[User: Erin Heley]
[Race: Halfling]
[Level 2]
[165/200 EXP]
[HP 20/20]
[Strength: 16]
[Agility: 16]
[Stamina: 15]
While Quinn was out with his roommates, Erin was in the gaming pods playing Power Fighters again. She still felt so weak despite all of her current efforts so far to work with the system. While Layla was gathering blood, Erin would gain EXP here, even if it wasn't at its full EXP cost.
Selecting a random level on the fight selection, a match was beginning. An arena formed in front of her, a boy with short and messy dark red hair wearing pajamas was flexing his hands.
The announcement began counting down
"3…2…1…FIGHT!"
The boy opposite her surrounded his body with several fully grown trees. After a second, his body bursted out of the ring of trees covered in wooden armor. Erin prepared herself and ran at him with her sword.
She slashed with the sword, getting it stuck in the wooden armor. The boy grew wood around his fists and punched her in the face.
[-2 HP]
[HP 18/20]
With her free hand, she swung her arm to create a blood swipe. The red aura dug into where her sword was at, freeing it.
The wood user was confused as he had never seen this ability before, but in that moment of confusion, Erin ran around him, throwing blood swipe after blood swipe.
The wood armor broke apart. The wood user looked shocked, but then created a tree from the ground to form a club.
Erin slashed into the club with her sword, wood splintering everywhere. The wood user ripped his club out of her sword and punched her again. Erin, however, caught his fist and using her strength, slammed him into the ground.
In that moment, she held her sword up high, and stabbed into his backside
[Opponent has been defeated]
[You have received 45 EXP]
[Level 3]
[10/400 EXP]
[1 attribute point awarded]
[New skill "Blood Bank" unlocked]
Erin knew that once the battle was over, it wasn't the same as when she fought against Nill or the gang Mono had. It was just too easy in the game. There was no sunlight to worry about, it didn't feel like she had just been in a fight, and she could use a skill she hadn't even used once in real life for free.
Exiting the fight and back into the game lobby, Erin expected some sort of message to appear about evolving, but it didn't happen. She was secretly grateful that she wouldn't need to undergo an evolution every time she leveled up. However, a different kind of message showed up which related to a skill.
[Skill: Blood Bank Lv.1]
[The skill "Blood Bank" will allow you to store up to 100 milliliters of blood in your reserve. The Blood Bank will automatically be used to heal the user if HP drops below 5. Every 11 milliliters of blood will be used to restore 5 HP of the user. User may also use the Blood Bank to consume blood at any time for their own personal pleasure.]
She thought the ability was rather useful, even if it was something she could've used for herself back at the assembly. It wasn't an offensive ability like she had wanted, but if for whatever reason that she found herself not wanting to talk to Layla or Quinn for blood, then she could just tap into her reserves.
"Hmm… at least this would be useful," Erin said before looking at her single stat point.
She could put it into any one of her stats, but it was just a single one. The improvement would be miniscule at most. Either way, she put it into agility as it was better than nothing.
[Agility: 18]
Starting up another quick match, Erin got her sword ready and prepared herself.
The arena formed, and there was a new opponent wearing a long red cape with 2 daggers. Apparently, someone was sitting in the stands watching the fight, but she didn't pay attention to him.
"3…2…1…GO!"
Immediately, the caped man took out his daggers and swung them at her, leaving fast moving wind blades in the air. The attack was similar to the blood swipe, only it was faster.
Erin jumped to the side, and swung out her own blood swipe as she ran towards him. She needed to close the distance.
"A red color? What ability is that?"
Seeing Erin run towards him, he swung more wind swipes at her, but she slashed at them with her sword.
With her speed, Erin went for a stab, using most of her strength, but the caped man turned around and covered his body with the cape. The sword left only a very small scratch, barely perceptible to the naked eye.
While Erin was recoiling, the caped man swung his daggers in retaliation, creating an X shaped mark on her body.
[-6 HP]
[HP 18/25]
Erin ducked down, and sliced at his legs with her sword, along with a blood swipe with her free hand, causing him to step back.
The caped man spun his dagger in his hand, and stabbed onto Erin's back. Using his wind ability, the dagger dug deeper.
