Ch.7[Chapter 7] Bu■ Re■■■■ ■ag■ ■■■■■ of Fin■■■.txt

“Your speed is commendable! To be wiped out faster than my tempo! Kekeke!”

To get straight to the point, Sir Dominic was experiencing his fifth death in this place.

Although the concept of death was very vague in Gachaland, something unpleasant was still unpleasant.

“Hey, you know what? The voice actor for Konga the Goblin King is the same as Sir Reginald the Faithful who was the raid boss in Season 2.”

“Shut up. I want to hit something.”

The guard sighed.

The coder had offered these words to lighten the sunken mood, but Sir Dominic and the guard, having already experienced five failures, were on edge.

“Why do we have to enter the boss room for recovery anyway? What about that thing you guys boast about—remote support or whatever.”

The guard, who had been sighing deeply, suddenly snapped.

The coder flinched and pulled his neck in like a turtle.

“W-well, that’s because the barrier separating the boss room is damaged. This is quite expensive equipment, so we can’t help it.”

“It costs more than letting bugs escape?”

“Yes. About two orders of magnitude more.”

“What about bringing in outside personnel?”

“This is a jungle. Communication isn’t great here.”

The guard sighed again in frustration.

What kind of plausibility is this in this chaotic world?

“Just tell me all the gimmicks.”

“Um… project details are confidential.”

“In emergency situations, we have priority. We need to beat this thing first. Junior! Say something too!”

The guard called to Sir Dominic, hoping to pressure this frustrating coder who couldn’t hold a proper conversation.

He startled with surprise.

“Heh.”

Sir Dominic, with his head lowered, was smiling in an unpleasantly strange way.

“Heh.”

Sir Dominic’s eyes were hidden by his hair, but he was laughing like a madman.

Pulling his shield close to his body and tapping it with his sword, his rhythm was similar to the boss’s rhythm from earlier.

“This is my first time experiencing such a battle. I always thought battles were either fast, long, or unpleasant.”

Sir Dominic stopped his hand and raised his head.

Sir Dominic was extremely happy.

He was speaking in the dialect of his serf days, abandoning even his conceptual formal speech.

This meant he had found something so interesting and joyful that he forgot his concept.

“Um… may I explain the gimmicks now?”

The coder, overwhelmed by this pure and happy madness, spoke as if trying to escape reality.

“At least as far as I know.”

The guard remained silent, and Sir Dominic just kept smiling.

Happily.

After a brief explanation of the gimmicks, the boss battle began again.

Normally, a challenge token would be required, but since it was still in development, no token was needed.

“Ah! Are you envoys coming to celebrate the king’s appearance?”

The cutscene continued.

The goblin was proudly looking down from atop a Tyrannosaurus with a djembe strapped to it.

The concept was a goblin who had become king of this jungle.

With an ear-splitting roar from the Tyrannosaurus, the Goblin King shouted his entrance line.

“From now on, I control the tempo of this jungle!”

As soon as the cutscene ended, Sir Dominic could move.

“Heh. It’s such a peculiar sensation no matter how I think about it.”

Sir Dominic muttered quietly.

The king and his pet hadn’t moved yet.

Instead, the Goblin King began beating the djembe with large drumsticks, each with a hand-shaped end.

“March! The drums of war!”

Goblins and raptors appeared from all directions.

The first pattern was consistently summoning minions.

‘Breaking the first fixed pattern is simple. There’s a hidden gimmick.’

Sir Dominic held his shield at an angle.

The goblins were preparing to shoot poison darts, with red light showing their trajectories on the ground.

The raptors roared and began charging in rows and columns, increasing speed toward the back, creating a wave-like effect as they pushed forward.

Sir Dominic smiled at the enormous number of minions.

Initially there were only 5 of each type, but those infected with zombie code remained after each failure, leading to the current numbers.

On the sixth attempt, there were thirty goblins and thirty raptors each.

However, knowing the hidden gimmick, these posed no problem.

‘Goblins and raptors are cooperative, but being different species, they can attack each other. Then they become hostile.’

A charging raptor collided with the shield.

Thanks to the angled shield, the raptor slid along its surface and passed to the side.

As the raptor tried to return, it collided with another raptor that had glanced off the shield and was swept away.

The tumbling raptor flew in a chain reaction all the way to where the goblins were positioned, and happened to bite the arm of the foremost goblin.

“Ack! That hurts!”

The goblin screamed.

It was the largest goblin among those shooting poison darts, and apparently the squad leader, as the other goblins panicked and shot their darts haphazardly.

Those darts ended up lodged in the raptors as a bonus.

The raptor leader, enraged by the sudden goblin attack, charged at the goblins.

And the goblins counterattacked against the raptors’ assault.

Only Konga the Goblin King could stop this situation, but the king was already so immersed in his rhythm that he saw nothing.

Sir Dominic watched this chaos with a bright smile.

He was happy.

This chaotic battle made him so happy.

The fight between goblins and raptors seemed eternal.

Both forces were under the influence of zombie code, and when they died, they revived with aggro reset.

However, this situation couldn’t last long.

