The Mad Rat’s Lab

This chapter has a different POV.

 

“Come on! Stop looking around and let’s move! We have to complete as many dungeons as possible!”

This is our first dungeon in the DMA tournament. We need to beat as many dungeons as possible to secure a place in the main tournament, but my teammates are wasting time looking around.

“Hey! Did you hear me!?”

“Yes, we heard you. Now shut up and wait, like a good kid.”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY!? You know what…? If you want to be like this, ok. I’ll move ahead of you!”

“Wait! Don’t go alone!”

Finally, following my lead, the rest of the team starts to move forward. *Sigh!* Must I do everything for this team? Why are the rest so useless?

Not very far from the dungeon portal, we find ourselves inside a medium-sized cave with lots of tunnels everywhere. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw when I was a kid, one where the protagonist had to enter a worm-like monster’s lair… except that this one isn’t as disgusting as the one in the cartoons, and it also has giant mushrooms that hinder our vision.

“I told you to wait, Dani! Do you want to throw away our chances because of recklessness!?”

“I don’t want to hear it from you, who only know how to waste time, looking around!” Ignoring Carles’ words, I enter the cave and look around.

The first thing I see is a weird shrub with lots of eyes. What the hell’s that? Why does a shrub with eyes exist? My brain comes to a halt at the stupid monster in front of me. When I recover from the surprise, I try to see what else is inside this cave, but… when I try to turn my head to look somewhere else, I notice I can’t move my neck. In fact, I can’t move at all, I’m paralyzed.

“What!? This thing paralyzed me! How did it do it?” I struggle for a short while, trying to force my Champion to move, to no avail. And when the paralyze status effect disappears, I quickly rush at the weird shrub with lots of eyes and slash it in a swift motion with my sword. “Hah! Not so cocky now, huh!? Did you think you could stop someone like me with just that, huh!?”

“See, Dani? That’s why it’s important not to rush mindlessly ahead. This time you only ended up paralyzed, but what if it’s something lethal the next time? That’s why you should follow Carles’ lead like the rest of us!”

I gnash my teeth at Toni’s nagging. Is everyone on this team against me!? Not wanting to hear anything more, I continue looking around. There are lots of weird monsters here. There are bright-red flies, a sheep releasing lightning, and one more of those weird shrubs with eyes… there’s even a group of disgusting humanoids some distance away. What’s wrong with this dungeon’s monsters?

“Hey, do you know what are all those monsters? It’s the first time I see them…”

The one to answer my question is Carles, as expected.

“No, it’s the first time I see most of them. But I know those disgustingly gross humanoids. They are the Flesh Monstrosities’ basic units. Maybe the weakest unit in the whole game, if you exclude critters.”

“Haaah!? Aren’t you always bragging about your knowledge? How come you don’t know anything about those units, then? Also… they want to stop this great me with weak units like those? Hahaha! I’ll show you it’s a worthless effort!” I say, rushing ahead to kill those grotesque humanoids.

“This and that are two different things... Also, can you stop rushing ahead!? Didn’t you hear Toni admonish you just a moment ago!? *Sigh* At least, I hope he doesn’t get himself killed…”

I hear someone complaining from behind, but I ignore it. When somebody nags at you all the time, the only thing you can do is ignore them.

When I get close enough to the enemies, I use the Flying Slash skill and release a, well, a flying slash. Those disgusting monsters die as soon as they are hit by it.

“See this!? There’s no reason to fear them so much!” I turn to my teammates and brag about what I just did. “If all enemies are going to be as weak as this, we’re going to have an easy time in this dungeon! Hahaha!”

“You really…”

“Annoying pest!” I swat one of those glowing flies away. Even if they are glowing flies, they are flies after all, so they are annoying and like to stick to your face or move near your ear. I would like to kill them, but the worst part about them being flies is that they are naturally hard to hit with attacks. I could use an area skill, but it’s a waste of EP or MP.

Annoyed at the flies that are swarming me, I set my sight on another target: the pack of lightning sheep I can see from my current position.

“Hahaha! You’re my next target! Die∼!”

“Wait! Something’s weird about those flies and sheep! And didn’t I tell you to not rush ahead!?”

Ignoring Carles’ words again, I come close to the sheeps. But, just as I’m about to swing my sword at one of them, something completely unexpected happens.

The flies chased me the whole way, but I’m faster than them. And the moment one of the flies gets close enough to the sheep, IT happens.

What happens? Well, both the fly and the sheep burst into fire and lightning explosions, respectively. And those explosions make the other flies and sheep explode too, in a chain reaction.

And I’m caught in the middle.

*Bzzzt! Boooom! Booom! Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Boom! Bzzzt!*

When the chain reaction finally ends, I find myself in the phantasmal version of my Champion. Until now, due to so many visual effects, I couldn’t see the game message in front of me telling me I died.

Yeah, I know, thanks. There’s no need to rub salt into the wound.

I then open the battle log to see what the hell has happened, but what I see makes me want to cry. I didn’t notice before, but the whole time when the flies were flying around me, I was taking constant fire damage. From every one of them at the same time. And when the explosions occurred, I was already low on HP, so I easily died.

