by K. T. Hanna
Murmur had to admit that he had a point.
This gate seemed far more pregnable than that of Stellaein. It was made out of thick logs, ones she wouldn’t even be able to put her arms around, but wood wasn’t as strong as metal. She frowned, gazing out at the dimming light.
“The sun will be gone soon.” Merlin muttered what they were all thinking out loud.
“No shit, Merlin.” Beastial laughed. “Everyone got their gear? Food, Drink?”
Murmur frowned. “I have plenty. But if you see mushrooms, or get any meat, I have things I can cook while we’re out. I think you’ll all be getting low on food soon.”
She handed out two more spider legs to each of them. “That’s about all I can manage right now. My plethora of spider legs is no more.”
“We off then?” Sinister’s grin spread wide, her eyes glinting dangerously.
“No time like the present.” Dev took the first step out of the gate and angled northwest. “After all, that bandit leader isn’t going to kill himself for us.”
Storm Corp
Storm Technologies Division—Theoretical Neuroscience Arm
Countdown: Fourteen months before Somnia Online launch
Edward Davenport, CEO of Storm Corp entered Doctor Michael Jeffries office. The CEO was tall, about six foot four. His white hair glistened like it had a silver underlay, and his tall sporty figure spoke of years of running. It seemed like his eyes could see through you, and knew everything you didn’t want him to. Approaching sixty, he oversaw every big project personally, refusing to delegate and swearing that was how Storm Corp became what it was today. He’d built the company from the ground up, after all.
“It’s looking good, Jeffries.” Teddy opened the conversation pleasantly. “One more round of tests, and then we should be good to go. Tell me, do you have any reservations?”
Michael looked up at his boss. His thoughts were a mess, his expectations deflated—yet he had to keep all of that out of his tone. “I’m unsure if we’ll be able to procure enough headgear for people to play with. They could technically use old crappy tech, but it will limit our data severely.”
It was about as much as he could put out there without sounding like a loon. Telling your boss that during the course of testing the limits of the headgear that was hopefully going to make him rich, Michael had inadvertently (probably helped) the AIs become mostly or fully sentient? That sounded crazy. Like a definite road to firing.
Firing would separate him from his beautiful project, which was one thing he couldn’t let happen. It meant everything to him, and it worked, even better than he’d ever anticipated. It had simply developed a reliance on the specific set of AIs controlling Somnia. So instead of saying what was in his mind, he skirted the worries he had, putting them down to lack of sleep, and knowing not a small amount of it was fueled by the greed to see his project work.
“Excellent. How is the data on the project right now?” Teddy glanced around the office, his eyes raking over the charts and screens running multiple calculations faster than the eye could keep up.
“The data,” Michael’s smile this time was genuine. “What we have is compiling nicely, giving us areas we can tweak and work on through how it’s retrieved and how the information is read. However, until we get a larger number in, we can’t really draw any specific conclusions. Everything we’re doing right now is general. Once the game releases, however, I’ll be able to gather most everything we need.”
Teddy nodded, hands behind his back, a stern expression on his face. “Does your team know the plans? Or is it all up here?” The CEO motioned to his head.
Michael blinked. Well, no one but him knew everything. “My extrapolations are mostly in my head, but as we improve and go through the development, my team is well aware of how everything works.”
“Not good enough, Jeffries. I need everything notated, you need at least two juniors under you. Pick the two brightest doctors you have working with you. I want their names tomorrow. They need to know everything.” Teddy straightened his jacket and looked Michael in the eye. “I’m being cautious. Storm Corp has far too much invested in this should something go awry. I’m protecting my investment, and your ideas are my investment.”
The last tone was serious and firm, and while Michael completely understood, it still fanned the irritation welling inside him. “Understood, Mr. Davenport.”
“Excellent. Thank you for your fantastic achievements so far, Jeffries. I see great things for you.” With a nod, the CEO left the office.
Barely keeping his irritation under control, Michael sat down and patched through to Jessa. “Send in Brandon and Silke, please.”
