The Mad Rat’s Lab

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s move to the last surprise! This one is an actual fighter for the dungeon and not a unit to help me get more bodies. I’m sure you’re going to enjoy listening to this one a lot more! Hahaha!”

“Until now, I’ve watched quite a lot of times the progress of other players invading my dungeon, to see how my tricks, mobs, and traps work; and also went to test my newest creations personally… I really like how the Freezer turned out, I love the entrance, and the big cave is ok… But I still felt like something was missing in the Tunnels area, though I couldn’t say what was missing… Until I had this crazy idea. Yeah, I’m talking about the first surprise! Hahaha!”

Or should it be the third surprise… well, who cares about small details like this?

“I believe that with this new unit, the tunnels will be finished! With it, I’ll make sure that all players believe that something dangerous can happen at any time when they are inside the tunnels! Hahaha!”

The thing that was missing in the tunnels was unpredictability. Ok, it’s true that the Tunnel Mimic and patrolling mobs are unpredictable, but they are only a small part of the tunnel area. The problem was the mushroom zones, traps, resting areas… I’m talking about those elements that are always going to stay in the same place after I put them there.

The problem was that after the first few times they dive into my dungeon, all invaders know which tunnels are dangerous, and which ones lead to the next area. If they are good enough, they can even remember the shortest and less dangerous path and ignore the rest.

This is something any good player does: optimize the strategy to have an easier dungeon invasion. The problem is that I don’t want them to be able to actually optimize the dungeon invasion.

“They can remember the shortest path and danger zones, and even make maps to help other players… They can even know which one is a Tunnel Mimic if they are familiar enough with the layout! After all, the Tunnel Mimics are the only tunnels that change from time to time. After every change I made to the area, the only ones to suffer were the first ones to dive into the dungeon, and I can’t keep changing the dungeon all the time!”

“I called this new unit The Tunnels’ Nightmare because its main purpose is to prevent this from happening, keeping all invaders on guard against it because if they find The Tunnels’ Nightmare, it won’t matter if they know every part of the tunnels, they are going to suffer anyway. It can turn the predictable and static elements into truly dangerous elements by itself! Hahaha!”

By now you might be curious about how this works… Don’t worry, I’m going to explain it right now.

“First of all, The Tunnels’ Nightmare is a Basic Chimera. And the two bodies I used to create it are a Terror Slime and a Maguiloyf.”

The Terror Slime is easy to explain: it’s just a pitch-black slime, so dark that it seems as if the light is sucked into it. It isn’t very big at around a meter high, but it looks imposing because of its looks. And as its name suggests, its innate skill is related to the fear status effect: Terrifying Presence.

Terror Slimes are support units from the Amorphous faction. By themselves, they aren’t too dangerous, but they are resilient because of their high HP. They aren’t fast to kill, so it’s easy for one or two units to be affected by fear before the Terror Slime is killed.

The fear status makes you run away from the unit which inflicted it, in a random direction. This is really bad, so Terror Slimes are usually the first to be targeted, and their low WIL and speed make them easy targets for spellcasters.

“And the second unit I used is the Maguyiloyf. Remember when I was talking about the Dream Vestiges faction, the one with units based on dreams? Well, the Maguyiloyf is another one of their units based on nightmares… and nightmares are based on fear, so the synergy between the two units is perfect.”

Maguyiloyf’s aspect is already terrifying with its deformed wolf-like appearance, creepy eye in its stomach area, huge maws, and gigantic arms. It’s a unit based on the fear of being persecuted by a very dangerous predator so, of course, its looks are terrifying.

Oh, and since it’s based on a dream, its figure sometimes turns partially transparent. Because it’s imaginary and you can say it actually isn’t there at all, as if it were a manifestation of your psyche.

But the most terrifying thing about the Maguiloyf is its innate skill: Your Worst Nightmare. It works as a support skill to help inflict the fear status effect against enemies. Especially if you combine it with other units, or in my case, with the Terror Slime’s innate skill.

“The idea behind the skill is that the Maguiloyf is so terrifying that you can’t keep your eyes away for a while after seeing it for the first time; until you finally are able to look away but are so scared that you immediately try to run away in fear.”

You already saw it before, but just in case you forgot, I’ll tell you again how The Tunnel’s Nightmare looks.

Its body is black and, similar to the slime, it seems as if the light was sucked in. Its shape is based on a wolf, except its forelegs are too long and muscular, and its gigantic mouth is full of sharp teeth.

But the most striking part is the eye located in the stomach area. More than thirty centimeters long, it keeps looking in the prey’s direction all the time: you can’t turn your head away because of fear. Furthermore, it can keep you in sight even when standing on four legs thanks to its disproportionately longer forelegs.

