Episode 48

While I was nodding to myself and accepting the situation in my own way, the boss’s HP reached 13%. Maybe 13% was the next trigger point for an attack, because at last, a mechanic we had never seen before was cast.

Circles with golden borders and circles with sky-blue borders appeared at random across the floor, with only a brief delay between them. As if some invisible person were delicately drawing each circle one by one, the circles formed one after another along lines of white light, densely filling the ground.

Unlike the circles from the day-and-night phase, these were tangled together so thoroughly that I couldn’t see any empty space at all. As if proudly announcing that this was the final phase (*last phase), the placement showed not a shred of mercy.

[Party] Kkulppang: Wipe mechanic?

[Party] Jaesugang: Just in case

[Party] Jaesugang: Keep DPSing

As Jaesugang said, this mechanic might be a wipe attack, so I kept forcing in damage however I could while quickly scanning the floor covered in all kinds of circles. If this wasn’t a wipe mechanic, we’d have to find the safe zone among the layers of circles to survive, so I needed insurance too.

Several reddish-gold sun circles overlapped, turning a deep scarlet, while the areas piled with moon circles became a deep blue. Places where circles of both attributes overlapped were dark green or dark brown depending on which attribute had more circles laid over them.

In that chaotic manner, the newly created circles meticulously colored the marble floor, which was so transparent that it felt wrong to even call it white.

The casting bar rose steadily at a speed that could hardly be called slow and passed halfway. Then something entered my frantically shifting field of vision. On the floor, which had been stacked so densely with countless layers and filled with deep colors, I found the one spot that was still pale sky-blue—the original color of a moon-attribute circle.

I moved my fingers and ran toward the pale sky-blue spot behind the boss, even using a gap-closing skill. The cast was almost over.

Jaesugang, noticing me hurriedly taking position, ran toward me. But just before reaching this place, he instead changed direction and desperately ran toward the exact opposite side of where I was standing, even using an evasive skill.

When I looked where Jaesugang had gone, there was a small golden space, just large enough for one character to stand in, where only a single layer of a sun circle existed—exactly like the spot I had found. After carefully positioning himself so his character wouldn’t stand askew, Jaesugang seemed relieved and leisurely cast an attack skill.

Just as the two of us had miraculously found spots that seemed safe despite seeing this mechanic for the first time, the cast ended, and the boss spread both arms. Then it stiffly unfurled the wings that had been fluttering lightly like silk curtains. Its transparent white wings were made of a single color with not one pattern on them, which made them look plain, yet that very quality made them feel even more mysterious and noble.

The wings slowly spread and touched the ornaments behind it that had been creating the basic-attack orbs. The ornaments, which had looked solid, shattered helplessly into pieces and crumbled. At that moment, the colors of the circles laid across the floor all reversed at once. The circles that had been gold turned sky-blue, and the circles that had been sky-blue turned gold.

I had originally been standing on a moon circle, but because the circle’s attribute suddenly changed, I ended up stepping on a sun circle. Maybe because I stepped on the opposite attribute, more than half my HP was shaved away. Seeing Jaesugang lose a similar amount, it was definitely damage proportional to HP.

HP was one thing, but I hurriedly checked my debuff window. I was worried this circle might also be a pattern that stacked debuffs. Fortunately, the circles from this mechanic didn’t seem to inflict burning or chill debuffs, as my debuff stacks stayed the same. Instead, a new debuff called [Laceration] had taken its place. When I activated the mouse cursor and looked at the debuff description, all it briefly said was “Attack Speed Reduction.”

[Party] Kkulppang: I got atk speed down (*attack speed reduction)

[Party] Jaesugang: Me too...

[Party] Jaesugang: They faked us out with this

[Party] Kkulppang: fr

Even so, when I actually used skills, it didn’t feel like my attack speed had dropped all that much. Normally, I should have been able to comfortably use four skills, but now, by a slight margin, I couldn’t quite fit in four. It was an unfamiliar speed, but the reduction wasn’t large enough to feel especially frustrating.

