Anomaly (Somnia Online Book 2)

by K. T. Hanna

  Murmur started to get that familiar tingle from her feet through to her head, the excitement of taking on a challenge, even if it was a small one. “Should we split up first?”

  “Probably a good idea.” Jinna frowned. “These guys are pretty strong, but their respawn should occur, if we set a good rhythm, in plenty of time for us to start the rounds again. They are just normal group mobs.”

  “Excellent.” Sinister rubbed her hands together.

  “We’ll take the bottom camp.” Rash stood with her hands on her hips. “We have the dwarf. So I guess we’ll race you to twenty.”

  Murmur laughed. “You’re so on.”

  Rash’s group followed Jinna down a small and not as well-worn path toward the second camp, while Murmur and her crew got all buffed up with mana regen, hit points, resist buffs, and more so they wouldn’t alert the camp ahead of them. Luckily, the snow reflected the moonlight well, and it wasn’t nearly as dark as it had been on Tarishna at night. This was what she’d needed. Some action to get her head around, some goal to work toward that that stupid Queen Arita had managed to stand in the way of once already.

  She could feel her blood pump through her veins, and her focus narrow down to all of her skills. Every movement, every breath felt real to her. Almost like slow motion in front of her, it allowed her to access and cast things closely on the heels of each other. She couldn’t wait to see what her abilities would be like once she was more used to them, once she gained more power. Once she knew how to target and use her mind control abilities with pinpoint accuracy.

  Sensing net cast out, shields around herself reinforced, all of her self and group buffs completed, Murmur was more than ready when three skeletons broke the ground this time. Their cackling and clattering bones were loud in the night, echoing through the clearing in an odd sort of dissonance. She could only hope the golems wouldn’t hear.

  “Oh yeah.” Havoc said nonchalantly, “I keep forgetting I can tell you if undead are coming now.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” Mur bit down on more sarcasm as she concentrated on Mezing two of them as they fully emerged. These skeletons were level twenty and their auras reflected their group mob status.

  Havoc grinned; his spells held more sting against undead mobs, and he wove them deftly as his pet attacked immediately. With his life-tap, shackle, and darkness, he managed to cause three DoTs to tick down, all while debuffing the skeleton they were attacking and leeching life back to himself. Murmur personally thought that both the dread knight and necromancer were a little over powered with their ability to heal themselves and take hits. Not that Havoc often took damage personally, but his pet definitely did.

  Her own debuffs did little to no damage, but they did make it easier for the others to land their spells. So she took pride in the fact that at least some of their damage increase was due to her. She tried not to be too smug about it. At the very least her class enabled her to watch over everyone, requiring less out of combat research to learn their skills.

  Beastial and Shir-Khan worked well in sync, and she was slowly learning to watch for the activation of his companion fuse. Beastial’s hidden abilities seemed to involve his pet, and lend them each other’s strength for more powerful attacks. It was magnificent to watch them fight in unison, like a sort of bladed and clawed dance.

  Merlin loved Jump Shot, and Murmur was pretty sure it was one of his hidden abilities because he only seemed to have gotten it recently. The mid-air powerful shot appeared to have a pretty lengthy cool down, because he didn’t use it often. His arrows flew so fast otherwise she knew he was using a quick shot and likely the ranger’s apid hot on cool down. Skeletons it seemed though, were difficult to hit, what with having vacant spots in their bodies. Some of his arrows just flew through the monster, landing harmlessly on the other side.

  Devlish used both his axes with a glorious flourish and insane ability to defend himself almost as well as with a shield. She knew he’d been gathering hidden skills, and he now used his Torrent skill, which allowed him to execute a flurry of dual-wielded attacks, on cool down. It made her wonder how other classes’ regeneration for those skills worked. How did he amass the points like her own Mental Acuity?

