Chapter 100: Frame-Linking
If she stepped into that room, a pendulum would cut her in half before she made it ten feet.
"You can’t dodge this," Levi said, turning to face her.
"Correct," Isolde replied. "My physical pathing parameters are too slow. I will be deleted."
"Not on my watch," Levi grunted.
He walked over to her and didn’t bother asking for permission. He bent his knees, wrapped his left arm securely around her waist, and scooped her up off the bone-dust floor.
Isolde’s character model stiffened. For a fraction of a second, her gray cloak flickered with green static as her internal logic circuits tried to process the sudden physical contact.
"What are you doing?" Isolde asked. Her voice hitched, dropping the flat robotic tone and sounding completely confused.
"I’m carrying you," Levi said, adjusting his grip on his Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse in his right hand. "Hold on tight and don’t wiggle. If you throw off my balance, we both get deleted."
Isolde hesitated. Her Anomaly code screamed that this was an uncontrolled variable, but the human emulation she had been developing took over. She wrapped both of her arms tightly around his neck and buried her face directly into the dark metal of his Obsidian Carapace. She held on like her life depended on it.
"I am secure," she murmured against his chest.
"Alright. Here’s how we beat the developer’s stupid jump puzzle," Levi said, his eyes locking onto the first row of swinging dark matter.
He was going to use a mechanic he had mastered in his past life. It was called Frame-Linking.
In Starfall, when a player used a teleportation skill like [Hollow’s Traverse], the game engine naturally forced a tiny, half-second recovery animation. The system basically locked your boots to the floor to prevent players from spamming movement commands and breaking the server.
But if a player’s base Speed stat was high enough—specifically over 1,500—the system’s input delay couldn’t process fast enough. By inputting a sprint command the exact millisecond the teleport ended, Levi could violently cancel the recovery frame and chain his momentum perfectly.
"Hollow’s Traverse!" Levi barked.
He teleported exactly thirty meters forward, bypassing the first three rows of swinging blades entirely.
The exact millisecond his Gold-tier Hollow’s Treads materialized back on the bone floor, Levi jammed his virtual movement controls forward.
The Frame-Link triggered perfectly.
The game engine hitched, completely skipping his recovery animation. Levi exploded forward at 1,736 Speed. He slid across the polished bone floor, entirely horizontal, passing directly under a massive dark matter blade just as it swept down.
The wind pressure from the pendulum violently tore at his black cloak. The humming noise was so loud it actually made his ears ring inside the helmet.
"Don’t look up!" Levi yelled to Isolde.
He popped back up to his feet and sprinted. The room was an absolute blur of black and white. Blades swung from the ceiling like chaotic metronomes. Levi didn’t have time to stop and calculate the timing. He just reacted.
A pendulum dropped directly in his path.
"Hollow’s Traverse!"
He blinked thirty meters diagonally, reappearing on the far left side of the hall. He immediately hit the ground, sliding sideways under another blade.
It was absolutely exhausting. He was carrying another player, holding a massive Platinum scythe, and forcing the VR engine to process micro-movements at speeds that defied logic. The physical toll in the real world was immediate. His legs burned, and his left arm holding Isolde ached violently.
He checked his mana pool while sprinting. He was down to 3,000 Mana out of his 5,160 pool.
He had to manage his potions while moving. Levi reached down to his quick-belt with his right hand, the same hand holding his scythe. He popped the cork off a Greater Mana Potion using his thumb, brought the glass vial to his mouth, and chugged the blue liquid.
He tossed the empty vial away just as another blade swept toward his face.
"Hollow’s Traverse!"
Blinked thirty meters forward. Frame-Linked into a dead sprint.
He was essentially playing the most lethal, high-speed game of dodgeball ever created. A blade came down from the right; Levi juked left. A blade swung low; Levi vaulted over it, his boots barely clearing the pitch-black energy.
Isolde clung to him. She didn’t say a word. She just kept her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, burying her face into his armor to avoid watching the instant-death hitboxes miss them by millimeters.
One minute passed. Then two.
