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

Oh. You don’t need that. All you need is to stop getting so messed up in your own brain. You take things too personally and too literally sometimes. Just...trust your friends, because they definitely trust in you. And don’t do stupid things.

Murmur paused for a moment. You’ve been listening in on my conversations, haven’t you? she asked drolly.

Not hard. I am a part of your mind.

Murmur paused. In my mind, right?

Exactly.

Murmur chuckled too, feeling pretty relieved despite the exhaustion creeping over her. Sinister had been having a discussion with the rest of the healers and walked over.

“How you holding up?” Sinister took Mur’s hand and squeezed it like she could feed strength through the grip.

Murmur squeezed it back. “You know, pretty much same old when it comes to learning a new fight. I think we’re close, but I’d almost forgotten how exhilarating it can be to learn a boss battle instead of engaging in a battle of wits. With all the riddles we’ve had and alternate ways of solving problems in these dungeons, I just sort of got used to mental acrobatic ways. I’ve missed this adrenaline rush.”

She grinned at Sinister, whose eyes were sparkling in agreement.

“So, what was that glitter cloud?” Sinister got busy checking her inventory while they waited for the last of the raid to restock.

“Oh.” Murmur triple checked the guild inventory. They should be good through this dungeon, and with the spoils from it, hopefully have enough to tackle whatever the next step was. “Just repaired everyone’s armor. We can’t exactly leave the dungeon thresholds to go out and have armorers do it for us now, can we?”

“Well,” Sinister looked up at her and wiggled her thick dark elf eyebrows, “we could just fight naked.”

Murmur barked a laugh out unexpectedly, feeling her own tension levels rescind. “Thanks, Sin. I needed that.”

Sinister laughed, squeezed her hand once and pulled away to go back to the healers. “I know it’s bad when even I can sense your tension levels. “

She walked away in a good mood, leaving Murmur behind in a matching one. Still, though, so much of a weight on her shoulders. Mur often found it difficult to let go of all her stress. But despite everything, that sort of intervention had been good for her.

Now she corrected herself whenever she felt the urge to just smooth over the concerns of the others. Instead of focusing on making things easier for them, she could focus on understanding her own reach and abilities more. She closed her eyes briefly, reaching out with her nets, beyond the people, into the system and the world around them. Calming was a good word for it, yet it was so much more than that. She sighed and opened her eyes again.

This fight was more stressful than she liked. They were getting closer do beating Hipnormous, though. They’d hit thirty percent once already. And she honestly thought their rhythm was improving. It was escaping the Cascade that was difficult. At the end of each Cascade, one of those damned pillars was destroyed.

Only one of them provided protection at a time, but in doing so, it was destroyed at the end of the ability’s duration. The Cascade appeared to work on an actual combat time. As in, there were certain intervals at different minutes into the fight that triggered the Cascade. Since it didn’t require the mob to hit a percentage, they had to be careful and make sure the fight timed out properly. In a way, it was a DPS race.

She looked at their surroundings as they swam back to the island. At least the trash didn’t respawn fast. There was the huge possibility that if the hippo wasn’t at twenty to twenty-five percent before the fourth Cascade hit, that they’d all die with no hiding place.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Jirald’s voice sent shivers down her spine.

Her first instinct was to check her sensing nets, and while she found him in them, she couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t been alerted to his presence. Her second instinct was to ask him why he was playing like shit when she knew he could do so much better. But she knew that wasn’t going to get any of them anywhere. Instead she raised an eyebrow and returned to her thoughts, silently cursing Snowy for not alerting her to the rogue’s presence.

Finally, safe back on Hippo’s platform, Murmur let herself observe the scene. There was no way to know which pillar would be safe until the rumbling that occurred just before the Cascade hit, which meant they had to be ready to change directions abruptly so as to make the run.

“Not talking to me, Mur? Isn’t that a little juvenile for such a grandiose raid leader?” Jirald’s words sounded like she imagined slime on a rock might.

Murmur took a calming breath and looked over at him. “I don’t have much to say, except up your DPS and watch your stun rotations. You’ve been slacking. Don’t drag the other rogues down with you.”

His eyes narrowed, as if he didn’t like her calling his dedication at playing into question. “Sure thing, boss.”

Murmur pulled her earth shielding tighter around her body, combining it with her kinetic shielding to make sure that even if he did manage to target her, that nothing was going to get through. It was like he could tell what she’d done as he offered her a smirk. She didn’t have the time to spend worrying about him. Snowy appeared next to them and snarled, even if it was a little too little too late.

Jirald tipped his head like he was giving her a mocking bow and made his way back to the melee DPS group.

Murmur sighed as Devlish began to organize the raid to attack.

Forty percent. No deaths. And the second pillar had just shattered.

Jirald stuck strangely close to Murmur after their conversation on the way back to the fight. A shard of stone from the explosion struck Jirald right underneath