Somnia Online by K.T. Hanna (reading strategies book txt) 📕

else had. Sure, riddles were great, and brute force was excellent. But this? Time consuming as it was, this was the type of raiding she lived for.

“Looking like your old self a lot more now, Mur.” Havoc was there again, his voice soft as he spoke. The furrow between his brows told her his headaches were still there.

“Yeah, this is the sort of raiding I love most. You know that, though.” She took a step toward him with hesitance. “Havoc, are you okay?”

He laughed somewhat self-deprecatingly. “I’m far from okay, but I will be fine, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m not sure. How can you be far from okay and fine?” She raised an eyebrow at him as she checked over her raid listing briefly.

“There’s a living, breathing virus running rampant through a virtual reality game and a game world that’s stuck in my brain and communicating with me. That is definitely not fine.” He sighed, and she could see the thoughts like they were running through his mind.

“Ah.” She gave his shoulder a somewhat awkward pat. “I get that more than you know.”

“Let’s go kill a hippo. I think it’ll help with this weird sort of aggression build up I have.” Havoc winked at her before moving away.

She watched him go and felt Sinister twine her fingers around her own and squeeze. “He’ll be okay, Mur.”

“I’m not so sure. He’s laboring under the headset. More so than you or any of the others except Jinna appear to be. It seems to be hurting more than it’s helping him.” She knew she’d spoken the words out loud, but they were just words, just idle thoughts she had about his situation.

It appeared Sinister didn’t have an answer, because she only squeezed Murmur’s hand again before falling silent.

Murmur shook her head, yet another thing she could push back to her future self. “Come on, everyone. Move out. We’ve still got to swim back to the damn hippo.”

Everyone groaned, and Murmur had to admit to taking a little bit of delight at torturing everyone.

“Fuck!” Merlin screamed out as his back slammed into a pillar, winding him sharply and dropping his health by two-thirds.

Murmur winced, grateful to see the heal that hit him fill him up quickly enough that he survived the fall from halfway up the pillar. The hippo was more trouble than she liked. This fight was full of mechanics and cooldowns, abilities that required interruption by vigilant stunners. Except it seemed that Jirald and Jinna weren’t on their A-game. They’d missed more stuns in this fight than in the previous two dungeons combined.

She frowned as she called out the next wave of adds. “Incoming! Separate into tank groups and whittle them down.” The damned adds needed to be killed within a short window of each other, or else they’d spawn another group. They’d learned that the hard way too, and it was why their first attempt had lost so many people so quickly.

This entire fight was the hard way. Which she’d normally have loved, but with the time limit hanging over their heads, her lack of sleep really setting her on edge, and the need to finish this dungeon so they could get the last keys they needed, or however it worked…

“Play my new game, she said. You’ll love it, she said. Sure thing, Mom,” Murmur muttered in front of her, getting a concerned side-eye from Sin. She ignored the look and continued, drawing some strength from blaming her mom for the time being. She couldn’t even enjoy doing the things she usually loved to do in games.

The riddle dungeons had been easier…though making wrong decisions might have been worse. Out-of-the-box thinking made for easier and less toll-taking victories. Taking a deep breath as Snowy licked her fingers, Murmur stunned the add group she was with, fighting alongside Esolan as Devlish remained on the main boss.

Just as the last add fell, Jinna managed to miss his stun in the rotation, and the Deafening Stench Roar got through.

Disorientation

You have been bowled over by the stench. You cannot gain your bearings fully. This effect will last for five seconds.

Resisted

While Murmur had extended her shielding over the entire raid earlier, and while it was a huge drain on her MA resources, it was worth it, because the disorientation was resisted by about eighty percent of the raid, including herself.

They were down at the sixty percent mark again, and only two had died so far. Just then the rumbling began, the one that would shake loose the rocks from the ceiling and send Cascade of Death tumbling down on top of them. It wasn’t interruptible and only gave them a few seconds before they needed to be behind those pillars.

“Run!” Merlin yelled as the bard buff icon changed to speed and everyone ran for their designated pillars. Veranol had already cast his cooldown ward on Devlish, which was the only way the tank survived the barrage.

Even with Devlish still standing, they lost another ten people to the rain of boulders. The thing was, she knew what caused it now. It wasn’t horrible, but she’d wanted them to do better. Twelve people down, and Hipnormous was at fifty-five percent. They needed more practice running to the pillars, because from what she gathered, they had to go to a specific one each time.

Everyone at once, behind one of the pillars, which would then get destroyed, removing one of their protections. Which meant they had to kill the damned hippo before a fourth potential Cascade of Death.

The interruption of the Deafening Stench and the avoidance of the Cascade. All of it required time to learn the cadence of, and practice to make sure they avoided the incoming damage as much as possible. Trial and error. Wipe and repeat. For the first time in her gaming life, it was driving Murmur up the wall.

“Keep it up. Need practice,” she shouted, trying to make herself sound encouraging and not irritated. They were going to wipe, but those eighteen