Aria didn't just pull the bowstring; she anchored a hurricane.
The glowing neon-blue arrow humming on her restored bow crackled with raw, uncompressed database energy. The ambient temperature in the cave didn't drop—it skyrocketed as the sheer heat of Leo’s overflowing mana buffer bled into the physical environment.
The lead Frost-Bite Direwolf, sensing the sudden, unnatural shift in the food chain, let out a terrified whimper. It tried to halt its momentum, its claws digging deep furrows into the snow, but its packmates were already leaping past it.
"Let it fly," Leo said, leaning casually against the cave entrance.
Aria released the string.
*VROOOOOOM.*
The sound wasn't a standard bowstring's snap. It was a deep, digital thrum that vibrated through the marrow of their bones. The arrow of pure sapphire light didn't arc through the air; it traveled in a perfectly straight, instantaneous vector.
```
[Active Buff: Glitched Archer (Ignore_Collision = TRUE)]
```
The first direwolf leaped directly into the arrow’s path, its icy jaws snapping shut. Under normal physics, the arrow would have impacted its skull, detonated, or been deflected by its frost-hardened hide.
Instead, the arrow behaved as if the beast simply did not exist.
It passed straight through the first wolf's skull, through its torso, and out its tail without slowing down by a single frame. It didn't draw blood. It didn't tear flesh. It simply bypassed the entity's collision boundary entirely, leaving a perfectly rendered trail of glowing blue pixels inside the wolf's physical volume.
The arrow continued onward, ignoring three massive pine trees—passing through their trunks as if they were holograms—before seamlessly impaling the second and third direwolves.
A fraction of a second later, the system caught up with the calculations.
```
[Collision Override Event: Delayed Damage Applied]
-> Target 1: 3,500 True Damage (Overkill)
-> Target 2: 3,500 True Damage (Overkill)
-> Target 3: 3,500 True Damage (Overkill)
```
*Pop. Pop. Pop.*
The three Level 10 direwolves didn't even have time to fall to the ground. In unison, their physical forms shattered into giant clouds of brilliant sapphire dust, their assets completely wiped from the local instance.
The blizzard itself seemed to part, a perfect tunnel of clear, heated air bored through the falling snow along the arrow's trajectory.
Silence descended upon the forest once more.
Aria dropped her bow, her knees buckling. She stared down at her hands, which were still trembling with the residual static of ten thousand units of mana.
"What... what did you do to me?" she whispered, turning her head slowly to look at Leo. Her violet eyes were wide with a mixture of awe, terror, and profound confusion. "My seal... the spell bypassed my seal. And the trees... the beast's armor... the arrow didn't touch them, yet they died."
"A simple collision-detection exploit," Leo said, walking over to her. He extended a hand, the digital-blue lines of his system interface fading back beneath his skin. "Standard game engines check if Object A overlaps with Object B to trigger a hit. I just told the system that your arrows have a collision value of zero until they are already inside the target's bounding box. No collision, no resistance."
Aria stared at his hand, then up at his face. "I do not understand a single word you are saying."
"You don't have to," Leo smirked, helping her to her feet. "All you need to know is that as long as you're linked to me, you have infinite ammunition. And those seals your enemies put on you? They're just bad code waiting to be deleted."
Before Aria could reply, a cascading series of golden system notifications flashed before Leo’s eyes.
```
[Party Members: Leo Vermis, Aria Bloodspear]
[Synergy Link Active: 100% Shared Experience]
[Hostiles Neutralized: Frost-Bite Direwolf (LVL 10) x3]
[Experience Gained: 3,600 (Shared: 1,800 each)]
[Congratulations! You have reached Level 7.]
[Attributes Increased: Strength +2, Agility +2, Vitality +2, Intelligence +2]
[Unused Stat Points: 20]
```
Leo let out a low whistle. "Level seven. Now we're getting somewhere."
He turned back to the cave, gesturing for Aria to follow him into the dry, warm alcove where the remains of the cave bear had left a comfortable shelter.
"Come on," Leo said, his eyes scanning the dark horizon. "We have a long night ahead of us, and I think it's time we discuss how we're going to patch this broken world."