by K. T. Hanna
There were several healing types interspersed amongst the ranks of the rest of the groups. She couldn’t tell what types of healers they were, only that they were already buffing their tanks.
She managed to pick out two archers and flagged them with the system, indicating to both Exbo and Merlin that the bow wielders had a target. Ranged opponents were always difficult and if possible needed to be eliminated first. The rest of the approaching army appeared to be made up of fighter types. There were no pets, so her bets were on monk types, thieves, and berserkers.
Veranol caught her attention with a wave of his hand gesturing toward their incoming attackers. Murmur sighed with relief and nodded her head. She really had to start relying on the other people around her or else they were going to get angry at her again, and that was exhausting.
Anyone who has the ability to slow the melee mobs that are incoming needs to do so now. These guys are coming in battle-ready formation. All tanks switch to tank status and get ready to take on an opposing dread knight each. All ranged, except rangers, focus on the archers. Veranol used the raid command chat to make the notification, freeing up Murmur to focus on maintaining stuns and interrupts on the healers.
She began to set up the interrupt orders, making sure that each healer had at least two raid members capable of interrupting healing spells on them at all times.
Rangers: kite groups of three melee fighters each. Once the archers are all dead, ranged classes are to focus on one healer at a time. Rogues, spread out please, and rotate through the stun rotations I’ve sent to each of you. Assist Jinna when focusing on healers. Murmur ran through the directions in her head making sure that Veranol and herself had not missed any major components of the fight.
There was no time left as the tanks clashed together, locked in combat. Steel on steel, strength against strength, she could already feel the power of radiating off both sides as soon as the battle began. The hasty plan they managed to bandage together in the heat of the moment sprang into action. Murmur didn’t have any more time to think about whether or not they’d made the right decision. Her hands were to full of her own obligations.
She paid attention to Sinister out of the corner of her eye but managed not to divide her attention too much. Snowy was at her side, lending her the strength she needed to fight this battle at her maximum concentration and power.
Casting Veto, she made sure its range covered as much area as possible. Annulment was perfect for stripping opponents of any beneficial buffs that they managed to get. But it appeared that some of her AoE spells were limited by how many different mobs they could impact. Or perhaps the infection influenced her otherwise far-reaching spells. So she had to recast the spells consistently so as to reach all of their opponents.
AoE spells were mana draining, and there was no doubt in her mind that she would run out of mana before any significant progress could be made. Veto was the only area of effect spell that was absolutely necessary because it enabled all of the spells that were being cast on all of their opponents to have a better chance of landing.
Stripping them of beneficial buffs would have to wait until they faced a smaller group. She turned her attention back to casting her three major stun spells. They were like the Old Faithful geyser in their consistency. Even if some of their enemies resisted them, it still bought time where others were completely unable to do harm. While she couldn’t heal in this game, she was definitely able to assist in damage reduction.
She maintained her concentration, allowing a portion of her mind to get an overview of the battle. Before her last encounter with the shards, it had been difficult to separate her trains of thought. Now, however, Murmur was finding she could divide her consciousness on multiple levels, keeping track of more things than she’d ever been able to.
Only now was she realizing that it might be more of a hindrance than the help she’d assumed it would be. Just because she could divide her concentration like that, apparently didn’t mean she could maintain control over all of it. Perhaps it was just a lack of practice, or maybe it was that she was overstitching herself before she entirely understood how her new abilities set themselves up. Either way, when she again looked over the entire battlefield, she missed one crucial stun.
All it took was the four second break missing that stun caused. Four seconds where none of their opponents were incapacitated. Because they’d been momentarily set free, it meant that every single mob not contained by crowd control or tanks turned to face Murmur, blood on their brains.
It was amazing how long a time four seconds could feel like. Murmur could see every single inch those creatures moved like it was in slow motion. Their mandibles and the infected goo that dripped from them; the skittering of their legs as they scratched across the stone floor like chalk on a blackboard, and their large faceted eyes focused entirely on her. She reinforced the kinetic shielding around her body, siphoning off large amounts of MA points to do so.
With Dev and Risk throwing out their Boil Blood spells as well as Torrent and Hatred to keep their targets focused on them, many of the loose mobs turned their attention back to the tanks. While that brought the imminent danger to a more manageable level, there was still a good half dozen of them headed toward Murmur.
The longest seconds of her life.
At that moment Snowy jumped in front of Murmur, spreading his four legs wide in a stance of defiance. His wolfy mouth widened in anger, eliciting a ferocious growl from deep in his throat. Slowly, a mild glow began to emanate from the wolf, his hackles raised and his white fur positively iridescent. Even his stature seemed to increase, becoming even larger than he already was.
When he let out a bark it resounded, cutting through the Cirician troops like a hot knife through butter. Squeals of pain echoed all around them, high-pitched and terrified. An acrid burning smell rose from the creatures, and Murmur eyed her wolf with a new respect, and even though she wished he’d been able to pull out that ability several times in the past, perhaps it was something he’d only just evolved into. Her stuns back in rotation meant that the dwindling amount of Cirician troops gathered around the main attack group were back in Murmur’s thrall.
