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

"So, what was that all about?"

I almost wanted to gawk at Guidance's tone as we finally managed to get some bit of privacy to ourselves. Shade and Maruki were too busy walking beside Shizu, which left me and Guidance to continue our earlier conversation.

"Shade's onto us, I think," I informed her. "Don't know what he knows exactly, but I think it'll only be a matter of time before he gets enough clues if we keep going like this."

Guidance sighed, "Well, that's kind of expected in the long run. They're gonna be our permanent party members. And with all of us living on the same [Rig], we'll be getting to know each other very well."

"Huh... Wait, let's get back to the topic," I pointed out, diverting our conversation back to what was actually important. "This [Rig] system of yours didn't show up at all on my end earlier. Not even a quest or anything too."

"Which would explain why our conversation with the Portmaster earlier was so short," Guidance inferred. "Probably also why the keys went to Shizu instead of you."

My eyes widened, "Wait, so I was supposed to be the leader of this group?"

"You're the player, so of course, you are," Guidance chuckled. "But the fact that Shizu's pretty much running the show means that the Engine's changed the world so much that the scripted sequences are pretty much gone."

"So no more forced cutscenes for us then?"

"Yep. Same goes for Shizu as well," the dev pointed out. "She hadn't had to stand in place and recite my lines per verbatim for a while now. And probably not ever with the way things are going."

I could only hum in agreement as we followed Shizu forward. The salty errors floating around us mimicked the sensation of being near at sea, and we actually were, now that I remembered. Also, why was this [Rig] so far from the office?

"You're thinking of something again," Guidance pointed out.

"This [Rig] thing... If we can't interact with it, how are we gonna fix it in the first place?"

Guidance hummed in thought before she replied, "If I recall, the quest here should be the player helping Shizu find a mechanic to be a part of the crew. Said mechanic will also be the healer of the party if one still isn't in it."

"Wait, I thought you said we didn't need to get the healer at this point in time?" I called her out. She did say that she was more than enough for where we were going.

"W-Well, I only just remembered, okay?" Guidance blushed with a stammer. "And with you being unable to access the [Rig] interface, we'll have to be able to fix it the old-fashioned way, assuming that's how it works now."

"I wouldn't put it past the game, to be honest," I scoffed. "This world doesn't even feel like a game anymore. I've barely leveled up, and I haven't even gotten to do the grind that I was expecting."

And I wasn't even kidding. Ever since that fight with the wolf, I haven't gotten any sort of experience that could level me up. The fight with the Emperor didn't give me anything, while my earlier duel with the woman herself didn't even give me so much as any sort of currency that I could use.

Essentially, the game aspect of all of this was just... not working.

"That'll hopefully change once we get into some proper dungeons," Guidance sighed. "Don't remind me that everything's just falling apart at the moment. I really don't want to think about it when I can't even fix it in the first place."

"You can always-"

"Not. Now. Okay?"

Ookay then...

Closing my mouth, the journey settled into silence as we waited for our feet to get to our destination. Along the way, boats of all shapes and sizes seemed to litter the pier, all in various states of disrepair as they floated lazily on the red water.

"I guess Kattleyna's not known for its ships," I absently commented.

"They are, but I guess that's another thing the Engine changed..."

Doing my best to ignore Guidance's forlorn tone, I turned my attention back to the pier. The farther we walked, the larger and more metallic the ships became. Somehow, they all shared the same old-timey shape that I'd expect out of a museum piece, and they all still retained some sort of wooden parts in their design. And it was there that I noticed something peculiar.

For some reason, despite the ships growing larger and more metallic in design, the bottom half of the ship was still made out of wood. I mean, wasn't that just a disaster waiting to happen?

"We're here!"

I perked up at Shizu's tone. Finally stopping behind the princess, we all ended up craning our necks upward as we all stared at the monstrosity staring down at us.

"That's... pretty massive," I voiced out in awe.

"I know, right?!" Shizu excitedly yelled out. "We get this large a [Rig] to ourselves! It's so cool!"

Right...

Looking at it, I could only estimate its total height to be around the same as a three-story house. Its metallic sheen showed that it was rather new, while the bright wooden color shimmering against the red waters below told me that no money was spared just to make sure this thing would float.

Of course, that was just the hull. The insides of this thing might be a whole different story.

"Truly, Imperial engineering is the best in this [Star]!" Maruki proudly declared, his loud voice thankfully not making us all deaf with us being out in the open. "Such a vessel is more than worthy to carry the Princess!"

"On that, I agree," Shade commented. "Such a beautiful vessel can only be matched by our fair Princess and the beautiful Lady Guidance."

I almost groaned. Won't this guy ever shut up?

"Something's wrong again..."

Oh? "What is it?"

"There's no name by the side of the bow," Guidance whispered beside me. "You should've gotten the option to name and customize your [Rig], but without that happening, I guess it just erased the damn thing with another missing texture glitch."

"Huh..."

Looking up, I took another look at the hull, only to raise my eyebrows as I spotted the error. Sure enough, just by the bow of the ship, a blurry pixelated mess covered a massive strip of the hull. I could only assume that's where the name of the [Rig] was supposed to go. And now that I look at it even more, the metallic sheen of the ship actually looked a hell of a whole lot lower quality than the wood that it was attached to.

"Well, let's see what we've got!"

Hearing Shizu's joy, I could only shrug as we followed her to the [Rig]. While it was worrying that I couldn't access this so-called [Rig] system, I'm sure Guidance will be able to fix it with her [Manifest] anyway.

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