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

I have no idea what I\'m doing. And quite frankly, so did everyone else. Clearly, I didn\'t get the memo when I thought that Shizu wouldn\'t come running down here fast enough to catch up to me.

"Moriya?!"

And yet here she was, staring at me with a bright smile on her face and her eyes glowing black and green as she lunged at me. I didn\'t even have the time to brace myself as she gave me the tightest hug of my life, some of the blood in my body moving to places I really didn\'t want them to be right now as her soft, yet athletic body crashed against my poor self.

"S-Shizu... Can\'t breathe..."

"O-Oh! Sorry!"

Feeling her let up, I took in a short breath as I composed myself in front of her. Sure enough, the princess had somehow caught up to me, probably using her eyes to cheat and take the shortest and easiest routes down into the darkest depths of this facility. Still, for her to be here meant that the others might follow suit.

"Where are the others?" I instantly asked. "Surely you didn\'t leave them behind, right?"

...

...."Right?"

Shizu\'s silence was deafening as she stared at me with a growing blush on her face. Playfully placing her hands on her head, she gave me a cute expression with her tongue out as she obviously tried to excuse herself.

"I... I kind of rushed here alone.... Tee hee~"

I sighed, my palm ending up on my face as I took in the foolishness that Shizu just did. Then again, it was pretty on-brand with what we all knew she was capable of. What else did I expect from someone that would willingly jump an enemy if it meant that she\'d get a good fight out of it?

"That\'s irresponsible, you know," I groaned out, my [Manifest] glowing from having recently shot an errant robot. "So you just left to find us after telling them where you\'re going?"

....

.......

"Shizu?!"

"I-I know it sounds stupid, but it was an emergency, okay?!" the princess defended herself in panic, her cutesy act melting away due to my annoyance. "I had to find Guidance, and she wasn\'t anywhere. Then I found this small hatch and saw some of your tracks..."

"So you jumped down," I finished the thought for her. "You jumped down without telling anybody we\'re here."

"Y-Yeah..." Shizu apologetically sighed. "I\'m sorry..."

I shook my head in exasperation. "Well, what\'s done is done. At least I\'ll have some help trying to find Guidance."

"Right!" she immediately perked up. "I need her to get this thing off me!"

I blinked, stopping just as I was about to take my first steps back into exploring. Turning around, I gave Shizu a questioning glance as I asked, "What do you need to get rid of that you\'d need Guidance\'s help for?"

Without even flinching, Shizu promptly took off her top, her breasts displayed bare for me to see without any shame whatsoever.

"This!"

She pointed right in the middle of her chest, my eyes squinting as I- "What the hell is that?"

I blinked once. Twice. Three times as I stared at the anomaly that was Shizu\'s chest. Well, her breasts were far from being anomalous, but embedded deep into her breastbone was what looked to be some kind of spherical device melting into her body. Its lights blinked red and green, shining through her flesh as if she was emitting some kind of signal from them.

"It\'s something we found in the Vermes Shen and I killed earlier," Shizu worriedly explained. "I hid it in my chest while we were on our way back to the administrative building, but once I was about to take it out from between my breasts to hand it over to Shen, I discovered that it had already sunk into my chest!"

Huh?! "So Shen knows that this is happening? Where is she then?"

"Oh, she doesn\'t."

...

...."What?! I thought you said she already knew about the device?"

"But that was before it began sinking into my skin," Shizu cried out. "I almost wanted to pry open my chest just to get this blasphemous thing off of me!"

I took a deep breath, hoping that it would help my eyes from becoming distracted by just how gorgeous Shizu looked topless. Focusing on the task at hand, I replied, "And you didn\'t think that Shen wouldn\'t be able to get this thing out of you?"

"Shen is cool, but Lady Guidance would be able to do the job with minimal risk," Shizu spoke out, her tone betraying the fact that she had just spoken in a more formal way than usual. "And I don\'t think Shen would appreciate me telling her to cut my chest open."

"And like her, I don\'t think that\'s the best option to take," I weakly chuckled. "I\'m pretty sure that Guidance also wouldn\'t want you to do that. She\'ll more likely use [Keystroke] more than anything."

Shizu gave me a small look, one that told more about her growing anxieties before it was replaced with her usual smile again.

"Let\'s go then," she nodded as she wrapped up her decency again. "The longer this thing is inside me, the more I\'m going to start to think that this thing can manipulate my thoughts."

...

..."Where did that come from?" I couldn\'t help but ask. "Wouldn\'t you think that tidbit of information was more important than a random machine being stuck in your chest?"

"W-Well, it\'s not doing that right now, but it might, right?"

I let out a small sigh of relief. At least that danger wasn\'t a thing yet.

"Don\'t scare me like that again, alright?" I chuckled. "We don\'t want a repeat of Island Sanctuary, and we\'re not going to start now."

"Exactly," Shizu nervously chuckled alongside me. "I don\'t wanna be the one being rescued this time. I wanna kick butt!"

And just like that, Shizu jumped forward, completely carefree as she took the place of vanguard in our current exploration. We were in pretty deep now, possibly around ten floors below the earth as we kept on going. I didn\'t know what we had in store for us, but if Guidance was actually trying to fight her way out herself, then we\'ll probably meet up by the end of this stupid dungeon.

Really, even if the enemies and the place itself saw some minor improvements the deeper we went, it was all still starting to blend together like crazy.

"Would it kill Guidance to add some variety to this place?"

⬛⬛⬛

GUIDANCE

⬛⬛⬛

"Would it kill the Engine to put some variety to this place?"

Guidance grumbled to herself as she killed off yet another robot in what seemed to be an endless loop of futuristic rooms and hallways, only to kill the big bad robot by the end of it. Seriously, if anybody thought that this was something that she designed, she would deck them so hard that they\'d wish that they were here instead of being above ground.

[*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*]

With each room that she cleared, the closer she felt she was getting to the end. Sure, she didn\'t know how deep the facility went, or if it even had an end like one of the few Roguelikes she played, but progress was progress. She didn\'t care that the gnawing dread in her chest was growing, only that she felt like she was making decent headway into getting out of this place.

"Where are you, Moriya..."

Jumping down yet another shaft, it was probably the twentieth time that she had done such a thing that day. Already, she was getting tired, and the prospect of spending the night inside hostile territory only made her will herself to move even faster.

"I\'m not spending the night here, Moriya," she grumbled out, mostly to keep her spirits up. "You better come and find me before the day ends."

That was assuming that the day was even still up. It felt like it had been so long that it might as well be the day after now. The lack of timekeeping, along with how similar the enemies and the facility were had made keeping track of time basically impossible.

[*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*]

Guidance blinked as she dispatched a rather sizeable group of armed robots. Yep, they were armed now. She had noticed a while ago that the deeper she went, the more formidable the enemies became. Thankfully, she was more than capable of still soloing them, but if this kept up...

"We probably need a team if the difficulty keeps ramping up," she thought to herself as she blew up another robot in front of her. "This might not be a dungeon, but it might as well be..."

Sighing to herself, Guidance pressed on. She could only hope that help would come to her sooner rather than later once she inevitably hit a wall.

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

Strap up. I\'m going to roll the dice and see where they settle.