The mile-long room felt like it was stretching into infinity. The randomized algorithms of the pendulums got significantly more aggressive the deeper they went into the hall. The blades started overlapping, creating massive, unavoidable walls of dark matter.
Levi saw a solid wall of three blades swinging completely in sync right in front of him. There was no gap to run through. There was no room to slide under.
"Hold your breath!" Levi shouted.
He didn’t slow down. He sprinted directly toward the wall of blades.
Right before the dark matter touched his nose, he dumped 50 Mana.
"Hollow’s Traverse!"
He blinked straight through the swinging blades. The timing had to be absolutely flawless. If he had teleported a fraction of a second too early, he would have materialized inside the hitboxes and instantly died.
He reappeared on the other side of the blades and hit the ground rolling.
He burned through another mana potion. His heart hammered in his chest. Four minutes of pure, unbroken adrenaline dragged on.
Finally, through the blurry, chaotic swinging of the dark matter, Levi saw the end of the hall. A massive set of heavy, frost-covered double doors sat at the far wall.
"Almost there!" Levi grunted.
He pushed his Speed to the absolute limit. He dashed past the final two pendulums, completely clearing the danger zone, and violently skidded to a halt right in front of the exit doors.
He dropped to one knee, letting his Platinum scythe clatter onto the floor.
He carefully let go of Isolde. She stepped back, her boots hitting the safe stone floor.
Levi leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees as he sucked in massive, greedy breaths of digital air. His real-world shirt was completely soaked in sweat. His left arm was numb.
Isolde stood over him. She slowly lowered her arms from where they had been wrapped around his neck. She looked back at the mile-long room filled with randomized, instant-death blades.
"Your evasion parameters exceeded all logical calculations," Isolde said softly. She looked down at him. "Thank you."
Levi waved a tired hand. "Don’t mention it. But if the developers put another jump puzzle in this dungeon, I’m burning the server down."
He pulled a basic stamina potion from his belt, downed it to clear the worst of the virtual fatigue, and picked up his scythe.
He looked at the heavy, frost-covered exit doors. They had cleared the labyrinth.
"Let’s get out of here," Levi said.
**
Levi pushed both hands against the heavy, frost-covered exit doors. The metal groaned in protest before violently swinging outward.
A blast of freezing, howling wind hit him instantly.
They stepped out of the Ashen Labyrinth and onto a jagged, narrow cliffside. The sky above them was an endless expanse of swirling, violent black clouds. But Levi wasn’t looking at the sky. He was looking across the massive, bottomless chasm directly in front of them.
Sitting on an isolated crag of black rock, completely surrounded by the void, was the Midnight Spire.
It was a monolithic tower forged entirely out of polished obsidian. It didn’t look like a castle. It looked like a massive, aggressive needle piercing straight into the heavens. The dark energy radiating off the tower was so thick it practically distorted the game’s rendering engine.
Connecting the cliffside to the Spire was a single, terrifyingly narrow bridge made of fused vertebrae and dark iron.
"There it is," Levi muttered, the cold wind whipping at his black Platinum-tier mantle.
"The Night King resides at the apex," Isolde stated, stepping up beside him. Her gray cloak fluttered wildly in the storm. "My core functionality is returning to optimal levels. I am fully prepared to engage."
"Good," Levi smirked. "Because we have a bouncer to deal with first."
Guarding the very center of the narrow iron bridge was a massive, terrifying silhouette. As they stepped onto the bridge, the creature turned around.
It was a giant, three-headed dog completely wreathed in dark-purple void flames. It was easily the size of a dump truck, with heavy, iron-spiked collars wrapped around all three of its massive necks. Saliva that looked like liquid acid dripped from its jaws, melting the iron grates beneath its paws.
Levi pulled out an Inspect scroll and crushed it.
[The Cerberus of the Void]
[Level: 60 | Mini-Boss]
[HP: 600,000 | ATK: 5,500 | DEF: 2,500]
"Six hundred thousand health," Levi said, resting his Platinum Scythe of the Eclipse against his shoulder. "And five thousand, five hundred attack. The numbers just keep getting stupider."