Chapter 81 – How Far Have You Fallen

The Terminate ended. For a split second, she saw the five-axis preview erupt from the Archangel’s pointed fingers.

Channeling mana without a Manacer. So whatever hit me was a spell?

This was reassuring. The archangel wasn’t doing something that she didn’t know about.

In the Vainfall VRMMO, there existed three categories of spells, broadly divided into ATK, DEF, or Neutral/Utility. To forgo a Manacer, the game required a certain threshold of overall mastery and experience with a spell. It was exceedingly harder with the ATK category, due to activation times, directionality, and the complex parameters involved. DEF was the second hardest, and Neutral ones the easiest.

This archangel has definitely passed whatever thresholds that RLP required for this specific ATK spell.

Darya was frantically using a command the exact moment she saw the five-axis preview.

[Vainfall: Terminate Twice]

The monochrome world flickered at the edges with visual artifacts. Whatever she did now, she had to buy at least ten or twenty seconds with it. She picked up where she left off.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

The vertex she pulled still jutted out. She grabbed it again. Targeting the archangel, she used the Frame command to hop the distance.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Bridging the gap in a blink, she appeared in front of the archangel. Here, she discovered another nuance of the Frame command. It depended on the silhouette of the target. The archangel had six wings that expanded, inflating their shape. Frame command ended up picking a distance that could fit everything within her field of view.

Just all sorts of trouble, this one.

It didn’t matter.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

She grabbed a new vertex, and this time, she grabbed another one with her free hand. Targeting a Shadow behind the archangel, she used the frame command.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

The flat shape she created passed through the Archangel, cutting it across the torso. Darya kept count of the Terminate this time.

Two.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

She grabbed another two vertices from what she dropped off. There were no Shadows in the background from this angle. She targeted the archangel again.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Arriving several feet below the archangel, she saw the perfect Shadow at an upward angle.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

She grabbed two vertices yet again, making a turn.

Three.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

This one passed straight through the archangel’s chest. Darya had her arms stretched to make it as wide as possible. It was stretched enough to decapitate the archangel at least partially.

Half.

Darya would’ve used the second Terminate to run away, but she hadn’t dealt enough damage to this enemy who could regenerate.

She grabbed a new stick and targeted the archangel again.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wiframe]

She was going to be hopping inside the collider tangle she just made. It was necessary to know where they were if she was to avoid getting grazed or wounded by them during slower travel speeds.

[Vainfall: Frame Selected Entity]

Right as the Frame command brought her to her destination, she leaned forward. She could see the collider wireframe clearly from her. This angle was safe.

[Skill: Smooth Slither]

-30 SP • 30s Cooldown

[view more]

The second Terminate activated during travel.

She slammed into the archangel's feet first. Prediction dots flew from the impact as her feet sank in. She grabbed one of the wings and swung around, making sure she did it slowly enough to not have her hands phase through. Smooth Slither took her all the way as she made it over the shoulder and landed on the archangel’s back.

She watched a splash of prediction dots bursting from her right lower leg.

One. Also, looks like I hit something.

[Vainfall: Edit Collider Wireframe]

One edge of a collider had sunk about an inch into her flesh. She was lucky yet again. That could’ve amputated her if she slid any further. She put her feet firmly on the collider surface.

She grabbed the stick firmly in her hand and grabbed a vertex from the pointed end and stretched it far enough to make a sword. Dropping the vertex, she grabbed another one at the pointed end and pulled it away to make a triangle. That was about all she needed as a sword at the moment.

Two.

Swinging it in a circle, she hacked the joints where wings connected to the back of the archangel. Prediction dots splashed in every direction as she gored everything with a series of swings, imagining her sword skills on par with Fominel.

Three.

Only two of the wings would break at the stem. It wasn’t enough. She needed more time she couldn’t have.

She sunk the triangle into the archangel and rolled it along the axis with both hands. Two more bones cracked in prediction dots form. She grabbed the handle of the sword as the last half-second neared.

With two swings, she cut across the archangel’s arms, the parts that it would shortly use to pierce her with that troublesome spell. She left the sword lodged in the right shoulder.

Half.

A mess of prediction dots splashed in every direction as the monochrome world faded a little. She watched the archangel’s irises move as fast as before. She was already looking at her.

