Mythos Of Narcissus: Reborn As An NPC In A Horror VRMMO-Chapter 317: Like A Video Game

The signal had barely been given.

And Verina had already reshaped the battlefield.

A dense, instantaneous, pulse-like explosion of arcane energy erupted from her position, expanding outward in all directions, filling every crevice within the enclosed space of the barrier dome.

It was certainly not an attack. It wasn't a shield.

It was a declaration of control.

The moment the energy touched every air within the barrier dome, the very world inside the battlefield began to shift. The hues of Carcosa's warped sky beneath it bled into something deeper—a redder, richer shade, saturated with an exotic heat that twisted the very nature of this space.

A phenomenon that had never existed before. A new law imposed by sheer arcane force.

And then. above every single combatant's head, glowing golden bars flickered into existence. Five of them, hovering above each entity.

Lupina froze, her tail whipping behind her in startled hesitation.

Across from her, the three Theogrunts didn't move. Not because they didn't want to—but because they were still processing. Their collective neuromorphic processes ran wild, their unseen network scrambling to analyze the imposed psychic yet gutturally reality-bending restriction.

For the first time, they didn't immediately react. Because this was something they had never encountered before.

Meanwhile, outside the battlefield, I watched with quiet amusement.

"Ah. I see."

Verina was doing 'that'.

I relaxed my muscles slightly, recalling a certain moment a few days ago.

At some point in her endless curiosity, Verina had come to me, seeking an explanation for the strange things she had learned from my former world.

"What are these video games you told Charis about back then?" She had asked, eyes narrowed in genuine interest, her usual emotionless voice carrying just the faintest trace of curiosity.

I smiled and gave her the most basic explanation possible for a mainstream experience of gaming that I remembered in my past life.

An amusement-driven activity where you mostly control a character, limited by resources, energy, or some form of restriction—where every action you take has a cost, and progression grants you more capabilities over time.

Systems like a mana system. Systems like a stamina bar. Many more.

I had never expected her to apply that concept in a real combat scenario.

Yet, here we were.

Verina, with her ability to manipulate conceptual heat, had taken that idea and made it a reality.

And now, everyone—friend and foe alike—were bound by this law.

"VERINA!!" Lupina's voice echoed through the burning air, her wings flaring aggressively as she turned toward her teammate. "What the hell did you just do?!"

Verina didn't answer immediately.

Instead, she tilted her head slightly—and established a telepathic channel.

Of course, since I was the narrator, I intruded on it instantly as a means to narrate their conversation.

"You imposed some weird restrictions on everything in this battlefield, didn't you?!" Lupina's voice rang through the mental link, her thoughts tinged with both frustration and wariness.

"I did." Verina's voice was eerily calm, as usual.

"WHY?!"

"Because I wanted to control the flow of this battle, obviously."

Lupina groaned. "And what exactly did you do? Because I feel like if I move too much, something bad's gonna happen."

Verina finally explained, her voice laced with a calm certainty, but still with aided with brimming curiosity that had been nagging her since her last bout.

"I've manipulated the conceptual heat of action itself. Every intelligent entity inside this domain—including us—is now bound by a set of five energy bars, the ones floating above our heads."

Lupina blinked. "What."

"Every time you take an action contributing to combat—dashing, attacking, casting a spell, evading, anything—it consumes one bar. To put it simply," Even with barely any expression, her tone was that of a smug trickster. "When all five bars are gone, you are restricted from taking further action until at least one bar regenerates.

"A single bar replenishes every three seconds. If you burn through them all at once, you'll be completely immobile for fifteen seconds." She chuckled in this telepathic channel. "Just like in a video game."

"A video game, what's that?" Lupina's eyes widened after she fully processed Verina's words. "Wait—so—hold on. You're telling me we only get five moves before we have to wait?"

"That's correct."

Lupina exhaled sharply, frustration evident in her voice. "AND you made it so that everyone can see each other's bars? That means the Theogrunts can use that info against us!"

"Yes."

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" Lupina screamed inside the telepathic channel. "You should be smarter than that!"

