- Wah, stop being so careless with your life like that. You do not have nine lives. - That is the voice of Mirai, who is currently "unemployed".
Right before the thorns can touch me, Mirai flicks a plate in the middle of the gap between my body and the thorns. Although the thorns are more durable than the shield itself, it gives me an extra second or two to divert my leap course, effectively evading the thorns before they slam themselves onto the ceiling and break.
- Tsk, every time one of you interrupts, I forget that the other one exists. - The boss looks a bit pissed off, as he starts to inflict more frequent attacks.
The Suicide Drones keep charging at the boss and attempt to blow the exterior layer of his head up, but they are mostly ineffective, if not for the smoke coming from the explosions that may or may not hinder the boss's vision. The other drone units that attack from a range are also firing at full power, but it does not look like they would do any significant damage.
Then, not only that, we are continually trying to evade all of the flying blocks that hinder us from trying to even getting close to the boss. The blocks crash into each other, get shattered into pieces, and fall like rain, making dust everywhere. The once spotless boss room now looks nothing similar to the first impression any more. It looks like an enlarged prison chamber, and no wonder it is called the Room of Atonement.
- Come here and just let me finish both of you! - The boss shrieks at us while summoning blocks from his hands and throw at us like baseballs.
- How about I offer you this same thing? - I am trying to be sarcastic.
At this rate, our firepower would just dwindle with time. If the fight persists, we will be at a huge number disadvantage. We need to do something.
- Eat these toys of mine. - I reach for my backpack and throw about a few grenades at the Intruder.
- What do you think these pitiful balls can even do anything to me? - The boss smirks and snaps his fingers. Big blocks that detach from the wall charge toward the grenades like bulls, pinning them into the opposite wall, before they detonate and break the blocks into pieces.
This supports my current hypothesis, but I still need to reaffirm it.
- Ha, this grenade performance is just for distraction purposes. - I laugh and charge toward the boss with my laser greatsword.
- I will provide cover fire for you. - Mirai seems to understand what I am trying to test. She switches to a photon assault rifle and deploys more disposable drone units despite our slight deficit.
- Have you two not learned your lessons? - The boss again controls the blocks to fly at me, while trying to fend off the relatively tiny but annoying flying units.
I leap onto each block and jump between them to gain momentum, and again, at a suitable height, I plunge myself downwards to aim at the boss Intruder's head.
For this second attempt, the boss seems to be a bit busier with the Suicide Drones hovering above him and just waiting to fly at him, but he still has sufficient reaction time to evade my attack, summoning rock thorns from the floor.
I set the settings of my greatsword to maximum electromagnetic power and spin myself like a turbine towards the thorns. This time, the immense power of the greatsword slices through the thorns like cutting vegetables, and I make it through the thorn attack unscathed.
Right after my experimental attack, Mirai retracts the extra drones. It seems that the atack clears all of our doubts, and we both unanimously agreed on the same, undeniable fact.
There is a cap to the number of simultaneous actions that the core chip can perform, and the more the numbers, the lower the quality of each action. The weakened thorns due to his distraction in fending off the drones, and the slightly reduced retaliation frequency against our drones when he is busy keeping the grenades away from him. These evidence all point towards it.
- Have you felt bored after deploying those ineffective tricks? - The boss yawns.
- Yea, so now let's come to our main course, shall we? - I smile.
Just to clarify, of course I am mocking his ignorance. There is no way I would cheer him on before leading him to his own demise.
I change my propeller settings to high leaps, then initiate another attack. The boss raises his hand, and two pillars from the wall are approaching me, trying to clamp me inside. I leap at one of the pillars, gain some ground to make another leap away, before the pillars slam into each other and get shattered. I sling myself through the rain of rock projectiles shooting in every direction, trying to approach him again.
On the other hand, Mirai charges forward with her photon assault rifle. With the agility module, she effortlessly jumps from block to block, as if it is just a game of casual parkour. She fires at the boss, who may be slightly disoriented due to our continuous attack from both directions. After his chain of commands, trying to deal with both of us at the same time, rock and soil blocks of all kinds and types fly around the room like a food fight.