“Didn’t realize he could do that.” Havoc mumbled the words, his face contorted with concentration as he attempted to wrangle Leeroy into the mass of healers with the pet’s scythe carving a bloody red arc.
Murmur laughed dryly. “That makes two of us. He and I are going to have to have a little chat later on. I believe he’s been holding out on us.”
She turned her attention fully back to the battle. All but two of the opposing healers were dead, the archers were long gone, and three of the tanks were down. That left them with the twenty-odd melee classes that were still chasing the five rangers who were successfully kiting them. Sinister used to love kiting mobs; it had been one of her favorite things to do as a ranger. Murmur spared a glance for her friend and realized how much fun the blood mage was having. The sheer majesty of being able to deal damage to their opponents, draining out the blood and transferring it to their allies in order to heal the wounds they gained—it looked good on her.
Dev was still fending off the final infected Cirician tank. Other than that, all of their other opponents were dead. Well, except the melee fighters. “Merlin, send the rangers over with their groups one at a time. Pick whoever you think needs to be rid of their group first.”
The end of this battle should mean all they had left was the queen and any entourage she might have. Somehow the whole dungeon felt anticlimactic. She couldn’t help but feel a little let down. After all, they’d been working toward this dungeon for weeks, literally. These were supposed to be difficult, the final battles, the test of a good guild. Not that everybody would be able to pull off fighting hordes of mobs at once. Truth be told, if they had had one less ranger the whole plan would’ve gone to shit.
And that’s when the plan did go to shit.
Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, and right now Murmur wished it had been available in her skill tree. It appeared that the melee fighters grew in strength every time a tank died, essentially leaving the raid facing twenty melee tanks. Murmur was not amused. She should have inspected the effects more closely, kept an eye on their debuffs better. Hell, maybe the rangers should have kept an eye on what they were kiting.
But they weren’t to blame, and trying to play that game wouldn’t get them anywhere fast.
As Idreal, one of the rangers from Exodus, brought the mobs he’d been kiting into the center of the fight, all five tanks needed to engage. Each of the Ciricians had visibly increased in stature and armor. They were significantly larger and stronger, and their fighting styles mimicked those that the previous tanks possessed. If they hadn’t been in the middle of a battle, Murmur would’ve thought it was a pretty cool trick. As it was, however, her sensing nets told her that time was of the essence and that the queen would be coming when she came and not necessarily when the raid was finished killing the previous opponents.
It was the zone on a timer, not the waves.
Maybe it was something that was built into the scale of the attack, but she didn’t think that was quite right and wasn’t entirely sure where she was getting the sensation from. Perhaps it was coming from Somnia herself.
No, it’s not. It’s your sense of the creature inside the hive, the waves she is giving out. It’s not you she’s notifying, it’s her guards. Take the information and plan accordingly. I thought you knew how to do this.
Murmur did her best not to snap at the voice inside her head, knowing it would do little but make her feel a brief sense of self-satisfaction. Instead she took in a deep breath, while maintaining her constant stun rotation, and responded in kind. It wasn’t like I was going to disregard it. All I had was an idle thought wondering where the information came from.
This time it was Murmur who cut off the contact with her inner voice. She didn’t have the time for arguments with artificial intelligence masquerading as a god.
The second ranger, Huppa from Spiral, was the next to deliver his five tanks. While their statistics had increased, allowing them to become tank-like, their abilities were still remnants of their melee fighter selves, and thus not ideal for tanking. It was a murky silver lining.
Activating raid chat, Murmur took a deep breath before speaking. Hey, the queen isn’t going to wait until we defeat all of these mobs before making her debut. Focus fire on Esolan’s target, and allow the other tanks enough space until we switch to their target. When the previous target has been defeated, Esolan will taunt the next one and pull it to him so it, too, can be focus fired as well. Everyone who can DPS is expected to DPS the current target. Use short-term cooldowns on rotation, but remember to keep long-term cooldowns for the upcoming boss fight.
The whole set up became monotonous, and Murmur didn’t like the sensation that they were being lulled into a false sense of stability. They still had two sets of beefed up fighters to go through.
Since they were melee-based Ciricians, there was no mana Murmur could drain, so she had to Manabalize herself and hope to high water that Sinister would get her healed in time to distribute the mana she’d gained. Potions had timers and so couldn’t be relied upon to replenish stores at any other time. Bard songs came in handy, but since Murmur was the only enchanter in the raid, she couldn’t be everything at once. Her own capacity had to be divvied out to the healers. No healers meant everyone died, and it was really hard to do damage while dead.
Unless you were Leeroy, apparently.
As Exbo began to bring his Ciricians over toward Dev, it appeared that Merlin’s group were tired of their ranger’s presence. In fact, they didn’t just follow the other group, they almost bowled them over in their attempt to reach Dev first.
Reacting on impulse, Murmur fired off her AoE Mez. It hit all ten of the remaining soldiers and froze them in place. She thanked her foresight for having cast Veto on a regular basis. Except she was too quick to congratulate herself, because a warning flashed up in her line of sight.
