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

thing of being able to use her abilities our here in the real world was a very bad thing for her brain health.

“How are we for time?” she asked, aware that she’d already posed the question but not left enough time for an actual answer.

Harlow shrugged. “Well, we only took about six hours’ sleep, so I mean, we still have some time.” She paused and studied Wren, grabbing her hand again and squeezing. “Did you even get five hours of sleep? How long were you down here?”

Wren grimaced. “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’ll be fine, too. We have a lot to prep. Neva is going to have to take a long day today, and I hope she’s in early, because I’m about to log in.”

“After you talk to your mom,” Harlow reminded her.

“Of course, after I’ve talked to my mom. I’m not that bad, Harl.” Wren tried to stay exasperated, but she didn’t have the heart. For the first time since logging out and realizing that sections of her skills came with her to the outside world, she felt a twinge of hope that maybe not everything was up shit’s creek after all. And Harlow by her side definitely helped with that.

 

Somnia Online

Continent of Tarishna - Mikrum Isle

Day Thirty-Two - Early Morning.

Telvar stood and watched the bustle surrounding Fable’s vast crafting empire. Neva had done wonders. Guilds in all different phases of the world, in all different stages of the game, knew Fable’s wares. Murmur and Beastial had left the girl free rein, and Neva ran all the way to the bank with it.

Good thing, too—they were going to need any and every advantage they could get in the coming dungeon.

“Telvar!” Neva waved to him, a massive grin on her canine features. Her tail wagged, and her ears twitched every now and again, showing just how excited she was to see him. Everyone needed a Neva. Maybe he could bottle that energy.

“Hello, master crafter.” He spoke the title with respect, because she’d earned every little bit of it.

She blushed, even under the fur; it was obvious. “Silly. I’m having a blast getting to keep a track of all this. Though, it really ends up being a lot, you know?”

“How are the preparations coming along?” He asked the question seemingly nonchalantly. But in reality, he was anything but.

“Excellent. The others have almost finished the first six dungeons themselves and will be moving onto the high-level ones as soon as they’ve got enough people at level forty-eight. Waiting for a guild group this time.” She was glancing through a list while she talked, a pen marking things off it. Multitasking perfection.

“Long story short, we have a lot of crafting materials. I’ve managed three more repair kits for the next zone. Those are a doozy. I finally hit my alchemy mastery, and we have potions and tinctures galore.” She frowned, turned away from Telvar, and yelled across the workshop. “Dhegar! I don’t have those diamonds you promised me. Need them twenty minutes ago!”

“Yes, Neva!” came a quick response, and the small luna turned her attention back to Telvar and raised an eyebrow.

“I swear, sometimes they’d forget their ears if they weren’t attached.” Her nose twitched, showing she was mostly joking, but Telvar wasn’t completely convinced.

“Looks like you’ve got it all, then. Just…let me know if there’s anything you need. Always willing to help out.” He couldn’t do too much; the rules of the world didn’t work that way. At least not right now. Maybe he could talk to Somnia about that at some stage. Of course, he had to be careful of human rules too. Find out you’ve got AIs on your side, and suddenly you cheated or had it too easy. There were reasons he’d handled revealing themselves outside of Glacier Lake the way he had.

Granted, most people would think Fable’s progression had been easy. Technically it had, but only because they tried different approaches.

“There you are.” Emilarth came running up to him, Belius dawdling behind her.

He gave her a deadpan stare. “Really? You know you if you had any trouble finding me, you could have just ported yourself to my side, right?”

She pouted. “That’s so not fair. Taking away all of my fun. You should be ashamed.” Then she sighed.

“But you know I’m not.” Telvar finished for her. “What’s up?”

“When are they getting back? Haven’t you felt those tremors?” Emilarth actually appeared to be worried, not that he blamed her.

“They’ll be back when they get back. They don’t run on batteries, you know,” he finished, trying to sound pompous on purpose.

Emilarth blinked for a moment and then laughed, loudly and heartily. “That was actually funny. You know, because…”

“It was my joke. I do get it.” Telvar tried to let her down gently and not give on just how worried he was that they wouldn’t have enough time left to prepare. They had to join forces; they had to make sure they were all on the same page. They had to warn the guilds about exactly what they were getting into and still hope Fable was willing to take the risk. There had to be some way Exodus could know too, though they hadn’t been given altered headgear.

“Are the keys going to work properly?” Belius still sounded grumpy, but Telvar just had to accept that was his brother, regardless of whether it was pleasant or not.

“They should, the one thing he won’t be able to do from that prison is change the locks.” Telvar sighed, wishing for the umpteenth time that he’d given himself a species that had hair he could pull out. It really felt like this was the ideal time for pulling out hair.

“Telvar!”

The lacerta started with surprise as Neva poked her head around his side. “What?” He realized he didn’t sound gracious at all. In fact, he sounded downright irritated.

But that didn’t deter the master crafter. She just flashed a smile, her ears twitching with excitement as she ran down that massive list she had in her