One wipe led to another...
'This isn't how its-'
Two wipes led to four. Four led to eight...
'I don't wanna die!'
Eight became sixteen. Became twenty...
'How in the hell are we supposed to beat this thing then?!'
At the end of the day, I was left as the only survivor from each passing attempt.
"So you're telling us that we've been at this thing for around twenty-five deaths now, and that we've figured out is that this thing has around six attacks before looping around?" Guidance repeated the words I just told them as if she couldn't believe what I was saying. "That's..."
"Unbelievable?" I sighed. "You've said that, yes."
Once more, I found myself leaning on the nearest wall as we all went through the motions. I explained the situation, with each of them doing their respective shock and awe at the fact that we've been looping this entire time. Guidance would always try to attempt and fix the situation, only for me to shoot her down with the fact that it never worked. Meanwhile, Shizu would always somehow notice how I've been avoiding looking at her ever since that wipe fifteen loops back.
Her screams still repeated themselves inside my head. The amount of trauma she experienced was something I really didn't want her to experience.
"D-Did I do something wrong, Moriya?"
I tried my best to ignore Shizu's question, but my own guilt at not talking to her at all for a few loops finally got to me.
With a sigh, I replied, "No, Shizu. It's just that your previous versions kind of... well...." Dammit... I couldn't even say it now?
"W-what did I do?"
I shook my head in capitulation. "Never mind. If everything goes well this run, it wouldn't matter anyway."
There was no need to saddle this Shizu with the existential trauma that were the dozen or so Shizus that mourned and broke at the sight of her friends dying. For all of her boisterous and adventurous attitude, she was still a sheltered princess deep down, one whose age didn't match her currently adult body. I really had to remind myself that Shizu was barely out of her teens when we first met every once in a while, that she was barely an adult before her entire life got turned on its head by meeting me and Guidance.
"If you say so..." Shizu weakly acquiesced, her curiosity still obvious as her eyes kept flitting towards me every once in a while.
I let out another sigh as I waited for Guidance to draw up a plan. The dev always took control of the situation after I gave her the rundown of the previous run. And with all of the mechanics now lined up, I'm pretty sure that we were close to killing this thing.
That was, assuming that those six attacks were all that this thing did.
pαпᵈα-noνɐ1·сoМ "All right, so the boss does [SELF DESTRUCT!] first, which Maruki will have to interrupt for us not to die in the first thirty seconds," Guidance enumerated out. "Next will be the [HELLFIRE] where the boss will apply an area of effect damage over time field around it that we'd have to keep our distance for around two minutes. Then the [FIRE SWING] happens in which it'll target me for an attack we have to all stack together..."
"And by stacking, you mean we all have to be right beside you, correct?!"
"Yep," I nodded at Maruki's clarifying question. "Stacking means we all take the hit together to make sure that the damage wouldn't outright kill Guidance."
"After that, we'll have to go near the boss for [HELLSWEEP]," Guidance continued. "After which it'll then do a few casual attacks before casting [FLAMEBREAK] on Maruki, which I'll have to be ready to give him a barrier and a heal if necessary."
"That's the tank buster, right?" Shizu asked. "These terms are kind of confusing, huh..."
"Well, I had to name them something," I shrugged. "I'm sure this won't be the last time we'll come across these kinds of attacks."
In truth, it was all Guidance that taught me those terms. A few loops back, we sat down and cleared up all the terms we might need for her game. Shizu and Maruki managed to absorb it all, at least, but I really hoped that we'd be done with this thing. I'm starting to hate repeating myself every time we had to do a pull.
"Lastly, the boss will then cast [IGNITE], and for that, we'll have to spread so that we won't hit each other with our own respective fireballs," Guidance finished off. "After that, the boss will then repeat these same six attacks in a loop, correct?"
"That's the gist of it," I nodded. "We almost killed it last loop, but you ran out of heals for us by the time the third attack loop came in."
"Which means that we have a DPS problem," the dev hummed in understanding, "I'm going to assume that I'm always healing by the time [HELLFIRE] activates, yes?"
"You have to unless you want us all to die," I sighed. "We tried having Maruki take all of the damage during that phase, but then we all died since you can't out-heal the damage he was taking."
"So we really have no choice but to run and wait it out," Guidance sighed. "That's boring. No wonder this is cut content."
I let out a small chuckle. That at least gave us some levity before what I could only hope was the final attempt at this thing. I'm getting sick of fighting this thing over and over again. And with me being the only one to remember all the loops, it was honestly boring.
Well, that was unless I didn't ignore the existential crisis that Shizu gave me. I could only hope that I'd forget about it after we're done with this.
"Right, if there aren't any more questions, let's kill this thing, shall we?" Guidance rallied the party. "Let's get out of here so that I can fix this."
"Of course!"
"Got it."
Letting out a tired smile, I followed Maruki into the boss room. If now wasn't the time for us to kill this thing, then I didn't know when it was.
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