[397] 5.21 The [Dimensional Sniper]

Claudius and I stand face to face as the army of bots watches motionlessly.  Based on what I’ve seen of him, he’s fast, he’s stealthy, his attacks have blistering celerity, and that crossbow-gun weapon packs astronomical punching power.  And yet, he shouldn’t have been able to have sneaked up on me like that.  Only one possibility springs to mind, and if that’s the case, the two of us are pretty much one another’s worst possible opponents.

Claudius’ finger clicks the trigger.  The bullet isn’t aimed in even the remotely correct direction to hit me, but an instant later, a bullet whizzes from behind my back, forcing me to somersault backwards to evade.  Another bullet follows, this one grazing my side and bouncing off my exoskeleton.  The third one he fires from the complete opposite direction, yet the shot appears aimed square between my eyes.  I concentrate my [Ether] and repel the shot, though it takes more than I would have expected from such a tiny projectile.

“Not bad, Seraphina.  You’re the first in some time to take four shots from my gun and still have the strength to fight.  Shall we pick up the pace a bit now that the warm-ups are over?”

I take that as my cue to charge the man.  He evades my slash with practiced ease and counters with a pair of shots launched in quick succession.  The first attack is aimed at my heart from behind, the second, my frontal lobe, coming from the side.  I contort myself, tilting my head back, throwing my legs and torso forward, and launch myself forward, flapping my wings with the speed of a hummingbird’s.

As though he were waiting for this exact moment, he bombards me with a dozen more strikes coming from different directions, their timing and patterns so precise that I ordinarily wouldn’t be able to dodge them all in the allocated time.  Instead, I bring this farce of a first round to an end by phasing out of the principal layer and reappearing a moment later.  Several of the strikes hit Claudius’ own mechanical soldiers.  He shows not the slightest hint of care at the scrap.

Instead he smiles.  I smile as well.  I will bring this man down as I must and ought to do, but that does not mean that I cannot respect his level of dimensional control that rivals my own.

We both vanish.  We both reappear above the skies over the battlefield.  Our fists fly at one another in close-quarters combat.  My heart is pounding, my breath quickens and my breathing intensifies as the two of us put the full extent of our martial might against one another in the most visceral way possible.  I win the exchange, but a single shot is enough to force me to dodge and for our battle to return to a neutral position.

We vanish a second time.  This time, the battle rages in subspace.  Multiple shots fire in the soundless space, though now the blasts have to be aimed in the traditional sense here.  I respond by dodging what attacks I can and using Filia to slice the bullets I cannot dodge in half.  The engagement of half a hundred shots lasts less than three seconds, at which point, both of us reappear in the skies above the battlefield below.

I’m given no chance to regroup before more strikes are upon me.  Claudius shows no sign of fatigue, but I know his [Ether] is not infinite.  From experience, I know each of these shots is draining at least a couple dozen [Ether] even with whatever Ethertech enhancements are carved into his weapon.  What I don’t know is how much regeneration he has; that will be the difference between his being able to last for mere minutes and potentially hours.

For now, I stay back, dodging and blocking all attacks to the extent I am able.  I’m starting to come up with a plan, but I’m only going to get one chance to make this work.  I have to gain a full understanding of every one of his capabilities if I want to win this battle.

Claudius slips into subspace again, but this time I don’t follow.  Instead, I use [Veilsight’s] additional ability and watch his movements as he swerves around the weave and attempts to shoot me from behind.  I dodge those attacks as well, leaning forward then backward before twisting my entire body to the side.

He emerges, I vanish, then both of us are engaged in close-quarters combat once again, phasing in and out of the principal layer multiple times each second.  Thanks to a mistimed dodge, I take a glancing wound to the side.  I suppress nearly all of the pain, reducing the sharp sensation to a minor ache before pushing forward once again.

For just a moment, he grimaces.  I press the momentary initiative.  Right before I’m about to land my swordstaff through his gut, he vanishes.  This time, however, I have an idea of his proclivities.  I spin around two hundred and forty degrees to the right with the momentum of my spear thrust, cutting through Claudius’ viscera right as another bullet cuts through my chest.

We both falter, though neither of us succumbs from these injuries.  I down a [Physical Regeneration Potion] and Claudius pulls out a similar tonic.

Our truce, if it can be called that, lasts only about two seconds before we’re again fighting with one another.  This time around, I forgo my physical attacks to lash out with my [Elemental Ether Strikes] instead.  I’m having far more success than I was before, able to score more than a few fiery blows upon the man’s ebon bodysuit.  For a brief moment, I’m even starting to get the upper hand.  My movements aren’t quite as fast as Claudius’, but my [Mind] is higher and I’m able to leverage the improvement in processing speed and reaction time to close the gap.

“Oww!”  A sharp sensation slams into me for a brief moment before my Skill dissipates it just as quickly.  My right hand and left wing are both completely shredded by the bullets that appear out of nowhere.  My stomach is about to be next, but I’m able to avert my momentum just in the nick of time and avoid the critical injury that was to follow.

“Sera?  Are you okay?”  Chloe asks.

“I’m…  I’m just fine.  Everything is going exactly according to plan.”

“A–  According to plan?”  A brief pause follows.  “Damnit, Sera.  I told you to be careful.  I’ll–  I don’t know what’s going on out there, but the barrier is stabilized and I’ll be–”

“Chloe!  I know you want to help, but I’m not sure how much you can do against a man who manipulates the dimensions even better than I do!”