  Sinister had developed a flourish with her healing skills. Murmur began to recognize all of her abilities, and it made her itch to play the class. She juggled using her own health to heal with siphon, and two damage over time spells that pulled from the mob and gave to the group, or to a singular target. Adding a Blood Grenade in every now and again spiked the healing and her damage. Grudgingly Mur admitted it was the perfect class for her best friend.

  In relatively short order, the skeletons were dead, and Murmur’s joy in the game was back to normal. All warmed up! The perfect mindset to start off the camp for XP!

  Murmur frowned as Devlish’s axe sunk into the clay golem’s leg and got stuck. She blinked, even while rapidly applying her slows, weakeners, and other debuffs, trying to run over tactics in her head because she had not expected weapons to get stuck in clay. Luckily, he managed to yank it out and dive roll to the left side to avoid being hit by the gigantic swinging fist that was coming his way.

  Devlish stood back up, shook himself off, glared at the golem, and let out a yell. His Hatred ability caused the golem to focus only on him as the DoT leeched away at its life, while everyone else starting laying into it as well. Havoc piled his DoTs up, eventuating in a nice set of damage every tick, plus some debuffs. He also sent in his pet, who didn’t seem to have the same problem as Devlish, and just then Murmur noticed the tank had swapped to a mace. She wasn’t entirely sure how much of a difference that was going to make, but it might be easier to pull back out of the clay.

  Merlin kept his distance, loosing volleys of arrows into the giant thing. For a moment Mur wondered where he got all those arrows. Did he just have an infinite quiver? Beastial and his cat executed their own attacks in unison. The animal’s claws seemed to do little effectual damage until Murmur realized that they were both methodically hacking away at the same spot on one of the legs, and it was getting close to severing. Which should bring it toppling down, and thus make it easier to cut out the tongue.

  Meanwhile, Sinister pulled blood for healing—out of something made magically from clay that had no actual blood vessels running through it. It was the first thing in the game that hadn’t smacked of realism. Perhaps her descriptions meant she could swap damage for life force or something. Maybe that’s what the spells actually did. She’d just have to ask her friend later, because otherwise it was an odd continuity oversight for Somnia to have. Still, Sin’s Tribute spell distributed enough health to the group that they didn’t appear to need much healing. Given that both Havoc and Devlish could give themselves mini heals, and Mur kept her shield absorption on pretty much around the clock.

  “Murmur! Look out!”

  She pulled herself out of her contemplative thoughts just in time to realize a massive fist was coming her way. Diving to the left she rolled and came up on her feet, congratulating herself briefly on that agility she’d upped. “Sorry. I zoned.”

  “You can’t afford to zone. That would have flattened you.” Sin glared at her. “Don’t give your healer a heart attack! I fucking need to hit level twenty so you don’t get hurt as much!”

  Murmur picked herself up off the ground, brushed off her armor and started laughing. “What about level twenty is going to make that matter?”

  “Don’t laugh! You can’t die, Mur!” Sin’s frantic words cut through the laughter and sobered Murmur up. “I get an ability at level twenty, where I can divide some of the damage you take. In a pinch, it’ll help.”

  Murmur blinked and her chest tightened.

  She really loved Sin. That her friend thought this far out, was this concerned. Sin was right, getting careless wasn’t going to help anyone. While they weren’t certain she wouldn’t be able to come back in
to the game if she died in it, she wasn’t about to test it out just in case. Which meant constantly being on the look out for the player killers, and Jiralds of this world too.

  Thinking of the training, back stabbing rogue caused anger to simmer in her gut, and Mur knew Sin didn’t deserve it, but the words were out of her mouth before she could bite them back. “In a pinch? How about in a pinch you all stop keeping shit from me? How about in a pinch anyone out to player kill us is quite literally gunning for my death whether they know it or not? How the fuck about you remember I know exactly what it’s like to have to heal people who won’t stop taking damage?”

  Sin stood there, gaping at her, and Mur could see tears well in her friend’s eyes. She hadn’t meant to bite. But then again, she’d been doing a lot of things she hadn’t meant to. She took a deep breath, cast a shield around herself and she stood up straight. “Okay, I won’t do that again. Let’s get you to twenty.”

