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

I really did a number on her, huh... Then again, what was that saying about the fight and the general situation when I was more worried about my girlfriend's reaction to me doing her in her sleep than actually getting out alive?

Thinking about it, I was pretty sure it meant that I- or rather, we were starting to go stir crazy in this instance.

"Just pull the boss already," Guidance grumbled, the blush on her face still apparent as she shuffled her feet. "I want to get out of here before another day passes."

"You're the boss."

[*BANG!*]

One shot rang out, and another pull was initiated as we went through our usual song and dance. Again. With no deviation from our usual strategies whatsoever. Honestly, it was so routine that, wait... haven't I thought about this before?

Damn... This place really was making us crazier the longer we spent our time here.

"I just caught myself thinking in circles again," I stated out loud, hoping that Guidance had something different to say to distract me from the boredom.

"As if you're the only one like that right now," she scoffed, her movements still stilted as my gaze landed directly on her thighs suspiciously rubbing against one another. "Sure, I've been thinking of ways to get past our current walls, but the journey to solve them was just plain boring. It's not even fun to do stupid strats anymore."

I followed Guidance's sigh as we whittled down Vesper's health. Navigating one debuff after another, we inevitably reached our previous best as the debuff that killed us flashed right before our eyes.

"And here we are," I called out rather lackadaisically. "We go inside, then go out as soon as the attack comes out?"

"That's the plan," she sounded off.

[STATUS: COLD: 15 SECONDS]

With the debuff now applied, we went ahead and moved closer to the boss, with the latter quickly firing off her attack that I've honestly forgotten the name of despite it having flashed before my eyes in big bold letters.

"Get out!"

[BURST: 12%]

"You heard the lady."

I let out a resigned chuckle as I pointed out the next attack. With us being prepared, we weren't caught off guard as we managed to get out of the boss's range just in time before the AoE hit our feet. And with that, the status effect also ran out... for some reason. It didn't do anything, but I wasn't going to question it further unless we get back to that point and we somehow die to it.

[ENEMY HP: 24%]

"Great, now we're back to the usual program of trying to kill her," Guidance grumbled as she began her usual role of throwing out heals and buffs at me. "Anything else that we have to look out for now?"

"None at the moment," I called out. "I'll say it out loud when the boss throws something out again."

"For now, we just whittle her down and hope for the best as usual?" Guidance sarcastically scoffed. "Yeah... Sounds about right..."

Ignoring her obvious irritation, we went ahead and did what we usually did. Vesper went and chased me down as usual, and from there, her health slowly went down as we worked our way through this fight methodically and, funnily enough, lackadaisically.

Then again, who was going to blame us for treating this fight like it wasn't going to kill us? On top of it being true in that we weren't in danger of dying anyway, there was just... We were just so sick of being stuck here that we were doing everything we could not to die from boredom. And yes, that meant me screwing Guidance to maybe give her a bit more comfort to get her back on track.

So there we went, firing on all cylinders as I watched the boss's [HP] drain all the way down to the single digits. Surprisingly, her scheduled attacks at every fifth interval of her health bar stopped after that cold attack. Instead, she just flailed around trying to chase me. She even looked winded as her pace slowed, allowing me to stand still at times instead of constantly running like the past few minutes.

"Something still hasn't happened?" Guidance asked, her confusion leaking through her voice. "An attack should've happened a few minutes ago based on our current pace."

"Well, it hasn't," I shrugged. "And trust me when I say that we're about finished with this. Hopefully, at least. We're at around seven percent."

True enough, we were making good progress, and I was honestly starting to feel that swell of anticipation the lower the boss's life bar got. Sure, it didn't mean that we were going to win, but the fact that we were here at this point in the first place meant that the end was nearing.

Which of course, meant that we were about to be free from this nightmare of a fight.

[ENEMY HP: 4%]

"No... No! I can't let it end like this!"

[DESPERATION: 22%]

Something new? "We have one more attack coming."

"Obviously," Guidance chuckled, a hint of her excitement seeping through. "Does it look like enrage?"

"Well, it's building up pretty fast, and we've got her health down to around two percent," I called out as I read the boss's health values. "Seriously, she's going to die before-"

[*FWOOSH!*]

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I blinked as I respawned back to the world of the living. Beside me, Guidance gave me a pointed look as she shook her head.

"You were saying?"

"In my defense, she was about to die," I shrugged. "Surely, whatever it was, it wasn't going to be that devastating."

"Well, apparently, it was," Guidance sighed, rolling her eyes in both mirth and annoyance. "Thankfully, we're nearing the end according to what you saw, which means that we'll be free to get out of here and forget all of this even happened."

I couldn't help but chuckle at the tone of her voice. It really sounds like she was more excited to pretend we never went here in the first place. "You really want to leave this all behind, huh..."

"Can you even blame me for it?" she called out. "Our time here has been nothing short of a disaster. I don't even remember why we're here in the first place anymore."

Well, in her defense, the fact that we were here to supposedly investigate a doomsday weapon had also flown over my head after everything that had happened. Then again, this massive pillar of light was all the proof we needed for that particular job we had to do.

"Fair enough," I chuckled. I then twirled my pistols in my fingers, pointing them at the boss as I gave Guidance a knowing smirk. "So, shall we break through this instance then?"

"Way ahead of you," she scoffed, pulling up her [Keystroke] in front of her. "I'm tired of this constant fighting. I want to get back to actual adventuring and meeting my characters."

I chuckled as I pulled the trigger. No words were needed as we went through the fight like a well-oiled machine. Motivated by both internal and external factors, we demolished each and every mechanic this boss had to throw at us. She didn't even flinch when we somehow did enough damage to skip a mechanic or two of hers with how practiced we were in solving it. So skilled were we with this specific fight that our uptime and damage numbers were starting to go higher than we usually did.

By the end of it, we were back to where we last died, with Vesper screaming out her desperation to match the name of her self-same attack.

"No... No! I can't let it end like this!"

[DESPERATION: 15%]

"Here it comes!" I called out.

"Just keep pumping damage!" Guidance excitedly replied, her [Manifest] glowing as she threw out her own attacks to add to the damage. "We can kill her before it goes off!"

Doing as I was told, we did our best to keep our damage up. And sure enough...

[COMBAT COMPLETED]

The world faded to black as what looked to be a cutscene played itself in my head. Screaming bloody murder, Vesper cried out into the sky, the sheer hatred and desperation in her voice almost making me feel pity for her before she fell to the ground unmoving. Whether or not she was dead, I wasn't sure. But one thing was for certain, she wasn't going to be getting up any time soon.

Once that cutscene finished playing, I was back to my own point of view, Guidance almost jumping for joy as she hugged me like her life depended on it. Of course, I returned the gesture, not even bothering with the fact that we were still in the middle of a warzone.

"It's over! It's finally over!" she cheered. "We're free! And I don't care how hard we have to fight. We're getting out of here the moment we're all together again!"

I couldn't help but return her enthusiasm with a loud laugh. I already had a feeling she was going to say that, and I wasn't going to try and deny her what she wanted.

I also wanted to leave this place myself. It just happened right after a disastrous event that we inadvertently caused ourselves.

Also, did I seriously not get any [EXP] from that fight? Again?

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