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

David spoke up, his voice gentle. “We need to close down the Somnia servers. Not the game, just the log in servers and run several diagnostic tests on it. They’ve been giving off some weird fluctuations. As it is, with these schematics out there, people have bought them. Not a huge amount, but definitely some. This is dangerous. Like liability dangerous. Davenport needs to know.”

“So, it’s the headsets though, not the game?” Laria felt a ball of guilt strike her in the gut as hard as a medicine ball might slam into her. This was her game, designed around the ability to full dive, designed with failsafes that she’d turned a blind eye to when her daughter and friends circumvented them.

“Shit. What have I done?” Her legs felt weak, and her worry levels shot up tenfold. Her kid was in that game, in there with her friends fighting against some weirdly human virus that was trying to get a running start into the internet, and it was all her fault.

“Hey. It’s not you. Your game was fine—the headgear was designed originally just for playing, but once the funding came in, Michael got carried away.” Shayla ground her teeth together, the sound oddly audible.

“Yeah. But it’s my game. And he fucked with it and with my kid. I’m not going down that easily. We’re going to fix this.” Laria’s determination sang through her bones, like it was setting her drive on fire. “Fuck this. Let’s go and talk to Davenport, I know he’ll have ideas too.”

The thud of ranger bodies smashing against the stone sounded dull in Murmur’s ears. Luckily it wasn’t an insta-kill sort of thing. But it was dangerous. Seventy-five percent health wasn’t anything to scoff at. Elastitan roared, opening his mouth and showing sharp scissor like protrusions that seemed to resemble teeth lining its massive stomach located opening.

While she’d at first thought this area resembled Pivya’s underwater ruined temple, she’d been wrong. Sure, it had pillars that were similar to the columns, but that was about it. Beyond each set of pillars was a ward. She couldn’t call it a wall, because it was mostly transparent, but you could tell it was there. Between two of the pillars toward where the next path began, there were three strange stones. They were raised in a way that made them appear to be daises. The odd collection of stone circles a few feet in front of the pillars made no sense at all either.

But they had enough room to maneuver in, the rotunda was deceptively large. She needed to concentrate on Elastitan even though wasn’t sure what to make of the creature. All she knew was they’d apparently killed all of its babies.

The pillars were like magical windows that shifted the air’s density or something. Because anything going a few feet past each of those pillars in the rotunda of columns didn’t go any further. It hit it with a thud and sank to the ground.

QUEST OFFERING

Elastitan is not of this world and but a guardian to this prison isle. He does not get along well with the newer inmates. Send him back to where he belongs and reap the rewards, but be careful: not all of the triggers you see before you will be successful.

Everyone else was reading the quest when they should have been concentrating on the boss. Murmur hastily hit accept and announced over the raid, “We’re doing that quest. Keep an eye out on anything you see that might be a trigger to a portal, or a piece of a puzzle we have to place together so a portal opens for Elastitan to go through.”

“How about we be nice and say hi?” Murmur wasn’t sure who that was, but she thought it might have been the mage Etriad. It was nice timing for the tension to lift from the group. She’d have to say thank you later.

“I don’t think he feels like talking,” Sinister quipped, and at that moment Elastitan roared again, flinging his bits of material flesh at the raid in a rage. They weren’t easy to dodge if you didn’t watch it, but if you saw it from the moment the creature began to unfurl its fleshy bandages, then you had a really solid chance of beating it. Almost like double Dutch jump roping. And Murmur hadn’t done that since she was in grade school.

“Slows are effective on separate appendages,” Merlin called out, and Mur had to wonder why no one had slowed the babies’ individual strips. Perhaps theirs hadn’t been individually targetable.

“Ice medium effective. Fire less so,” Ishwa called like he’d expected as much.

Murmur attempted to use her stuns and her Mezmerize against the appendages but got her habitual warnings that this spaghetti-o was immune to stuns and the like. And mind magic didn’t have much effect either. Probably because its brain was in its stomach or something.

Devlish called out, “Slash the fuck out of it.”

It wasn’t like anyone was going to argue with him. Murmur sent an image to Snowy, asking the wolf to please search for any sign of the puzzle to free Elastitan. He wuffed briefly next to her, like he was offended that she wouldn’t let him bite their opponent instead, and then trotted off around the outside of the battlefield, slowly moving into stealth mode until she could no longer see him.

He was a great wolf, and Murmur glanced sideways at Telvar to see if he too was watching the wolf he’d seemed to know from somewhere. Obviously Telvar had created him, but Snowy was so much more now.

The three AIs remained grouped together, behaving like NPCs were technically supposed to. Belius simply DoT’d with his spells and weakened what he could. Emilarth helped heal where she could, and Telvar fought well, keeping his damage middle of the pack.

She’d thought they would be more help, but unless they told the other two guilds about it, they couldn’t. There were too many