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

A bright light blinded me to kingdom come as I saw my health drop down to zero in a single instance. Likewise, Guidance got evaporated right beside me as we both died without even so much as a second thought.

"Fuu-"

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"Well, that was something..."

Floating around in the darkness was always an experience, especially if you've done it dozens of times by now. In fact, I was probably starting to push the triple digits in terms of actually dying to mechanics.

"Still, that means I was right..."

I couldn't help but feel smug at my own rightness. I knew that something was wrong the moment that one cast took an eternity to complete. Still, it wasn't like I could fault Guidance for not taking it into consideration. She did design the game, and if she never designed a fight that had a massive DPS check at fifty percent, then how else was she supposed to know that this exact fight would do just that? No, this was an anomaly, one that even I knew was pretty stupid.

After all, the man had a healing move that could bump his health up by fifty percent. Why not just use that instead of doing... that?

"An Enrage, huh..."

Quite a weird way to call a DPS check, but if that's what Guidance calls them, then I guess that's what we'll all take into our nomenclature. I'm sure that the others would quickly take her word for it, even if I myself kind of wanted to question just why it was called that way.

Anyway, this darkness was taking longer than usual to disappear. I guess the world was still rolling back all the damage it probably took with such an attack. Maybe it was strong enough to obliterate the general area around us, or perhaps it was just-

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Oh, we're back.

Cracking my neck and back, I looked around the general surroundings as I noted that yes, it was all back to where we last left it with Lewis standing in front of us and Guidance standing beside me with a clear frown on her face.

"Ugh... What the hell just happened?" Guidance groaned as she mentally blinked back into reality beside me. "I didn't think that an attack of that magnitude existed in the game, but then again, this is all the Engine's fault, so I'm absolved of all responsibility."

"I don't think that's how that works," I chuckled.

"Don't take it from me right now, Moriya," she scoffed. "Besides, at least we now know that we've seen the whole fight. We just have to deal enough damage to not get Enrage again."

"You think?" I sarcastically asked with a scoff of my own. "Anyway, why even call it like that?"

"Call what?"

"The DPS check?" I questioned, my curiosity getting the better of me as I gave Guidance a stare. "Why is it called Enrage?"

"Oh, that? That's just the terminology I'm used to back when I played Final Farewell X," she explained with a shrug. "Saying that it's a DPS check sounds boring. Also, it has like, four syllables? Enrage only has two, along with the fact that it also kind of makes sense in the fact that the boss gets angry that you're taking too long to kill it, so it just kills you outright."

"Okay then," I drawled out. "I'll probably just take your word for it."

"Hey, it's a real thing," she whined before she promptly shook her head. "Anyway, let's just get to strategizing again. We know that he's going to kill us if we don't kill him first. He won't throw out anything while charging his final attack, so what can we do that will increase our damage somehow?"

I blew a breath through my lips as I squinted at the boss. Like usual, he did nothing as we just talked and loitered around in front of him, waiting for us as if he had nothing else to do other than be patient enough for us to just screw ourselves over.

"I kind of think we were already doing that," I mumbled out after a beat of thinking. "We've pretty much done everything we could to optimize damage. We're even dancing around the man like he was a glorified disco ball."

"Well, apparently, it's not enough," Guidance shook her head. "How low did we get him down to before we got wiped?"

"Around five," I promptly replied. "Based on our damage, I'd guess that we only needed around eight more seconds of constant fire before he would die."

"So we need that much damage, huh..." she hummed in thought. "How low was he when he started casting?"

I closed my eyes in thought as I recalled the exact time that he started channeling the attack. I did remember the fact that he was busy talking to us before he even began the cast, meaning that he didn't exactly start at fifty percent...

"I would say that he started casting at around forty-seven percent," I hesitantly stated after a bit of thought. "He was talking to us about stuff before he did it, and we kind of just stood there and watched out for whatever it was that he was about to do."

"Meaning that instead of doing nothing, we should've been attacking him with everything we've got," Guidance quickly finished the line of thinking, a frown coming onto her face the more she spoke. "That also means that we could've been done with this fight earlier, but instead, we're gonna have to go back in there and try again."

"What're you even upset about?" I chuckled. "We already have his number by now. All we have to do is execute perfectly and we'll be free."

"You're talking like our friends aren't in danger out there still," she worriedly rebutted. "What if we've wasted so much time here that they're already dead by the time we're done?"

I swallowed a bit of fear that quickly wormed its way into me as I quickly answered, "I don't think that's gonna be the case here. If they were already overwhelmed, then surely most of the enemy would already be around us waiting for our fight with Lewis to be over."

"That's just... conjecture..."

"Is it though? Based on what we've experienced throughout the whole time we've been in this world, instances are kind of self-contained," I postulated, placating my worried girlfriend as she looked at me anxiously. "Every time we die, time rewinds itself, putting us back to where we last left off before we engaged the boss. Sure there's an instance timer, but..."

"But what?"

"I don't think they matter," I hesitantly continued, my own anxieties starting to flare up as the possibility of me being wrong began to grow the more I thought about it. "If they did, then we should also have a timer counting down for us by now. From what I can gather, we have all the time in the world to solve our way out of this fight."

"Which we've already done," she hesitantly replied.

Seeing her like this, I did my best not to give her a hug as she visibly thought to herself. She'll get to a logical conclusion eventually, and from there, she'll be back to her usual self.

"Alright, I'll trust your judgment," she nodded after a bit of thinking. "I never designed the game like that, but it's not like the Engine hasn't already ruined what little confidence I have left that this world is the exact same one that I worked on. It's familiar, and all of my characters are still here, but everything else is just flushed down the toilet in terms of actual continuity."

"That's the spirit," I chuckled. "Let's just focus on the now. I'm sure our friends are fine."

"I'll take your word for it," Guidance shook her head with a small smirk. "If we get out of here and all of our friends our dead, I'll just straight up kill you."

I chuckled at her obvious joke. While I could tell that she was still shaky, at least she had a bit of her confidence back. It'll have to do for now though. I'm sure that this won't last. As soon as this fight ends, we'll be back to the life-and-death situation of us racing against time to save our friends.

"Well, shall we then?"

"Let's get this over with," Guidance chuckled. "By the time we get to Enrage, I'll just keep you topped up with regen. From there, you'll have to keep shooting on your own. I'll be too busy doing DPS to add to the effort to try and keep you fully topped up with healing."

"I understand," I nodded. "Let's just try and deal as much damage as we can while he's still talking."

With our plans already made, we once more attempted the fight. We were sure that we already had things on lock, that we'll actually be done with this after this one run...

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