Dusk (BL Light Novel)

[Combat] Used skill: Will to Sacrifice.
**[Combat] Retaking took 53,996 damage from **.
[Combat] dealt 37,798 damage to Retaking.
[System] The Abandoned Temple Sector has been sealed off.
[Party] Retaking: it's not a bu—[lkzjnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

The second I saw that needle, clearly meant to skewer Retaking, I slammed . It’s an ultimate-tier skill that, for 16 seconds, redirects 50% of all damage received by party members within 8 meters to me, with a 30% damage reduction. I hit it purely on reflex.
At the moment I pressed it, I thought it was a waste. But once I saw the damage I took, my opinion changed fast. Good thing I hit it without thinking. Even with the reduced damage, over 20% of my HP got shaved off in one hit. Retaking was left with barely 50%. If he’d taken the full hit, he probably would’ve died—if not dropped to near-death.
[Party] Retaking: what did I even

[Party] Retaking: do???
[Party] Honeybread: who knows;;
I quickly taunted the nameless thing to pull aggro, then typed in chat.

It wasn’t like Retaking was standing too close or had cast anything to trigger aggro—so why had it suddenly attacked him? I wondered, but after thinking it over, I realized there were a few rare mobs that initiated attacks on their own like this. Usually only in event dungeons, though. In a story dungeon? Almost never—but not impossible either.
Right after I used my taunt, the nameless thing rolled its sun and moon eyes toward me. But only for a second—then it looked away, like it lost interest, and turned its gaze back to Retaking. Even the aggro marker next to the boss’s HP bar had Retaking’s name.
The taunt didn’t work at all.

[Party] Retaking: your taunt didn’t land?
[Party] Retaking: you used it
[Party] Honeybread: huh;;

[Party] Honeybread: i did tho;;
I was starting to get really anxious, thinking Retaking might get one-shot by this overpowered nameless bastard. But the longer time passed, the less relevant my worry became. Even though Retaking had aggro, the boss made no move to attack him.
Was it not aggro at all, just some scripted event? Then why was Retaking’s name showing up on the aggro list? And didn’t we get a system message earlier saying “The Abandoned Temple Sector has been sealed off” right after I took damage in his place?

Just to be sure, I walked up and used a skill on the boss.
Strangely enough, there were no damage numbers shown. But the nameless thing’s gaze snapped to me—and the aggro marker switched to my nickname.
This was definitely combat. The boss was reacting to us. But it just watched. No actions, no attacks. Just standing there, silently shifting its gaze.

Maybe it was one of those bosses that stay passive until a sudden burst phase? But why didn’t our damage show up? Was I really hitting it? Was this like the mirror-mob phase again—am I just slashing thin air?
No, I could definitely hear the hit SFX when I landed a blow. That much was clear.
It wasn’t just me, either.
[Party] Retaking: why isn’t the boss attacking

[Party] Retaking: and why isn’t our damage showing??
[Party] Honeybread: maybe our attacks aren’t landing?
[Party] Retaking: i’m still hitting and the HP’s going down, though

Wait, really?
I blinked and checked the boss’s HP bar. Sure enough, what had been 100% was now at 99%.
At this point, it might as well be a giant walking bug. In any other game, I’d be convinced it was a bug and just log off. But this was Dusk—developed by ZeroSoft, with one of the lowest bug rates in all MMORPGs. Was it really a bug? Or, like Retaking said… was it intentional?

[Party] Retaking: let’s just keep hitting and think later
[Party] Retaking: might be best to chunk its HP now while it’s doing nothing
Retaking had decided: this was the boss. And right now, all we had to do was wail on it.
Thinking could wait. Hitting things—that was what I was good at.

Retaking and I just started swinging. Until the boss’s HP dropped to 90%, it just stood there, watching.
I couldn’t see how much damage I was actually dealing, and the boss wasn’t moving—it felt like pounding on a training dummy. I was starting to get bored when its HP hit 80%—and that’s when the nameless thing finally stirred.
My eyes gleamed. I watched closely.

It raised its hand as if waving to the air. Its arm and wrist moved with fluid precision, like a conductor leading an orchestra. A casting bar appeared under its HP bar.
Of course—and unfortunately—the skill name was blank, just like its own name. We couldn’t tell what it was casting.
That was going to screw Retaking hard. His main strategy was using skill names to anticipate and solve mechanics. Sure, he could improvise decently, but his strength was in contingency plans: Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C.

He’d saved my ass before, when double-tank-busted us in a surprise phase—but he paid for that with 8 stacks of Stress. If this fight demanded another miracle, he might hit 20 stacks and drop dead from the Combat Medic penalty.
Assuming it was an AoE, I popped damage reduction and external survival skills. Looked like Retaking had the same thought—he was prepping a heal cast to time with the end of the boss’s cast bar.
When the cast ended, the boss dropped its hand like it was finalizing a purchase. No damage landed.

But something changed on my screen.
Specifically—my quick slots.
In confusion, I halted mid-DPS. All my Holy Guardian skills had vanished from the quick bar. In their place were completely unfamiliar ones. I panicked, switched to mouse mode, and checked the skill tooltips.

[Vaccine] – Lv.46 / Immunity Skill
Cast Time: 0 sec
Cooldown: 50 sec
Spreads a vaccine that increases status effect resistance by 2% for all allies within 15m (including self) and grants immunity to Discarded Miasma / Regenerative Miasma debuffs for 6 seconds.
Huh?

I froze, then moved my mouse to another unfamiliar skill icon.
[Ongoing Research] – Lv.1 / Offensive Skill
Cast Time: 3 sec
Cooldown: 1.5 sec
Inflicts 200 magic damage to a designated target within 21m that is currently affected by your Virus-type skills, advancing research.
Each successful hit slightly increases the probability of virus mutation.

The icons were unfamiliar, but the names and descriptions were all too familiar.
They were Combat Medic skills.
All of them—my entire bar—had been replaced with Combat Medic skills.

[Party] Retaking: Bread
[Party] Retaking: my skill bar changed
[Party] Honeybread: wtf

[Party] Retaking: it’s exactly the same as your skill layout
His words made it click.
That damned boss had swapped our skill bars.

Now that I looked more closely, the layout was the same one I always saw in Retaking’s stream videos. No—identical.
…Wait. But how does Retaking know my skill layout?
[Party] Honeybread: wait how do you

[Party] Honeybread: know my skill setup??
The back of my neck tingled as I typed it. I’d never posted screenshots on the official forums or in videos. Not even my ball-less ball-friend Moon Seonhwa would know. And he wouldn’t care anyway.
[Party] Retaking: in the story video you sent me
[Party] Retaking: I saw it there

[Party] Honeybread: ah
I’d just been writing an entire soap opera in my head—something like “no wonder he gave me his number so easily and told me to text him, he must’ve had a crush or something”—but his clarification wiped the mental script clean.