The Mad Rat’s Lab

 

Hello, everyone… This is Andreu. And I’m now going to die… I mean, dive into my little sister’s dungeon.

“Haaaaa…. I hate myself right now. Why did I have to agree to her request? Why did my mind shut down at the most critical moment?”

And since I have already agreed I have to keep my word. If it was somebody else, I could maybe talk myself out of it, but with my little sister… It’s scary just to think what she may do in retaliation.

“So yes, I must keep my word now.”

There’s a reason why I don’t know the Abyss faction that much. It’s because this game is very realistic and when playing you feel like you are in a real fantasy world. Just imagining being surrounded by the Abyss faction’s creatures makes me shudder…

“Andreu, please, focus on the task and stop making complaints to yourself.”

Maybe it’s not as scary as I’m imagining it? Maybe it’s like any other dungeon, and I can even enjoy myself while testing Clara’s dungeon?

“Haaaa… there’s nothing else I can do than to go and see. Let’s first add my sister as a friend so that I can enter her dungeon…”

After my internal monologue, I open the friends list and send a friend request to my little sister.

“She said her nickname is LemonPie, right? Found her! Now I send the friend request and wait for the reply…”

But I don’t have to wait. Almost at the same time as I send the friend request, my sister accepts it. She must have been waiting while watching the friend list all the time…

“There’s no going back now. I have to enter her dungeon. Yes, I have to go… I’m sure it’s going to be ok!” I try to convince myself, to no avail. “Well, whatever happens, happens…”

The dungeon is called ‘Dargun’thu Legacy’. It sounds like something important that disappeared into the Abyss, maybe a whole civilization? Anyway, the name does fit the theme in my opinion.

So I start the Dungeon Invasion. And after the initial white flash I see… nothing.

Nothing!? Well, not exactly… But almost nothing. The dungeon entrance portal leads to some kind of ruined stone road, but everything else is void.

‘The void’. Literally, there’s nothing else. Maybe if I could fly, I could test if there are invisible walls or not. But since I can’t…

“So… am I in outer space? No… It looks different from the photos I've seen. And also, this weird dark fog that is constantly trying to eat at my vision isn’t normal. It’s like dark tendrils are slowly disintegrating everything they touch… I can see the stone here and there slowly crumbling away.”

I am currently standing on top of a stone road. Well, I call it a stone road but it’s more like several flat stones put together in a chaotic mess. I can walk, but there are spaces missing here and there. And only the void awaits those who fall into them.

“I definitely don’t want to test what happens if I fall in one of those holes…”

And from here I can see the stone road continuing. It sometimes goes down, sometimes up, it even bifurcates at some points. But I can’t see too far because of the weird dark fog.

“Oh, and there are crumbling buildings here and there. Just in case, I’m not going to step into them. I don’t want to be squashed to death by a falling building yet… I don't need that experience at all.”

By the way, I think I didn’t mention it before, but dungeons in Dungeon Masters Arena are in 3D. What I mean is that they can have different elevation between zones, and have parts that are literally on top of the others.

A lot of people do this to create the typical RPG dungeons with several floors, as well as castles and mansions.

I also used it for the tunnel zones, where some tunnels pass over the others. And in the Freezer, where some rooms are on top of the others.

And also, there’s a dungeon menu that shows a small version of the dungeon in 3D, similar to those sci-fi holograms in films. Except that this one is in color and has all the details. It even displays the units moving in real time!

“Andreu, it was nice trying to run away from reality and talk about the game instead of moving forward. But you know you can’t delay it forever, so start moving!”

Yes, sir! I’m moving forward right now, sir!

 

This is oppressive. As I move forward, I feel the dark tendrils tickling my skin. And it’s driving me crazy! Well, maybe it’s just my imagination… but I swear I can FEEL them!

“It’s already been two minutes, and nothing has happened so far. Except for the time my foot slipped and almost fell into the void. Where are you, monsters?” I call them.

But even after calling them, there’s still no sign of them.

“Not like I want to see you, but I don’t want surprises later on, so I would appreciate it if you could appear from afar so that I have time to mentally prepare... Or to run away.”

A few more steps. The dark tendrils keep putting me on edge.

“Shit! Please, appear already! Or I’ll turn crazy! Crazier, I mean!”

Just as I shout. At that exact moment, something appears from under the stone road. At first I think it’s just another one of those dark tendrils that keep annoying me. But then the tentacle grabs me, and I’m sure it’s not the fog this time.

“Noooo! Please go away! It was all a lie! False bravado!I never wanted you to come! Leave me alone!”

The thing comes into view as more and more tentacles grab my leg. It’s a creature about half a meter in size. If I had to compare it to something, it would be a mix between a squid and a leech. But it has more tentacles, and each tentacle ends in a small mouth like one of those from a leech.

The horrendous thing strongly grabs my leg with the tentacles. Several of them are already sucking me.

“Aaaaah! Die! Die! Die!” I shout as I strike it repeatedly with my staff.

I don’t know how many times I’ve hit it because of the panic, but it finally dies.

“It’s dead, right? It’s still spasming on the ground… But the HP bar is depleted.”

This thing has managed to reduce my HP by about 1/8. And, even if I didn’t use any skill, the MP has also been reduced. Taking into account the difference in stats and the champion’s buff, it’s a lot.

“It must be because of the panic… Otherwise it wouldn't be possible, right?”

I inspect the monster, and see that it has both a HP drain and a MP reducing skills. The HP drain is the same skill as the specters that Ricard had: Draining Touch. And the MP reducing skill is this one.

“Yeah… definitely this thing should never be seen. And here comes the Abyss trait: killing the enemies by MP and SOU depletion! Also called sanity loss!”

