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

Steering the trackball, everyone seemed to devolve into their respective activities as they all waited for me to get us to our destination. The two kids were playing with one another, Maruki was doing his usual thing of guarding us against non-existent threats, while Shade was off to the side fiddling with his [Manifest]. All in all, we looked like we were all just waiting for our voyage to finish.

Well, all except for Guidance as she deemed it fit to accompany me on console duty.

"Do you really think that you should be the only one capable of steering this thing?" she asked.

"No?" I scoffed. "If anything, I\'d be more than happy to relinquish helmsman duties to anybody that wants it."

And I wasn\'t kidding too. Driving took a lot of energy and attention even if you were just riding a motorcycle. What more for a massive [Rig] that probably weighed thousands of tons drifting through the sea?

"Helmsman, huh... I kind of didn\'t think of that term," she pondered to herself.

"Just like the rest of your other decisions, huh."

I let out a chuckle as Guidance sputtered at my teasing. I wasn\'t even lying. The amount of stuff in this world was massive, but I still couldn\'t see anything more than a few loosely connected ideas trying desperately to somehow glue together and make it all work. That glamour system I unlocked way earlier hadn\'t been useful to me yet at all. And that wasn\'t to mention the other stuff like the linear [Move] system and the random dungeons.

Then again, that might just be the Re:Mind Engine changing things right from under us.

"I-I told you it wasn\'t my fault already," she pouted. "Well, some of them are, but most of the game-breaking stuff is purely unintentional!"

"And that, I believe," I smiled. "We\'re all trying our best, at least."

"Hopefully," she scoffed, leaning on the console as she looked over the chart. "If anything, we\'re probably doing better than any of us thought we\'d do."

I almost let out a laugh for that. That was mostly true. I didn\'t even think that we\'d ever be doing this well back when we first set off. Maybe we\'d be doing decently, sure, but not to this level of us somehow being sufficient enough to be sailing out to some random island out in the Deep.

...Or maybe I was just overestimating our capabilities. I sure forgot to give away the Leafs I had to those that could actually use it. Huh...

"We should probably delegate ship roles or something..."

"What?"

Absently correcting our course through the trackball, I gave Guidance a look, her face contorting to one of curiosity as she waited for me to answer her.

"Ship roles?" I repeated. "Like Caption, cook, helmsman, etcetera."

"Oh, that..." she hummed in understanding. "To be fair, I didn\'t really put in any effort into the [Rig] system beyond being able to customize and drive it without any issue. There weren\'t any of these minute things in the code, all these crew members mostly just for show rather than actually being a thing you should be able to control."

"But that isn\'t the case now, is it," I chuckled. "We have to run this thing like a proper vessel, and with just six of us, trying to maintain this thing will be a nightmare."

I could already imagine the inevitable problems that would soon pop up once we got into any serious issue with this thing. We even got a small taste of it already just from our fight with the Vestygian [Rig] yesterday. We were hilariously understaffed, and we were already out of the Empire for us to try and recruit some people to our cause.

And that was on top of us having to screen through them to see if they would even be worth it to take along our journey.

"Hmm.... I suppose we still have a few people we can recruit," Guidance hummed in deliberation as she stared at the chart. "I put in three possible starting places, one for each nation with their own possible party members available for recruitment."

"So you\'re saying that we should go deep within enemy territory in hopes that we can find them then."

"That\'s just that, unfortunately," she sighed. "Thankfully, I also put in a way for the player to recruit an enemy nation\'s possible party member. We just have to do their questline to get their trust before they can be properly recruited into the party."

I blinked at her words. "That\'s assuming that the Quest system still works, which it isn\'t..."

"Yeah..." she groaned. "Still, it could be a start of us filling this [Rig] up with capable people. I for sure know that all of the recruitable party members I designed would be up to the task."

"And combat capable, right?"

"Of course," she snorted. "I carefully handcrafted their designs, making sure that they\'re all to my taste."

...

...Okay? "Guidance?"

"Yes?"

"You\'re drooling again."

"Wha-"

I let out a small chuckle as I let the dev properly compose herself again. Shaking my head, I looked out ahead of the [Rig], our lights illuminating the waters beyond as the charts denoted that we should be landing just a bit beyond the horizon.

"Land ho, Moriya," Shade casually announced. "Should I get to the comms?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Tell them we\'re just here to resupply."

With a curt nod, Shade assumed his position and began contacting whatever port authorities the island might have. That was assuming that it even had a port. Or civilization, for that matter.

"Land?! We\'re at the island already?!"

"Calm down, Shizu," I chuckled. "We\'re just about to see what\'s in store for us."

I couldn\'t help but smile as the princess began acting like a kid that was finally seeing an amusement park for the first time. She was practically glued to the window, staring out with Shen as they eagerly awaited landfall.

"They\'re such kids," Guidance chuckled.

"Yep," I agreed. "Have you talked to Shizu yet, by the way?"

"What for?"

"For... You know..." I trailed off. "And that\'s on top of how you two are going to fix Shen\'s lack of growth. Assuming you\'re both not planning on doing something?"

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