Levi’s physical condition started to show through the health bar.
At the same time, I could feel the familiar grip in my hand.
“Chanwoo-nim? When did you have such a strange thing?”
“This is…!”
Two rotating controllers, perfectly placed on the tips of my thumbs.
On the left side, there were four directional keys that could be clicked, and on the right side, there were four round buttons that could be pressed.
Moreover, the grip I was holding felt really good.
Ever since I dropped into this hard, hard apocalypse world, I had forgotten about it, but now, I felt like I had regained the ‘essence’ of my life.
“Kagagagagagak-!”
“?! Chanwoo-nim! Please retreat for now! It’s about to attack again!”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Chanwoo-nim…?”
Once again, from the 7th-floor villa, tentacles started pouring out, aiming at Levi.
Oh, of course, I didn’t directly witness it with my own eyes, but rather, I saw it through the third-person view on the screen that appeared with the joystick in my hand.
“The attack is too straightforward…”
Clang!
“Huh?”
“Kagak?!”
An attack with no timing whatsoever, just a simple thrust.
It was such a basic attack.
It was almost a waste to dodge something like that.
With perfect timing, I pressed the R1 button and succeeded in parrying it effortlessly.
“My body… moved on its own?”
“No, Levi.”
“Chanwoo-nim?”
“I told you. Trust me, who trusts you. From now on, I’ll ‘control’ you, so just trust me with your body.”
“!!”
Levi’s face, looking at me, was filled with confusion, as if she had no idea what was going on.
But there was no time to explain.
Even if I wanted to explain, I didn’t even know how I gained this ‘ability.’
There were a lot of things that were confusing, but for now, I asked Levi to trust me with her body, as if to say, we’d figure it out together later.
“Yes! Because I’m Chanwoo-nim’s android!”
The strong bond we had developed over the last three days.
Based on that relationship, Levi quickly gave me full control over her body.
“Thanks, Levi.”
“Kagagagagagagak-!”
Alright, now that the ‘tutorial’ part of the game is over, On the third-person screen in front of me, I could see not only Levi but also the damn tentacled monster that was currently threatening us.
The health bar of the queen-level creature, Behemogigas, was also visible.
For reference, its current health was about one-tenth.
Even though Levi had been struggling so much, the damage she caused was barely a scratch.
“From the beginning, a queen-level boss… this is clearly one of those types, right? In soul-like games, they put a boss that you can’t beat early on, right at the end of the tutorial path, and you have to lose in order to progress the story.”
Soul-like special.
Early on, they throw a boss with ridiculous specs at you, make you get a good beating, and then let you progress with the story after you’ve had your fill of difficulty.
As proof of that, Levi didn’t even have any automatically charging healing items every time we reached a checkpoint.
But that didn’t mean we could afford to lose either.
As I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t afford to die out of curiosity anymore.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
Clang.
Clang.
Kaang.
“Kegegegegek?!”
“Incredible…!”
“More than anything, even if I wanted to die… you can’t even hit me.”
“Seems like it’s really an early boss… Its damage is strong, but its attacks are too straightforward.”
There was no timing at all in its tentacle slashes, and even while parrying, I’d never faced such a simple enemy.
As a soul-like user who preferred the parrying system, this was probably one of my favorite types of bosses.
Compared to those that break the flow by throwing in off-timing attacks, I actually preferred this kind of enemy.
Kaang.
“Kyyeeeek…!”
“The, the groggy state! Chanwoo-nim, the enemy has entered a groggy state!”
“Yeah. I know.”
But, enjoyable moments never last long.
Especially when facing an enemy with straightforward attacks and no off-timing moves.
There’s a saying that those who get cursed live long, and my time with Behemogigas, which couldn’t even stress me a little bit, seemed to be coming to an end.
“The posture gauge is completely drained. Then, die.”
“Hraaah!”
Each time an attack was deflected, the ‘posture gauge’ system would slowly build up.
All the monsters in Star’s Child, whether they were wild animals or bizarre creatures, had this posture system.
Once the posture was completely drained, they would enter a groggy state, like now, and take a critical hit.
I then pressed the triangle button, as if asking to be stabbed right here, towards the shining third-floor window.
Then, Levi leaped high into the air and plunged her plasma blade into the monster’s ‘heart,’ which had been hiding in the villa.
“It’s over!”
***
Crack!
Because the weakness was directly targeted, “Kagagagagagak-?!”
The beastly scream of the Behemogigas poured out from the 7th-floor villa, where it had only been swinging a few tentacles until now.
It was truly a desperate scream.