Darya felt a sharp jab of pain from the wound on her side as those irises burned with white mana. The archangel was doing something with its eyes. It had some way to influence minds, which would explain what just happened and the fact that Darya never felt pain during that attack.

Darya glared back at those glowing eyes. The monochrome world vanished. The first collider line cut through its stomach, splattering blood all over Darya. The second collider line cut diagonally across its chest and collarbone, severing the spine. The archangel twisted in a bid to free itself, but the wings no longer did what she wanted. Shattered bones vibrated wildly inside the gored back, desperate to have any control.

Showering in the massive spray of blood, Darya bent down and touched the gored flesh where all the shattered bones were.

[Spell: Pillars of Erisoth]

-6.6 MP/s • Circle• 124s Duration

[view more]

Mana chains came from eight directions as the pillars materialized mid-air. She had no intention of stopping her rampage. She had just bought ten seconds or more where she was free to recover Terminate and do all the damage she wanted.

“Oh, you’re so fucked this time,” Darya muttered, watching the Archangel twist even harder, damaging herself even more. Darya grabbed the triangle sword with a wet hand.

The flat collider tangle skewering the Archangel was hundreds of feet across. It had enough surface area to slow their fall with air resistance. As this whole contraption started tumbling, Darya drove the triangle sword into the archangel’s torso. The invisible surface she was standing on tilted dangerously as Pillars of Erisoth froze everything in the middle of eight pillars.

Didn’t know if that was going to affect a collider that big.

She knew Pillars of Erisoth in the VRMMO was supposed to freeze anything inside the octagon. It seemed that in this very screwed-up scenario that she created, the spell was counting the colliders as part of the target character collider.

This wasn’t exactly what she envisioned. She thought the collider would fall off while the spell froze the archangel.

It didn’t matter now. The archangel’s blood had already made the invisible shapes around it visible. Darya drove the blood-soaked triangle sword into her neck from behind and started hacking.

She put all her weight on it, moving it back and forth like a saw. The archangel watched her with her glowing eyes. Darya’s wound burned, sending thunderbolts inside her body.

It only pissed her off further. She grabbed the archangel by the hair, pulling back while cutting the rest of the way. Her sword finally connected with the diagonal slash of the tangled collider that failed to decapitate the archangel.

Screaming in pain, she ripped the head off. It came out with a spine segment. She left the sword where it was, dragging the head onto a collider. It was slippery with blood now. She flipped the damned thing around.

The white irises glowed like stars. Darya felt as if she was being run through with a sword. Clenching her teeth and fists, she started punching the cursed tar-black face with all her strength. She crushed the eyes with her fists, driving her fingers into the eye sockets.

The pain lifted as soon as those glowing eyes vanished. The archangel opened its mouth. Mana flashed along its spine and glowed at the back of its throat. Darya didn’t waste any time. Roaring in anger, she drove three fingers in, pushing with all her strength. The white flash flickered out around her hand as she drove through the fleshy membrane.

It was disgusting, but she was far beyond being disgusted now. This was life or death. Curling her three fingers, she clenched her hand into a fist, shoving it deeper. The archangel’s jaw popped.

The gored eye sockets were already brimming with mana. She used her other hand and shoved all her fingers into the two sockets, pinching the face around the nose.

“Die!”

It wasn’t easy to kill. She felt the regenerating flesh squirm on both hands. She had no idea how an archangel severed in two would regenerate, but it was happening on the half she was trying to snuff out.

The brain.

She had to get rid of the brain behind all of this. Driving her knee into the gored mess, she pushed with all her strength, driving her hands further in. With that focus driving all her energy, Mana poured out of Darya’s hands like transparent fumes.

“Die, you stupid fuckin—”

→ [Strum?]

Darya frowned. Letters flashing in her eyes were the last thing she expected.

→ [Look how far you’ve fallen from the Light, Reverend Mother.]

The archangel’s mouth curled at the corners. Was that a smile?

For a split second, rage cleared from Darya’s mind. She noticed something she should’ve noticed a while ago.

Blood.

Actual red blood drenching everything around her.

What the fuck? Shadows don’t have red—

White sparks erupted from the archangel’s blood-drenched spine.