Initializing

by K. T. Hanna

  This mob was two levels higher than them, and she did have to refresh the Mez on the ranger once. As the first one died, a message scrolled in front of her eyes.

  You have gained experience.

  You have gained grouping experience.

  Congratulations. You have reached your first milestone level. As such, whenever you are in a group of four or more people, within four levels of each other, you will receive a group bonus to your experience. The larger the group, the more you gain. Happy hunting!

  There wasn’t time to check it, or to celebrate, because Murmur’s Mez was about to break. “Breaking in three!”

  She summoned Mind Bolt, and the runes up and down her arms began to glow, like a gently strobing light. As her Mez broke, she slammed the Mind Bolt into the ranger. It stumbled to one knee, holding its head for a moment. Its life dropped by twenty percent. After a beat, it rose and ran into the group, fury on its face, unable to access its abilities.

  Murmur watched her hands, unsure exactly how she’d released that apart from picturing it in her mind. The runes under her skin and lights at the end of her hair faded slowly, leaving her arms silver once more. Her Mental Acuity sat at forty-two now, twenty points depleted. Exactly like she thought. If she used the ability, it drained her Mental Acuity. It was probably best if she always held forty in reserve. For oh shit moments.

  Refreshed after their first cave pull, they began moving down at a solid pace. Murmur focused on keeping her own shielding up and her sensing net out, her Mental Acuity close to full. After several pulls, while waiting for mana to regenerate, Merlin turned to her.

  “So, you’re my friend, right Mur?”

  She nodded.

  “So, no shooting me with that bolt, right?”

  She laughed. “No promises. You have to toe the line.”

  Merlin inched away from her as they ventured down the winding path. They were about to move onto the next roaming group when guild chat lit up again. Mur groaned, Beast and Dev echoing her sentiment.

  Veranol: So, we’re like here.

  Rashlyn: Figured yelling across would be a bad idea considering how intelligent these mobs seem. Also, there’s a weird level nine guy out there who told us to give you his love, Mur?

  Murmur stopped short, another shiver racing down her spine, and answered in a way she hoped didn’t give away the unease roiling in her gut. He’s a joker. Met him at level one.

  Rashlyn: Right then. We’ll work our way down from this side. Meet you in the middle at the bottom.

  Merlin: Race you.

  Dansyn: Fuck you, ranger.

  Merlin: Not my fault you’re inferior, bard.

  “Mur, I really don’t like Jirald.” Sin stood close, whispering. She grabbed Mur’s hand and squeezed. “How about we just never leave each other’s side from now on?”

  Murmur looked at her best friend gratefully. While she put on a brave front with the others, Sin knew her the best, knew the creepers they’d both encountered in game worlds before. “I think that sounds like a plan.”

  Despite the fact that the pulls in this dungeon were far more difficult due to pathing and hyper realistic responses by the NPCs, Murmur couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride at the fact that just over a day into the game they had two full groups ripping through a level eleven to fourteen dungeon. An open world dungeon, with named mobs scattered throughout.

  Her new skills felt like forbidden fruit, secret and dangerous. Yet it was such a rush to use them. The sense of euphoria only lasted several pulls. As they moved methodically down the ramp, they began reaching the huts, the first of which held a named bandit. Another lieutenant, Kellin, stood tall, her leather armor sleek on her viking body. Fierce and well-muscled, tattoos stood out against pale flesh that hadn’t seen the sun for a while. Her eyes burned an unholy red, and she hefted two wicked looking axes in her hands.

  At level thirteen, Lieutenant Kellin gave Murmur pause. However, she was only the first orange level, so Mur’s spells should stick. Being level ten now, she hoped they’d be able to fight these named.

  “I’m not sure how to pull them.” Merlin whispered to the group, the irritation evident in his voice.

  “Five of them.” Beast muttered, scanning the group. While two were slightly off to the right, there’s no way it was enough space to pull the other three, or to pull those two away without alerting the others.

