ONESHOT : LEVEL 64
DAY 233 : A-DAY, SECONDWEEK, HORUS, YEAR 1
CENTRAL 19 : CENTRAL DISTRICT 1 : HUNTED
So it’s that time of year again. Tournament finals. Between the eight dicks and the four cunts, I forget which corporate sycophants are getting shoved up Heaven’s asshole this year. All I know is half of them are ascending soon.
And that means I have plans to make. Maybe… Depends on who shows up. As to that? Time to go see.
None of them ever want me to show up at all, of course.
When you get right down to it, that’s the real reason I always go. Maybe if we ever lasted long enough in Ragnarok for any kind of overlap… But I’ve never had that problem. And this is an off-year anyway.
Besides, it’s the closest thing to a sports event that I’ve ever actually had fun at.
And if I don’t like where they sit me, I can teleport to my waypoint that they still haven’t figured out how to erase from the Announcer’s Booth.
Some announcers like the chaos I bring to the table. Most don’t. None of the people running the thing like it at all. So I always mysteriously end up with an objectively great seat, thereby avoiding any such issues.
Opening my World Map, the thing looks like a goddamned octagonal galaxy with all the glowing waypoints. I’m well over my waypoint limit, of course. But my limit is 0, so it’s fine.
Anyway, I zoom into the Royalty-Free Octagon, Outskirts, then Central, and I keep zooming until I can finally differentiate between the hundreds of little dots I placed all over the city.
In a fit of annoyance at how much zooming in I have to do, I zoom all the way in, until the only thing on the screen is a tiny dot in the middle of a blown-up rendering of a spawnpoint.
It isn’t actually my closest waypoint to my seat. There’s a whole VIP Entrance where they can sneak you past the crowd. But if I’m gonna show up, I might as well Show Up.
I don’t actually have enough MP for the distance required. Nor do I ever. But what I do have is a Skill for that.
[ EPIC ACTION: MANA OVERCLOCK ]
Which makes the next Skill cost all my MP, no matter how much it actually costs.
[ LEGENDARY ACTION: WAYPOINT TELEPORT ]
[ LEGENDARY TOGGLE OFF: REACTIVE TELEPORT ]
And just like that, I’m in the middle of the street, breathing in my first lungful of surprisingly non-musty air in nearly a year.
And the instant I show up, some rusted metal or something wangs me in the elbow.
[ HP: 9,403/9,408 ]
[ DEBUFF GAINED: HELD ]
At which point, some girl yells from right behind me. “GO!!!”
I snort. Surprise attack, huh? Hardly the first time someone had an ambush prepared. Not even the first time it happened right here. I guess my plans for today were rather predictable…
Alrighty then, now that I have at least a trickle of MP back… BATTLE MODE GO!!!
[ LEGENDARY TOGGLE ON: REACTIVE TELEPORT ]
[ HERO TARGETED: THE CRIMSON BITCH ]
BATTLE MODE FULLY ONLINE!!!
I strike a pose that flounders as I notice her name.
Seriously?
Well, I guess it’s not the stupidest thing she’s done recently…
I line myself up like a catcher to her pitch, perfectly ready to meet this girl’s shining white blade with my own. I know I started out with a baseball metaphor there, but it really feels more like I’m daring her to just go ahead and shoot me with the same gun as before. Just to prove how little of a threat she is.
Because of course she’s doing that counter thing again. Last time, it was innovative. This time, it’s just irritating enough to make me want to mock her for it.
And this is Central.
And I’m me.
Even if she wanted to be more creative than she’s clearly capable of, I can’t afford to not be harsh about this.
So I snake right past her telegraphed counter to stab her in the face.
Except I don’t. Instead, she snakes her blade right back into mine, even as she nearly whips off the sword’s scabbard. Her arm movement mirrors mine exactly. In spite of my best efforts, they make contact in the same instant that I feel pressure on my right inner thigh.
[ HP: 9,401/9,408 ]
She also disappears.
The fuck?
The next moment, I feel like she just kicked me in that same spot.
[ HP: 9,382/9,408 ]
[ DEBUFF REFRESHED: HELD ]
Oh… Fuck indeed. I recognize her, of course. How could I not? The thing in that starting town was forgetful enough. But Civetta’s been complaining about her for months. So this is Bootleg Guldo, huh? And she does seem to have me in quite the predicament. Except…
[ LEGENDARY TALISMAN USED: UNHOLD ]
Turning in place, I… Can’t turn in place.
Which is when she yells again behind me. “GO!!!”
Why am I still stuck?
The girl’s sword wangs me in my left flank.