Of course, it’s not like the Abyss units can’t kill other units by reducing the HP to zero. But their ‘special resource’ can only be obtained by having units die because of the Soul stat reaching zero.

This makes this faction especially dangerous against units that don’t have high MP and Soul stats, usually melee characters. But is also dangerous for the spellcasters, because they accelerate the MP depletion by casting spells.

What they do is this: If you don’t use skills, you die because of HP loss. And if you use skills so that you don’t die, you are going to use MP, accelerating your own death. You can’t escape from the Abyss’ grasp!

What happens if you don’t use MP at all, because your skills only use EP, you ask? Then you still might die anyway because the MP gets drained as long as you have one of their units in sight. Because not all, but most units from the Abyss faction have this skill.

After examining my aggressor’s corpse, I continue moving forward. And now that I know what to look out for, the next encounters aren’t so surprising nor hard.

 

It’s easy to get lost in this dungeon if you don’t pay attention to the road. Simply because of the lack of… well, lack of everything. Luckily, the road isn’t too complex and the enemies don’t come all at once.

Now I can understand why she finished creating her dungeon so fast. There’s almost nothing in it, so of course it’s going to be fast to create!

“Clara, you did a great job with your first dungeon. I like how you distributed the monsters and the setting of this dungeon. Well, I don’t like it, but I still know what’s good and what isn’t. Though I would never understand how you can say these creatures are cute…”

I talk to myself while looking at the last defeated creature. Is it the tenth? I’m not sure how many I’ve killed already.

Finally, something changes in the dungeon. Maybe I’m reaching the end? I don’t know. But the stone road is now getting wider. And I can see a plaza some meters away.

And there’s something in this plaza. Yeah… ‘Something’. I can’t properly see what it is from afar. But it’s clearly another monster. And it’s floating in mid-air.

“I don’t want to go, but I must go and fight that thing… But I don’t want to go… Did I say that I don’t want to go?”

I slowly walk towards the monster. The closer I get, the better I can see it.

I can see one eye, and a mouth… and then another eye, and another one… Oh, and another mouth too! And what’s that? It looks like yet another eye! What the hell? The eye sprouted teeth and turned into a mouth? And that eye just buried inside the body and vanished…

“W-what's going on? Is it morphing and changing all the time?”

Now, from less than five meters, the dark fog doesn't obscure the monster anymore and I can properly see how it looks.

The monster is a mass of floating dark flesh with eyes and mouths. From the flesh, mouths and eyes sprout, grow, morph into one another, and then bury again inside it.

“Eeeewww… I was complaining about the Stitched and how gross they are, but this thing beats everything! And by far!”

It’s stuff from nightmares. I must congratulate the DMA content creators for creating a monster that can give most people insomnia for a few days. Myself included. I’m not going to sleep today…! Shit!

As I’m entranced with the appearing and disappearing eyes and mouths, the monster is getting closer.

“Aaaaaah! Don’t come close! Don’t touch me! Aaaaaah”

When I see the monster get closer, I start to back away. Slowly. Because I don’t want to turn around so I can see if it does something weird. But I also can’t run, because I don’t want to fall into one of the ground holes by accident.

Luckily, the monster is taking its time and doesn’t rush in my direction. Or unluckily, maybe it’s doing it on purpose to make me panic more?

“I said stop! Don’t come any closer than this!” I say, waving my staff as a warning. “Oh, I know, I can cast attacks at distance! Ahahaha! Eat this, aberration!”

I use Cold Blast and attack it from a distance. And then, when getting hit, the monster stops for a moment.

“See? How did you like it? Attacking from afar? Hahahaha!”

The monster answers to my provocations by releasing a small fire projectile in my way. It’s the Fire Arrow skill, one of the most basic elemental skills.

“Oho!? You want to have a spellcasting contest? You got the wrong opponent! This is going to be an easy win! Hahaha!”

So it decided to fire back. At least it has stopped getting closer, so it’s a good thing. Now I can stop backing away while doing rounds to the plaza.

We exchange a few more spells. But then, suddenly, the monster dashes at me. It must have been moving slowly on purpose until now. And as it gets into melee range, one of its mouths bites at me.

“Shit! Get away!” Again in panic, I start to bash it with the staff. It’s the repetition of the first fight with the squid-leech monster.

I’m so fucked now… I’m not going to be able to sleep properly in the next few days! The image of the monster rushing at me with multiple open mouths has been seared into my brain. There’s no way I can forget it…

The monster finally dies after a few more staff attacks. I don’t want to look at it for a single more second… so without wasting time, I continue to move forward.

At the other end of the plaza, there’s a dilapidated altar containing the dungeon core. At least, the dungeon ends here and there aren’t any more monsters… I quickly break the core so that the game brings me out of this nightmarish place.

 

When the game asks me for the rating, I give the dungeon 5 stars. Because, objectively, the dungeon is quite nice for being created just today.

And I swear! Me giving it 5 stars doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that if the dungeon is rated highly, more people will enter the dungeon and, as a consequence, join me in the sleepless nights filled with nightmares. I swear! Don’t look at me with those accusing eyes!

Damn you, Clara… You didn’t allow me to sleep during the morning, and now I won’t be able to sleep today because of the nightmares… And I’m sure I’ll have to play with Clara in the future, so I’m going to see more of those aberrations…

“Peaceful sleeping times, goodbye! I’m not going to see you again for some time!”

Shit. I hate my bad luck. Why did my little sister have to consider those awful monsters as CUTE!?

 

Some time later, because of DMA, Clara met with Ricard and Laura for the first time. In fact, it was Andreu who said they all could play together. But he didn’t know that this decision would bring him a lot more nightmares than the ones he was going to have because of the invasion into his sister’s dungeon. His nightmares had just begun.