  “Add to that there’s another patrol that comes up here and spends like thirty seconds talking to the two on the right.” Merlin sighed. “Mur, can you Mez that many?”

  “I can, technically. Give me a second.” She rummaged through her spell and ability book, noticing that her Mental Acuity skills were classed as abilities instead of spells.

  “I have an area effect stun, but that’s going to break any Mez near it, and while I can also root the mob, I could just as well be casting Mez and rendering one completely out of commission.” She glanced at her Mental Acuity bar, which was sitting at eighty-two, and shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I could try to group Phase Shift, but I have no idea what that’s going to do. It’ll get all five of them, and should give me time to Mez them one by one—maybe its duration isn’t exact?”

  “Why are you asking us for?” Sin punched her in the arm playfully. “It’s your skill.”

  Murmur laughed softly. “Yeah, I guess you have a point. I also have no idea how useful or useless I’ll be after I cast it. So—I’d say burn your cooldowns if you had any yet.”

  “I knew there was something I missed having.” Havoc muttered, but grinned evilly. “Can’t wait for level twelve.”

  “Okay. We just need to time it for when the patrol is on its way back down.” Devlish moved back a few feet. “Just let me know where you want me.”

  Merlin clamped his hands over his mouth, as if trying to stop himself from speaking.

  “You’re leaving yourself wide open mate,” Beastial laughed.

  “Shut up.” Dev’s blush was barely visible in the dim firelight, but the slight rouge to his scales didn’t go unnoticed. His glare landed on Merlin, who hurriedly sobered.

  “Take down the named first, I’ll—shit.” Murmur frowned at the two who were standing where the patrol would meet them. “I’ll have to Mez them and then you’ll have to break it and pull one at a time back. Can you do that Beast? Can your tiger avoid casting DoTs?”

  He motioned at something none of them could see and nodded. “Yeah, I can do that. Pull one at a time over and you’ll re-Mez them?”

  She nodded. “It’ll be close, but it should work.”

  “Might as well find out. Better to die while we’re young!” Merlin grinned and they stood together, a little ahead of the rest of the group. He turned serious, dropping his voice low enough so the others behind him didn’t hear. “You sure about this Mur?”

  Murmur glanced at him for a moment, really taking in the elf with the fine blond hair and delicate features. Merlin, Dev, Havoc. All of them. They all cared, they were always concerned, and they put up with her when Murmur wasn’t sure she’d put up with herself. For an instant she was so grateful to all of them, her chest constricted a bit, bringing her close to tears. Smiling genuinely for the first time since logging back in, she nodded. “Yeah. I’m good.”

  Shielding and sensing nets still in place, Murmur took a deep breath. She had no idea what to expect, nor if attacking the mobs with Phase Shift before they were fighting would count as using it in a bad way and what consequences she would face. But it was better to find out now, than to wait until she was higher and would get more pissed off by a death, or when her experiment might wipe out an entire raid full of people.

  Unlike Mind Bolt, which just shot out of her mind, Phase Shift required an intricate display of finger dexterity. She almost wove her fingers into knots casting the spell and holding it for the right time. Taking a deep breath as the patrol began to move away, she released the skill.

  A spasm wracked her body as a shockwave
exploded out from her in a radius that covered the five enemies. The ground shook, and several slivers of rock fell down from the ledges above them. The cloud expanded around the targets, and the shift of them into the phase void made a sickening, sucking sound.

  Murmur gasped for breath, suddenly light-headed, her thoughts swirling as she fought to get enough air into her lungs. She barely remembered to cast Mez on the named. Lieutenant Kellin shifted back to reality, when she looked at Murmur wild anger shone in her eyes. The clock kept ticking down with only twelve seconds left. In hindsight, casting it on five mobs the first time had been a very bad idea.

  “Named now.” She motioned to Merlin before casting Mez on the two bandits closer to them and pulling their minds out of phase shift as well. Level twelve seemed Mez-able with little difficulty.

