The massive glitch creature did not give her any time to even attempt to flee. It rushed towards her on its oddly bent legs, closing the distance faster than she could have anticipated as it emitted a low droning hum. She knew that this… thing would be able to kill her, but not easily. If there was to be a fight between her and that entity, it would drag on for quite a while and it was more likely than not that her centuries of sloth would prevent her from being able to fight effectively.

Even if she hadn’t been lazing around for so long, she could tell that, whatever this being was, it was strong enough to potentially kill her. Even if she couldn’t read the thing’s level or general status, she knew from pure gut feeling that the being that was closing in was, at least by a few tens of levels, out of her weight class. This thing was too strong for her to hope to deal with, and thus the only viable option was to run as far away as she could.

However, as she looked prepared to flee, she noticed that there was no way that she would be able to outpace the semi-translucent creature. The thing was too fast, and even if she turned and ran, the speed at which she could run would be only barely overshadowed by the foe before her. If this was to be a contest of endurance, then she had a sneaking suspicion that whatever she was seeing had no limits on such a thing.

It didn’t obey the natural laws of existence, and therefore the idea that it even had to deal with things such as exhaustion or the need for sustenance were suspect at best. With two of the three Fs of conflict being out of the question, she was left with only the option to fight. If she fled, she would be caught, if she froze, she would be caught. Therefore, she needed to fight, and as she fought, she would have to hope beyond hope that she could somehow strike a decisive, mortal blow before she took one herself.

But, if there was one thing that stoked her desire to fight now that the other options were rendered moot, it was that this entity had crushed her hopes of receiving a Name. Things were going so well, and then this... whatever the hell this thing happened to be ended up spoiling everything. Yes, she would use this indignity as a source of fuel, and with that, she would (hopefully) fight better and harder.

So, as the glitchy kaiju-sized anomaly closed in, she decided to show the world what she was currently capable of. Using her mind, she ripped entire streets worth of rubble from the ruined and collapsed city and threw them as fast as she could towards the incoming entity. The masses of masonry and debris impacted the thing, and a noise not too dissimilar to the sound of metal sheering across metal emanated from the glitch-creature. The impact slowed the thing down ever so slightly and only for a few moments, but the entity resumed its former pace soon after.

With the act of throwing rocks proving to essentially be pointless, she launched a mass of webbing laced with the most potent toxins she could manifest. However, just like before, the metallic shriek that came from the creature’s body as it contacted the substance was followed by a minor reduction in speed for only the most insignificant period of time. The ground before the two of them was covered in these webs, but each step the creature took erased entire sections of the webbing.

Backing up as fast as she could, she ripped a section of the ground around her from its terrestrial moorings and hurled it at the entity, despite knowing full well that it made little, if any, difference. The ear-piercing metallic sounds that came from the impacted creature were unintelligible, but that didn’t matter in the end. All that mattered was that she was farther away and the bizarre being had slowed down ever so slightly for a few moments.

The damage the entity was apparently sustaining was… non-existent. Each bit of thrown rock or webbing seemingly made little difference as the creature just kept moving towards her, not even acknowledging the things that she was trying to do to it. And, to make matters worse, she was beginning to get somewhat tired…

…

As Gareth slammed him through another building, Vaile came to a startling realization.

“I think I’ve been smashed through this same wall in the exact same spot about five times now…”

Of course, due to the hell that was what seemed to be a holdover from the MMO’s out-of-place QTE bullshit, he couldn’t actually speak those words and instead had to say them inside of his head. As he was smacked around a bit more, he was forced to wait for the cycle to repeat itself, all the while watching out of the corner of his eye as the nameless spider threw buildings, hills, and even a few city blocks at the glitchy kaiju-thing to seemingly no effect.

“Yep,” Vaile said to himself inside his head as he was smashed through the same building that he had been just a few tens of seconds prior, somehow creating a hole in the exact same place that he had been pushed through at least five times before this one. He wasn’t sure whether the building he was being sent through was simply being replaced or whether there were some cartoonishly fast repairmen working behind the scenes, but in the end, it didn’t matter. He was getting pretty sick of being treated like this regardless.

He also was a bit worried that he could be stuck in this endless loop forever, to be forcibly shoved through the same ten buildings, thrown across the same three streets, and punched in the same seventeen spots until the universe ended. He was about to just give up on trying to break free of the limitations of this dumb-as-dirt inclusion to the MMO that had somehow survived the transition into whatever rules of reality governed this new world, but then something happened that broke the loop.

Gareth was charging at him, the loop having reached the roughly midway point, and he was about to land a foot directly into Vaile’s chest, but then the collateral damage caused by the nameless spider’s attempts to fight the glitch-creature finally caused some very welcome change. Before the maddened High Confessor could deliver a kick to him, a piece of masonry that had broken off from the mass that had been yeeted at the glitch-thing flew by, impacting Gareth’s extended leg as he was flying towards Vaile and somehow forcibly ending the hellish QTE loop.

This was all that Vaile needed to finally fight back, and given that he was at a much, much higher level and had much, much better stats than Gareth did, it only took a single attack to take down the frothing mad High Confessor. While the hard part was making sure that he didn’t simply kill him, the High Confessor ended up being the one who took care of that problem by himself. When Gareth rushed towards Vaile, all Vaile did to deliver a knockout blow was move forward a bit at a higher speed, move slightly to the side, outstretch one of his arms and let the insane man clothesline himself.

As Gareth surrendered to unconsciousness after skidding to a stop over the cobblestones that made up the road that he and Vaile were fighting on, Vaile made sure to try and use a few potions of varying tiers to (hopefully) end this insanity. With Gareth down for the count (at least for now), Vaile turned his sights to the kaiju battle happening a few miles away. As much as he hated to admit it, it looked like he would need to intervene to let the nameless giant spider have any hope of winning this battle.

And, even if he couldn’t do much himself, he did have one card to play that could possibly swing the odds in the spider’s favor, or at least make the battle more even.