Dusk (BL Light Novel)

Once this pattern begins, one of the two party members will see something subtly wrong—like me—but their screen will otherwise appear normal. Meanwhile, the other party member will see their screen mirrored, as if reflected in a mirror, with everything flipped left to right.
In the normal view, the party member will appear as a blank space, invisible. But in the mirrored screen, the party list becomes fully visible. The party member shown there could be a "user," or it could be the "boss."

The reason the party list is only visible in the mirror screen is supposedly because the human eye—distorted by light and brain computation—doesn't show things as they are, whereas a mirror “shows the world as it truly is.” Naturally, that was Retaking’s deduction.
So no matter what I see on my screen, it's just a warped “fake” and means nothing. What matters is who appears to be partied with the boss on Retaking’s mirrored screen, which reflects the truth. Depending on that, our response had to change.
I just kept dealing with the fake Retaking who charged at me without warning. Even though his attacks were weaker than they looked, the damage felt sharper than expected, so I made sure to wrap myself in defensive buffs and waited for the real Retaking’s message.

Eventually, a single line of chat appeared:
[General] Retaking : <|0
I didn’t even have to tilt my head to the left. It was instantly readable. He'd written “Win” using a symbol and number. It was a signal—since on the mirrored screen, Retaking and I were still in a party together, the “real-world” version of him had to win.

The moment I confirmed Retaking’s chat, the screen darkened. Then, just like in Phase 1, the silhouette of the moth reappeared—ripped and shredded, no longer whole.
As before, the silhouette started regaining color quickly and began to glow. White light surged in from all directions, and a prompt appeared urging me to press any button in time with the rhythm.
But I didn’t press anything.

Retaking said “win,” which meant I had to lose.
Because I missed the timing, the moth shattered into pieces, and the beams of light tracing paths from it faded away, leaving faint trails. Not only that, but my character’s HP dropped to 1 in an instant, and a “Near Death” debuff icon flashed across the screen. My avatar dropped to one knee, panting heavily.
That’s when the fake Retaking lunged at me like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.

A crack appeared in the center of the screen, in the exact shape of the shattered moth. The crack didn’t vanish—instead, it spread wider and wider, until finally, with the sound of glass breaking, the entire screen fractured and fell apart.
And from that crack, a hand suddenly burst through, grabbed my character by the collar, and yanked me out in one sharp motion.
As my avatar was pulled out, the screen quickly went black, and just as fast, it brightened again. Through the hazy focus, I saw Retaking’s face.

It was probably meant to be one of those cutscenes where the boss traps a party member, and another comes to rescue them.
I clicked my tongue. So this was the synchronized cutscene I hadn’t triggered during Phase 1. It was my second time being grabbed by the collar like that, but every time it happened, I’d get a little fluttery.
After that “pulling-from-the-crack” animation, Retaking’s name reappeared in the party list. The boss still stared down at us expressionlessly—unlike other bosses, it didn’t scream or rage in frustration.

With the mirror pattern cleared, all that remained was the pickpocket mechanic we hadn’t cracked yet, and whatever new gimmick waited beyond that wall. A mountain beyond a mountain—but the climb was almost over. The boss’s HP had already dropped below 30%, so we just had to hold out a little longer.
Before the next mechanic could begin, the symbol on my back shone brightly and transformed into a new glyph: a large sun, under which hung a small crescent moon—representing the Jeopa race and the daytime. The phase had shifted to Day.
Auto-attacks came at the same pace and rhythm as before. But just as Retaking had suffered during the Night phase, I—being Bia—started accumulating the Scorch debuff in stacks of 2. I had to be more cautious stepping into AoEs than I had during the Night phase.
…And even though I was being cautious, there was a moment where my brain froze. My quick slots had gotten shuffled, and I couldn’t remember which attack skill I was supposed to press. In that split second of hesitation, I stepped into an overlapping area of two Sun tiles, and the Scorch debuff stacked to 9 in one go.

Thankfully, a Moon tile spawned soon after, and the boss entered a casting phase that paused auto-attacks—an absolute miracle. The debuff settled at 8 stacks.
I breathed a shaky sigh of relief, having narrowly escaped being roasted alive at 10 stacks. If the boss had kept auto-attacking during that window, I would’ve died without even seeing the next gimmick—and Retaking might’ve mocked me in chat for being unlucky.
[Party] Retaking : inventory

Just as I was feeling relieved after pulling my foot out of certain death, Retaking warned me via chat to check my inventory. When I opened it—unsure of when it had even appeared—there it was: a bomb icon item sitting dead center in my inventory.
This damn thing was the bastard that had been screwing us over for four attempts now.
The bomb had a time limit. Once in your inventory, if you didn’t get rid of it within 15 seconds, it would auto-detonate—dropping the holder’s HP to 1 for 5 seconds. If it wasn’t handled in time, you’d get hit by the next AoE ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) and die, simple as that.

You’d think tossing it away would fix it, but no. The item couldn’t be dismantled, discarded, or destroyed.
We’d been racking our brains trying to think outside the box—trying to break away from standard boss mechanics and find a workaround.
We tried hovering the mouse over the item and pressing various skills.

We tried using the "play dead" emote and dropping the item while lying down.
We tried dragging weapon icons over to the item and swinging them like swords…
We scraped the bottom of our imaginative barrels, spouting ideas so stupid we couldn’t help but laugh, and then actually testing them in-game.

Still, we hadn’t cracked the mechanic.
We paused DPS and just stared at the bomb, now down to 12 seconds. We couldn’t drop it. How were we supposed to deal with this?
I squeezed every last drop of concentration and creativity from my brain and tried to think fast.

The final boss mechanics in this place were clearly unlike anything we’d faced before. The difference was stark—unlike other bosses that followed predictable combat logic, this one seemed to interfere with the system itself.
That had to be the key.
System-based solution… using game mechanics to solve it… an item that drops the holder’s HP to 1…

I stared, unblinking, at the dwindling countdown—then snapped my eyes toward Retaking.
A system-level way to change ownership of an undroppable item… I darted my eyes back to the bomb item’s tooltip.
No “Untradeable” tag in sight.

When the timer hit 4 seconds, I ran up to Retaking’s character, mashed mouse clicks on him, and hit the trade shortcut key. Miraculously, the trade window popped up—even during combat.
Heart pounding, I dropped the bomb item into the trade window. I didn’t even wait to see if he accepted—I just smashed out a message on the keyboard, giddy from the discovery.
I told him the trick in party chat, completely lit up.

While Retaking was still asking what the hell I was talking about, the remaining 4 seconds ticked out.
I opened my character info window and checked my HP.
Even after the time ran out, my health hadn’t dropped to 1—not even close. It was still sitting at that very familiar five-digit value.

[Party] Honeybread : trade POSSIBLE!
[Party] Honeybread : send trade
[Party] Honeybread : and have

[Party] Honeybread : one person
[Party] Honeybread : take the hit!!!
[Party] Retaking : you can trade it?

Retaking just stood there, typing in chat like he’d already resigned himself to dying. But his reply was weird—he was asking if it could be traded.
[Party] Honeybread : yeah yeah earlier
[Party] Honeybread : I sent you a trade, remember?

[Party] Retaking : ??
[Party] Retaking : I never got one though?