'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Kleya barely dodges Jane.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 166

Jane likes violence. She vehemently dislikes misses.

47 Comments

Of course! I forgot that Kleya has the all seeing eye of hacking! Otherwise Jane would’ve HACKED Kleya’s head off.

I boo your pun. Mostly because Bloody Mary wasn’t going for a neck level horizontal slash that might remove Kleya’s head from her body. Seriously, that’s the only reason I boo it as otherwise I would’ve made it. Actually, the only puns I ever do boo are ones that I wouldn’t make myself, and those are few and far between.

Well she would have at least hacked off a limb

Pane l1 warning counts as a hack, right? Thought we were trying not to hack this one.

Is it a real hack, or is it something she just noticed without really trying because she has that hacker meta-knowledge.

Once you know how something’s made, it’s easy to see it differently. Ex: users see pictures and words on a website, web-designers see arrangements of HTML code. So, my guess is that while Kleya didn’t actually hack into The Game and alter the code, she DID notice a snippet of code she PROBABLY wasn’t normally supposed to see. Kind of like how she saw the NPC-twins’ stats back in the colorless practice version of the game.

I agree.

Yes, but I think it’s easily dismissed as “She heard the air move” or something like that so it’s not a 100% give away, maybe a hint at possible passive hacking, but not a give away. Like she did with the Twins, she made Danni think she could just tell.

Gotta invest more in agility Jane.

And that is why I wear back armor whenever I fight creepy ladies with animated dolls. … Which happens much more often than one might expect.

Great page!

Jane looks awesome here.

Considering that Kleya has been hit before with more warning beforehand, I would guess the reason she was able to dodge this time was because of Jane’s low DX score.

I’m a bit disappointed that all those dolls got taken down so easily with one kick though. Jane is supposed to be the top fighter in this tournament. The dodge was good but can’t other people manage what what Kleya did? Jane took down her ENTIRE team and they knew how her primary special worked quite well.

Honestly, I understand that Kleya’s the protagonist here and not losing is her thing… but I kinda think she should lose this match. She wins with her powerful specials, ability to read info of the other player and an early warning system which allows her to dodge a lot (except when the opponent has a higher speed then her). She hasn’t actually hit people much though. I can’t help but think she should have a big enough disadvantage to lose. Which made the previous page a bit of a let down.

The doll’s AI seems to be lacking. Having them all clump together like that really does make them an easy target if you know what to expect and since Jane is rather famous, I’m sure most of her opponents did. Perhaps they should have spread out to attack Kleya from all sides? Strikes me as better tactics. Plus, how did she even know they would be slow to move after the jump was done anyway? Maybe it was some info her program leak detector found? Hmm.

I think you’ve forgotten that (if I’m right here) everyone else who fought Bloody Mary didn’t have a special that would counter the dolls and always destroy every one of them. Although they might manage to get one or two dolls at a time eventually there’d be too many dolls for them to take down at once and they’re attacks would become staggered, causing the dolls to be separated, because of the different timing of when dolls were eliminated. Kleya is the only one who could take advantage of Bloody Mary’s special’s (those dolls are a special, right?) weakness like that, simply by virtue of being the only person who had a special that would allow her to keep the dolls all synchronized like that until their numbers increased.

I do agree though that having Kleya win this would feel a bit odd, with the peculiar disadvantages she has, but I doubt she’d dislike becoming a leader that much. After all, it takes money to live and winning this tournament means she gets to start earning money in the Game, which at this point is she doesn’t have very many options left. Unless it’d be possible for her to design specials for others, and she could get payed for it, I’ve got the feeling that losing would be very bad for her.

I vehemently like the word vehemently

The sickle is brutally covered by the letter I. It looks like she is trying to punch her.

But d***, both the hair and dresses of both characters are really good in panel 3.

That alert is cheating I guess, does kleya have a Weapon? This could get really interesting, both their Specials are Down or useless.

Hm. Sort of a hack, but probably not more so than Jane’s loophole….

Great job on Jane’s hair. The contrast in art quality between Jane and Kat is very striking.

swing and a miss

Hello,
Im following you for some time now, and always when i check on Tuesday and Friday the update is on :3
For some other comics i follow its sometimes a day later cause of the time difference.
So where you from? If it is on the site i was not able to find it.

And keep up the nice work!

Your comic was actually the first i ever red. I had to do allot of waiting on me job and was like i wanna read comics, so i looked for comics and found you! And i liked it allot that i searched for other ones.

Greetings!

Welcome welcome

I don’t exactly have a home but I tend to be in the MST time zone so that’s what I use for the update schedule.

Thanks so much for reading!

Talk about close calls. But if Jane made no sound upon approach, will this expose Kat’s ability to read the code? Or would it be put down to whatever stats she’s got assigned on her chara?

That is the best question of all right there. The text of the ‘Alert!’ was done in Kleya’s Hacker Vision, but would it have been shown to a normal player or not? And remember, if Bloody Jane had used a horizontal slice instead of that vertical one that evasive maneuver wouldn’t have worked, so it’s not that un-realistic to think that the ‘Alert!’ would’ve been shown to anyone instead of being a ‘hack’ by Kleya.

Pirouette, double fist, BACK OF THE SKULL.

Lucky miss! Kleya sure has her work cut out for her now (pun unintended)!