[ HP: 9,374/9,408 ]
[ DEBUFF REFRESHED: HELD ]
I twist around to her.
Before I can get there, she says something like “choo” and almost takes my breath away as the other, now much longer sword rends a grove into my opposite side.
[ HP: 9,309/9,408 ]
Woah… How did she do that much damage? Far as I can tell, the only thing empowering that was the sword getting longer. So, what, the damage was multiplied once or twice? That doesn’t account for… Has to be the sword. It’s gotta be at least Mythic to hit that hard. Which means she’s almost fighting me with a real weapon this time.
And then she implements the interesting strategy of standing there and flipping her swords over in her hands to grab them by the blades.
Flashing back to childhood attempts to do that with a flagpole, I’m rather impressed with her show of dexterity in doing so both smoothly, and with two at a time.
I mean that doesn’t stop me from pulling the trigger on my Hidden Blade to shoot the tip through her unmoving forehead for a relatively tiny explosion of only a few hundred overlayed 1’s.
As my blade cycles through its half-second reload time, I blow out a sigh of relief when I don’t get one of my belongings confiscated for killing that girl. No one’s landed a normal hit on me in so long that I forgot how it works when you follow up the counter with another attack before you die.
Turns out, the System is at least slightly less full of shit than I thought.
Or maybe she just has a Vengeance Quest?
Well, she can get back in line. As for me, I just gotta wait for the Debuff to expire. Aaand…
[ HP: 9,301/9,408 ]
[ DEBUFF REFRESHED: HELD ]
What in the fuck…
Stunned into utter bewilderment, I stare down at the crimson-haired girl who just cut most of the way through my left big toe.
But she doesn’t wait for my fugue state to end before slicing my cheek open.
[ HP: 9,293/9,408 ]
[ DEBUFF REFRESHED: HELD ]
Only then do I process enough of what’s going on to reach out and kill her again.
She dies.
No notification… That confirms the Vengeance Quest Theory.
Fuck.
Alright, so here’s the deal. While it’s on, Reactive Teleport will cause me to, fittingly, teleport a set distance away every time I’m hit. That distance is 0.
The timing for that is a set number of seconds after the initial impact. But that’s 0 too.
Thanks to a Legendary Mod, I also get an invincibility window after a teleport, based on the damage of the initial hit.
This introduces an issue in the System’s chain of responsibility. If I’m teleported 0 seconds after a hit, then my invincibility window, also 0, overlaps with the hit that activated the Skill in the first place. All of it coalesces in the same 0 seconds that the entire hypothetical sequence of events happens in.
An additional benefit is that the 0 Damage I’m being protected from, which translates to a 0-second invincibility window afterwards, costs 0 MP in accordance with its duration of 0. Or at least no MP beyond the resource drain from keeping the Skill itself toggled On.
So I end up getting teleported the instant the hit happens. And the hit no longer happens since that’s when I teleported. So no damage is prevented, no distance is traveled, and it doesn’t cost anything.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Heaven is gradually rotating. And in the brief time between the initial impact and damage calculation, it gets just far enough so that I inch over a little bit during each teleport.
And thanks to a more classic kind of glitch that the Admins refuse to fix anyway, it teleports me to where I would’ve been if I hadn’t moved during the minimum window-time-delay. So, each time I get hit, I don’t get hit, and instead auto-nudge just a little bit along Heaven’s overall rotational axis.
Which is how this is usually supposed to go. But she’s got me in this goddamned Debuff.
And the offensive lack of a lootbox is already running straight at me again.
But this time, I see from the start that she’s doing it, and therefore make no bones about stabbing her first.
Except my hand, hidden blade and all, just phases through her forehead.
At which point, she reaches around to cut the back of my damn knee.
[ HP: 9,285/9,408 ]
[ DEBUFF REFRESHED: HELD ]
So I kill her again.
This time, the damn spawnpoint seems to yell at me. “GO!!!”
And then her armored ass bursts out of the thing, only faster this time.
I stab through her forehead again.
It does nothing. Again.
What in the fuck is going-Oh. Oooh. So that’s why that leapt to mind… The invincibility window.
It’s just meant to give you a few seconds not to do a much more messy version of ‘clipping through’ anyone else already standing in the spawnpoint, or who might arrive while you’re doing the same.
Sure, you can attack during that time. But that’s not exactly practical. And how are you supposed to know what’ll be waiting for you at least eight hours later?
Its strategic value is utterly useless.
Except for her. And except right now.
I can’t see the targets she’s gotta be aiming for with her weird Hold-sword, so I can’t dodge the damn thing.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Well, I can. Kind of. I’ve still got some modicum range-of-movement, even with the Debuff. Not like this is paralysis or anything… Which makes sense seeing as how I’m immune to paralysis.