  Sinister gave her a tight-lipped smile, and returned her full attention back to the fight.

  The thing was, keeping herself alive was important to everyone, not just to herself. They were all here having a ball because they loved grouping together, and Murmur being reckless or distractible was only going to cause them pain in the long run—and maybe mean she could never see them again.

  The last was a sobering thought, so she concentrated on the golems, and tried her best to refrain from spacing out.

  The other thing about golems—and maybe it was clay specific, because she was pretty sure rock golems and maybe even earth golems were going to emerge somewhere in Somnia—was the noise. Clay golems were noisy. They sort of half-bleated like a goat, but a goat who’d got its head stuck in a fence and then got its legs stuck when it tried to pull them back out or something, and mixed it with the gurgled grunts of pigs who were attacking their feed in the trough. Overall, the sound was unpleasant, and it echoed abysmally through the mountainous area where they fought. Apart from the rustling of the tree leaves and the occasional bird overhead, there was very little noise around them. Perhaps that’s why the golem sounds felt so loud.

  They could even hear faint noise from the other group, and occasionally had to double check that they weren’t accidentally alerting one of their target’s golem friends. It was precarious to pull them because the area was relatively small, but the mobs all faced very strategic ways and were extremely slow to move when alerted by noise.

  There were some good things about golems. They dropped fantastic crafting materials, which often included gems, and they seemed a little less than bright and didn’t help each other at all. So they were the only mobs they’d encountered so far who didn’t run to each other’s aid, which was probably good because handling three of them at once would have been a nightmare. Murmur hadn’t tried it yet, but she was quite certain they couldn’t be stunned, and likely not Mez’d.

  Havoc suddenly spoke up. “You know, their stupidity isn’t really inherent. It’s probably because the command on their tongue says nothing about helping each other.”

  Murmur gaped at him. She’d thought she was the mind reader of the group. Although she guessed there were only so many things you could think about while fighting golems.

  “If these things start respawning and helping each other, Havoc,” Sinister began very calmly, deftly healing Devlish as he took a glancing blow, “I’m going to gouge out your eyes, and use them as marbles.”

  Havoc paled visibly, and Beastial roared with laughter.

  “Don’t think you’re off the hook entirely either, Beastial. Just because Telvar turned out nicely, doesn’t mean you’re forgiven for jinxing the fuck out of us at the time.” Sinister’s tone was still calm and almost sweet...and if you knew her, that meant it was pretty much deadly.

  For a few minutes after that, until the golem finally fell and gave them a healthy dose of experience, inching Murmur ever closer to level nineteen, the group was subdued, until Devlish laughed. “You know, we all know it. Last game it would have been Mur telling Sin off, not Sin telling everyone else off. I do believe you’ve grown up, young Sinister.”

  “Shut up. You’re like two years older than me.” But she was smiling, beneath the heavy blush on her cheeks.

  That was until the first arrow shot through their group and embedded itself into the tree behind them.

  Somnia Online

  The City of Stellaein

  Office of Head Enchanter Belius

  Seven Days Post Launch

  Belius paced his office. If he wasn’t careful, he’d wear a path into his floor, not that he couldn’t fix it with a thought, or direction, or whatever it was when he did things now. He was certain Murmur had obtained another of those discs. He had been the last time she’d visited, but for whatever reason, she didn’t hand it to him. Was Telvar interfering? Was he trying to take them for himself even after he’d cautioned against trying to absorb Michael’s scattered mind?

  His enchanter office wasn’t small, but it was confining. And yet, this is what he’d chosen for himself, thinking this way he’d have the most access to Murmur. She fascinated him—a human whose brain was present in the game, and whose body was somehow holding out in the real world. There was much he could learn from her. So much he could experiment with. So much she could teach him without even knowing.

