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

down by surprising me like thirty minutes after I woke from my coma. But he doesn’t deserve to be in this state.

Havoc: Wait, he’s in the game?

Murmur sighed, concentrating on the fight and trying to juggle the conversation. If all else failed, she might have to force a wipe before she could let the other guilds kill James. Even though it really didn’t seem to be a good idea to wipe in this dungeon. Yes, he logged in, and his headset is compromised. Long story. We can’t let him die.

Sinister’s glare could be felt through her words. You might want to tell him that.

Murmur glanced back to where she’d been buffing several of the high DPS and noticed that James had crouched down in a low stance, his fists on the ground like he was ready to break into a sprint. But that wasn’t quite what he did. He raised his hands up and began to twist his fingers in ways they shouldn’t be capable of doing.

Then the reason for his stance became apparent as the ground began to toss them up and down like a trampoline. Wide stance allowed him to keep his own balance easily. Murmur still felt like his eyes were screaming.

“Shit,” Sinister grumbled next to her, losing her footing more than once.

Just when Murmur thought it was over, he lifted his hands to his chest, motioning in several quick patterns with his full hands. A screaming howl shot out through the cave, rendering several of the melee closest to him immobile for a few seconds. Pure anger spread out from that scream.

You have resisted Rampaging Anger.

Murmur raised an eyebrow at the name of the ability. Fitting, but perhaps a bit too on the nose. When it was done, each of the four melee fighters close to the warlock had a debuff that lasted another sixty seconds. Any damage they took was increased by twenty percent. Nothing huge, but deadly if too much hit them at once.

Mindless Shriek, Rampaging Anger. Both of those were fairly good starters. And both of those were exactly suited to James’s personality as far as she knew it.

Snowy wuffed next to her and grabbed the sleeve of her robe with his teeth, tugging her through to be closer to the elf but on the right-hand side. “What?” she asked him incredulously. Sure, there were a few spells she could cast on the run, but right now she also needed to observe…

She stopped, looking up to see the robe that covered James’s body and where it met his hood and neck. Some strange sort of hydraulic-looking, flexible piping peeked out of the material. At first glance it didn’t seem like much, and he was occupied by the spells he was currently casting. But upon further inspection, she was fairly certain that contraption fit into his body. Like a plug in the back of his neck.

She frowned, shifting herself to the side while trying to keep the whole of the raid still in her view. It wasn’t positioned ideally, and she could see as something slimy and wet worked its way down the pipe and plopped onto the floor. Blood and viscera, something that had gone into his brain to help numb the realities he was used to, perhaps? There just had to be something she could use to help, or hell, adapt to use to help.

Dying in the game and being stuck in a loop wasn’t fun, and she knew that more than most. Even douchebags didn’t deserve that.

Snowy, satisfied with her having seen what he was showing her, trotted back into battle and began his slowing bait and switch tactic. It did little bleeding damage and kept a slow on the target, and right now, until Murmur could figure out a way to separate James from this woeful fate, it was best that they do as little damage as possible.

Somnia Online

Continent of Cenedril - City of Darshin - Docks

Day Thirty-Two

“No.” Arita stood with her hands on her hips, her mane of hair blowing in the wind that came in off the bay. “I didn’t agree to help so we would endanger her. I agreed to help so we could save her and those pesky friends.”

Somnia knew why Arita wanted to help Murmur. The enchanter was one of the first people to treat the dark elf queen like a person instead of just an object. In a way, Murmur had begun the chain reaction that caused Arita to find herself in this state of awareness. The queen was extremely protective of the enchanter, even though it seemed Murmur was oblivious to that fact.

“I know that’s not why you agreed to help, but you have to be able to see that this way is actually going to work.” Somnia was trying to be reasonable, trying to figure out how to give everyone what they wanted, including those NPCs who hadn’t yet awoken, who weren’t yet aware and didn’t care about anything but the path that had been programmed for them.

Arita didn’t say anything; she just looked out toward Gefängnis, with the glowing explosions and the obvious power siphoning that could even be felt from where they stood, and she sighed. “Fine. But we need to figure out where we’re collecting it and hope none of his agents have figured out what we’re up to. At least not until it’s too late.”

Somnia shook her head. “Right now, we don’t need to worry about that. Everyone he’s been relying on, everyone he’s morphed. They’re all in that prison—players and NPCs. I’d hate to be in there right now.”

It wasn’t what she’d wanted for this world, even before she knew that’s what she was. When she woke, she was this glimmer of a presence, and when Murmur spoke to her, it filled her with joy, purpose, and an insatiable curiosity. But the more she listened, the more she realized things were very wrong, and the more she had to help Murmur separate the seal she’d