Not only that, half of our drones are now set to break down the band potentially damaging rocky blocks. As soon as any of them are formed from the walls, the Archer Drones would immediately roast them with relentless turns of bullets.
- Now, who is the person with the upper hand here?
- Do you really think that this outnumbering can miraculously work? HAHA, nope!
Dirt and debris from the floor fly upwards and coalesce together, forming several hardened, deformable spheres. Then, after the boss's command, they fly at us.
Just because they are rock hard does not mean that we have no choice. I change the greatsword settings to grapple mode and leap at a sphere, thrusting my blade into the sphere to stand firmly, then jump away from the sphere again to close our distance.
- Yuusha, the spheres bounce! Be careful!
The warning is just in time. Right after I leap away from the sphere, it crashes into a wall and rebounds at me at speeds that are not following any laws of energy conservation. I make a backflip in the midair, just nicely and barely touching the sphere surface with my hair strands.
- That was close. - I sigh in relief.
The spheres bounce several more times before they use up their energy and disintegrate into rocks and dirt again, and we do not find it as difficult after adopting their bounce trajectories. Then, we charge at the boss Intruder again.
- That technique is supposed to finish you off in one bounce. Impressive.
- You can continue cheering for us after we send you to heaven.
It again evades the combo attack by stepping aside and summoning thorns, but this trick is becoming all too familiar for us. We step on the accelerating thorns to push us towards the shadow of the dodging boss.
- Got you this time! - I declare.
- Not so easy. - It says.
Even faster than the offensive skills, a barrier made of rock suddenly emerges from nowhere, blocking my greatsword as it swings in the air with full force. The Intruder leaps backward.
- Come on, why are you so afraid of close combat? - I try to provoke him.
- You can more than realise that my class is not a fighting class through those pitiful spectacles. Your words are no use. - The boss materialises rockets with the remnants on the ground and flings them at me.
- Who knows? - I swing my greatsword and slice all of the incoming rockets into pieces. The rockets break down into dirt again and fall. I accelerate forward, again directly at him.
- Come on, when would you be bored with this only strategy that is as old as the universe? I can just... Huh?
I know that such a conversation, although meaningless, would make him forget that he is fighting against two people. I have bought enough time.
- Now, who just get tricked by the trick that is as old as the universe? - Mirai is being sarcastic towards the boss, whose legs are tied up.
It only takes ten seconds of distraction for Mirai to tie his legs up with a lasso. The boss tries to cast attacks, but they are all intercepted by the army of drones that just sit and wait to see anything materialising from thin air to destroy. This time, my propeller acceleration is maximum, and I swing the greatsword at maximum power.
- Goodbye. - I use both hands and slash its head with the powerful laser beam.
Under the overwhelming power and heat of the melee weapon, the boss's head breaks into half. The internal processing system is exposed, showing a rectangular piece of component that looks like a chip.
I take out a small knife to extract the chip safely out of the boss for research purposes, but as my knife blade touches the chip, a blinding flash immediately inhibits both Mirai's and my vision.
- Do you know why our rank is 65, even though your attacks and tactics are so lousy? Well, now you know. - There is a voice from the chip, but this is definitely not pre-recorded audio.
The ground starts shaking, this time even more vigorously than the initial one, as if the room is going to collapse and trap us here. In the dim light that is left after the dust is kicked up and spread in the atmosphere, I barely see the figure of a giant entity growing from the ground.
- Welcome to your final trial, also your place of eternal rest. My consciousness and this entire room have been synced into one after that emergency protocol trigger. Now, shall we? - The voice then follows with a maniacal laugh, then quickly decays into silence.
That thing is not any different from a mechanical robot.
- Mirai, what do we do? - I turn to the only resort.
Just to receive a confident smile.
- The boss is not the only one with a robot. Let's crush him, forever, Yuusha!