Even still, no matter how I bend or maneuver away from wherever it looks like she’s aiming, she just pivots and goes for an entirely different spot that I can only assume was her goal all along.
I try to block her with a buckler.
It doesn’t work.
I switch to a tower shield.
It doesn’t work.
I try everything in between. Even a shield designed to home onto oncoming attacks.
It kind of works. Except it keeps pulling my arm to block the wrong sword.
So I do. But then I’m Held again.
And she keeps hitting different parts of different limbs, at different angles, every time.
When I don’t know the spot she’s going for, I can’t seem to defend myself at all.
We both have the same Speed STAT of 32. So, on paper, we should be an even match. But this Cheat-Breathing shit has her so far ahead of me that I just can’t keep up.
Sure, I can hit her. And I do. Every time her invulnerability window runs out, in fact.
The problem is, she’s so fast out of the spawnpoint that it only runs out once she hits me. That deactivation is ‘premature’ by the System’s estimation.
Proving once again that said System is perfect and totally not complete and utter bullshit the whole way down.
She just keeps going.
I can’t teleport. Or move. At her level, I could do another Kirito.
Which I am. But none of my instakills are working for more than an instant. I can only watch this happen.
And I do.
But the maneuvers she’s making… They’re amazing. I can’t move even remotely like that. And at her level? That’s insane.
As she respawns again and again and I kill her again and again, Bootleg Guldo’s movements and timing develop a sort of standard.
0.2 seconds to yell at me to ‘GO’.
1.1 seconds to reach me and begin her swing.
0.6 seconds to reveal between one and an undisclosed number of feints.
Something in the range of 0.1 and 0.6 seconds for me to either kill her or get hit again.
The real clincher, even beyond being constantly Held, is that she’s hitting me too fast for my HP Regen to kick in.
There are Skills for that.
Armor Effects, too.
But that’s a different armor set, and I haven’t lucked out to where it’s even usable yet.
Besides, I’m not sure whether any of it has Re-Equip…
Guess I’ve got a couple build actions I should really take. Should’ve taken…
Wait, no. Of course there are things I could’ve done.
But I can teleport through everything! I never turn it off. Except… When I travel.
But even without that, I’m a goddamned Maxlevel specialized in Defense. I never put anything in Speed beyond the 16 points needed to get it to 32. Which… Is required. I maaay have spent the years immediately after reaching 64 Defense, largely unable to move.
And my enemies loooved that.
Point is, I have the most Defense you can get from STAT points alone.
Which, in conjunction with a set of Unique armor, I thought would be good enough to get me through the first few seconds of randomly showing up with no notice from across the entire world.
Is she working with… Or for… No, they’d be here by now if she was. I’m putting her through a lot here. But she’s getting there. Slowly… As painfully as I can make it.
The fact of the matter is, I can’t time this out. That second-and-a-half between the Debuff refreshing and when I would start auto-healing, might as well be an eternity.
But it is kinda fun to watch the district’s Pyramid Guards jerk in our direction every time she kills me.
They zip out of their little alcove facing the spawnpoint and rush for her the instant she displays open aggression against a technically nonviolent citizen such as myself. Then they stare blankly forward for a bit, only to retreat back into their starting positions a second later. Where they stay for the few fractions of a second it takes for the girl to hit me again.
Alright, so… Go for the taunt? “Well if it isn’t Harem-girl. Where’s your harem, Harem-girl.” I pretend to finally notice the narcissistic shitbag and his multicolor pets. “Oh there they are!”
Well, this isn’t working either… It’s only making her faster, actually.
Alrighty then… Time to get serious.
[ RARE WEAPON RE-EQUIPPED: ORB OF SINGEING WARMTH ]
Every destructible and otherwise object within four meters of me vaporizes with a signature rising light.
But that only seems to bother the girl for a fraction of a second before she jumps in anyway.
Orb of instant death or no, she reaches me well within the respawn invincibility window. For her purposes, it almost doesn’t matter that she disintegrates the instant she hits me. The hit still counts, after all.
[ UNIQUE ATTACKER PENALTY LOST: TRUE RANDOM MOD STONE ]
What?
[ UNIQUE ATTACKER PENALTY LOST: TRUE RANDOM MOD STONE ]
FUCK!!! WHY THO???
[ UNIQUE ATTACKER PENALTY LOST: TRUE RANDOM MOD STONE ]
[ UNIQUE ATTACKER PENALTY LOST: TRUE RANDOM MOD STONE ]
NOPE.
