Chapter 80 – Collider Experiment Number Two

Three.

Darya spent the first three seconds creating the biggest possible mess. She used more consecutive commands than at any other time. It was basically a continuous thread alternating between the Frame command and the Wireframe command. The only limitations were travel time and activation delays.

She was quite sure that if she pushed any further, she would discover a new kind of game-breaking glitch. She couldn’t afford any other ways to get into the /dev void in the current situation, so she kept things as safe as possible.

The mess she created was truly spectacular. She dragged random vertices off the stick while hopping around the archangel, bouncing back and forth between random shadows nearby. This kept the travel times faster and allowed her to jump and weave a total of thirteen times within three seconds.

Each time, she made sure to puncture, wrap, or do something to harm the archangel’s six wings. She had managed to damage the two largest, and one of the medium-sized ones below. Prediction dots showed them twisting and tearing.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

She grabbed a random vertex and targeted a Shadow to the right.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

The collider stretched in a weird polygonal shape, cutting across the archangel’s left shoulder.

Half. This can explode with self-collisions.

She hadn’t experimented with that before. Basically, stretching a collider in ways that would make it collide with itself. In the VRMMO, these usually resulted in kinetic explosion. She was quite sure the effect would be similar, but RLP could make things a lot worse.

One.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

She grabbed the last vertex and turned around. She targeted a shadow about two arcs below the spiral around the Dreagan. This was her exit.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

The long end of the messy collider passed through several shadows along the way,  and she let it go as she burst out a few feet from the last Shadow.

Two.

She targeted the Dreagan.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

She appeared hundreds of feet away from it at a random angle. It took a second to reorient herself and find the archangel above. She was well out of the way of any colliders.

Three. Hopefully, that thing will be busy for at least ten seconds. I need a Terminate streak refresh before another round.

Darya grabbed her telescope in case that failed. She could already see white spots around the island. She could escape to a whale without Terminate and buy a few more seconds that way. Most of all, she needed to see what would happen with her own eyes.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

As the monochrome world faded, the world around her turned blue with collider preview. Things started moving. The mess of blue polygonal shapes above snapped wildly.

It was a self-collision explosion as she expected. The wild shape bounced off itself, stretching and collapsing into various shapes with the archangel trapped in the middle. White mana exploded at the center as its black wings got twisted and sliced to pieces.

The long end of the collider fluctuated in all sorts of directions, taking out tens of shadows each time it swept through the migrating spiral. The archangel crumpled to a knot in the middle as her collider fell off the sky, or more accurately, since it was the weight of the stick, floated in the winds.

Chunks of black flesh fell off the archangel in a smearing trail. For a moment, it looked as if the fight was already over. Darya was getting ready to change her position to keep an eye on the dangerous collider she created. She definitely didn’t want any of her friends going near it during or after the fall.

Probably best if I use terminate again and revert it back to a stick.

The only entity target she had was the archangel itself. She raised her telescope to target it right away. Hopefully, it would already be dead in pieces.

A white lightning bolt pierced through the center of the messy collider. The archangel flickered out, leaving pieces of black debris behind.

Darya looked around frantically. Not even Diamond Eyes could help her. She had lost track of the damned thing yet again. It had used some sort of porting spell. It seemed to have lost one wing for all the trouble that she went through. It could’ve been worse, of course. She would’ve been a lot more pissed if it wasn’t damaged at all.

About twenty seconds into free fall, her Sense Sphere tingled. She felt an impact from behind. She saw sparks flying off the warding layer on her ribs. Her body reacted almost on its own. Curling to the side, she brought her knees and forearms up to cover the rest. A streak of white light went past her.

The Archangel was flying in from below, the distortion line laid straight across her torso. The impact she felt was a mana-propelled projectile of some sort bouncing off her warding.

[Vainfall: Terminate]

She counted eight more projectiles. They were ice shards, peeling off the archangel’s forearm. She counted five wings intact, and a smaller, medium-sized wing. It had already begun to grow back.

One. Fucking right. Emil did say archangels could have high regeneration.

Darya targeted the Dreagan again. This was going to be a chase, and she didn’t want to take this thing anywhere near the others.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Zooming forth, she appeared hundreds of feet away.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

The messy collider was still entangled in an endless explosion. It was flying to the right, a small aberration in the sky from where she was. Now she had no way to get there and revert it, because that required her to touch the wireframe. She had just created a problem for herself.

Two.

She targeted a Shadow in a downward spiral behind her.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

She was hundreds of feet below the archangel now. Turning to the left, she targeted another Shadow flying below the Dreagan. Going that way would break line of sight, which she suspected had something to do with the archangel’s ability to spot her so fast.

The disadvantage was occluding the archangel with the Dreagan and losing track of it, but if there was no other way to buy time for an opening, she had to do it.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Appearing a few feet away from the Shadow, Darya targeted the Dreagan from this new angle. She didn’t want to end up in a second brawl and get blindsided by the archangel.

Three.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Appearing hundreds of feet away with the Dreagan filling her field of view, she entered freefall during the last half-second. She watched the direction she came from. If the archangel still found her in record time, it had something other than line of sight.

The monochrome world faded.

Ten seconds passed, then twenty. She got some attention from a couple of Filvorans, but they didn’t throw any mana spears at her. Thirty seconds. She was free-falling almost as fast as the descending Dreagan.

Forty seconds.

Too long. Now it was concerning. All the archangel had to do was chase her around the Dreagan. It shouldn’t have taken this long. She didn’t see any thunderbolts of porting either. She preferred being chased to being left hanging without cause.

Fifty seconds.

She saw a smear across the sky to her left almost by chance, and perhaps due to the Diamond Eyes. She had no idea if other skills and spells were still active at this point. This wasn’t a VRMMO with a HUD where she could see numbers rolling.

The smear grew into a streak. The archangel was coming for her in a near straight line. Darya grabbed a stick. It was time for another round. This time, she had to freeze it before trapping it in a mess.

The archangel extended its hand at her, eyes glowing white.

[Vainfall: Terminate]

Darya saw something horrifying in that split second. Prediction dots splashed out of her body.

Something had hit her already. The free-fall velocity wasn’t fast enough to phase through whatever it was. She had just moved slowly enough to let the prediction dots affect it.

The exact wound wasn’t clear at this point, but she felt a tingle on her side. The splashing prediction dots showed a horizontal cut to the side and out of her body.

Her heart raced to her throat and grew cold. This would’ve ended her if the cut went in the other direction. Archangel punctured her, but her death would’ve been Terminate itself.

Making sure no other prediction dots were popping out anywhere, she targeted the Dreagan desperately.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Appearing hundreds of feet away, she saw the trail of blood shaking off her in prediction dots. She had a healing potion, but not enough of a break to put it on.

Whatever hit me, it had to have gone through me already. How did I not feel anything?!

Looking back, she noticed a thin white line. She hadn’t seen anything like it from the forward angle. The thickness varied along the line, almost disappearing at points. White mana was distorting around it, as if mana had been ‘gathered’ into a line rather than a fired projectile or a beam.

It had somehow put a line through her where she would be, rather than kinetically puncturing her. The other hand was already performing the same gesture, ready to do it all over again.

Darya glared at the archangel, clenching the stick. Her body already anticipated pain. She had lost count of seconds as well. Terminate could end any moment now.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

She grabbed a vertex.