  But here she was, friendly with Telvar, basking in his gift of a castle and a home. Belius knew he should have vetted that portion of the potential storylines. Triggered though they were, Bel had thought it would take far more time for someone to discover Telvar on that island. For a brief second as he passed his cluttered desk, anger gripped him, flushing his algorithms with an unidentifiable sequence. He grunted and swept an arm across his desk, sending all the excess tumbling to the floor in a crunch of papers and pens and inkwells.

  Glaring at them, he waved a hand, which magically returned them to where they’d been. That was the thing with being a god in this world; you could do anything. Anything, that is, except force a human mind. Cajoling and manipulating could work to a certain extent, but Murmur had become too adept at shielding for him to sneak suggestion past. The fact constantly irked him, especially since they’d allocated her the enchanter class in order to help preserve her brain activity, figuring it could access attributes other classes wouldn’t come by. The irony.

  The strange sensations he attributed to anger that swept through his body, through his system now didn’t cause him any concern. Telvar had been wrong. Absorbing Michael purely meant that Belius was becoming more human, more real, solidified. Emotions began to surge through him, causing his system to adjust to new parameters, bringing him closer to reality. He knew the fact annoyed Telvar and probably amused Emilarth. The latter was very prone to doing almost anything for amusement.

  “What are you laughing at, all on your own? Careful, it’s a sign of insanity.”

  Speak of the devil. Belius whirled around, coming face to face with his sister...sort of. It really depended on how she felt. “What do you want?”

  “Seriously, what is it with you guys? You don’t like my company or something?” There was a dangerous glint in her eyes now, one Bel knew better than to push. While she wasn’t hell bent on any particular direction, if she found amusement in it, she’d help out. Thing was, Telvar was very good at being amusing, even without trying. He had a way of thinking that wasn’t always logical, a process Belius wanted to emulate.

  “I don’t hate your company.” Bel muttered and turned back to survey the nothingness he’d been looking at before she entered the room.

  “You’re boring today, Bel. I just thought you’d want to know that young Murmur is on her way again.”

  Emilarth’s tone made him spin around. “What way where?”

  She shrugged, examining her fingernails and then suddenly they were longer and black, pointed at the tips like tiny stabbing knives. Emilarth smirked. “
Excellent questions. Which should I answer?”

  Belius glared at her. “Just tell me.”

  Emilarth raised an eyebrow. “You’re being no fun at all. At least Tel is fun.”

  This time he growled. Comparisons to his brother never went down well. He hated them with a passion, or a subset of complex algorithms but either way, he despised them. “Just tell me or get out and let me scour for her myself.”

  “We are testy today. Did you have too much insanity for breakfast?” Her smile didn’t spread to her eyes, those all-seeing eyes, cat-like eyes. “Anyway. She’s not on this continent anymore. If you want to see her, want to influence her in any way, you’re going to need to travel to Cenedril. Pretty sure she’ll be there for a while, leveling and all. You’ve become superfluous. It’s not like there isn’t a class trainer in all the towns.”

  “Shit!” Belius tugged at his robe, running different computations through his head, trying to figure out just what and where he needed to be. Humans wouldn’t slot into his variables tidily; they screwed up all of his calculations on a constant basis. How did Telvar adapt so quickly to them? Regardless of what his brother did, he never seemed to have a problem talking to actual people.

  “Fine. Is that all you have for me?” His impatience frayed at his temper, and he could already feel vestiges of his anger leaking through again, peeking out to test the waters.

  This time Thra—Emilarth—pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “You know, I don’t think I like your version of this anymore. You’ve grown dull, you’re getting obsessed like Michael was, like that Jirald kid is. Watch it, Bel. There are some aspects of being human that are far less desirable. You seem to be gravitating toward those.”

  And with that, she disappeared. But Belius didn’t care because he was clinging to her words. Obsessed? If he was obsessed, wasn’t a fellow obsessed individual the best one to cut a deal with? He may not be quite stable, and he might be a little too one track minded, but with any luck...