  Phase Shift’s fifteen seconds were almost up, and she fought to clamp down on the panic screaming at the back of her mind about how much the spell had taken out of her. One of the dangerous ones was going to break free with Phase Shift’s expiration. Targeting it, she spoke softly, noticing how dry her voice sounded. “Beast, take my target. It’ll break in three.”

  Trusting in Beastial to take care of the loose enemy, she readied her Mez as his cast aggroed the stray and released the spell, holding him in place. Refreshing the first two, she directed Beast to pull the second one to them, just as the patrol rounded the corner and walked up the path toward them. They were still a good distance away, but Murmur didn’t like cutting it so close.

  With the fight finally under control, Murmur could take stock of herself in the aftermath of using Phase Shift. She desperately wished she hadn’t.

  Her Mental Acuity was down to five. That in itself wasn’t a bad thing. She knew using skills would deplete her it—that wasn’t what bugged her. Her head felt foggy, but not in a way that made her forget things she could do, or confused.

  No, she wanted to reach for more.

  It was like there was something just beyond her fingertips, whispers lingering at the edge of her awareness as she tried to grasp what they were saying, only to lose them in mist she could almost see through.

  Even probing the edge of what seemed like her consciousness, Murmur still maintained her Mez on the other opponents, kept her DoTs up and running.

  If nothing else, at least she was a pro at multitasking.

  All the way down the dungeon spiral, precarious encampments and smart NPCs led to a very unique experience.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think these guys were actual players sometimes.” Devlish wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  Merlin frowned. “Especially the patrols. They actually converse, and it’s not a script. I’ve listened. It’s so well done.”

  Sin tapped her foot. “I’m so glad we have these little chats. But can we get going? Rashlyn will beat us to the bottom at this rate.”

  Murmur laughed. “She’s right.”

  The final level was easily visible now that they’d been at it for hours. Each of the three ramps down from the cave entrances converged closely together on the bottom floor. Murmur studied it. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but that floor level seems like it might be made for raiding, or at least multiple groups. The way the mobs are clustered...”

  Beastial’s brow furrowed and he lifted a hand to stroke his chin. “Point. They’re not for single pulls. We’d get at least five. Coordination will be the key.”

  “How about we get there first?” Havoc cut in, and Merlin grinned in response.

  When they finally got to the bottom of their ramp, they inspected their opponents. Frowning, Murmur noticed the thicker border around their aura, the jagged crown next to their names. “We haven’t had these before.”

  “Taking a wild stab in the dark.” Sin cracked her knuckles. “I’d say these are really fucking hard. Or raid trash mobs. Or both.”

  “You think they’ll still cough up experience if we form a raid group?” Merlin frowned, voicing what they all feared. There were several games that didn’t allow the person to gain experience when grouped in a raid.

  “Not sure.” Murmur glanced back up the ramp Rashlyn’s group was taking, and shot a message over guild. Might have some raid mobs down here. You good to group up once you make it?

  Rashlyn: Does shit stink?

  Havoc: Way too much information there, Rash. Way too much.

  Murmur heard Rashlyn’s peal of laughter echo from where the other group fought. Several of the NPCs swiveled around to try and find where the noise had come from.

  Careful Rash, apparently noise really can alert these guys. Murmur cautioned the group, not really wanting to have to do a corpse retrieval mission. Apart from the fact that the healers still didn’t have their resurrection spells, it was just a pain in the butt.

  They waited at the base of the ramp in a corner wedged between the stairs and the walls, out of sight of the rest of the bandits. Murmur flicked through her abilities. She should have bought her level twelve spells when she went back to the city before. After all, she was going to be eleven soon, and having to leave at twelve if they were leveling well would be a pain.

  After finding out about the psionicist part of her class, she’d basically forgotten about anything else.

  Havoc sat down next to her. “Going to give us a rundown of what the hell that spell did to you back there?”

