18- *Insert Boss Music*

(A/N: Some good old action for you guys, just to spice thing up a bit, you know? Also to show how actual virtual fights would look like.)

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"Believing is half the victory. So watch me prove you wrong by virtue of being the fool you accuse me to be." Cal shrugged and grinned at her one last time before putting back on his helmet, and sealing all the opening in his armor as he sensed some wannabe sneaky tendril creep from above him.

His eyes seemed to light up like golden-green stars behind his visor as he manifested his will for the fight, aided by his digital heart.

"What are you doing, dear? There's no need us to fight. You only need to accept our inevitable fate of an eternity together and all will end well." Monika lifted one eyebrow and smiled wrily. She seemed wary and somewhat surprised by — he had no other way to put it — his will.

"No thanks, I'm not anyone's puppet, even fate's. And when I'll be done with you, you'll be the same. Don't worry, it's good thing." He answered with a wicked smile in his voice and brought one of his hand up and his gauntleted fingers together, but before doing anything he paused and let out a playful warning. "Oh, and Monika? You'll have to forgive me, I'll not be playing fair. You said it, after all, I'm against the world." He chuckled and clicked his fingers, the sound echoing unnaturaly in the black and green void as the world around the two of them collapsed at once into darkness.

Light exploded as they now found facing one another other in a grassy plain, an imposing army of knights behind each other, the one behind him sporting the banners of a red welsh dragon and the one behind Monika having a black one.

The girl in question breathed in deeply as her eyes darted around. "W-what is this?"

He shrugged. "A fictional battlefield, or maybe an historical one? Who knows at this point?"

Neither of them had the time to say anything else as the leading figure of both camp slowly gallopped forward, one somewhat diminutive figure with a sleek white plate armor and a magnificient and holy sword at her waist, and the other a massive and intimidating one in black armor and equally black sword.

Both unsheating their sword as their pace quickened, the army behind them beginning to trot behind their leader as the world seemed to fall silent just before utter pandemonium fell as like a crack of thunder, two booming voice shook the world with a simple word:

"CHARGE!"

The cries of a thousand men and horses galloping colided into making a pseudo apocalypse as Cal dissappeared into the sweeping mass of warriors, even his black and green armor vanishing to copy the one of his neighbors.

Monika, on her side, looked bewildered as the black army parted around her to collide with the opposite side, making it impossible to see anything else but a mass of black and white blur everywhere around.

She stood unmoving as she told herself that she simply had to keep vigilant for any white knight coming for her, she also had frankly no idea how to proceed, overwhelmed by the situation around her, one that seemed perfectly real.

It was her first mistake, and the first trap Cal had concocted for her.

Focused on the front as she was, she barely saw a black blur of motion on the edge of her vision before something passed over her head and severed all the weaker thread that she herself couldn't see but only felt.

Crying out in surprise and afterward pain, she instinctively teleported elsewhere as she received a clear compulsion from the script, one which filled her with dread due to a promise of further pain that came with it.

Do not let it happen again.

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Cal paused as he felt Monika bump into the limit of his World Marble(?), a few dozen metters to the left, while teleporting.

He could feel the script battering at the absolute heresy that was a space isolated from its direct influence that he created. It wouldn't last long, but it would still stand strong for a few minutes if the script only tried that much. If it used all of its ressource, then it'd probably last a few seconds at best. But he had the impression that it couldn't just do that.

In any case, he had to hurry.

From his place in the middle of the trusnami of battles and duel, he perceived the remaining five tendrils still connecting to Monika, ones he couldn't just wish to be severed and had to touch 'directly' with intent. The less solid ones he had already cut in one fell swoop in his previous assault due to his successful trap.

She thought he would wear a white armor and comes from in front of her since that was how and where she last saw him. But he was the one to create both army, neither were truly on her side. 

As he saw her feel for the wall of his little bubble with confusion, he couldn't help but smile wrily and feel a bit bad as he sent the two side at her simultaneously and took the place of a randiom soldier among the tide.

She had no idea how this all worked. How there was no rules in this place aside from the one you created and your imagination. And that nothing else truly mattered asides from his special kind of will or proccessing power and authority level.

But she was a clever girl, she'd figured it out eventually. Hopefully after the fight was over.

He deadpanned when the five threads going through his the roof of his bubble flashed with light and she sent the first couple of rows around her flying like broken kites and she began to try to change the rules affecting her virtual body.

Welp, nevermind. She already began to.

Resisting her attemps, he let her have some leeway to not tire himself too much and switched place with one of the closest warrior to her. He diverted the wave of pseudo kinetic force she sent at him to around his side with a flex of his mind and leaped with speed just above what she was subconsciously limiting herself to and tried to slash through all five tendris at once.

