Fragments (Somnia Online Book 3), page 26
Her tone ended so apologetically, Murmur took a step over and hugged her shoulders before even thinking about it. A thought struck her. “If Rash has the ability to hurt this thing, maybe she should main tank this one?”
Devlish bit his lip, but held up a hand to forestall Murmur’s response. “I’m okay with that. Sincerely. Rash is a good tank. And I think dodging on this one might be a key to winning. But I don’t feel like our attacks are going to do much damage either way. We need to think of something else. Something that might bring her crashing down.”
Murmur paused. He had a point and sounded so thoughtful. He’d probably been thinking of nothing else while the damned statue talked to them. She couldn’t blame him, but at the same time, she couldn’t think of anything else they had in their arsenal. They didn’t have a mage, just a witch, psionicist, and necromancer. And it hadn’t even been their choice not to have a mage.
“Rashlyn tanks, Ver take lead on the heals then? The rest of us need to hope our debuffs stick. Anyone else have any ideas other than wind or acid?” Murmur’s tone was low, because she had a sneaking suspicion that this regal creature wasn’t above listening to them to up its advantage. And even if the statue was, she knew that Riasli wasn’t.
Everyone shook their heads.
“No more ideas right now, but we might think of something once we start fighting and learn if it has any weaknesses.” Merlin wasn’t playing the joker any more. While it was good to see everyone’s serious sides, it was scary that they needed them.
Rashlyn took a deep breath, clenched her fists against her side, and stood in front of the group. About to take her first step, she grinned back at Murmur. “We got this. Don’t worry, boss.”
Murmur rolled her eyes as they all moved forward as one. There was a crunching of stone against stone as the statue straightened, its eyes gleaming red once more.
“Very well then. You will regret your decision to go against the Naishi-dan. We will crush you, and fertilize our nursery with your bone dust.”
The shivers that ran down Murmur’s back didn’t have time to distract her. The Amazonian statue roared, and the sound bounced off the rocks, shaking them, echoing down into the depths of darkness behind her.
Nothing beyond them stirred, not even a sound. This dungeon and these mobs appeared to work differently. But she didn’t have long to contemplate it.
The Naishi-dan warrior lunged at them, surprisingly agile for her size, even if a bit slow because of her construction. Rashlyn appeared so helplessly tiny against her. It was like time slowed for them as the first strike approached, and Murmur couldn’t help but watch as her friend stood bravely in front of their opponent, about to be squashed like a bug, even as Murmur’s Weakness spell flew toward the monster.
A smash echoed through the front chamber, with tinkling sounds of glass resounding as they bounced on the floor. Right in front of her, Rashlyn grew to four times her usual size. The rest of them scrambled to get out of the way as Rashlyn’s block of the statue’s attack drove her back several feet.
But she didn’t squash Rashlyn, and Murmur heaved a sigh of relief. Sure, by comparison Rash wasn’t large. She barely reached the statue’s chest, but she was far more capable of fighting something that big. The only thing was that the rest of them had to be careful of not only the statue, but Rashlyn as well.
What Rashlyn had that the statue did not was speed.
Murmur glanced at Mellow, who grinned as they watched the fight progress. “Can’t do the rest of us, sorry. I only have enough for about eight potions, and they only last fifteen minutes each. Let’s hope that’s enough. My potions are different from my spells. Spells only require that I have the ingredients on me, potions require that I consume them.”
Murmur felt relief flood through her, and she focused on her own job while Rashlyn maneuvered the mob into a better position. Dodging the statue’s attacks was one thing she was perfectly capable of, but the backlash from some of those missed attacks might squelch the rest of them at this size. So, like any good tank would, she moved herself into such a position that the side wall was behind her a ways, and it let the group stay in a relatively safe semicircle. A huge semicircle which made the two healers have to space themselves out in such a way that everyone was covered, but it worked.