It had looked threatening enough to make me wonder if it was a wipe mechanic, but all it did was slightly reduce attack speed. Was that really all? Maybe that really was all. But... considering the kind of mechanics it had shown us so far, well, I wasn’t so sure.

Besides, the boss’s HP had just dropped to 8%. Unless a wipe mechanic came out instantly right now, clearing this was practically guaranteed, so was the DPS check really this lenient?

While I had a reasonable suspicion that this wasn’t everything, the clear was right in front of us, and despite myself, my heart began to pound. It was a main story dungeon, after all. Maybe since the mechanics were that absurd, they had at least made the DPS check generous.

[Party] Jaesugang: We’re gonna clear this, right?

[Party] Kkulppang: Stop raising

[Party] Kkulppang: flags already;

[Party] Jaesugang: No, seriously

[Party] Jaesugang: My gut feeling’s good

[Party] Kkulppang: I like Chik Chok too

[Party] Jaesugang: ?

[Party] Kkulppang: So just DPS

With that chat as the last word, both Jaesugang and I silently entered our final burst. I even pulled out every skill I had been saving for later because of their high damage coefficients and long cooldowns. There was no future. We had to end it now.

As we dealt damage, the background music began to change subtly. The background music, which had been smooth enough to listen to despite some noise mixed in here and there, began to fill with grating static in proportion to the boss’s decreasing HP. It sounded like tinnitus, like a radio failing to pick up a signal, or perhaps a mix of both.

Listening to the slightly irritating background music, we sold even our future to pour in maximum damage, and the boss’s HP soon fell to 5%. The boss, which had remained quiet until then, immediately cast a mechanic as if it had been waiting. The final boss, whose eyes had held us fully within them—both hot and icy—closed its eyes again and began to tremble its wings.

The wings had already been so transparent that the background behind them showed through faintly, but they gradually began to emit a glitch effect as though chromatic aberration were occurring, giving off an eerie atmosphere. Then slowly, they changed into a familiar shape. The design of those wings was so familiar that if someone handed me paper and colored pencils and told me to draw them, I could do it right away.

There was no way I wouldn’t know whose they were. The wings belonging to me and Jaesugang—wings my eyes had naturally grown used to even without trying to memorize them—were drawn exactly on either side. A black base, red and yellow lines connected to form an eye-like shape, and even the purple dots stretched out in long marks as accents. It had copied the wing design I had personally customized without missing a single detail.

Looking at the wings, one side copied from mine and the other from Jaesugang’s, I tried to figure out what it meant. And I gave up after three seconds. It wasn’t as if I were Jaesugang... I couldn’t even guess what it intended to do by copying wings that, aside from flight or gliding functions, were mostly used to show a user’s individuality.

For the first time, the boss showed signs of strain. It clenched its teeth, raised a hand, and stirred the air. The movement looked like it was tapping something, or maybe tickling it. Along with that motion, the cast that I assumed would be the last began once again.

Because of the attack speed reduction, the boss’s HP fell more slowly than before the final phase. Unlike my expectation that we would be able to kill it quickly, the attack speed reduction I had taken lightly was fairly fatal in this situation, so I couldn’t easily say whether the cast would fill first or its HP would be shaved down first.

At this point, mistakes I’d made flashed through my mind like those of a person on the verge of death, and I even found myself chewing over regrets like, “If I’d focused a little more while moving earlier, I could have landed one more skill.”

Although I moved my fingers as calmly as possible and pressed my skills, inwardly I was unbearably anxious. How bad was it? Bad enough that the thought crossed my mind—“What if this is actually a fake, and like another mechanic, we’re supposed to handle the pattern by breaking the casting bar or something?”—and I even did the insane thing of bringing out the mouse cursor and clicking the casting bar like crazy. Naturally, no matter what nonsense I did with the mouse, the boss’s casting bar didn’t budge.

Still, perhaps our silent ascetic training had paid off, because by the time the cast filled halfway, the boss’s HP had dropped to 2%. Starting from 5% and shaving off 3% by half the cast was a fairly hopeful sign. If we kept dealing damage like this, we could clear it by the skin of our teeth.