Black veins penetrate the eye from all directions as if they were blood vessels, and in contrast with the rest of its body, the eye looks as if it glows in a dangerous yellow tint.

If you know how the two units look, you might have a better idea of how The Tunnels’ Nightmare looks if I tell you you can take the Maguiloyf looks and add the pitch-black surface of the Terror Slime plus the black veins in the eye zone and you have The Tunnels’ Nightmare.

Oh, I also did a special trick with it! Slimes don’t have a fixed shape, and can extend their pseudopods to attack… I used the slime’s body for the main joints when creating The Tunnels’ Nightmare, so it can rotate all limbs freely as well as extend its arms to attack. Nasty, right? Hahaha!

It can also stand on two legs and use the forelegs to attack with wide swiping attacks that have more range than they should because it can extend them! A true nightmare.

As for the AI, I used the Magiloyf default one as the base and tweaked a few things. It basically roams the tunnels’ area randomly until it finds an invader and then tries to apply fear to them. If all enemies start running away, it will resume its previous behavior; but as long as there’s one invader that isn’t affected by fear, it will continue to fight against it until only one of the two sides survives.

This is the rest of the info for The Tunnels’ Nightmare.

“As you can see, it is only a little stronger than the Lab Assistants. Of course, their purpose is completely different, so it’s only natural that a unit that has to inflict fear is also powerful enough to actually inflict fear.”

Who would fear a weakling? Nobody, right!?

“I’m sure you already know what’s the purpose of The Tunnels’ Nightmare now, right? Yeah, you’re right! It’s to make players and their support mobs run randomly through the tunnels because of fear! And since they can’t control their movement directions, they are going to activate traps, walk into mushroom areas, or even get lost!”

I don’t expect invaders to have to actually fight against The Tunnels’ Nightmare at all, just run away from it. Its only purpose is to cause chaos inside the tunnels, after all. You can say it’s going to be successful if it manages to force experienced players to use tunnels and areas they would never want to step into.

The idea behind its skills is just to make invaders have a bad time after encountering The Tunnels’ Nightmare. Alpha’s Howl is another way to inflict fear other than the slime’s innate skill, and Paranoia is a skill that further increases the effectiveness of the fear status effect by dealing damage when an enemy is under the effects of fear.

And let’s not forget that the Mind Break can also help with other status effects other than fear: if The Tunnel’s Nightmare manages to activate the Mind Break skill by applying both Terrifying presence and Alpha’s Howl, those enemies affected by the sleeping mushrooms will sleep for an extra second each time the sleep effect is applied, for example!

The Too Gross to Look At is an amazing defensive skill given its innate skill that forces enemies to look at it. They both synergize with Terrifying Presence amazingly well.

Now for the Corrosive Goo skill… You can think of it as a way for The Tunnel’s Nightmare to deal extra damage against enemies that are going to run away because of fear. It deals continuous damage even while they are running away! Hahaha!

“Fufufu! Yes, that’s what I was talking about! Thanks to The Tunnels’ Nightmare now the tunnels aren’t going to be safe anymore! Do you know the whole path, traps, and dangerous areas? Good for you, but a single unlucky fear can make you move through a tunnel that you never intended to cross! Hahaha!”

“And what’s best! I don’t need to keep modifying the tunnels anymore just to prevent easy dungeon invasions! I can keep them as they are, only changing them when introducing something new or when making the dungeon bigger.”

I’m sure you noticed: I’m very proud of this new unit! I think it fits the tunnels area soooooo well!

“Well, this was all about the new dungeon changes! Now I just have to wait and see if they actually work as I intended to! Hahaha!”

“One of the best examples I’ve ever found of the phrase ‘status effects are king’, is in ‘The Mad Rat’s Lab’. Have you ever fought The Tunnels’ Nightmare? It’s a monster that basically makes you run in fear. That’s almost everything it does. It can also do decent damage depending on the situation, but the problem is with the Fear status.

I’m sure you already know how difficult the dungeon is. Now imagine running randomly through it because you have the Fear status and can’t control your champion…

I see you shuddering, so it looks like you understand what I’m trying to say, right? The Tunnel’s Nightmare is just a normal mob, stat-wise, but is considered a mini-boss for most players because of the Fear it inflicts and the situations the fear status can put you in.

I still shudder every time I remember that time when I ran inside a Tunnel Mimic because of the fear effect…”

- Excerpt of an interview with a random DMA player.

Radosh

Hello everyone! Some of you might know I had some troubles early on with character interactions. At that time, Lord Rune helped me with how to fix it, and in exchange I told him if he wanted to create a monster... In short, The Tunnel's Nightmare is his idea, and I adapted it to the story. I hope you enjoy this one as much as the others!