Finally, able to concentrate on her debuffs, Murmur stood back to take stock of the area. Her eyes had slowly grown accustomed to her surroundings, and the special sight of the locus let her take in the area. It seemed the guardian had come from a slot in the wall just inside the entrance. If the sparks from the fight were anything to go by as they lit her way, then there were more alcoves further down the path.
She frowned, trying to figure out just how it was these opponents were triggered, since it didn’t seem to follow the same pattern as the rest of Somnia and come when there was too much noise. Then again, why would anything in Somnia ever be the way she expected it?
Watching the spells encircle and swirl around the statue, Murmur suddenly got an idea. She might not have much that could damage it, but maybe if she gave it a kinetic shove? Readying her shield, she gathered her energy, focused her thoughts, and pushed. The shield hit the statue and shattered.
Murmur frowned. Maybe it had something to do with stone and mind control, or else Riasli had done something that would render mental attacks mostly useless. While she understood it, it was disappointing that her kinetic ability wasn’t a good secret weapon for this.
And then she no longer had time to think about much at all, because a scream of pain tore her attention away from her thoughts, and she turned to find Merlin clutching his arm to his side as it dangled helplessly from the elbow down.
“Shit,” she said under her breath, smacking herself mentally to focus better and stop letting her thoughts carry her away. There wasn’t time for her to space out like this. Spacing out could kill her.
...Breathing changed?
Murmur blinked, and shook her head. That had to be her parents, or someone in her room. She didn’t have time for it to disorient her. Grimacing, she watched Merlin’s arm mend itself with a flow of sluggish healing from Sinister, and she knew this wasn’t a normal fight. Whatever Riasli had done, went against the original intentions of the dungeon. The feeling that permeated the vague emotions that entered her sensing net showed a frustration and zeal that clashed severely.
Therefore, it stood to reason that these entities in here were being coerced against their will, too. Regardless of their origins, the inhabitants of this world exhibited intelligence and emotions. Forcing them might seem appealing occasionally, but it made her insides crawl to truly contemplate it.
If she can hear...
“Oh my god, I can hear you,” Murmur muttered with exasperation, wanting desperately to concentrate on the fight.
“What?” Sinister said from her left, but only half her attention was on Murmur, because the healing seemed very involved. She didn’t pursue the question when Murmur didn’t answer, and the enchanter was grateful.
Rashlyn’s attacks changed in style. She went from using things like her Kanji flying kick and Hundred Fists’ flurry of punches to an air punch that appeared to be a ranged attack that punched powerful discs of wind toward the target, making the statue stagger back as tiny bits of stone began to roll down from the impact spot. Every now and again, the monk activated a tumbling roll that ended with a slicing kick, which activated a wind that, again, chipped away at the stone.
Mellow’s acid bombs landed in between those attacks, thrown with accuracy Mur hadn’t realized the witch possessed. Their face was pinched, their brows scrunched, and Murmur focused her sensing net for long enough to realize that the witch was worried about this fight. Perhaps they only had so many ingredients. She didn’t fully understand how the witch class functioned.
Hadn’t she enabled the guild bank usage already? She was sure she’d done so. That was another thing for after this fight.
...Voices pull her back?
Murmur stumbled slightly as she didn’t quite recognize the voice. It was warbled, and she couldn’t tell if it was her reception or perhaps emotion clouding the words, but she just wanted them to stay out of her head and stop distracting her. She tightened her shields, projecting the thought over herself as she reinforced the walls.
Rashlyn’s attacks were interspersed with her defensive capabilities. She threw in Dodge on cooldown to avoid attacks for eight seconds, and her hidden ability Phantom which allowed her to dodge and counter every attack for twelve seconds. Admittedly, they weren’t as strong as usual, considering how slowly the statue attacked.
Murmur shuddered to think how it would go if the monk got hit though. Anything more than a glancing blow would probably flatten her. In the meantime, small cracks had begun to appear, jutting out from the place on the statue everyone concentrated their attacks on. Even Jinna had been throwing daggers that appeared to be coated in acid. How it didn’t eat through the blade, she couldn’t figure out. She’d have to ask him about that later.
