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

"Any information on the debuff?"

Quickly searching through my HUD, the debuff was something that, while I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with, came up so rarely that I even forgot they existed. Sure, the burns and the regens were status effects, which were technically just debuffs, they were also a dime-a-dozen effects that existed in any other normal game or RPG. Hell, they were so common that they really shouldn't even be questioned anymore.

This, however... Oh, this was different.

[OBSERVED: The Head Intellect is observing your movements, her keen mind jotting down any and every movement you make...]

Okay, that didn't help one bit.

"It's just a bunch of flavor text," I replied to Guidance. "Says that she's observing our every movement."

"What?! That means-"

[EXPEDIENCE: 42%]

Before the dev could even finish her sentence, my attention was already at the boss's movements as she cast yet another attack in the middle of the arena. Flitting through the environment, the lack of any indicators bode ill for our current survival rate.

"Move swiftly!"

[*FWOOSH!*]

The bar reached a hundred, and Vesper was suddenly surrounded by motes of blue shards glowing all around her. With the sound that it made and everything, I was more than ready to get wiped all over again. Likewise, Guidance even stopped healing me while I shot my weapon, also fully expecting that we would be dead in a few seconds.

Only, we weren't dead just yet despite the shockwave that flashed through our feet. Instead, our enemy just glared at us in the middle of the arena, a menacing blue aura now enveloping her person.

"Okay, what the hell is this now?!" Guidance questioned, her stance quickly sharpening once more as she resumed her duties.

"I don't know, but expedience does mean speeding things up," I helpfully pointed out. "Maybe she's going to be-"

"Leave my city alone."

What the- When did she get this close to me?!

[DIE: 21%]

Oh dear...

[*THWACK!*]

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Back here again... It would've been fine if we wiped to something cool and flashy, but this was just... It just felt unfair.

"I guess that's new enough to break the monotony, at least..."

I sighed as I floated through the vast nothingness, waiting for Guidance to wipe so that we could just respawn and do it all over again. It was boring, but it sure beat being whacked in the head hard enough that you just died instantly.

"I wonder how much information she'll get this time..."

Guidance did manage to last longer than I did in our first run. Assuming she could work her miracles again, she might just gather enough information for us to beat this woman on our next few runs. The sad part was that I was kind of starting to forget we were in the game in the first place. It was like the world itself was starting to blur altogether, its game aspects blending into reality in a way that most of the user interface never really got useful enough for me to exploit them. Sure, I've only been in this world for around a month, but it just felt... I can't believe I'm saying this... generic?

"Guidance will probably kill me if she heard that..."

Still, she wasn't here, was she? She was still out there gathering intel and making sure that our deaths wouldn't be in vain. Then again, if this was a game that was meant to be multiplayer despite only having a single-player mode, why in the hell was I not allowed to watch the fight whenever I die?

No matter... I guess I could ask Guidance why that was the case later. But right now, I might as well get comfortable while she did her thing. I do wonder how long she'll last this time though.

"I sure hope you're doing great out there, Guidance..."

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GUIDANCE

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Guidance was not having the time of her life right now.

"[Bind]! [Bind]!"

With Moriya going down just as easily as last time, the dev was left on her own to piece together just what exactly happened. Well, she already knew what happened. The only problem she had left was to try and figure it out despite running for her life.

"What the hell is this speed?! [Bind]!"

Guidance couldn't help but b1tch and complain at the clear unfairness that their enemy was showing. The boss's new mechanic did little to the fight itself. In fact, it didn't even change the status quo that much.

No... That so-called 'expedience' mechanic just made the woman walk faster.

"[Bind]! [Bind]!"

The dev gritted her teeth as she kept having to turn around and re-apply the debuff keeping the woman slowed down. Not that it even worked all that well, what with the boss just getting slowed down to a brisk walk as opposed to actually being stuck in place now.

"She's so fast that even the [Bind]'s barely stopping her...."

Still, it was better than nothing as she kept on moving around the arena, leading the boss on in a wild chase that will never end unless she wanted it to.

"This is so stupid... How in the world am I supposed to damage her now?"

With the boss's added speed, even the [Bind] wouldn't be enough to give Guidance some leeway to cast her damaging [Moves]. Sure, she could try, but seeing what happened to Moriya just soon after that one cast made her think otherwise about trying her chances.

Also, there was still that one debuff that she was pretty sure hadn't even kicked in yet. She had already tried casting [Dispell] on herself, but it did little to take it off her bar.

"Observed... That sounds like a puzzle mechanic..."

Inwardly, Guidance couldn't help but smile at the prospect of doing something new. Puzzle mechanics went more along the lines of her own design philosophy, meaning that she had sprinkled in a generous amount of such mechanics throughout the world's bosses and raids.

"But us being observed by her... Maybe it only triggers once we reach another health checkpoint again?"

It would make sense, at least. The boss had done absolutely nothing except chase them around in between her more interesting mechanics. If she thought about it correctly, it meant that they could possibly just let the status effect stew for a while before trying to resolve the damn thing.

"At least it's-"

[*CHIME*]

"I've got everything I need."

Her eyes widened as she heard the Head Intellect speak. And just as soon as it happened, a blue glow erupted from Guidance's body, motes of light flowing up into the air and right back into the boss's floating aura surrounding her. The tiny bits spun faster, and the boss visibly looked around her as if reviewing something.

"I see... So that's your weakness..." the boss audibly muttered to herself. "There will be no escaping now..."

Taking a short breath, Guidance took a bit of precaution as she quickly cast a barrier and a regen on herself. It wouldn't be much if this was going to be a massive attack, but she at least wanted to try and survive whatever it might end up being. For all she knew, it was nothing more than flavor text that the Engine whipped to-

"Now fall!"

[*BBBRRRRRRLLBBBBBB!!!*]

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Guidance blinked as she found herself respawning right where they started. Standing right in front of the boss, it took her a full minute before she finally realized what just happened.

"Wait... that's it?! It was just a massive raidwide?!"

Based on the last thing she saw, it was as if the very air around them split itself into pieces. The sound the attack emitted was unlike anything she had ever heard, sounding more like the world was being compressed before being quickly stretched apart. It was so surreal, and she was sure that no sound bank in the world would ever have such a sound sample in their database.

"Why? What did you learn?"

Turning to her side, Moriya's returned presence did little to soothe her nerves. It wasn't as bad as the first few wipes, but it still didn't sit right with her that they'd essentially just unlocked more variations of the same thing.

"I learned that she just moves faster with that expedience thing you just told me she did," Guidance relayed. "That observed status also did something by the end before I wiped, but I didn't really get a good look at it before I died."

"Did you at least try and cure the debuff?"

"It's undispellable," Guidance explained. "The only debuffs I can dispel are some of the common ones."

"Haven't you managed to dispel the hypnosis thing back in the Sanctuary though?"

"Well, there are just some mechanics that you can't get rid of," she rebutted in resignation. "This is one of them."

Guidance sighed as she looked at the boss. And here she thought that something new was about to happen. Well, there was still a chance that she was wrong about the debuff's effects. They might just have a puzzle mechanic that's actually engaging as opposed to it being just another boring one-shot check.

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