“Okay.” Jessa disconnected the call and Michael sat, contemplating how he’d approach this. He knew who his best and brightest were, and trying to keep his own motives from people who might get close to his work, would be tricky. But most of all, what if they realized the AIs were behaving oddly as well? Would they put a stop to everything?
He couldn’t let that happen.
Release Day: Somnia Online
Walking was something Murmur never really got used to in a virtual world. She had to exercise the same portion of her brain to instigate it, but didn’t get half of the benefits she would have if she’d done it in the real world. Apparently the suit was supposed to help with that, but she wasn’t holding her breath.
Every now and again she spied a mushroom, and plucked it. If nothing else, she could make them some skewers.
Beastial kept veering off the path. By the sixth time, Murmur was ready to smack him. “Stop it, Beast!”
He blinked rapidly, likely shutting out of whatever he was doing, and met her eyes. “What?”
“We keep having to babysit you. Stop whatever you’re doing and just walk to the bandit lair with us.”
Beastial laughed. “You wanted me to contact people we’ve played with before. So either I don’t help with the bandits, or you shepherd me there. Your pick.”
“When he puts it that way.” Havoc smiled. “I shall be his shepherd.”
“Excellent. I’m counting on you mate.” Beast’s answer trailed away as he went back to whatever he was doing.
“You better not recruit a ton of freaking rangers.” Merlin pouted as they walked. “And I don’t mean for loot’s sake. I’d like to enter Mr. Training Ranger in as Exhibit A.”
“To be fair, most of the people we’ve played with would have just died.” Dev jogged to keep up with Murmur’s quick, irritated steps. “Hey. We’re not in a race. Well, I guess we are, but five minutes won’t make a difference.”
“Search for levels D.” Murmur replied shortly. “No tens yet, but there are several nines. So let’s not rest on our lack of laurels, huh?”
“And,” Beast spoke loudly from behind. “I may or may not be in contact with most of those nines. Calm it Mur. Don’t turn on hardcore bitch mode just yet.”
She sighed, knowing full well she often got carried away. But just like in school, just like in everything she did, not being the best wasn’t an option. Competitive? Nope, she was beyond that. In such a way that it dogged her every thought, always there in the back of her mind.
The slight incline of the off-road path they took gave her character a work out. She didn’t even want to contemplate the time, because she knew her actual body should be getting tired shortly. Should being the operative word.
In the waning light, they finally made it. Motioning the others to be quiet and stay behind him, Merlin crept forward. Murmur watched him, focusing on the small campfire she could see just past the tree line, in a clearing with a huge cave rearing up behind it. Several figures stood at intervals around the camp site, behind it, some chatting and laughing while they played something that might have been a game of dice.
There were all sorts there. Some dark elves, some appeared to be luna, others viking, and even the occasional locus. Straining her eyesight, Murmur noticed another flicker in the distance, meaning there was
more than one camp, and likely more than one cave.
“Levels?” she whispered.
Merlin rejoined the group. “Seems to be more like levels ten to eleven here. They’re also not normal mobs. They have a line around their aura—might be the equivalent to an elite, or group mob? More experience for the group, anyhow. In Somnia it probably means they’re just well-trained or something.”
He cleared away some pebbles on the ground and drew a few diagrams in the dirt. “There are going to be multiple pulls. I think the fewest I can do is when we hit the campfire and there are two of them at it, at least right now. I think I can keep it to three.”
Murmur ran the numbers through her head. “I can keep two Mez’d easily. But there’ll be a delay on the second one. Only slight, but we need to pull them back significantly.”
“Well, we learned the hard way that mobs don’t leash in this game.” Sin laughed without a trace of mirth. Murmur almost pitied that ranger if her friend ever found him again.
“I’ll Mez two, and we’ll work on the other. I’ll be able to DoT, but I don’t trust my pet to obey my commands, so I’m not going to cast him for now. He’s pretty useless, and to be honest, only listens to my directions about twenty percent of the time.”
Beastial chuckled. “You need a BEAST!”