"And I still am." Verina's answer was simple. "The reason was—because this fight isn't just about us winning. It's about gathering data for the neuromorphic network. We're testing them, and they're testing us. Isn't it meaningless if I didn't give any kind of hint for the neuromorphic recording to reference their information after the result of this fight?"

Lupina scowled. "I hate this already."

And then, before anyone else could react—Lupina dashed forward.

Her first yellow bar vanished.

She boosted her momentum with a powerful wingbeat and the propulsion of her jet-like tail.

Closing the gap in an instant, Lupina swung her heavy, rock-textured wing like a blunt weapon, smashing it directly against the nearest Theogrunt.

Her second yellow bar vanished.

The Theogrunt's somashift ability activated immediately, displacing all of the kinetic force into an adjacent dimension—completely nullifying the attack like it was merely a faint taunt of a lion roar on the other side of the cage.

However, as it used somashift, a yellow bar disappeared above its head.

And from the corner of my perceptive extension vision, I saw it.

Verina grinned.

Not her usual calm, unreadable smirk.

A devilish, eerie, shit-eating grin.

One that sent a chill down to a toddler's spine.

The air warped around her as she lifted her crystalline musket, its form pulsing with a new arcane volatility, brimming with the refined intensity of compressed conceptual heat, as if it had become an extension of the Furnace itself.

Her finger rested on the trigger for only a fraction of a second before she fired.

A single shot—silent at first, yet impossibly fast.

The moment it left the barrel, it did not simply fly toward its target. It split.

One became three.

Three became nine.

Nine became an entire storm of piercing violet projectiles, each imbued with homing mechanisms far beyond conventional arcane tracking.

They did not move in predictable arcs; they slithered through the air like serpents, bending and twisting in unnatural ways, weaving through space as if following paths unseen to the naked eye.

Each shot carried a condensed core of implosive energy, their surfaces brimming with pulsating sigils that glowed in a sequence—detonations waiting for their final command.

Lupina's eyes widened.

"Oh, you—"

A single, forceful beat of her wings sent her body rocketing sideways, her tail-booster igniting at full capacity as she curved her trajectory to escape the barrage. A yellow bar flickered out above her.

Yet even as she evaded, the storm expanded, each projectile twisting mid-flight to continue its pursuit. They did not travel in straight lines—they swarmed, forming a shifting lattice of radiant destruction that adjusted its own movement based on Lupina's acceleration.

But she wasn't the real target, obviously.

The Theogrunts, in contrast, did not immediately move.

Instead, they analyzed.

Their processors worked at an inhuman speed, attempting to dissect the behavior of the incoming projectiles, evaluating variables of trajectory, energy output, and potential countermeasures. Their bodies remained still—until the first wave of homing shots reached them.

Still taking into the account of the undecoded psychic restriction that was everywhere, and in that instant, they made their decision.

Somashift.

Their absolute defense.

The fabric of their forms shimmered, an invisible displacement field activating as the entire force of the incoming projectiles was redirected into an adjacent dimension.

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But then—one of their bars flickered out.

Then another.

And another.

Each projectile absorbed triggered the same response. Each perfect evasion drained another yellow bar, all until there was nothing left, rendering them unable to take any action that progress the combat.

And there were too many to count.

At first, the Theogrunts continued to endure, maintaining their calculated rhythm, even without the somashift.

The homing shots did not stop.

The air trembled as Verina's musket discharged another volley that only used a single action bar of her own, layering an additional storm of radiant death into the battlefield. The violet light of her projectiles overlapped, forming an expanding field of absolute suppression.

The sky above became an arcane constellation of imminent destruction, each individual point flickering as it recalibrated its trajectory mid-flight, predicting every possible escape route.

Lupina had already escaped its range.

The Theogrunts, however—hadn't.

Restricted.

Completely immobilized.

For the first time since their creation, the Theogrunts—machines of perfect calculation, of absolute adaptability—could not act.

And they were still caught in the middle of an active, never-ending barrage.

The air was thick with the hum of suspended arcane energy, a self-sustaining, automated execution system fueled by the sheer density of Verina's bombardment.

At this point, the battlefield had already been decided.

And the Theogrunts—who had never once known the concept of being unable to react, now found themselves completely vulnerable.