This is a Beta Test?! - A Literally Broken System

"Once more unto the fray..."

With a sigh of resignation, I went ahead and started the pull with the usual opener. It was all second nature to me by now as Guidance and I went with our usual song and dance. With Vesper doing her usual stuff, we also did what was asked of us by the fight. It was kind of more boring now as opposed to stressful, and the whole novelty of a hard fight wore away as soon as we were asked to keep a level head for hours on end. Of course, we already had the early parts of it on lock, so the boredom part of it all reared its head very quickly the more practice we got in.

So inevitably, Guidance and I just started talking while doing the fight.

"Think this'll be the pull?" I casually asked as I fired off my shots.

"Probably not," she sighed, her [Manifest] glowing as she did her usual upkeep. "It'll hopefully get us closer to the final pull, but for now, I'm not asking for a miracle."

I chuckled at her pragmatism. "What happened to all that anger earlier?"

"It all bled out as soon as I realized we're in this for the long haul," she scoffed. "[DEPLOYED] here, by the way."

"Right.."

At her callout, we both lackadaisically moved towards a single position, letting the debuff resolve itself before moving back to our respective positions. From there, we went back to our usual schedule of trying to kill the boss while also not dying in the process.

"So, what's the plan later?" I asked as I began walking away from Vesper's foreboding gait. "We're not going to just sit here and let that debuff run out again, right?"

"That's the plan," she remarked. "I already tried healing us back up to full and it didn't work according to you, so maybe we can try hugging the boss next?"

"That sounds stupid," I chuckled. "Let's try it."

With our plan in place, we went ahead and whittled the boss's health down to around 34%. From there, we were starting to get near our last best progress of 29%, with the [COLD] debuff hanging over our heads that just froze us to death somehow.

[ENEMY HP: 31%]

"We're just about there," I called out. "Focus up."

"Got it."

[DEFROST: 22%]

My eyes widened in alert. "Here it comes!"

"[Adloqium]! [Adloqium]! [Medica]!"

Feeling Guidance's buffs wash over me, we braced ourselves for the latest attack that stopped our progress right in its tracks. Once more, Vesper whipped out her faux cellphone, disassembling it into motes of light before it spread out all over the arena.

"Freeze!"

[*FWOOSH!*]

[STATUS: COLD: 15 SECONDS]

Once more, the arena was awash with waves of cold gusts emanating from the boss. Wisps of light encircled her throughout the attack, seemingly protecting her from all of the cold air she was exuding. Of course, it also meant that our health bars were ticking down from all of the damage-over-time we were taking from her snowstorm attack.

"Alright! Go to her!"

At Guidance's insistence, we quickly made our way to Vesper's inner circle. Invading her personal space, it looked very awkward as we kept on attacking her inside her bubble, the boss's perpetual scowl only deepening as she glared at us like we were insects to be ground underneath her heel.

"Get out!"

[BURST: 22%]

I blinked in surprise. "A new attack?!"

"Something new?"

Looking down, I quickly answered Guidance's questions right as I saw the glowing orange circle flashing underneath us. "We need to get out of here!"

"What?! But we're-"

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"Okay, that was some progress."

"Progress, my ass... That was cheap as hell..."

I couldn't help but chuckle at Guidance's justified grumpiness. That attack had come out so quickly that we didn't even manage to react to it. We just stood on it and let it explode underneath us. It didn't even let us live for a few seconds. It just gibbed us instantly right through our ticking health bars, preventing us from trying to survive.

"Maybe we can survive it if our bars were full," I extrapolated, recalling just how much health we had before we died. "We were kind of sitting at around three-fourths in terms of our health bars back there."

"Possible, but it's still cheap," Guidance grumbled. "That damage-over-time outside her personal space was still dangerous for us to go out to."

"That's just this boss's entire gimmick, I suppose," I shrugged. "She's been making us go through debuff after debuff with an ever-increasing amount of complicated bullsh1t to go through to dispel them."

That had been the name of the game, it seemed. Not that we appreciated the different spice that the difficulty gave us, but doing it over and over again had, again, lost its luster on us ten pulls ago.

"Ugh... I want to take another break," she whined as she went to her usual rock and sat down. "I'm sick of doing this fight, really. It's just boring now."

"I agree," I nodded in commiseration. "Unfortunately, we still have to finish it. Unless you want us to be stuck here with her for the rest of our lives?"

She sighed. "I know, I know... Still, can you even fault me? I haven't had sleep in so long. And unlike you, not everyone's blessed with no longer needing any sleep."

I frowned as I sat beside her. That really was the deciding factor, wasn't it... I didn't need the sleep, but everyone else sure as hell did. I could only imagine what the rest were feeling right now, having been up for over a day now without a wink of sleep... And we were all fighting hard to stay alive too.

"Didn't you take a nap on our last break?" I asked.

"It wasn't really much of a nap. Besides, you kept talking to me," she scoffed. "And as much as I'd like to sleep, talking to people I care about takes precedent over my well-being."

"Hah... You're really going to pin the blame on me?"

"Who else am I supposed to blame then?" she cheekily replied. "Other than myself, of course."

"Uhh... The boss? The Engine? Our luck in general?" I enumerated in sequence with a light chuckle. "You can also blame the cosmic forces in the world for putting us in this situation in the first place."

"Getting all philosophical on me now, huh," she giggled. "What happened to letting me sleep?"

"You're the one who started it," I quickly pointed out. "I can finish it if you want. Wait... In fact, I'm finishing it right now."

With a slight scoff, I shut my mouth up, much to Guidance's clear chagrin as she frowned at me.

"What, you'll just keep quiet and force me to sleep?" she asked.

"Yep," I answered succinctly.

Guidance pouted. "Really now... You won't talk to me?"

"If it means you get your much-needed rest, then yes," I insisted.

Grumbling, Guidance went ahead and laid herself down on the slab of stone we kept on using as our resting spot. Watching over her, I watched her close her eyes, her exhaustion quickly winning out over her stubbornness as she finally got her much-needed rest once more. Of course, that meant that I was alone with my thoughts for a good long while until she either woke up or I just went ahead and tried sleeping myself.

"Not that that would work," I chuckled to myself. "Sleeping sucks for me now..."

And so, I was left to my lonesome with all the time in the world in this time-locked instance. With the boss hating my guts and my girlfriend asleep, I had nobody to converse with as I just went ahead and laid myself down beside Guidance.

"I guess I'll go ahead and ruminate about our existence and the general state of this world..."

Let's see... We've been stuck in this place for what felt like forever now. Technically, we've only been here for just over a day, it already felt like we've been here for over a month. It was tedious and boring, and while the threat of mortal danger kept us going, it could only do so much before even that became tedious. Such was the way of human adaptation, and even the threat of constant death did little to prevent that.

Still, could we even die here? Outside of this instance, I mean... We already knew that we'd just respawn after a bit if we die to a boss, but what if it also worked outside of instances? It would be great, of course, but what would it mean for our existence going forward? Would that just make us reckless? Would we just go ahead and throw away our lives without a care in the world since we'd just respawn anyway? What's worse, would it wear us down as the difficulty and thrill of mortal danger disappeared along with our mortality?

I sighed at these thoughts. Whatever... They were thoughts for another time. For now, I'll just stick to making sure that Guidance got the sleep she deserved.

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