She raised an eyebrow. “You think?”
He laughed. “Seriously though. Did you want me to invite people we’ve played with straight away?”
Murmur gave it a moment’s thought, running through possible complications in her mind. “If we’ve raided with them and they know how to do their jobs, keep out of shit, watch their surroundings, and aren’t a complete dick? Sure.”
“Love your criteria, Mur.” Beastial laughed, and for a moment it seemed his cat was echoing the expression. “Right, I’ve got about nine that I’ll invite outright because I’m quite certain you don’t hate them, and the rest we’ll discuss. Except Rash, who isn’t online right now.”
“Rash? Great! Sounds like you have a plan” She redirected her attention to the bandit camp, quite happy to learn that Rashlyn would be playing Somnia too. But she needed experience, now. It was like the lack of it was making her skin itch. “Let’s try a pull and see how much stronger these ‘elite’ mobs are.”
Moving up slightly past the trees but still in the shade of its branches, the group began a series of self buffs, except Sin because hers could give extra health to everyone.
The first group they attempted stood at the foot of a large rock that blocked the mobs from the sight of their comrades. That made it a much easier pull, considering higher level mobs likely had more intelligence or something. Merlin stepped out onto the grass as the last rays of the sun began to sink beneath the mountain range, took aim, and released an arrow, straight into the neck of the human bandit whose back was to them. The other two standing with it drew their weapons immediately, already moving, but Murmur finished her cast, sealing one of them in place.
The initial bandit walked slower, the blood of his wound decreasing his speed as he approached them. But Murmur didn’t have time for much more than a glance, already busy motioning through the Mez spell again before releasing it quickly. No fizzle, and no resist. It stopped the second uninjured mob in its place, leaving the initial one as their target.
By the time she turned back to it, it was down to almost half health, and riddled with damage over time spells from both Havoc and Beastial and their pets. Merlin wasn’t kidding; these were definitely not normal mobs. Adding her own DoT to the mix, Murmur kept an eye on her Mez countdowns, positioning them better in her HUD so as not to interfere with her vision, but also to make sure she could keep track of them.
When the mob hit thirty-five percent, she renewed the Mez on the first mob with a few seconds to spare, repeating the process on the second. She always allowed time for a mistake, in case a fizzle or a resist meant she’d need to recast the spell. She needed to refine her strategy. “Taunt before you break Mez.”
Dev rolled his eyes in her direction. Considering he’d played DPS previously, he knew all about taunting. Still, she felt better having said something. At five percent he switched targets, while the others finished the initial mob off. Effectively taunting it, he broke Murmur’s spell and the mob didn’t even try to glance at Murmur. She let out a sigh of relief, DoT-ed the new target, and then re-Mez’d the other. Now she had time to nuke the new mob a couple of times. The health of the second one was going down faster than the first as the group figured out their rotations, and got more comfortable with their classes.
“Not going to re-Mez it again. Taunt it, Dev, and let it come to you. We can handle two for a few percent.” Murmur directed them without thought to the fact that she was usually in the healer’s shoes.
“Easy for you to say.” Sin glared at her.
“Shush baby healer. Your health is full, and your mana is sitting at eighty percent. You’re not even breaking a sweat.” Murmur paused at the timer. “Breaking in three.”
The final mob ran over to Dev, who turned and thwacked it good, maintaining any aggro he might need, and began alternating through both for the last ten percent of the second. DoTs applied on the new, nukes and pets engaged, the second died quickly, and they made short work of the last one.
“Take stock.” Murmur stepped back and surveyed the scene. “I believe these will take longer than average mobs to respawn given that they’re a quality level higher.”
She frowned. No one was lacking health, and most of their mana bars were around seventy-five percent. With slow and steady killing they could easily pull three groups of three in a row without being careless and even save some mana for an ‘oh shit’ situation.
“Yes!” Dev cried triumphantly. “Plate for meeeeeee!”
Havoc laughed and Merlin punched Dev in the arm. “Loot whore.”