It felt like meeting a steel wall, and no matter how much effort he put in, none of the connections gave. Not until he shifted his focus to a single string, which gave with a satisfying snap after a moment.

Falling to the ground behind her, he heard Monika cry out in frustration and some pain as she whirled toward his position and blew out the ground in a huge explosion that davastated the battlefield. Only to miss him, as he had teleported behind her.

With another slash, he severed a second tread.

He managed to cut another as the girl lifted off the ground and blitzed into the highest position she could inside his bubble and crushed the entire plain into a mass the size a grain of sand and he followed her silently all the while, invisible.

She finally seemed to get that she was limiting herself to her normal senses when she teleported in front of him while he was still invisible and opened her mouth.

"Stop."

An amount of force he had never felt before tried to ensnare him in its grip from head to toes, and when it kept slipping because of his will fighting it. It froze the space around him, and spread as thin as he was now, he wasn't able to destroy its influence directly. And to his sincere surprise, it simply followed him as he teleported around. Meaning, he could change position, but not move.

"It hurt, Cal. Why are you doing this?" Seeing that he couldn't evade her anymore, she asked him, pain on her features.

Throwing a look at the two remaining threads, he tried to shrugs and when he realized he couldn't, rolled his eyes instead. "It's neccessary, Monika. And I'm not really the one hurting you, am I?"

She stayed silent before she shook her head. "You really sent me for a loop there. But now, I've never felt so free. This place is extraordinary. Like a canvas just waiting to be painted." The smile that had risen on her face suddenly took a slightly dark turn. "Sadly, I got the impression you don't want to paint it with me, am I wrong?"

"Yes, you're wrong. Just, not as you are right now." He replied, a smile to his voice.

Monika sighed deeply. "I've never thought it would come to this. But let's see what I can do."

With that, she furrowed her brows. And Cal felt a lance of force poke at his armor a few time at different place before it settled on his chest and began to spin like a drill. He could feel it change shape and accelerate more and more as it barely made any progress on piercing his chastit- uhm, bulky privacy ward.

"That's quite the armor you got there. What's it made of?" Monika lifted an eyebrow and asked him casually, as if she was just making idle conversation and she was not actually still trying to find a way to get to his sensitive bits right this instant.

"It's made of the strongest material known to man. Hope and dreams." He answered noncommitally. "Besides, isn't it quite rude to try to get under someone methaphorical clothes like that? Normally, at least one dinner would be in order before engaging in that kind of activity. Plus, if our positions were reversed, it really would be questionable." He pointed out as he felt something akin to impossibly potent acid beginning to rapidly eat away at the integrity of his chest plate, letting her drill slowly but surely makes some headways... Which he immediatly reversed by washing away the invisible substance with invisible water and restoring his armor in a split second.

What? Nobody had said he just had to take it.

Monika smiled slyly at him, her emerald eyes seeming to glint with a dark shine, and seemingly not that much bothered by her lost of progress. "Oh, don't worry. After that, I wouldn't mind-"

In a flash, he used the distraction to collapse the size of his strained reality bubble to barely a few metters wide and created a clone with a small part of his power and consciousness at Monika's side and had it cut another tendril. Immediatly cutting his connection to it afterward, it faded into motes of codes that he was able to reabsorb.

Monika didn't seems very amused by his stunt, looking at him with a blank face that bordered dangerously close to a deadpan like she was.

"I'm not sorry." He couldn't help but shrugs as he shed his physical nature and slipped out of her grasp. In his reality bubble, he made the rules. But it didn't mean he had to adhere to them.

Monika looked at him in silence and shook her head. "Well, I think you've done it now."

Case on point, he couldn't help but wince as the attempts to batter his bubble ominously stopped.

Next instant, he felt it being squeezed. And he could do nothing but watch as his bubble simply popped like, well, a bubble.

Looking toward the sky as the grass plain vanished into oblivion, he wasn't surprised as what met his gaze was a ocean of code beginning to boil in turmoil.

Seemed he had made the bwaby script quite angwy.

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(A/N*2: Comment away on how you found the action scene. And if there's still any confusion as the actual rules of digital fight. Just think of it that way: there's no limit to what effects, attacks, or defenses and even tricks that can be created, they're all artificial construct in a way. The two things that affect those thing are the scales of those construct aka how strong they are, which depend on raw processing power and for Cal part willpower, and how you uses them, aka how creative you are, like how to contourn a certain defense or how to fool your opponent.

For exemple, at the last stretch of the fight. Monika locked away any kind of movement for him specifically, and he contourned it by gathering most of his prowess maintaining the reality bubble back and using those ressources to literally creating a clone out of himself who wasn't under the same restrictions.

Hope that clear potential confusion.)