Chloe’s heavy breathing passes through the mental link.  “Damnit, Sera!  Whatever happened to ‘we’re a team’ and ‘we’re going to stay together through good times and bad’?”  She grunts.  “We’re going to have words when you get done out there.”

“I understand.  And I’m sorry that I’m forcing you through all this.”

“You damn well better be, Sera!”

The conversation began and now ends all in the span of under a second.  The connection closes like a slammed phone, leaving me only a cold bitterness permeating the bond we share.  Yet one more thing I’ll have to apologize for once this matter is done with.

“Are you ready to concede defeat?” Claudius asks.  “I can promise you the mercy of a quick and painless kill.  It’s the least you have earned for being the best sport I’ve had in ages.”

I descend down to the surface and lower my head.  “Just… Why are you doing all this?  What are you hoping to accomplish?”

Claudius shoots me in the thigh, then in the left shoulder, right above where my arm turns to metal, as though it were a distinction with any real difference.  He fires several more shots in the wings, and then pierces me through both feet with a shark stake.  All the while, I quiver by the barest of margins to mitigate the damage such that I stay just above the trigger threshold for [Rewrite Fate].

After staking me and crippling my body, for good measure, he casts a [Dimensional Lock] around the entire area, as though I were in any condition to try to escape given my current situation.

“I do not know why you’ve chosen to make those your final words, or how you intend to communicate whatever you learn to your allies, but I suppose you have earned a final request as befits a warrior.”  He glares at me.  “I am Claudius, [Dimensional Sniper] of Apeiron.  As for our goals, we seek nothing less than for humanity to become unbound from our current society and our home world and expand our reach to the stars and throughout our galaxy, as has forever been our birthright.”

“How noble,” I say, playing along to buy time.  “But surely you can’t expect that the most efficient way of going about reaching the stars is to trigger a global war.”

“I would have thought that the great Seraphina of all people would have realized the importance of the work we do.  We cull the fat, stoke conflict, and in doing so, ensure humanity’s continued growth and maturation into a–”

I frown, barely suppressing the scowl that wants to surface through my armor and the desire to lash out at the man.  Noble justifications or not, this slime is just bringing back eugenics by a different name.

“Surely there are better ways–”

“Perhaps.  But let us not forget that we are almost certainly not the only lifeforms in the universe, and it is only a matter of when, not if, they make their way to planet Earth.  When that happens, will it be prudent to rely on their generosity, in a world where there is so much to be gained by simply cutting us down like cattle.”

“And so you plan to justify yourselves by doing exactly the same thing.”

“It is necessary, Seraphina, to ensure humanity’s continued survival.  I know you know it to be true.”

“And simply working together wouldn’t work, why?”

“Because conflict breeds disruption.  Disruption, breaking the status quo, allows for new opportunities to flourish.  And these opportunities, in turn, invite the talents of our world to reach their true potential.  Or do you believe that you would be where you are today had the greatest disruptor in universal history since the Big Bang itself not descended upon our world forty-two months ago?”

He continues before I can cut him off.  “I know what you’re thinking.  Why don’t we do things on our own?  Why don’t we focus on dungeons and the opportunities the System has already afforded us and keep people who seek not to be involved out of the conflict?  It is an option that we considered, but ultimately, the risks of that path were judged too great to simply permit a laissez-faire approach.  Especially with the flashpoint of the Korean conflict threatening to metastasize across the planet.”

“Apeiron has no involvement whatsoever with the morass in Korea?  I find that just a little too convenient to be entirely believable.”

“Believe what you want.  It truly doesn’t matter.  Now then, Seraphina.  I do believe it’s time to finish this.  Any other last words you would like me to convey to the world after your death?”

“Just two,” I say.  I calculate precisely the amount of damage I need to inflict to myself and throw a feeble [Lightning]-type [Elemental Ether Strike] directly at my thigh.  By a mere seven points, I fall below the ten-percent threshold and recoil as my entire body is replaced by one from an alternate timeline where I never sustained any of the damage ravaging me.  My strength is restored, the lightheadedness that replaced my suppressed pain is gone, and, most importantly, I’m no longer ensnared within the [Dimensional Seal] he’d placed upon me earlier.

I teleport in the blink of an eye directly behind Claudius.  Filia’s point finds a space between the folds of his bodysuit and stabs directly through his gut and into his entrails.  He attempts to phase away, but I’m able to follow suit, using the [Dimensional Lock] he himself had placed earlier against him.  I stab my blade further up, cutting through his viscera until I stop just short of his heart.

He, completely broken, returns to conventional space, his breathing reduced to a pale whisper as he bleeds out.  Apparently, the bodysuit was what was providing him resistance to the negative effects of subspace, and once torn, his rather low [Vitality] body succumbs rapidly to the deleterious effects.

“[Rewrite Fate],” I say to the worthy foe as the final vestiges of light die out from his eyes.

[You have slain a ([Dimensional Sniper] / [Walker of the Precipice], Level 98).  You have gained a boosted 1,250,000 Experience.]

[You have gained enough Experience to reach Level 98 (From 96).  [Strength] +6, [Speed] +6, [Vitality] +6, [Mind] +6.  Please assign free stat points (Remaining: 20).]

[Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x 2 + Current Level + Rand[1,3] = (664, 669)]

[Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0,2] = (395, 400)]

[Level: 98; Experience: 21,772,100;  To Next: 390,540]

[Current Stats: [Health]: 30,481 / 31,901; [Ether]: 18,712 / 20,246]

[Current Stats: [Strength]: 225; [Speed]: 219; [Vitality]: 285; [Mind]: 300]