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

I listened to Guidance rant about this boss just a while ago. She said I shouldn't worry about anything else other than to just dodge and keep moving. Of course, being the trusting companion that I was, I followed her lead and went into the fight thinking that she would give callouts depending on what attack was about to come out. After all, she did last a long time against this woman. Surely she knew what she was doing...

Apparently, that was a lie.

"You were saying?"

Respawning back to the exact same place as last time, I couldn't help but tease Guidance as she visibly fumed at the fight in front of us. We were making great progress after the last time she said that there was nothing left to the fight other than to kill it. Unfortunately, that all changed when we actually got the Head Intellect down to around 90%.

By that time, she was practically sprinting at us like a woman possessed.

"Why are you even blaming me?" Guidance scoffed, her anger coming off her in waves as she crossed her arms over her chest. "It's your fault you got caught out again."

"Well, I'm not denying that. What I'm talking about is the fact that you didn't tell me she could get this fast," I chuckled, hoping that a bit of humor would calm my girlfriend down. "That wasn't a brisk jog like you said it would be."

"No, it wasn't. It was a bonafide sprint," she grumbled. "It even came out faster than last time too. It took a long time for me to even get her to jog at me."

I hummed as I took in that new piece of information. So apparently, her health was tied to how fast she was moving. Well, it was vice versa, but it was still the same principle. The lower her health gets, the faster she moves. Kind of unexpected from someone that seemed to constantly be coughing her lungs out, but who was I to judge an AI's tastes in theming and consistency?

"What are we supposed to do then?" I genuinely asked. "We can't just let her sprint at us for free."

"I'm thinking here, Moriya," Guidance huffed, her brows furrowing as she glared at the boss. "I don't think tripping her would work. Well, unless it's a specific [Move], that is..."

"Don't you have any sort of debuffs on you then?" I questioned, following her line of thought. "Some kind of 'Bind' or 'Slow' equivalent?"

Guidance turned to look at me, her pointed stare telling me all that she was currently feeling. None of them were pleasant.

"If I did, I'm pretty sure I would've used them already," she scoffed. "Don't think too little of me, Moriya."

I laughed at her cute pout. Despite everything that was happening, I still couldn't help but tease this woman.

"You're thinking about something stupid again, aren't you," Guidance frowned.

"If thinking that you're cute and beautiful is stupid, I'd say that you have very low self-esteem, which I know you don't have," I quickly quipped back. "But onto more productive things, are you sure you really don't have any debuffs in your arsenal?"

Guidance blushed and stammered at my words, her eyes rapidly darting away from my gaze as she replied, "D-Didn't I tell you that I didn't have them already? And stop flirting with me right now. We're in the middle of an honest-to-god war."

"Ah, but I managed to get you to calm down, right?" I cheekily pointed out. "That was the plan from the start, you know."

She blushed even further, and I couldn't help but inwardly smirk at my own adlib. What I just said was a total lie. I just wanted to tease her to get a reaction, but then I realized that it might just work to get her to stop fuming at the boss and start thinking more rationally again.

If that wasn't killing two birds with one stone, I didn't know what was.

"Now you're just straight up trying to seduce me," she sighed, the redness on her face still apparent despite the resigned tone in her voice. "Can you stop that? It's uncomfortable to feel like this in the middle of a fight."

"Well, now that you're saying it, I suppose I'll just use it sparingly," I chuckled. "But seriously, we really don't have any answers to this woman sprinting at us and bonking us with her cane?"

Guidance shook her head. "No, we don't. Unless you want me to devote a bit of time and code out a few new [Moves] for myself, we're dead in the water."

"Then why not do just that then?"

"I thought we were in a hurry?" she quickly replied with a question of her own. "Do we really have the time to waste here for me to go ahead and code for hours on end?"

I blinked at the rhetorical question. She did have a point. However...

"Haven't we established that we weren't being timed while we're inside an instance anymore?" I answered back. "We can spend as much time as we can in here without the outside world being aware of what's happening. Well, maybe Shizu might notice something, but she's always been a fringe case."

Guidance raised her head to seemingly make a point, only for her to back down as the gears in her mind visibly turned at my words. Slowly, she reached for her keyboard, her gaze still pointed at me as she grumbled.

"Why in the hell did I forget about that..."

"So you can do it then?"

"Hell yeah, I can," she scoffed. "I don't know how long it'll take for me to make this work, but I'll try not to take an hour."

Giving her a warm smile, I decided to go ahead and stand a bit closer beside her and give her a pat on the head. Ruffling her hair, hearing her hum in reticent satisfaction was more than enough for my patience to recover. We were going to be here for a while, after all. And with Guidance clearly being busy for the foreseeable hour or so, I was left to my lonesome as I went ahead and looked around.

As was customary for being inside an instance, an invisible barrier shimmered by the edges of the arena. Beyond that, the battle waged on, the fires of our accidental attack burning as our foes scrambled to take control of the situation. Funnily enough, no progress seemed to be made despite all of the effort being poured out by those outside the bubble. It was as if they were stuck in a loop of doing the same thing over and over again, perpetuating the state of war outside just because we were still stuck inside this bubble.

Now that I thought about it, would the others outside remember this looped time? Guidance did give them the ability to remember the loops just so that we wouldn't look stupid in every fight. Maybe they'd feel that something was wrong, or maybe they were also stuck in a loop. Who knows, really?

Minutes passed, and I was starting to get bored again. The adrenaline of being in the middle of a warzone had thoroughly left my system, and I found myself just staring out into the distance waiting for Guidance to give me the signal to pull. Looking at the dev, the concentrated frown on her face told me that I really shouldn't disturb her right now. Her fingers flew through her keyboard like clockwork, the sound of clacking keys almost blending in seamlessly with the sounds of battle taking place outside. Still...

"This is kind of boring..."

My voice echoed throughout the arena. I half-expected Guidance to throw out a remark or two, but nothing came out of her as I had hoped. Likewise, the boss in front of us simply held her perpetual frown at us, her cane still firmly pointed at the ground as she smoked her cigarette.

"Hmm...."

I hummed to myself as a stray thought entered my mind. Shouldn't I be able to speak with these bosses like normal? Then again, doing so might just pull aggro on me... But I'm pretty sure that we managed to talk to Lewis before all the way back at Port Decima.

Well, there were no downsides to trying... "Hey, Vesper."

To my surprise, the woman actually looked at me. Her green eyes shone dangerously against the orange light of the fires around us, the pillar of light behind her almost making her look angelic despite the perpetual frown on her face.

So far so good, at least. "Uhm... Can we talk?"

To my surprise, the Head Intellect actually narrowed her eyes at me, her scowl contorting as she moved her lips to speak. "Nothing you say can erase all of the crimes you've committed, Imperial. You've sullied this city with your deeds, and it falls to me to fix the damage you caused."

I froze at her cold vitriol. Then again, it wasn't like we didn't deserve that kind of tone. "Yeah, well... Sorry about that."

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