[ UNCOMMON WEAPON RE-EQUIPPED: HIDDEN BLADE ]
The next second, I kill the girl again, back to stabbing this time.
Nothing happens. Oh thank fuck…
The second after that, about a dozen people nosedive into the warmth radius of my shitty orb.
Oh… Those assholes dove into my death field to get some of my shit. I haven’t been in a real fight for so long that I kinda forgot that was a thing. But yeah, I don’t just go around handing out True Randoms like candy.
Except today, apparently.
I fold my arms as she runs toward me. “This is bullshit.”
She hits me.
So I kill her.
She respawns, yells, and rushes me.
I glare at her. “You know that, right?”
But she doesn’t respond. She just hits me.
I kill her.
She respawns, yells, and rushes in while answering. “Like you’re one to talk?” Not waiting for a response, she hits me.
I kill her.
She respawns, yells, and rushes.
I chuckle. “Fair enough.”
She hits me.
Obligingly, I kill her.
She respawns. “Then would you mind not fighting back?” Then she hits me.
I kill her. Then I wait for her to stop yelling. “…Why?”
The self-proclaimed Bitch doesn’t get back to me until the next respawn. “I’ve been thinking…”
She doesn’t elaborate until the one after that. “Since this is basically a foregone conclusion and all…”
She finishes her thought the next time through. “So why not just skip the tedium and let me kill you?”
I can’t help it. I laugh. I’m still laughing the next time she respawns. I keep laughing over her yell. “Oooh-ho no.”
I don’t elaborate until the next go-around. “Do you think I got this far by giving up?”
Again. “If you’re going to kill me anyway-”
And again. “I’m at least going to make it tedious.”
I’m grinning wider with every kill. “So how’s that respawn timer treating you?”
I give her all the time she needs to answer.
But her reply comes an instant later. “GO fuck yourself.” On that note, she hits me.
I kill her, waiting for eight hours to instantly pass before the start of my warning. “Careful now…”
I pause for, among other things, effect. “You don’t want THAT to be on your mind when you die…”
And again. “Me fucking myself and all.”
She cringes as she hits me.
I kill her.
She scowls as she hits me.
I kill her.
She grimaces as she hits me.
I kill her.
She looks to be in real pain as she hits me.
I still kill her. “So whatcha thinkin’ ’bout?”
She hits me.
So I kill her.
“Fuck you.” She hits me.
I smolder seductively as I kill her.
She hits me.
As I kill her, I exaggerate it even more.
She hits me with a horrified expression “GAAAH!!!”
I don’t let up as I kill her.
Her ‘go’ sounds a lot more croaked-out this time. “How do the Mods not ban you for that?” She hits me.
I kill her. “Oh sorry Pot, I think I misheard you.”
She hits me.
Killing her, I wait a sec. “What were you saying about kettles?”
She almost starts to laugh as she hits me.
I kill her.
Hitting me again, she lets out a pained groan.
Killing her again, I wonder if… In case I wasn’t, I should ask. “So was I black that time or what?”
Her next set of replies are less coherent.
While she splutters, I knock over a nearby pile of her own corpses to get in her way.
But it doesn’t work.
The same way she fails to properly hide from me behind the still-rising 1’s from her previous few attempts.
But then, I’ve long since turned off my Damage Number Glow Opacity. Not a System setting most people bother with. But, surprisingly, I’ve had the occasion to.
Looking around as my health dwindles and the minutes turn to hours, I realize that at some point, my least favorite people in the world showed up.
There’s Tyberius.
And I haven’t seen Stovetop in years.
Is… Is that Adorkabler? I’ve never even met her.
And so, so many more. It’s like a goddamned reunion of everyone I’ve ever fucked with.
But I’ve never met most of the others either. And they’re interested enough to just stand there like this is a better show than the one they’re missing. But apparently, the ‘biggest’ Tournament match of the year can’t compete with a man being slowly cheated to death over the course of several minutes, going on hours. Maybe even days… Who knows? The sky’s apparently the limit when nobody gives a shit.
[ HP: 159/9,408 ]
Speaking of which, I’m getting pretty low, huh?
A lot of them are probably healers. I know a few are.
But would they spare the MP to help a man being brutally, mercilessly, slowly nibbled to death?
Apparently not.
But I’ll just as never give them the satisfaction of asking for their help.
I’d rather die. But I’d also rather just help myself.
[ EPIC ACTION: FULL RESTORE ]
With the setting sun, she hits me again to kick off Round Two.
[ HP: 9,400/9,408 ]
Gradually, what seems like everyone I’ve ever pissed off, keeps showing up. And they just watch.