“Woohah! The rhythm of war is truly majestic! I’ll express this joy through sound!”

An ear-splitting electronic sound came from somewhere.

“Increase the tempo and volume!”

But as time passed, the second phase began.

While Sir Dominic was fighting the boss, what were the coder and guard doing?

“Hey! Are we there yet?”

“Wait! The boss room contents are confidential until release, so the console always generates in a different location!”

At the edge of the jungle.

More precisely, at the outskirts of the boss battle, the two were wandering lost.

To fix the bug embedded in the boss battle, they needed to access the boss room console.

Out of five attempts so far, and this sixth attempt, they had only reached the console twice.

This might be the limit, the guard thought.

The defense mechanisms were getting stronger to exclude intruders who entered through unauthorized routes.

“There are too many bugs in this jungle!”

“Yes! Lots of bugs! That’s a coder’s fate!”

They were talking nonsense, but were diligently finding their way.

Let’s return to Sir Dominic.

‘Phase 2 usually splits into two parts. Either an enhanced version of Phase 1, or a gimmick that summons new enemies. If the strategy succeeds in Phase 1, it should be easy to clear.’

“The coder was right.”

Sir Dominic smiled even more brightly.

The goblins’ poison darts attacked more rapidly and were threatening, while the raptors’ claws and teeth tore flesh and bone even faster.

It was a terrifying sight, but Sir Dominic was happy.

No minions were actually coming for him.

“Now I should prepare for Phase 3.”

‘After Phase 2 ends, we’ll enter Phase 3. The gimmicks change a bit from here. It’s an interesting gimmick.’

“Stop! Stop! Enough! You’re ruining the song! Everyone get out!”

Konga the Goblin King was angry. This was the signal for Phase 3.

‘It might be a gimmick you’ve never seen before. It’s truly experimental.’

“This jungle belongs to the king! Time and tempo too!”

The Goblin King raised the drumsticks high in both hands.

Flash! Lightning struck and the drumsticks began to crackle.

“Electronic!”

The drumsticks, coursing with electrifying current, struck the djembe.

Perhaps because of this, the Goblin King’s voice was also modulated as if through auto-tune.

“Heh. So that’s it?”

Sir Dominic finally understood the gimmick the coder had mentioned.

‘It’s a rhythm game.’

As the Goblin King began to beat the djembe violently, electric circles began to spread out from around the Tyrannosaurus.

In rhythm.

“So when are you going to find it!”

The guard was at his limit now.

The defense mechanisms for security pushed against the guard even more fiercely.

“Just wait a little longer! This is the last area!”

The coder examined the final area.

The console happened to be in a conspicuous location.

Wondering why he had such bad luck, the coder stood right in front of the console, connected a mouse, and shook it.

The console screen, which had been in sleep mode with a screensaver, reactivated.

“30 minutes! Just hold out for 30 minutes!”

“Turn off these defense mechanisms first!”

“Then 40 minutes!”

The guard almost cursed but held back.

He needed to use his energy to deal with the defense mechanisms rather than swearing.

“Eight beats!”

8-bit. Making a pun out of this.

Sir Dominic jumped to avoid the circular electricity that advanced or retreated in rhythm.

He got hit once during a tempo change, but befitting a new gimmick, there was no damage.

Instead, one of the pixelated hearts floating above his head broke.

“7 beats! Fortissimo! No, Fortissimo not you!”

The rhythm of the electricity changed. But when the Tyrannosaurus under the goblin roared, the circular electricity disappeared momentarily.

Apparently that dinosaur’s name was Fortissimo.

Sir Dominic instinctively realized this was the timing to attempt an attack.

“Ugh. Right. When I call you, I’ll say Fortissimo Tempost-“

“ROAR!”

“Yes. Like that.”

The Goblin King was trying to soothe the dinosaur that had started acting on its own.

Sir Dominic rushed forward and climbed up the tail of the kneeling Tyrannosaurus.

“Eek? Ack! Get out of here right now!”

Konga the Goblin King was startled by Sir Dominic’s charge and swung his drumstick.

Sir Dominic blocked the drumstick with his shield, but could feel the tingling sensation as electricity was still flowing through it.

Despite this, Sir Dominic exerted superhuman will and thrust his sword.

“Ack! This hurts to the bone!”

The goblin exaggerated even though it was just a graze to his side.

Then he moved the Tyrannosaurus to drop Sir Dominic to the ground.

Sir Dominic, who was in a rigid state, crashed into the ground, but the soft humus created by the jungle trees cushioned the impact.

“Argh! I’ll increase the tempo more! This is what anger looks like!”

‘The rhythm game gimmick isn’t just one thing. Being a raid boss, it should have various patterns.’

The drumsticks caught fire.

Konga the Goblin King was performing tricks while swinging the drumsticks flamboyantly, when suddenly the world went dark and only the flames of the drumsticks were visible.

“This is the metal that will bring your death!”

A metal mask was placed on Konga’s face, dimly visible in the shadow cast by the flames.

A mask with a protruding tongue and “DEATH” written on the forehead.

Sir Dominic was happy.

Grateful for such an interesting battle.