At the same time, it sounded like the hunter’s agonizing cry after being hunted by the prey it had mistaken for its meal.
Nevertheless, despite being a Queen-level abomination, unlike ordinary monsters that die instantly after receiving even a single critical hit to their core…
“Kakakakak… kakakakakak-!”
“Ugh?! This thing…?”
As expected, this was a tutorial boss designed to be unbeatable in the early phase of the system.
It broke free from the collapsed villa structure and violently shook its body, pushing Levi, who had been positioned in front of its vital spot, backward.
Until now, it had been hiding its form inside the brick villa.
Behemogigas revealed its full, true form before us.
This meant Phase 2 had begun.
“Keggekeggekeggek-!”
“This is… its real form?”
“Don’t panic, Levi!”
“Chanwoo-nim!”
“From the start, it’s a Queen-level abomination. There was no way it could die from just that.”
“…! That’s right! Now, we can only do our best to bring it down!”
Behemogigas, now bare, was, as expected, a grotesque mass of tentacles.
Its shape was unsettling, with dozens of tentacles growing like spikes, all stuck together.
Its lower half, which had been hidden inside the villa’s first floor, had a hole resembling a mouth, and the spot where Levi had just stabbed, about three stories high, seemed to be its heart.
“Kegegegegegek…!”
But what was there wasn’t a heart; it was a single, large eye.
After being stabbed by the blade, the eye, now bloodshot, was embedded in a mass of tentacles.
“Wow… look at all the slime this thing’s oozing? Seems like Levi really caught its attention.”
“Keggekeggekeggek!!!”
“Personally, I’m not into that kind of thing.”
I do like tentacle stuff, though…
Sssshhh.
“…! There are, what, eight tentacle attacks?”
While I was thinking that…
***
Phase 2.
In other words, Behemogigas had returned to its true form and was now ready to tear us apart with full force.
As an example, it extended the thickest of its tentacles in all directions, threatening Levi.
It was a situation where victory seemed impossible.
If I were being beaten like that, I’d surely turn into nothing more than a meat chunk.
Above all, Levi was about to be swallowed into the tentacle pit, just before death, and would live her life forever as a breeding ground for unwanted, malformed offspring or something equally terrible.
…Or so I thought.
Sssshhh.
Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank!
“Keggekeggekek?!”
“Uh, uhh?”
It seemed like that would have been her fate.
“But you… you still suck at this, don’t you?”
A classic trait of early-game bosses in Soul-like games.
Suddenly, the attack count increased, but surprisingly, this was a good thing for experienced players who knew better.
Multiple tentacles attacked Levi in quick succession.
But this, when thought about differently, also meant more chances for parrying.
Furthermore, although the number of attacks increased, the patterns remained straightforward.
The rhythm was clear: a steady “thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk,” over and over again, each strike perfectly predictable.
“Keggekgek! Keggekeggekeggekeggek!”
I must win!
Win and kill the man, and take the woman for… well, let’s not go there.
VS
…Click… click.
Behemogigas… it was easier in Phase 1, to be honest.
In fact, when there were fewer attacks, I was more worried about slipping up, thinking the tension would get to me.
That tension is completely gone now, and with just a click, the body gauge fills up by itself.
That’s Behemogigas for you.
The body gauge almost filled up once again, and…”Keggek… Keggekeggek!”
Flash!
“I… I can’t stop this!”
At the last moment, Behemogigas, having reached its limit, gathered all its tentacles into one concentrated, unavoidable strike.
This was a move it made the instant it sensed defeat.
That attack was aimed directly at Levi, moving with an absurd speed.
Even Levi, who had been calmly dodging so far, found herself momentarily startled.
“Keggekeggek!”
Behemogigas’s true target wasn’t Levi, but the man standing behind her.
It was devious, aiming at the human who had long been considered extinct, just like an old-school video game player with a ‘click’ button.
But still…
“You… you still suck at this?”
“Kegegek?!”
‘A sudden attack that couldn’t be parried?’
In a battle that was slowly losing its intensity with repetitive patterns, that was simply the final gift to cheer the ‘dead’ on.
Click.
“Reading it.”
“My body’s moving on its own?”
In fact, an attack that couldn’t be avoided would always come with a red signal beforehand, a sign that the player needed to react accordingly.
In that critical moment, with tentacles closing in, Levi, using her game system “Star Child,” performed a counter by converting even an unavoidable attack into a body gauge.
“Keggek…!”
With Behemogigas now in a groggy state, Levi shouted:
“This time… it’s over!”
She plunged her plasma blade into its head, driving it straight down to the ground.