Some of them try to help her.
But the more clever or less angry of my past victims, stop them. “What are you doing? You’re going to break him out of whatever’s got him trapped!”
But Adorkabler sees right through me. “Oooh, it’s a Hold thing.” She clears her throat. “EVERYONE, only hit him with stuff that inflicts Hold!”
A few people do.
Among those, even fewer actually manage to hit me.
So I shoot them with the low-damage homing sidearm I equipped hours ago.
It kills them.
I get their stuff. Along with no small pleasure from the whole thing. In no small part thanks to my public demonstration of being the worst serial killer in history with how many times I’ve killed the same girl.
It’s well into nighttime by now.
The girl stopped bothering with banter hours ago. Guess she’s running out of steam. Or something… Not that you’d be able to tell with this goddamn Debuff that she’s still keeping up. But maybe the whole thing is getting to her? Finally?
[ HP: 420/9,408 ]
And that’s about as low as I’m willing to go with all the new jerks nearby. Don’t want to risk a pot shot that gets me for several hundred HP. Even if they seem to have all acquiesced to give The Crimson Bitch some space in respect of her distinctly unrespectable fight, I don’t want to take their uncharacteristic politeness for granted.
[ MYTHIC ACTION: RESET COOLDOWN ]
[ EPIC ACTION: FULL RESTORE ]
Cutting off my only-just-restored right pinky, Jessie kicks off Round Three.
[ HP: 9,400/9,408 ]
I’m getting a little woozy myself, actually.
It’s like there’s a literal stream of the same girl coming at me.
Sometimes, I can swear there are two of her.
But I don’t think… Did she figure out how to breathe backwards? Nah, I’m just tired. The tight-ass Admins aren’t about to allow time reversal. Not even to fuck me over.
But would I even be able to tell whether my memories were blending together? Kinda hard to clock when every iteration is just the same shit in an endless loop anyway.
Well, not endless…
Full restore doesn’t recharge that fast.
Reset Cooldown has the cooldown of the Skill it reset. So that’s a no-go.
Unless I can figure out a way for the System to think I’m not in combat anymore, I can’t use potions.
And contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually have any Admins helping me with any of this shit. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Everyone knows I’m married to one.
And everyone else either doesn’t care, or thinks the knowledge means they’re in on some sort of conspiracy that I’d kill them over.
Which, I mean, I’d kill them. If they give me the excuse, I’ll get right on it. But not over that.
And everyone knows I’m cheating. How else can I possibly do any of this shit? But the Admins won’t nerf me. They refuse all requests for that. And there are plenty of requests coming in every day. Just more examples of people all thinking they had the same idea at the same time and that it’d actually get them anywhere.
But it won’t. I never get banned.
Not because the ‘angels’ wouldn’t love me gone. New Admin Candidates even run on the platform of banning me. And then they get into the order. And they try to take me down. And as soon as they start the process, a complaint gets auto-filed on my behalf. And the admin gets a strike. Three of those ever and you’re out of the order altogether.
To that effect, I’m pretty sure the Arch-Mods in charge of monitoring other Mods and Admins, love me. For the training opportunity I present, if nothing else. I’m like a walking speed-trap for them.
Otherwise, basically all of them fucking HATE me. Because I’m making a mockery of everything they hold dear. And I’m getting away with it.
But I’ve gotta admit… This Bitch showed them all up.
When I provoked her almost a year ago, I only meant to piss her off. It was supposed to be a seed. One of many. An incentive to grow, and one day surpass me. I was never supposed to lose to any of them. Especially not down here.
Okay, look. I’m a troll. Of course I am.
So, every now and then, I might go ahead and pick out newbies and go out of my way to fuck with them specifically. That way, they think their destiny is intertwined with the strongest player in the game or whatever.
So then I can show up later in their ‘journey’ and just keep steamrolling them after they think they’ve gotten strong enough.
I’ve done it before.
I’m even still doing it with a bunch of the assholes who showed up to watch me squirm.
No matter how pissed they get, none of them can kill me. Which is the world working as intended. The whole point of the thing is to make their struggles for revenge out to be nothing more than a lot of impotent barking at the moon.
Not this time, though. This time, one of them actually managed it.
As my HP gets down to the dregs after hours of standing here, and she’s still attacking me all these years later… I can only think of one thing to say. “Cle-ver girl…”
[ YOU DIED — RESPAWN DELAY: 8 HOURS ]
[ RIGHT GAUNTLET UNEQUIPPED ]
[ UNIQUE VENGEANCE TAKEN: RIGHT X-GLOVE ]
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