a spider, but since they had eight total legs and a set of mandibles, it was difficult to classify them as anything specifically. What did the game have with its arachnid fascination?
The Mez held well, and Murmur was grateful for it, because they were still dealing with a marshal, and as usual, it was taking a while. Raid mobs outside of the dungeon had mega hit points. Like it was testing if they had the stamina to slog through their opponents and make it to the inside. If they’d been a full-sized raid then it might have been easy to mow through them, but with only had twelve people, these enemies outside were taking longer than Mur liked, even with all of their debuffs.
The Cirician marshal began to open its mouth, but Beastial stunned it, interrupting the horrible warbling it would have otherwise emitted. Its eyes glowed red in defiance as it began a series of attacks on the beastmaster, totally ignoring Devlish and his taunts. It wasn’t until Rashlyn butted in and used her Backfist cooldown that the monster turned on her, finally leaving Beast alone.
Snowy nipped at the backs of each leg, or arm, depending what hit the ground first. His sharp teeth did little but graze the protective armor surrounding each bit of flesh. Murmur could feel the annoyance drifting off him at how difficult it was to pierce the Cirician armor and petted him as he passed in front of her.
With two of its legs hacked off, the marshal finally went down.
“Glad you’re doing so much damage there, Sin,” Veranol quipped.
“Haha. Very funny.” Sinister glared at him, casting on the next two targets. Devlish and Rashlyn turned to attack, breaking the Mez on each of them. Now the alarm giver was dead, they didn’t have to worry about getting swarmed with multiple groups. One beep of that sound had brought a second group upon them immediately. Murmur wasn’t going to risk that again.
It would be easier to control the soldiers, without the marshal. With twelve raiders attacking, the mobs didn’t really stand a chance, even if the killing was slow. The visible sliver of experience they provided piled up nicely in their experience bars.
Progress was progress. Though if these were the protective trash mobs, she wasn’t looking forward to finding out what was inside.
“Headsets?” Devlish asked as the last of the group they’d been working on went down.
“Working as intended. I think?” Merlin shook his head like he was trying to clear something from it. “It’s so weird that it makes me feel like I’ve just swapped realities instead of entering a game.”
The others around him laughed, patting him on the back and agreeing. But Murmur watched. He was right. That was exactly how it felt.
She kept an eye out, strengthening her nets to warn her of incoming monsters, or else that the giant who’d previously guarded the entrance and made Ululate’s ground tremble was approaching. Ideally, she’d hoped to split into two groups and clear the outside like they had at Hightower so long ago, but it didn’t seem possible here.
Frustration crept over her as she began, yet again, to Mez the extra Cirician soldiers who followed their marshal, rampaging as their mandibles gnashed and their multiple limbs lashed out. She’d long since lost count of how many of them they’d downed. Her reactions and actions took on a mechanical nature as she reacted on instinct while her brain obsessed over the thought Merlin had planted in her head.
Different realities.
You seem surprised.
Murmur almost didn’t want to answer, but then she gave in. I just hadn’t thought of it that way.
When Somnia spoke again, it almost sounded like she was smiling.
Give it time.
Murmur wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that, but her attention zapped back to focus as Snowy jumped into the fray with a vicious growl.
Sinister leeched the Cirician’s life, a look of grim determination on her face. Merlin and Exbo stood back so their arrows would hit with more force. Dansyn weakened all of them, his song a merry discord to the hacking and slashing that went on. Merlin gleefully threw their potions as smoke billowed out of their cauldron. Rashlyn practically danced through her fighting, lending grace as the perfect counterpoint to the music.
Beastial, Devlish, and Jinna joined her in a dance around the creature as Veranol warded them all, and Havoc wove darkness, DoT’ing the crap out of each and every non Mez’d beast.
They worked so well together, Murmur wasn’t entirely sure that adding the other two guilds into the mix was a good idea. It might be like throwing a crowbar into perfectly working cogs. Perhaps it was the cohesion to the game lent to them through the headset adjustments, but she thought her friends looked beautiful.
As long as their potential allies knew how to play as a team and follow instructions, it should be okay.
One of them is difficult for me to monitor. I can’t hear him clearly.
Murmur released yet another Mez and tried not to focus too much on the fact that Somnia had just told her she listened in on all of the players. Her own nets weren’t strong enough to do that. Not yet, anyway…which was food for thought. I’m guessing that’s Jirald, she projected back to the AI in her head.
Somnia paused for so long before answering that Murmur had already begun to draw her consciousness away from the conversation. Jirald isn’t what he was.