Warning: The Mesmerize spell is reduced in effectiveness. Due to the crowd control already inflicted on the Cirician soldiers, they have developed a partial immunity toward further manipulation. Your spell will only have quarter of its effectiveness with diminishing returns. Countdown is already in place. You have been warned.
The entire raid could see the message, for once, it wasn’t just directed at Murmur. She hadn’t realized that kiting the mobs would count as crowd control, nor had she realized that too much crowd control might negate future crowd control. That was way too confusing. What was the point if she couldn’t fucking use her crowd control spells?
She could feel the panic rising in the people around her and didn’t even blink when she sent a wave of calm through to each and every one of them. They weren’t going to survive if they got antagonistic or panicky right now. With the massive timer literally hanging over their heads counting down until when they faced the queen, Murmur didn’t think the use of her power was extraneous. She needed the raid calm, and five minutes ago. So she left the tendrils in place, supplying a soothing effect to mist over all of them constantly.
If they died now, she had a feeling that one of two things would happen. Either the raid would have to face this entire wave of mobs again, or the queen and her entourage were going to camp their corpses, and there was no way anybody would get any of their stuff back. While she wouldn’t have hated the first option, the second option was the one she feared most likely to happen.
She couldn’t allow that to happen.
The timer above their heads dinged nine minutes and thirty seconds. Trying not to concentrate on it, Murmur dug her fingers into Snowy’s fur and pulled what power he could give her. Engaging his own mana core, he lent her what he could. Murmur hoped it would be enough.
She concentrated on the healers. No healer mana meant one dead raid. It was the crux of the situation. Most of the caster classes had chosen some form of mana regeneration as their hybrid class, so she let them deal with themselves. Murmur watched as her fellow raiders began to systematically shut down each new mob. They followed her directions perfectly, focusing on each of Esolan’s targets in a row.
He focus taunted one into him from the clutches of one of the other tanks, and targets switched smoothly. Each other tank had two of the improved melee fighters left. Burning them down one at a time was the only option, while tanks went into defensive mode and simply took beatings to hold their opponents to them.
Murmur realized too late that keeping her Mez up on their opponents even though it had diminishing returns was lending her an abundance of aggro that she wasn’t going to be able to get rid of in time, despite the fact that the tanks were taunting. She could see her aggro as it rose to the point of no return and cursed inwardly at her short-sightedness.
Almost in slow motion, three of the melee fighters made a beeline directly for Murmur. She knew instinctually that Snowy didn’t have the mana to do what he’d done before to save her. Instead, even though he stood in front of her willing to take a hit, she knew he wouldn’t be able to withstand the brunt of it.
Her mana was low, and so was her MA, leaving her little choice but to pour what she had left into her reinforcements and hope it would suffice. What she didn’t expect, was for Sinister to basically throw herself in front of Murmur inside the blaze of a Blood Bomb.
It all happened so quickly that Murmur didn’t have time to react. She blinked, unsure as to what exactly had transpired in front of her. Looking up, she realized that those three Ciricians were not only at half health but were also already gathered around Sinister.
Murmurs stuns were down, her mana practically depleted, and the raid was tearing apart the last two who were over with the main assist. All of the rangers turned their firepower on the three Ciricians who
focused on Sinister.
But it didn’t matter that they pumped arrows into their bodies, and it didn’t matter that the tanks were bombarding them with taunts either. They only turned their attention away from the blood mage once they left her for dead. Despite being in the midst of battle, Murmur ran to Sinister’s side.
“No! No, no, no, no, no!” Murmur couldn’t stop the tears brimming in her eyes and falling down her face. She knew it was a game, she knew they could come back in this world, but that didn’t make it feel any less real. She held Sinister’s broken and bleeding body against her own. There was nothing she could do to help. Health potions were on the same cooldown timer as her mana potions. All she could do was watch the blood drain away from her best friend’s body as the life left it.
The sounds of battle echoed distantly for her as if they were of little consequence. A glance at her raid configuration told her that Jinna, Mellow, Karn, Ishwa, and Sinister had all died in the last few seconds.
Finally, the sound of fighting faded completely, and Murmur finally came back to herself. She had to stop this, had to stop everything that happened to Sinister from distracting her from her focus which should have been on the raid.
She glanced around. Everyone looked like shit. From torn armor, to broken weapons, to missing hit points, and drained mana. Murmur stood up and spoke to the raid.
“Resurrect the dead, heal up, med up, and sort through your weapons. The next battle is about to start, and we don’t have time to fuck around.”
No one commented on her word choice and no one argued with her. The resurrections began. Time was ticking. They only had five minutes left.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices – Conference Room 2
Day Twenty-Six
Laria had taken it upon herself to confiscate the conference room so she could stretch out and be alone. Of course, perhaps, it helped that she could actually lock the door properly here and use a code, which would keep prying James out. Her focus right now was the way the programming was integrating with the players that they had assisted in modifying headsets for. That was the way she phrased it in her mind anyway. Better to keep it slightly left of breaching contract, even if just to herself.