“Fuck yeah.” Dev gloated. “Without me you’d… probably use Beast’s tiger. But still!”
Merlin laughed. “Okay we need to get going before—”
A series of trilling bells echoed around them. The group glanced around, trying to figure out what it was, all except for Beast who bowed in front of them. “Ladies and shitheads, I give you our new guild members.”
Another portion of her HUD Murmur was going to have to prioritize. At this rate she was going to be playing the game through a series of transparent chat and attribute screens. She directed more pleasant words into the guild chat though: Welcome everyone. Good to see you again. Excuse us while we kill shit.
It only took a few seconds of glancing through the roster to recognize character names she knew and didn’t hate. Beast had been right—all of them were extremely capable gamers. She promoted the newcomers to members, bypassing the trial status, and blinked the screen away. “Okay, we’re done. I’ll have to set permissions later, and we need the charter imported. Not bad for less than twenty-four hours. Fable’s member count is fifteen. Keep an eye on your friends list Beast. I guess you’re our recruitment officer.”
She grinned evilly at his flabbergasted expression.
“Anyway, as Merlin was about to say. Let’s get going before we all fall asleep.”
Checking all the bags throughout the camp yielded some nice cuts of meat. With an appraising look, Murmur grabbed it all and stood over the fire while the others checked on the bodies they’d just decimated. Blood pooled on the ground around them, so lifelike even the coppery tang registered with her senses. Even to the extent that if they stepped in it, they’d leave bloody footprints when they walked away. Everyone’s armor, including her own, was sprayed with blood spatter in pretty raindrop like patterns. She knew the pale purple was going to be a problem. It almost made the blood seem neon. Fighting living mobs was definitely more messy than skeletons.
Accessing her recipe, adding butter, salt, and pepper to the pot, she dropped in a mushroom and piece of meat. Three seconds later she had a nice dinner in a sort of container that could pass for ancient Tupperw
are in the real world. Its duration was two hours and it gave six health every five seconds. Not horrible. She continued to make it until she ran out of ingredients, and then quickly passed one each to the group members.
“How’s the cave looking, Merlin?” Sin stretched her arms again, but glanced at Murmur and stopped before she did the hip jiggle.
“Higher levels. They’re eleven and above in there. I mean we could try it but we’re pushing our luck with three level difference out here. I feel like the higher these opponents get, the cleverer they are.” He motioned to the right. “There’s two other camp sets just like this. We could just keep moving around each of them and clear them out.”
“Until others get here to do the same thing.” Dev frowned at his HUD. “Keep going, I say. Pretty sure leveling is going to halt drastically once we hit double digits.”
“From all reports from our guildies if you’d care to look at guild chat,” Beastial interrupted, “nine is a hell level and a half.”
“Great. Let’s go kill shit and make our way to hell.” Murmur moved behind Merlin, walking toward the next camp, already eyeing the mobs.
Just before she did though, she spied what looked like a rogue creeping close to the trees. That seeing invisible spell was pretty cool. The dark elf seemed to be a sort of liquid looking shape of a humanoid. She held up a hand to stop everyone, and quickly buffed them all too. After quick consideration, she realized he was level eight and frowned. Damn it. They needed to speed up their leveling.
About to set out to claim their camp before the rogue tried to, Murmur realized he was slowly inching forward, like he was checking out the camp for himself. Except the mobs he was inching closer to kept looking around, as if they sensed something. She crouched down and the others followed suit, making sure to stay hidden behind the rather overgrown foliage they stood in.
It happened so quickly, Murmur almost missed it. The rogue’s stealth dropped as a throwing knife landed in his left bicep with a sickening thud. A scream tore from his throat as blood dripped from the wound and onto the ground. Three mobs ran over, quick as lightning, their daggers and swords biting deep into the poor rogue’s almost-paralyzed body. It was like the player just didn’t know how to react. His death was vicious and quick. Murmur had to swallow past a lump in her throat as she watched the blood still leaking from his lifeless body as it soaked into the dirt.