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

roped off the virus wherever she could, trying to cut off any escape route that could end up infecting the whole Storm Corporation set of systems. Because that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Once it had access to that, it could go anywhere, infect anything, probably accomplish anything. The thought made Shayla want to throw up. How many of them could work on this? How many could she trust to keep their traps shut when she needed it?

“Where’s David?” she bit out, glancing through who was in the building and capable of helping. Silke was there, Thomas was there…she shot them messages straight through their implants to come to her office ready to work. Taking a chance was all part of managing a project.

“He’s working on something for me at home—something that might help us with headgear interaction within Somnia.” Laria seemed excited, and yet hesitant to spell it out. Maybe it wasn’t certain yet or something.

“Can he come when he’s done?” Shayla asked. He might be her brother, but he was Laria’s husband and if Laria had him doing something while fires were burning all around them, then she obviously had a good reason.

Laria nodded, her fingers dashing around on the keyboard Shayla couldn’t see. “I’ll contact him—we’ll get this all worked out.”

Shayla smiled, and allowed her mind to relax somewhat. While she knew Laria wouldn’t solve everything, if they worked together and dragged David into the mix too, they’d be a whole damn lot closer than they were right now.

Murmur paused, leaning over to hug her knees as she panted. The abilities these spaghetti monsters possessed left her constantly gasping for air. As a collective, they liked to focus on a few people. Murmur didn’t like being one of their targets.

“Come on, Mur. Anyone would think you were out of shape,” Merlin teased as he danced to the side, somehow sweating in a fucking simulation.

“Shut up, ranger gate,” she quipped out at him.

“Ouch. Got me good. Right through the…” But he trailed off as one of those whipcord sections of elastitite snapped out and almost pierced his midsection.

Murmur grunted. “Pay more attention to killing it than trying to rile me up.” She concentrated on doing what she could, which wasn’t as much as she wanted. Mobs without mana sucked. There was so much less for her to manipulate.

Devlish backhanded the one they were currently killing with his tower shield, but lacked the usual stun, of course. He grimaced, gritting his teeth as the thing used a series of strikes by multiple appendages hammering down on the shield all at once. Luckily, during that time, the elastitite’s focus was all on him, allowing everyone in their raid to focus fire the damned thing for about eight seconds.

Shaman wards were lifesaving, and Murmur was, again, glad they had two of them in this raid. Though Veranol’s abilities seemed slightly different, it was extremely clear that having both of them was a pure asset.

Only one more of these spaghetti things to go. They could do this and move onto the next part of the dungeon and what it had to offer. As if triggered by her thoughts, the last one finally peeled itself out of its pillar and languidly moved toward them. Esolan stopped it with a taunt, but Murmur knew it wouldn’t hold; none of them had so far except for Devlish’s. Everyone else was just a side attraction until the creature could reach the dread knight.

Maybe it was the Enrage spell she’d cast on him, or else there was something about the abilities he used. Risk didn’t seem to carry the same auras as Devlish, so she wasn’t sure what the difference was and hadn’t had time to check and see what the different paths being followed by multiple dread knights were.

The second to last of the elastitites fell, and Murmur heaved a sigh of relief as Snowy pushed against her legs in a type of furry hug. She smiled down at him briefly, before her attention was once again pulled in by their next target. Devlish used his Darkness Lariat on the creature to pull it directly to him and began his slow and minuscule health siphon from it. While it didn’t heal him much, nor did it do a lot of damage to the target, the fact that some of it was converted into self-healing helped the tank maintain aggro.

The best course of action for all of these fights was sword wielders. Devlish had changed from his favored axe to a one-handed sword that sparkled more than Murmur thought he liked. Beastial changed to dual wielding swords instead of his axes and the limbs he encountered barely stood a chance. Perhaps “limbs” was a bad description.

Almost like a mummy, it seemed wrapped in bandages that just looked like rubbery spaghetti. Much easier to cut with something sharp, except what was revealed when cut appeared to be flesh like. Karn, Jinna, and Jirald seemed to be having a great time massacring the ribbons. As of yet, Jinna hadn’t reverted back to the bad attitude he’d carried for the underwater dungeon.

Sure, he wasn’t his jolly great advice-giving self, but he also hadn’t started throwing hateful glares at her again. Yet. She’d take it—one less thing to worry about.

Mages used their ice attacks to make the ribbons more brittle, and the bards did whatever bards dancing around the group did. Murmur was running out of knowledge and give-a-fucks. She really hated trash that took forever to kill and packed a wallop just like a boss. Maybe she was exaggerating, but these were more annoying than challenging, and considering how much they’d had to go through to raise the damned prison…

Okay, so they were a bit challenging. She just hated feeling hamstrung by not being able to use some of her best abilities, yet somehow still being one of the creature’s main targets. She had a feeling that wasn’t a coincidence.

Sinister squeezed her hand out of nowhere. “Mur. Watch