[-3 HP]
[HP 15/25]
He began to prepare his other dagger, but then Erin shot upward, sending out a blood swipe as she did. The caped man was unable to block in time, and she stabbed his chest, the blade sticking out on the other side.
The caped man, with his last dagger, tried to stab into Erin again, but she grabbed his weapon and headbutted him.
He dropped his weapon, leaving Erin free to spam him with blood swipe after blood swipe, dealing massive damage.
He wasn't done yet as he covered himself with the cape, meaning Erin couldn't hurt him anymore.
She grabbed his cape, and yanked him towards her knee, kicking him in the process.
Seeing as he couldn't see, he grabbed Erin's sword from his chest, yanking it out, and revealing himself. However, that turned out to be a critical mistake as Erin threw out 2 final blood swipes, finishing him off.
[40+ EXP gained]
[50/400 EXP]
The man sitting in the stands was in awe. Both he and his friend were on a win streak taking turns beating opponents, and all of a sudden this beauty managed to defeat his friend. Not only that, but she displayed some sort of ability that he hadn't recognized before.
His heart thumped, and he couldn't stop himself from blurting out, "Please fight me!"
—
In that fight against the wood ability user, the boy was actually recording his fights. It was initially just to rewatch his own battles to try to improve, but had since uploaded his videos onto poutube. He wasn't exactly a very popular person online, only getting 200 views at most, but the recording of a strange ability never before seen in Power Fighters had him stumped.
When examining the ability list on Power Fighters, there was nothing listed about a red line ability. Unsure of himself, he uploaded the video on the Power Fighter forums asking if there was a chance that someone was hacking.
"Nah, surely there was just an update and that's why you haven't seen this ability before."
"Are you sure? I'm looking at the ability list right now, and I haven't seen anything. Maybe it's a wind slash with a red cosmetic?"
"Are you fucking stupid? Ability cosmetics don't work like that."
"I thought cosmetics were banned in Power Fighters?"
"Not banned, more like completely removed. The creator got rid of them a few months ago."
"I hate that they removed mods, I had a really cool flower mod installed."
"My favorite flower is the sunflower."
"WHO TF ASKED?!"
"Anyone in this thread smoke weed?"
"We're getting off topic! This looks like a hack, and if someone hacked the game, then that's obviously really bad!"
"Yeah, someone @ the creator because this wouldn't be fair."
"I think I faced her a while back ago. I was surprised because I checked her profile after fighting, and it said she had an ice ability."
"Ah so it was a hack! Mods, ban her."
"I don't think that's how it works. We're on a fan forum right now."
So far, it was just this one singular thread that had this whole conversation going, but it was enough to garner the attention of a particular person.
—
Somewhere, in a messy room, dimly lit by whirring machines, was a hunched boy with green hair. He was lurking in the forums page of a game he worked on, Power Fighters, to search for bugs while he attended school. This particular boy was named Logan Green, and as the head coder of the game, he noticed the strange messages about some sort of red line ability. He didn't need to look up his own ability list because he had it memorized, and he knew it shouldn't have been an available one.
Initially, Logan was skeptical of the post since it wouldn't be the first time that someone would've tried to cause some sort of urban legend in the game. Either that, or it was some sort of cosmetic in the game that led to people arguing over 'visual clarity' leading to him banning cosmetics altogether.
This seemed to be an especially strange case where despite being uploaded when ability cosmetics are outright banned, multiple people were claiming they had seen someone use a red line ability.
Looking into the video that was uploaded, he saw a wood user fight against someone wearing a black soldier training suit with rose gold accents and black hair. He confirmed that it wasn't faked, and he looked into the two user IDs of that fight. Then, he looked into the IceQueen's profile and saw that not only was she online, but also had an ice ability selected.
"It can't be, did someone manage to hack my game?"
When checking the logs of the fight, Logan couldn't see anything malicious, or from a third party in the code. He let out a sigh of relief knowing there wasn't a hacker. Still, it was a very peculiar conundrum that he had to look into.
Due to the fact that user ID data was scrambled as it was company protocol to not keep records of players, Logan struggled to figure out who the mysterious player was. However, he realized that with her still being online, there was perhaps something he could do…