  Murmur paused her own musings and looked over at him. “I’ve got a headache, but I feel like my brain had a chance to expand, to understand something I couldn’t otherwise know. It’s like my mind is a Tardis.”

  While she meant the last as a joke, she realized it was actually true, and Havoc sat there concern drawing his lips into a frown.

  “That’s new.” He sat in silence for a moment before continuing. “But ever since you said to keep an eye out for weird quests, I’ve been dividing my attention between something I swear has been nibbling at the back of my mind since we started playing the game and damaging the mobs.”

  “And?” Murmur prompted.

  “Just got an update that’s vague as hell.” He laughed and shook his head. “I need to listen to my surroundings and block out all life so that death can get through. If that’s not morbid, I don’t know what is.”

  For a few moments they sat in silence before Murmur spoke. “Actually, considering you’re a necromancer, it probably has something to do with being able to boost your undead pets and other stuff.”

  He blinked at her. “Sometimes I forget you’re younger than me.”

  “What does that have to do with the smell of shit in a barn?” She smiled at him, feeling morose. Havoc always treated her as younger than he was, which was the most annoying thing in the world since he was only in his junior year of college. “Age is just a number.”

  He looked off into the distance for a few seconds before standing, and glancing down at her. “True, but sometimes numbers have lots of legal ramifications.”

  With a wink, he turned and joined Dev and Beast leaving Murmur to gape at him.

  Storm Entertainment

  Somnia Online Division—Conference Room 2

  Countdown: two months before release

  Teddy Davenport tapped his pen on the table, as he scowled at the report in front of him. “Is the software going to be able to keep up with the scan rates? With this many gamers, we’re going to create a bottle neck.”

  Laria Sommers smiled disarmingly at Teddy. Shayla watched her friend tackle the boss with words like she would a football player on a field. Admittedly her words probably packed more punch.

  “Our Artificial Intelligence integration guarantees that we’ll be able to handle the influx. We could handle an influx a thousand times larger. It was set up perfectly.”

  One of the other men at the head of the table shifted in his seat, making it creak like dry bones rubbing together. “And we have enough units available to meet demand?”

  Trying her best not to hesitate, Shayla stood, la
ying a hand on Laria’s shoulder. As project coordinator managing all monetizing aspects of the game, she put on her best non-patronizing smile. “We’ve had production in place for close to a year now. The last units will ship about three weeks before launch. While this is closer than we’d have liked and will allow less time for us to review the data provided, it’s still within acceptable limits.”

  Shayla Johnson sat down, giving Laria a brief glance before she let some tension drain out of her shoulders.

  The same man grunted. “I fail to see how this game works the way we need it to.”

  Shayla didn’t even bother to stand this time. She’d been at this for the last several weeks. Long meetings, roundabout questions and sessions of far too many self-important and pompous people, all stupidly rich and trying to obtain more wealth. And they all knew something about the funding the game had received that Shayla did not. While she was aware of the military basis, she had no idea what the endgame was. Trying to target marketing and sales without all the information hadn’t been easy.

  “Look, Drake. The game is like no other that’s been seen before. We have multiple AI units overseeing this. AIs overseeing other AIs even, and all with us constantly monitoring it. Their ability to analyze and mimic human behavior is unparalleled. The scans will happen, the game will go ahead, and everyone will have all the data we need, plus money to actually help support the research.” Shayla was tired. All she wanted to do was go home, put her feet up, and eat with her family. But it wasn’t looking likely today either.

  Drake Cain, looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it. “No delays. And I hope for your sake the system allocates honestly.”

  Shayla smiled at the man, willing herself to exude confidence. “All the tests we’ve performed have gone flawlessly. It’s perfectly safe and very accurate.”

  She could see Laria blanch out of the corner of her eye. Shayla frowned at that reaction, considering how eager Laria had been not an hour ago about the containment capsule. Still, the sooner this meeting was over, the sooner they could both get back with people they could stand.