Murmur knew it, somehow. In the depths of her mind, she knew that Jirald had also been adversely effected by Belius’s meddling. He’d been sent to gather the shards before Murmur could, and if nothing else, Jirald was competitive. Mur didn’t respond to the voice in her head, not wanting to screw up her timing on her Mez chain. Multiple Mezes were fully possible, but it required great concentration and the upkeep of relevant debuffs in order to execute it properly.
Especially when the opponents she was attempting to control appeared to have high resistance to almost everything.
Keeping her eye on the battlefield constantly meant she often had to stand in the back of the raid. She preferred to stay next to the rangers so that if shit should explode, she would at least have two people to defend her. Most times the other casters stayed with her, or just ahead of her. Like Sinister, Veranol, Havoc, and Mellow.
Her awareness needed to be further split into paying attention to everyone else’s mana levels, especially the healers. Now that her own abilities provided her with the skill to tap mana, drain mana, and redistribute mana, there were just so many more things she had to constantly keep a track of.
Potential additional monsters joining the fray were only one of the many worries she had as an enchanter. And she loved every tense moment of every fight.
The Cirician soldiers fought in section groups. All of them were led by a marshal, but the soldiers were tough. Not just their hide. Occasionally, and it seemed totally randomly, they would execute a quick attack that sliced dangerously close to their target’s neck. It seemed unstoppable, so the only choice was to dodge it.
“Why is there a tunnel off to the side?” Beastial asked suddenly.
“Tunnel?” Devlish grunted out as he shield-bashed yet another Cirician. The shot would have caved in the head of a lesser beast, but the creature barely blinked.
“There’s a tunnel behind them. As if they’re protecting it.”
Murmur took a moment as the others repositioned so that everyone could see what Beastial meant. Sure enough, there appeared to be a cavern or cave entrance, mostly concealed by thorn bushes behind where they were currently fighting.
Monitoring her timers, she took a moment to glance up at the hulking mass of spiked mountain that stood in front of her. The walls were sleek, almost as sleek as the city of Stellaein. The tops of the walls bore sharp contours, and huge spiked branches jutted out of the ground with thorns snaking all around the territory.
She’d assumed the path led to a set of doors, but the closer she looked, the less she could see an entrance on the outside of the walls. Taking a deep breath, she moved around as well and signaled to Snowy.
He left with little more than her thought for him to scout it out, trepidation making her more cautious than usual. A feeling of dread began to gnaw at the pit of her stomach. She should have known better than to assume that Somnia, altered by the brain of a madman, was going to deliver them anything she could hope to expect.
Snowy sent her back images, ones that made her blood boil, that made her want to let out a scream. Because they confirmed her worst fears. She Mez’d and debuffed the creatures she was holding in place again before clearing her throat to speak.
“There are catacombs down there. Tunnels that appear to be filled with nests and scores of these beasts that guard the true entrance to Vahrir. From what Snowy sent me, anyway.” Murmur ground out the words from between clenched teeth. She was irritated with herself for not considering there would be more to this dungeon. Of course there would be. It was one of the endgame challenges after all.
“Shit.” Veranol sighed out loud, but she could tell from his voice that he was already resigned to clearing out the catacombs.
“Then I guess we’re heading down, right?” Merlin grinned, knocking a flame arrow and managing to get the shot directly in the eye socket of one of the soldiers, dealing a killing blow. “I’m available to lead the way.”
Murmur eyed the entrance as the rest of the raid recouped from the fight. It was about five people wide. Surely it couldn’t be that narrow the whole way through, the whole way down. How would they fight? How would they defeat this? Despite all of her power growth, all of her new advantages, Murmur had missed this one fact. An important fact at that.
Sinister’s hand suddenly rested on her forearm, lighting the runes there aglow with the healing power of her touch. “Mur, breathe. Check it first before you panic.” Sin’s voice was low and soothing, soft enough that no one else could have heard her utter the words. Murmur was grateful and took a deep breath, drawing on the warmth Sin offered her.
Of course, getting worried about confined spaces was stupid of her. After all, she could ferret it out for herself if necessary. She closed her eyes briefly as the others began to prep themselves to enter the passages as well. Her sensory nets spread out fast inside the catacombs, reaching through and allowing her to see how many enemies sat around, how many were planning for their attack, and how close the quarters were going to be to fight.
She breathed a sigh of relief, tempering her fear. “Thanks. We just have to make sure we fight them in the main rooms.”