The rangers targeted burning arrows into the growing fissures of rock. While they weren’t going to make an explosive difference, they should help break down the substance. She wasn’t sure what they’d been doing before, but it didn’t matter. Havoc’s skeleton seemed to be pounding on the weak spot with something akin to a void staff, and Havoc’s scowl as his spells landed mostly harmlessly wasn’t a pretty sight.
Beastial grimaced as they fought, unable to pull the most out of his class or his pet. The stone was a harsh master, and difficult to combat. While they could chip away at it, only a few of them could do any real damage. But the weaker they made that spot, the more the rest of their attacks could wear it down.
Axes were useless, so Devlish, Beastial, and Dansyn used metal tipped maces, hammering away and chipping off bits of stone slowly but surely.
Cracking rock had a definitive sound, and the statue stumbled as the sound echoed throughout the chamber. Fissures appeared in her rocky facade, expanding all the way up in a gradually spreading spider web. The stone statue blinked, and even that action caused rock to crumble and fall, narrowly missing the team standing below.
“You will have no peace. Naishi will reign. Naishi will win. She will wrest your keys from your dead bodies and have her sacrifices. And then she will release him in your place.”
The booming sound permeated the corridor, ringing in their ears. She opened her mouth to say more, but the rock began to crumble, turning to dust just as Rashlyn shrunk back to her regular size. The giant statue’s disintegrations rapidly increased, like a waterfall of rock sand out over them.
Veranol threw up his shield, expending the last of his mana in an effort to shelter them all from the keeper’s last-ditch effort to stop them. When the deluge finally stopped, they surveyed the area around them.
The sands of rock that littered the ground around them gave off a soft white glow. Nothing like the red or orange tinges they’d seen from its angry eyes before.
“Maybe this is the way it was before Riasli took it over?” Rashlyn’s tone sounded sad, like she hadn’t wanted to kill her.
Murmur completely sympathized and a sudden thought occurred to her. “Do you think Naishi is what they call Riasli? I’ve not heard of it before and the statue’s mutterings make partial sense if that’s so.”
“Maybe.” Havoc nodded before uttering a deep sigh. “Either way, we had to get through it. It’ll resurrect at some stage, even if it takes a while.”
“Speaking of which.” Mellow interrupted him. “We have to figure out a better way to combat these things, because I’m pretty sure they’re placed at intervals all the way down the length of that corridor. And I have enough acid for one, maybe two if we prolong the fights.”
“Was the acid really that important?” Havoc’s drawl sounded bored.
“At least half the solid damage done to it was Mellow’s doing.” Rashlyn shook her head. “And I can’t up my damage output any more than I just did. Not right now. Not in this armor with this gear. I wish better gear dropped in the game.”
“So basically, if we can’t figure out another way to topple them, we’re screwed?” Havoc asked as his tone became sullen.
Mellow nodded. “Basically. Yes.”
Somnia Online
Fable’s Castle - Mikrum Isle - Himmel Lake
Fourteen Days Post Launch
Telvar frowned and cast out his sensors again. He’d basically looked in every nook and cranny he could think of throughout the entire game world. Murmur was never not on his radar, but for the last ten minutes he’d been trying to locate her and quite literally drawing a blank. He didn’t like the sense of uncertainty.
He began to trace her movements for the day, to see where it was she’d last been before he lost track of her. Feles, and feles, and the area outside Curet, and then the jungle for a while. Then suddenly nothing.
He frowned, barely aware that Hiro stood next to him tapping his foot on the ground with impatience while waiting to ask him something. The simple fact was, Murmur had been there within his data, and now suddenly she was not.
“Stop it, Hiro. I’m trying to concentrate.” The admonishment seemed to work, because Hiro knew that Telvar rarely needed to concentrate on anything. And if he needed to, then it meant something was up.
And something was very up. She’d gone missing around the old ruins on Cenedril, except...