If she only could trick the dolls in jumping at jane accidentaly and snap nice on in that moment…

Was that warning a hack or…? It seemed too fast for a hack but not like it was part of the game proper. Is it just a result of her understanding code and whatnot?

Don’t know if it’s specifically a hack or just a product of Kleya’s hacking abilities. But in the same way that she can read opponents abilities, she is also able to be alerted to danger (I think this ability has been seen in the comic before, but not sure where (of if…)).

Hu, i’m impressed.
I tought she could never avoid that.
Now i think: was she lucky?
Or did she already have high stats and nice took MANY of them?
Is the alert considered hacking?
Because a normal player surely wouldn’t have a giant alert thingy saying someone was attacking him/her.
And i guess Kleya is really screwed now.

I’m not so sure that a normal player wouldn’t have gotten the warning. The real question is did she know how to dodge because of a hack or was that part just luck?

I’d like to comment here but one of the things you need to remember is that as “great” as Jane might be in regards to how the system works and how to program a special she’s probably severely lacking. Kleyas specials are complex programs, which is what makes them unique. The fact that Jane even has a special with the ability to clone itself is quite impressive, complex AI would probably be enough to get her killed. It’s quite possible that she’s just a one-trick pony, it just happens to be a very good trick when dealing with people who either have no programming ability or very very limited ability.

She can only see those warnings because of her amazing programming skills, but technically, she isn’t hacking, because she didn’t actually mess with anyone’s code. Most programs just “leak” information that she can easily read.

I’m not so sure about that. Her ability to see leaky code seems like an extra Special to me– I doubt most players are supposed to be able to access a “debug” mode in the Game.

Then again, if there isn’t a rule specifically against it… Kleya seems very good at finding loopholes.

I see it as a sort of “developer mode” setting – one that Kleya shouldn’t really have access to, but is passive enough to pass under the radar.

Well, it’s a good time for her spider sense to start tingling…

lol @Squire James i was just thinking the same thing lol

I’ve been to your comic once and was turned off by the artwork. I came back today and read all of it. I found the story very original, and complex, and I can relate to it as I have been trying to lie low on some forums where I guess my views weren’t tolerated. what I don’t understand is why being a hacker is so bad. I desperately want to learn how to hack.

You have to remember that these people practically live in a virtual world. Hackers with the ability to bring down the network would be like arsonists or serial killers.

Also, I suspect that the “Hacker Hunts” were fueled by Dr Grace and his colleagues so that they could maintain coding superiority over the common people.

when you’ve got highly advanced dome cities with computers monitoring your oxygen, temperature, water, etc, having someone that could get into the computers and turn off the air would scare the h*** out of you I imagine. That and the fact that a lot of people seem dependant on Life for making their money which would probably be easy for a hacker to screw with, and you’ve got a terrorist more frightening than any suicide bomber, with the potential to do even more damage.

Uh, it’s kinda like saying:

‘I want to learn to learn to be a burglar. What? Theres nothing wrong with it! It’s not like I actually plan on stealing stuff, I just think it’d be cool to learn!’

In theory theres nothing wrong with having the skills, but most folk wont trust you not to abuse those skills.

That is some nicely drawn hair!

I’m confused here, and surprised no one mentioned this yet. why did she dodge the attack!? She couldn’t use Nice against the dolls because the indirect damage to Jane that wasn’t enough to outpace the damage she takes. But Jane is attacking directly, and would presumable take damage from Nice as normal. Meaning a OHKO for Jane. shouldn’t she have stood there and took the hit like everyone else did?

In a related note I don’t see how she beat the dolls. She knocked them all down sure, but shouldn’t they just double and come at her again? Why did killing them this time kill them perminately and last time not? Sure last time she killed them with a special, but if the dolls only duplicated on special attacks they wouldn’t be very useful in a game where most don’t use specials.

In short, why are neither of their specials in play any more?

On the related note: the dolls are like Hydra heads, destroy one and it will make itself into two. Kleya didn’t destroy the dolls in the previous page, so they couldn’t regenerate. Kicking down the dolls put Kleya in close range of BlooJane, so BlooJane is using her sythe. The dolls special is still in use, but I think they’re more of a far range special, compared to short range NICE.

I believe that Kleya disabled Nice a couple strips back, right before she ran after the dolls. She could bring it up again, but not in time to counter the attack.

Except she turned off Nice. If she got hit now, it would just hurt her, and not Jane.

Kleya canceled Nice a few pages ago so she could attack the dolls without getting hit by it. I suspect the dolls are still duplicating and all this is happening faster than their duplication animation.

DOLLS ARE LIKE HYDRA HEADS!! SHE DIDN’T DESTROY THEM, THEY DIDN’T REGENERATE.

Kleya turned off Nice. So Kleya can’t depend on it to take out Jane.

And where do you get the idea that the dolls are dead? Just because we didn’t see them doesn’t mean that they haven’t regenerated?

Kleya disbanded her special so she wouldn’t be hurt when hurting the dolls, and I think it takes a little time to get it back up. As for dolls, we can’t see on this page as to whether their special is still up or not.

mary would be fun to cosplay as.

Not A Villain – A Webcomic

A webcomic about a reformed hacker in a virtual Reality.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 166