Chapter 279 52.1 Puzzle Mechanics?

Difficulty can be a delicate thing to balance. Even without the experience of a dev backing my word, I could safely say that balancing issues and making sure that everything would be viable was one of the hardest things a developer has to do to make their game fun and enjoyable. From fighting games to MOBAs, every skill build or playing style has to be accommodated. From what I could tell, there were a few fundamental rules to balancing combat. Melee has to deal more damage than ranged, and spellcasters need to be glass cannons. Of course, these rules didn't have to be rigid. There were Rune Knights and Spellswords after all, but that was the gist of it. They were the rules, and they had to be followed lest the game would be broken once the player finds that one build that the developer didn't think too much about.

Unfortunately, I didn't hit that lottery right on the money.

"No! I refuse for this fight to be yet another Enrage timer with us doing nothing but boring DPS!"

We had died yet again. To the same mechanic that was the boss just powerwalking towards us and bonking us right on the head with her cane. There was no fanfare, no strategy. It was literally just the Head Intellect unceremoniously hitting us with her cane.

Frankly, it was kind of humiliating.

"I couldn't agree more," I sighed, my fingers lackadaisically twirling my pistols in both hands as I shrugged. "You would think that we should've encountered a few more mechanics than this, but I guess that was just wishful thinking."

Looking at Guidance her frustration was both endearing and infectious. And as much as I liked looking at her pout and seethe, even I was starting to get annoyed at the fact that we were once again stuck with a boss. What's even worse was that the fight itself was boring. The only mechanics we really had to dodge were whenever the boss would call upon her men and flash orange areas around the arena. That one attack where the safe space was right beside her was a novel idea, but even that didn't feel too dangerous after a few successful attempts of going through said attack. All in all, they were all just basic moves that we simply had to walk to dodge.

"I'm seriously thinking about overhauling the entire world just to give us better fights," Guidance grumbled. "I'll have to ask Shizu later, but once we get some free time, I'll start by altering the very Engine itself."

"Can you even do that?" I raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't that essentially mean rewriting this whole game from the ground up while we're still inside it?"

The dev gave me a pointed look, her eyes shining with both doubt and determination as she shrugged. "We wouldn't know until I try it, right? If we want our quality of life to improve, we have to take risks." She clicked her tongue as she continued, "Sure, being in the world I created is great, and I get to see all of my characters brought to life, but the damn Re:Mind Engine is just gimping us at every opportunity."

I sagely nodded at her assessment. While it was fun and exciting to explore this new world, I do admit that having to contend with random bugs and glitches at every corner was starting to get stale after a while. I haven't even seen the good and funny glitches yet like ragdoll physics and broken [Moves]. Most of the broken stuff we've encountered were all just things that made our lives harder as opposed to more interesting or fun.

"I guess that'll be your next project then," I chuckled. "Assuming we all get out of this place alive, that is."

"Why are you even thinking that?" Guidance scoffed. "We're functionally immortal so long as we don't die outside of an instance. And even then, so long as either Shen or I are alive, we'll just heal you back up."

I shook my head at her sudden surge of positivity. Well, at least she was done sulking and complaining. We could go back to the task at hand, which was to kill this boss and get out of this place.

"I'll hold you to that then," I lightly scoffed. I then gestured towards the Head Intellect and followed, "But back to the matter at hand, have we learned anything that will change this fight for us?"

Taking note of what I was talking about, the dev hummed as she replied, "I don't think we have. Beyond her being a boring boss that just walks towards us at ever-increasing speeds, the only thing we've managed to do is to get her down to 80 percent."

I hummed in agreement. even I didn't see anything noteworthy with the progress we've made so far. Everything was just so straightforward with the fight. We just hit her until she does something, which was usually just an AoE that was laughably easy to dodge, then we go back to hitting her while also running away for our lives. Granted, that last part inevitably got harder the longer the fight went, but that was it.

"And so far, she's just repeated her AoE attacks at every fifth interval of her health," I added, recalling something that we've already learned a pull or two ago. "Nothing too fancy, really."

"As if we've ever encountered something fancy throughout this whole journey we've had in this world so far," Guidance scoffed. "Trust me, you'll know immediately if we see something fancy in terms of mechanics."

I copied her scoff. I could only assume that her describing a mechanic as 'fancy' meant that she herself had designed how it works. Maybe she programmed in a fight that required some puzzle solving as a mechanic, or maybe it was something as convoluted as mixing and matching colors depending on what the boss's attack looked like. Either way, I kind of didn't want to see it anymore if that were the case.

"Let's just pull this thing and see where this goes, yeah?" I shrugged. "We're wasting enough time as it is."

"Heh. And here I thought we had all the time in the world in this instance," Guidance teasingly chuckled.

I shook my head in exasperation. While seemingly true, that didn't mean we shouldn't just waste our time with banter. We could be doing better things with our time like exploring what this world had to offer. That one storyline about the war still lingered at the back of my head, but this immediate battle was starting to blur everything else that I had to remember in terms of stuff to do outside of Marquee.

Yeah, it feels like it had been that long since we've been out at sea.

"By your attack then," Guidance gestured towards the boss.

Rolling my eyes, I went ahead and opened up with my usual salvo. With practiced movements, Guidance and I took our respective positions, alternatively cycling around the arena like a small carnival ride as we kited the boss's one-shot attack.

[PROTECT THE HEAD INTELLECT: 24%]

"Cardinals."

At my callout, Guidance and I picked out our respective spots along the arena. Cardinals were something I came up with after a few pulls of both of us being annoyed with how long it took to say either of the four cardinal directions. Well, eight actually, but they were essentially the same thing. Either way, so long as any of us says the word, it would mean that any of these eight directions would be a safe spot that we could stand on.

"Okay, that's over," Guidance methodically called out. "Back to shooting her until we make some progress."

And shoot, we did. Nothing of import even happened. With our actions practically as efficient as a well-oiled machine, we were making decent progress.

Well, that, and the fact that Guidance was doing good work with that new [Move] of hers.

[ENEMY HP: 79%]

"New best, by the way," I scoffed from across the arena. "Your [Bind] is actually doing wonders now."

"I'd say," she chuckled. "We can practically just stand still for a few seconds whenever I cast the thing."

[Bind] was the new [Move] that Guidance came up with. With each cast, green energies coalesced under the boss's feet, shackling her for a good five seconds before it wore off. It didn't stop her completely, but it at least slowed her enough that we could establish some distance between us whenever she got too close.

"Just keep casting that thing whenever she gets too close," I reminded her with a chuckle. "At the rate we're going, we'll be free from this place before-"

"I've had enough of this!"

[CHAIN STRATAGEM: 22%]

I almost paused in my step. "Okay, this is definitely new."

"You think?" Guidance scoffed. "Come on. Tell me where to stand."

Looking at the arena, I squinted as I stared at the ground, trying to see if there were orange indicators to watch out for. Only, there weren't any...

"Nobody can escape my purview!"

[STATUS: OBSERVED: 30 SECONDS]

My eyes widened. "We have status effects, Guidance!"

"What!?"

This fight just got a whole lot more interesting.

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