This time, the faint sound of laughter echoed across the empty space. An illogical occurrence happened under the influence of a similarly illogical power. Seeing this, the man let out a scoff. His lips carved a slight smile as he shook his head helplessly. His gaze returned towards the torn-up space. The tear steadily grew larger with each passing time, as if heralding an impending doom about to be unleashed to this canvas.
Buzz-!
Out of nowhere, a gray cloud emerged. All of them flew towards the direction of the crack, seeping through what was left on the other side. In a blink, the man held an unassuming black sword—a single-edged blade reminiscent of a dao. In its guard lay a faintly-carved character engraved with gold—
Tian (lit. Heaven).
The man simply swung the sword towards the growing tear. It left out phantoms upon phantoms in every living moment, creating an illusion of countless swords being swung all at once. Or a livid dream one might have towards a sword immortal. Their tips pointed towards the other foreign canvas, exerting their full might.
Click-!
The surroundings "buzzed" literally. Akin to a glitch in-game, both the man and the torn-up crack seemingly phased out of existence several times. By the time things returned to normal, the crack's gradual growth was temporarily halted.
The masked man watched everything with revelry, putting THEIR hands up high. Absolute cinema, or so THEY have stated. The man's strike wasn't superfluous, yet it was able to affect this universe and the otherworlds from beyond.
"???"
Three large white question marks appeared atop the masked man's head as THEY froze. They looked at the pitch-black rift surrounded by white tears. THEIR mask conveyed the emotions of being dumbfounded and surprised.
The man looked back and met THEIR gaze with a smile. Then he began spitting out riddles.
"Oh, you. It could be considered a spoiler, but it doesn't matter." He paused dramatically before continuing, "It wasn't just one world, but two."
His eyebrows went up as he sensed another existence prying these secrets open. His golden eyes seem to have spanned through space and time, peering through someone else playing with Aha's whims. His lips parted as he asked:
"What did you see with those silver eyes?"
*****
There was once a girl spurned on by others. She was looked down upon, being denied her right to live a decent life by everyone. Her weakness became her sin… until everything changed one day. She happened upon a game cartridge. It granted her a literal RPG-esque system, allowing her to break through her limits and level up.
In her world where one's level is fixed, only she alone levels up.
She struggled desperately against her weakness, becoming stronger step-by-step until no one could slight her as they did in the past. Then came her 'game' against the Aeon of Elation, Aha, to which she ended up losing. THEIR powers did not prevent THEM from cheating in-game, no matter how petty it was.
A lot of things happened after that. The girl left her home planet and left to explore the vast cosmos. Eventually, she had a fateful encounter with the renowned Destiny's Slave. They showed her the power of her future self as well as how to better control the cartridge's capabilities. That was the time she encountered the "level cap" at level 999. Anything beyond it lay in the realm of gods. Hence she had no choice but to accept their offer.
The work wasn't much. It mostly involved reading scripts and intervening at the right moments. The girl's freedom wasn't restricted much, either. She got used to this life… until their black cat started losing his hair. No matter which veterinarian they brought him, this condition never stopped. It just so happened that the girl, Silverwolf, was one of the two assigned along with him.
'Won't he grow bald by then? It will be better to shave all of his hair, as all the other bald men do.'
Ignoring the questioning look at the cat's eyes, Silverwolf continued playing her computer game. It was a first-person-shooter whereas players have the role of bombers and defusers.
'How could she..!'
Her silver pupils watched the replay within the screen blankly. She saw the other party kill her in one-shot. A sniper no-scope straight to her head. She was about to move on to the next game, burying the frustrations over the "Defeat" text plastered all over her screen, when she saw the said player making some "noise" at the chat room.
[Mihoyo's No.1 CEO: Isn't that you? Why aren't you in the bronze lobby? I suggest you start out from there and work your skills up.]
[Mihoyo's No.1 CEO: There are a lot of other people who will say worse than me. Seeing you feed in ranked lobbies would make them crash out.]
Silverwolf's right eye twitched. Both of her hands trembled, only short of gripping the keyboard tightly and smashing it against the wall.
The most infuriating part was that before she could type out a reply, the player left out of the game lobby!
"Kkh..!"
It took a lot of patience for Silverwolf to not punch through the screen. Her resentment did not disappear, however. She went up and did the second option whenever she encountered someone infuriating: hack their IP addresses.
The sound of a mechanical keyboard resounded throughout the room. Silverwolf never noticed the growing darkness behind her as she remained extremely focused on tracking that player down. Just as she was about to uncover her real name, the computer screen went out with a "zap!" There weren't any blue screens and the likes. Its plug was pulled over, forcing it to shut down.
"Who pulled the plug?"
Silverwolf looked behind her seat, only to be stunned by the total darkness. When she looked back into the computer screen, she found herself standing at a vast expanse of the void. The hotel room they booked was gone. Confusion plagued her mind, pushing her to investigate wherever the hell she was transported into.
The first thing she noticed was the torn white crack amidst the void. Pure white light dotted its torn outline, with a shade of black within. Silverwolf expected to find nothing in it.
Yet she did.
One blink was all it took for her surroundings to change for the second time. A ruined city filled her sights. It was a scene of devastation. Countless corpses lay lifelessly on the broken cold cement. They were akin to illusions as they disappeared in the next moment.
Standing amidst the ruined city all was a familiar girl whose silver hair was styled akin to drills. The pitch-black leather outside she wore revealed a significant portion of her flat chest. A large black coat remains half-worn in her shoulders.
Strangely enough, three words echoed inside Silverwolf's mind the moment she saw her:
The Angel of Sin.
*****
A/N: If you know, you know. Otherwise, y'all would still see the answers with the coming chapters...