Hell's Glitch (initial draft)

14 The Sinner vs The Immortal

Sam hurriedly lifted his shield in front of his face and was pushed back a little from the force of the projectile as it collided with his shield. It was a wooden arrow, the third one that Sam had blocked in this fight. Sam had a hard time getting into the range of the tester he was chasing who seemed to have built a character even faster than Sam's own. The tester used a Hunter and went by the handle DangerStompz and Sam knew him as a quiet guy named Steven in real life. Steven was cool because he told Sam the dirtiest jokes he'd ever heard in his life. It was so funny because no one else believed that Steven told jokes like that. The other testers always assumed him to a nice and quiet guy because he mostly kept to himself. Besides telling dirty jokes, Steven also played dirty no matter what the game. He'd exploit any advantage in order to ensure his victory, even glitches.

Steven was also really smart and observant. Every time Sam blocked one of Steven's arrows with his shield, Sam noticed that Steven's attacks had locked him in his blocking animation which meant that he was forced to keep his shield up a whole half second longer than he wanted to. Steven took advantage of this to create more distance. Sam yelled obscenities, knowing that Steven couldn't hear him. When he was done with that, he puzzled out a strategy to get in close to his friend turned opponent.

"Alright! Here we go! YOLO dash!"

Sam ran forward, laughing at his outdated slang from the twenty-tens while using the trees as cover whenever he saw that Steven was about to fire an arrow. The strategy worked for a while until Steven altered the timing of his shots. He waited for Sam to emerge from behind cover then fired shots at various speeds and trajectories.

One of the wooden arrows pierced Sam's shoulder and caused him to reactively reel backwards from the force of the blow. Surprisingly, the wound didn't produce any blood, but that was most likely because he was in his Spirit Walker form thanks to using his Sinner's Scriber to invade. The arrow had stunned Sam enough to leave him open to another of Steven's shots. The arrow almost connected, but Sam rolled forwards, past it, just in time.

With a properly timed dodge roll, Sam found that he could get certain attacks to pass right through him, even when it looked like they connected. Steven stood up on a slight incline deeper in the forest and so Sam had to run upwards to catch him. He gained a lot of ground thanks to his dodging and was now right in Steven's face. Steven ran around to Sam's right and tried to circle around him, maybe searching for a Backstab. Sam quickly guessed that Steven was actually trying to bait out one of Sam's attacks, possibly to Parry it or maybe he was just trying to buy some time.

"That's it!" Sam yelled aloud, but he knew his friend couldn't hear him thanks to the way the game was designed. He also knew that his earlier guess was wrong. Steven was actually stalling so that he could equip a melee weapon. Equipping more than one weapon would surely slow him down tremendously.

Sam stopped and charged up his Soul Burning Technique. Steven thought he saw some sort of opening and attempted to close the distance between himself and Sam. Sam stopped charging his attack and unleashed it on Steven. He was able to pivot towards Steven and launch into a vicious Sword Uppercut.

He swept his fiery blade upwards, cutting Steven's avatar from hip to shoulder. Steven was forced backwards and stunned for over a second. Sam was able to follow up with something new that he totally did by accident. As a way to prolong his attack while waiting for Steven to rise, Sam charged a heavy thrust by going deeper into his stance and tensing his muscles, just like real life.

Once the charged strike landed, it did nearly twice the damage of a normal heavy attack and caused Steven's Hunter to recoil horribly. It was all that Sam needed to walk up to Steven aka DangerStompz's and Backstab him. Sam stopped and, with outstretched arms, did an "are you not entertained" pose from a certain classic movie, over Steven's fading corpse.