"No Game No Life" volume 12 by Kamiya Yuu, exploring the intricacies of role playing games.
The main quest involves a party going through a classical RPG, advancing through the linearly laid out levels and defeating the bosses as they go. There was one reference to FromSoftware on page 176, but the actual game play through the levels is more comic action and not so much hardcore gothic horror fighting. This part is fairly consistent with previous volumes.
What's special about this quest was how the author constructs this RPG in the No Game No Life universe, giving explanations to things like why demon lord came to exist, why are there collectible items in dungeons, and how HP and MP really worked. The extra bits of details made the quest more interesting, although this meta topic of how RPGs worked from the dungeon operators' point of view is not unique to No Game No Life. For example, it's the main theme of Dungeon People and maybe a few other series, and attempting to weave all the details into No Game No Life appears to have resulted in some pacing issues in this volume. Alas, volume #12 ended without completing the quest.
Maybe it's not so much the slow pacing that cut off volume #12 at a cliffhanger, but the author himself also had not fully fleshed out the ending to the RPG either. We will have to wait until #13 to find out.
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