Devlish grinned and brandished a nasty looking mace. He shrugged at Mur’s questioning glance. “What? It’s hard to cut through their carapaces. Smashing shit is much easier. We ready?”
The group nodded, all of them tense with the pre-battle focus.
Devlish held his mace up in the air. “Let’s kill shit!”
They moved in, four to a row, Sinister and Havoc on either side of her. Murmur did her best not to give into the urge to scream, and only Sin’s presence took the edge off it. Even the ceiling was relatively low, and her locus height didn’t help.
The chittering of the Cirician seemed to echo from all around them, and Murmur forced herself to take a deep breath as she muttered to herself. “I fucking hate enclosed spaces.”
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices
Late Day Twenty-Five
Laria wrung her hands. She’d had too much caffeine, and it was difficult to stop herself from shaking. At least, that’s the mantra she kept up in her own mind. Admitting it was nerves was just going to make matters worse.
“All of the headsets appear to be functioning optimally.” Shayla’s comment was low in volume, almost meshing with the hum of the technology around them.
“Good.” Laria ran another diagnostic, just to check. Especially on Sinister and Havoc as they’d already had theirs for a couple of days. Shayla was right. They seemed to be performing well. Brain waves even appeared to be more stable than with the mass-produced headgear.
Then she switched over to Wren’s diagnostics. Her daughter’s brain was working overtime, but none of her vitals seemed to do the same. Just the patterns of her brainwaves. Where previously it had fluctuated oddly at intervals while she was in a coma, right now, it was functioning on all fronts. Equal distribution of activity.
It made Laria wish she’d paid better attention to her gaming psychology class. She didn’t understand all of the adjustments that had been made to Wren’s original headset. There were elements to it that had never been a part of gaming tech, which she was sure were tied directly to the military grant and research.
Except Michael had perished before he’d had a chance to implement any of the tests he’d likely had lined up for her. For all Laria knew, he’d probably meant to have more than just one headset like hers out there in the world. Hell, he’d treated the whole thing like experimentation on the human brain. How she wished she could wake him up for long enough to ask him what the hell he’d been thinking and how he’d accomplished it. Everything would be so much easier.
“You’re overthinking again,” Shayla commented into the silent room. “Deal with the problems in front of you, Laria, and stop playing what ifs. The biggest what if isn’t even a question. If we don’t keep the game stable, nothing else is going to matter anyway.”
“I know. Sorry.” She ripped her mind away from Wren’s predicament and forced herself to focus back on stabilizing the game. She was so close to asking David for help. Her husband was busy though, and this was her problem to fix since she essentially created it. Luckily, she knew her daughter could probably deal with what she was facing on her own. And even
if she couldn’t, Harlow was there with her.
“Mur, are you sure we should be doing this without back up?” Veranol’s tone was terse, and she could sense his unease.
“We can deal with the creatures down here. They’re trash mobs guarding the entrance to Vahrir. Nothing much more complex than the dwarves that guarded Hightower. You know, except like level fifty.” She didn’t see the need to explain why they needed to be where they were. They had to get in there. They had several dungeons to go through yet before they even had a shot at stopping the shards’ advance.
“Seriously, Mur?” Devlish stood with his tower shield planted on the ground, resting an arm on it. “You don’t know the area any better than us. Right now, these are level fifty raid monsters. Like…we’re a tiny raid right now. What the fuck gives?”
Right on his heels, Rash stood in front of him, her slit eyes glaring. “I’m with them. I’ve got a new and weird headset, this strange sensation throughout my thoughts that there’s so much more I don’t know. And you have this urgency about you that means you’re either bluffing, or you’re lying your ass off to us. So what is it? What aren’t you telling us?”
Murmur sighed, glancing at the mostly enclosed space around them and wishing they’d brought this up anywhere but here, conveniently forgetting that doing so hadn’t been possible. She reached out with her nets, gently casting them around her friends and pushed ever so subtly with a sense of calm, not to force them, just to help her words persuade them. “I’m not hiding anything. If you close your eyes and feel the world around you, you’ll realize that we are taking steps to stop the shards from destroying what’s left of Somnia’s stability.”
Veranol, Dev, and Rash all calmed, and she couldn’t be sure if it was her doing or else their own realization that she was mostly right. Either way, they were calmer now, and they would be able to understand that she was doing the right thing. They didn’t need to be worrying about all of this. She could take that sensation away from them. Let them have fun, let them be themselves, let them forget their trepidation.