He ran a series of calculations through his program, and then again in a different way. There was something wrong with this, nagging at the back of his programming that he should know it for what it was.
It hit him, like a sucker punch must, and numbers clashed against each other as his algorithms upheaved his senses. The ruins felt like a back door. Something left there for a program to gain access to without being detected, and he started to have a really bad feeling about who had left it there. Still, jumping to conclusions was foolhardy. He needed to investigate, to check first. Closing his eyes so as to block out the light of Somnia, he retreated into the darkness of his original programming, seeking out the makeup of the Ruins of Cenedril.
It was there, yet it wasn’t. Its appearance was vastly different to that he remembered, even after the game had launched. Sure enough, no one had been there yet because Murmur’s group was the first to reach a level that would be able to access it. But others weren’t too far away. Exodus and Fable weren’t the only guilds that were leveling well.
However, the once bright representation of Mayan culture they’d settled near the cat kingdom had sunk into the ground, darkened the stone, and let moss creep all over the perpetually wet structure. Its entrance appeared more like a gaping maw of darkness than the original concept for the massive sandstone steps leading up to the square pyramid in its glorious sandy might.
He could see the slowly decaying bodies of the guards. Even their vacant eyes still maintained a feral red gleam. His programming stuttered as he tried to comprehend the sight in the middle of the jungle. Something had possessed these? Who had created an AI or an NPC that could pull something like this off?
The binders around the towns had been one thing, and they were barely contained currently as it was, but this? It was something different, with an air of evil that even made Telvar’s sub routines feel dirty.
“Telvar?” Hiro’s tone held concern, and maybe a tinge of fear.
The lacerta shook his head and tried to force a smile onto his face as he rested a hand briefly on his friend’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Hiro. I’ll get this under control. There’s just a few things that aren’t aligning the way they should be, that’s all.”
Hiro’s raised eyebrow told him that his foreman didn’t believe him in the slightest.
“I just need to go and investigate the feles jungle. I promise I won’t be long.” He left without checking to see if Hiro believed him.
Somnia Online
Cenedril - Curet Jungle - Outskirts of the Cenedril Ruins
Early Day Fourteen Post Launch
Telvar had been aiming for the front steps of the ruins, but he landed a significant distance from the entrance. Frowning, he pushed forward, attempting the jump again. The air around him warped, bending in like a thick bubble and gently bounced him back. Exasperation filled him, his systems double-timing to try and figure out what was causing the phenomena. He’d not had to deal with having his way blocked before. Ever.
The calculations he ran came back normal, perfect even. He narrowed his eyes, turning his sight inward to check several other regions of the game with a sudden idea that crossed his algorithms. It wasn’t an idea he wanted to entertain, but if he was right, they were in for a whole world of a shitstorm.
Walking forward didn’t cause the bubble to spring up. As long as he masked his overseer role, it didn’t activate. It seemed as if his being one of the main AIs was what triggered the defense. Warning bells sounded throughout his head, part of them the system and the other part he attributed to something like instinct. Because there were so many things wrong with this, he was beginning to panic.
Now he knew how Laria and Shayla felt, because things about his equational inquiries kept returning data to him that were too perfect. Even tracing the results to their source only cemented just how faultless the results were. Which was the ideal but rarely ever the case when it came to a program as complex as their own. His first instinct was to call both Sui and Thra to him and have them help him figure this out. But at the same time, a portion of him cautioned against it. Because who other than one of those two could it be making this happen?
Telvar took a deep breath. Even if he might not need air, even if Somnia didn’t technically have air, the action still calmed and relaxed him. Slightly, anyway. The vegetation leading up to the ruins was thick and crunched underfoot as leaves and blades gave way under his weight. He dampened the sound, hoping not to alert whatever it was doing this with the fluctuation of his presence. He masked it with a stealth ability pulled from the assassin line. What good was it being a god in the game if you didn’t pull up some perks every now and again?
