[LOCATION: GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL - MAIN CONCOURSE] [TIME: 04:08 AM (Day 1 of the Server Wars)]
Lord Arthur, Level 42 Duelist Commander, did not appreciate being threatened with a ceiling collapse.
He lowered his rapier. The glowing yellow monocle over his eye whirred, focusing directly on me.
"You rely entirely on environmental tricks," Arthur sneered, stepping away from the solid marble where half his army had just plummeted into the subway. "But environmental edits require you to type. You are a caster. And the golden rule of PvP..."
Arthur vanished.
He didn't use stealth. He just moved faster than the game's standard framerate could render.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: SONIC LUNGE]
"...is always silence the caster!" Arthur's voice echoed directly behind me.
I didn't even have time to flinch.
CLANG.
A shockwave ripped through the terminal. I fell backward, my glasses sliding down my nose.
Abhinav Bhardwaj was standing over me, his dark longsword locked in a brutal parry with Arthur's rapier. The Spellblade had used his encrypted mana tunnel to boost his own agility, intercepting the Level 42 Duelist just inches from my neck.
"Oh?" Arthur raised an eyebrow, his rapier sparking against Abhinav's blade. "A Level 26 Spellblade blocking a Tier-Four attack? Your gear isn't registered in the database. Where did you get that sword?"
"I built it in a cave," Abhinav grunted, his boots sliding back slightly against the marble from the sheer force of Arthur's stats. "With a box of scraps."
Abhinav pushed back, triggering his [Spellblade's Trance]. His sword erupted with blazing sapphire light. He launched into a furious flurry of strikes, pushing Arthur away from me.
"Get back, Jax!" Miller yelled, stepping up to the remaining Syndicate Vanguard soldiers. The twenty-five heavily armored knights roared and charged.
"Hold them off!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet and hiding behind an overturned ticket kiosk.
The terminal erupted into a warzone.
Miller slammed his [Hardware-Encrypted Bulwark] into the Vanguard line, absorbing their halberd strikes and discharging kinetic shockwaves that threw the knights like bowling pins.
Dave popped up from behind a trash can. THWUMP. THWUMP. The heavy pneumatic nail gun drove Mach 2 iron spikes through the Vanguard's plate armor. Because the spikes were air-gapped objects, the knights' magical defense buffs didn't register the incoming damage until it was too late.
Sarah floated above the chaos, executing pre-compiled spell files from her USB drive. "Running Chain_Lightning.exe!" she yelled, sending a jagged bolt of electricity that arced through five knights at once.
But my eyes were on the duel in the center of the room.
Abhinav was fighting like a demon, but the level gap was just too wide. Arthur's agility was monstrous. The Duelist dodged Abhinav's sweeping strikes with millimeter precision, moving like a dancer.
SWISH. SLICE.
Arthur's rapier darted past Abhinav's guard, drawing a line of red code across his shoulder.
[-1,200 HP]
"You have spirit, boy," Arthur laughed, side-stepping another sapphire slash. "But my Agility stat is 250. My Evasion is maxed. You literally cannot hit me."
Arthur was right. The System's auto-dodge mechanics were assisting his movements. Even if Abhinav swung perfectly, the game's engine would subtly shift Arthur's hitbox out of the way.
"Jax!" Vane materialized next to me in the kiosk, throwing a dagger that Arthur easily swatted out of the air. "We can't touch him! Do your Admin thing!"
"I'm working on it!" I shouted, staring at my Dev Box screen.
I couldn't lower Arthur's stats. The Red Team update from Admin Prime had locked me out of directly editing enemy character files.
But I wasn't just a hacker. I was a game developer. And if a player's evasion was too high, you didn't need to change their stats. You just needed to change their collision geometry.
Every entity in a video game has a 'Hitbox'—an invisible 3D shape surrounding the character model that tells the game engine when an attack connects. Usually, it's a tight cylinder around the body.
> [SELECT_TARGET: ENTITY_LORD_ARTHUR] > [ACCESS: RENDER_MESH_PROPERTIES]
I couldn't change his HP or his Agility. But changing how the game rendered his physical space in the environment? That was well within my Master Key privileges.
> [MODIFY_ATTRIBUTE: HITBOX_RADIUS] > [SET_VALUE: 4.0 METERS]
I slammed the enter key.
In the center of the room, Arthur flourished his rapier. "Time to end this," he declared, lunging at Abhinav's chest.
"Dave!" I screamed over the din of battle. "Shoot the Duelist! Aim ten feet to his left!"
Dave, currently hiding behind a pillar, didn't question it. He swung his heavy pneumatic nail gun, aimed at completely empty air about ten feet away from Lord Arthur, and pulled the trigger.
THWUMP.
The iron spike sailed through the empty space.
It never touched Arthur's character model. But the moment the spike crossed the threshold of the invisible, massive, four-meter-wide Hitbox I had just assigned to him...
SHUNK.
A fountain of red pixels erupted from Arthur's chest.
[CRITICAL HIT! - 4,500 HP]
Arthur shrieked, stumbling backward. He looked down at his pristine mythril armor. There was no hole. The spike had clearly flown past him. Yet, his health bar was flashing yellow.
"What?!" Arthur gasped, looking around wildly. "Invisible magic?!"
Abhinav didn't miss a beat. He didn't know what I did, but he saw the opportunity. The Spellblade swung his sword in a wide arc, completely missing Arthur physically.
But the blade passed through the giant Hitbox.
SLASH.
[-3,200 HP]
Arthur was thrown to the ground, his monocle flying off his face.
"My Evasion!" Arthur screamed, scrambling backward. "It's not triggering! The system says you're hitting me!"
"You're Level 42," I walked out from behind the kiosk, holding my Dev Box. "But to the game engine, Arthur, you are currently the size of a school bus. You literally can't dodge."
"Hit the broad side of a barn!" Dave cackled, firing three more spikes into the empty air around Arthur. Every single one registered as a direct, unmitigated hit.
Arthur's health plummeted into the red.
"Syndicate!" Arthur shrieked, pulling a glowing blue crystal from his belt. "Tactical retreat! Fall back to the gate!"
He crushed the crystal. A localized teleportation bubble wrapped around him and the few surviving Vanguard knights.
"He's logging out of the Sector!" Vane yelled, throwing a dagger, but the teleportation bubble absorbed it.
With a flash of blue light, Lord Arthur and his men vanished, fleeing back through the red portal to London.
The terminal went quiet, save for the groans of the knights still trapped in the subway tunnels beneath our feet.
"We won," Dave panted, dropping his heavy gun to the floor. "We actually beat a Level 40!"
"We beat an advance scouting party," Abhinav corrected, leaning on his sword. He looked at the giant swirling portals.
I looked up. My stomach plummeted.
Gate 1 (London) was still open. But now, Gate 2 was turning a vibrant, glowing purple. Gate 3 was turning dark green.
[GATE 2: SECTOR 3 (TOKYO) - CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.] [GATE 3: SECTOR 4 (MOSCOW) - CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.] [GATE 4: SECTOR 6 (SEOUL) - SYNCHRONIZING...]
The deafening hum of heavy machinery and the roar of monstrous mounts echoed from the newly opened portals.
"Uh, Jax," Miller took a step back, raising his shield as the shadows of a hundred new invaders began to stretch across the marble floor. "I don't think we can hit-box hack all of them."
"We can't," I said, putting my Dev Box away and pulling out the golden [Master Key]. "We need to lock the doors. Permanently."