I raise my arms in anger as I shout. “Shiiit! I got done in! What the heck was that!? How can you make flies and sheep explode like this? I didn’t even touch them at all!”

“Fuck you, Dani! If we don’t reach the second phase because of you dying here, I’m never going to talk to you again! I was sure this was some kind of trap, so why didn’t you stop when Carles told you to!”

“Then, you should have helped me instead of blaming me now, Toni! Complaining after the fact means you are blaming everything on me and making excuses!”

Toni is looking at me with his face distorted by anger. He’s holding his axe, ready to strike at me.

Heh! What are you trying to do!? I’m already dead! Even if you want to hit me out of anger, it isn’t possible anymore! Hahaha!

“Now, now. Stop fighting! Dani made a mistake, but there’s no need to complain to him so much. Next time, don’t rush ahead like this, ok, Dani? If you learn from this and don’t do it again…”

I get angry at his words, so I snap back at him. “Yeah, well. I made a mistake, so what!? But why didn’t you warn me, Carles? Aren’t you always showing off your knowledge!? Does this mean you let me die on purpose, huh?”

He scratches his cheek and furrows his eyebrows when he hears me. “I’m sorry, but it’s the first time I see monsters like those… They must be special monsters from one crazy Flesh Monstrosity player…”

“What!? So your knowledge is useless after all! Hah, I knew it! Useless knowledge from a useless fighter!”

“Don’t call me useless!”

Tired of hearing Carles’ and Toni’s complaints, I turn my head to the only party member who hasn’t said anything until now: Sara. It turns out she’s been looking at me with cold eyes as if I was less than garbage.

With a *Hmph* sound, she turns her head away. Then, she starts to talk with Carles as if I didn’t exist.

I cross my arms in protest and gnash my teeth... But I don’t have any other option than to follow the rest of the team for now. Once we beat this dungeon, I’m going to show my teammates how good I am! Yeah, they’re going to be so astonished at my display of skill and battle prowess! I’m going to kill everything in our path! Hahaha!

I follow my team from behind. There’s a limit to what you can do as a phantom, and exploring ahead is completely banned. You can’t be the team’s invulnerable scout.

But since I’m dead, I don’t have anything at all to do... For now, I’m going to keep track of all my teammates mistakes so that I can defend myself if they want to pick on me again! Hmph! As if I was the only one who can make mistakes!

 

---

 

“Hahahahaha! You complained so much about my mistake at the beginning of the dungeon, only to get yourselves killed so easily later on! Hahahaha!”

Right now I’m rolling on the floor laughing. Even if we float instead of walking when we are in our phantasmal form, we can still do things like this. After all, the phantasmal form is mostly an aesthetic thing. We can’t cross walls or the floor, only other players and monsters.

And yes, all of them got killed pretty quickly after I died.

The first one to die was Sara, our healer. Soon after I died, she walked into a random tunnel and got eaten by a gigantic worm-like monster. And she lacks damage, so… she died before she could kill the monster from the inside. Ahahaha! Serves her right! That's what you get for looking at me as if you were superior all the time!

The next one to die was, funnily enough, Carles. He who likes to brag about his knowledge so much, and is always so bossy, got killed because he didn’t look at the battle log at all! I cracked up when I saw his face after looking at the battle log filled with ‘Your HP has been reduced by 2’ messages! Hahaha!

And the last one to die was Toni. It isn’t his fault, but he was the only one to not die due to a stupid mistake. When he reached a zone filled with poison mushrooms, he couldn’t properly fight alone and surrounded by poison, and well, you know the rest.

“See? This is why I was against entering the tournament with Dani! If he didn’t die so easily, he might have been the one to be eaten by the worm, and with his high damage, he would have survived! And then I could have healed you and Toni before you were killed! But the worst is that he’s laughing at us all the time!”

“...yeah, I’m sorry, Sara. But I thought that, because he’s good in combat, he could complement our team that lacks firepower…”

Looking at me with disgust and anger, Sara talks with Carles. Shit! I hate it so much when people talk about me as if I wasn’t present!

 

---

 

“Hehehe. That was quite fun. Killing one player with a very big explosion just after entering the dungeon, and then slowly killing the rest of the team. Not only that, but you also managed to destroy all their teamwork, and maybe their friendship, if you can call that friendship, in less than 5 minutes… I’ll call it ‘The Big Bang’. Did you see it, Jordi?”

Inside a room filled with screens and people watching them, a woman is laughing and pointing at one of the screens.

“Oh, yes, I did. It was an amazing explosion. See Alicia? Do you understand now why I like the Flesh Monstrosities so much? You never know what the players will prepare for the next encounter! And not only that…”

“Shh! Shut up! Another enemy team is entering the dungeon right now!”

“...ok. But don’t forget you have a job you should be doing instead of watching the matches…”

“Yes, yes.”

She says while making a ‘leave me alone’ gesture with her hand. Shrugging his shoulders, Jordi leaves Alicia. He then rises his cup of coffee to take a sip and looks around.

Some people, especially those who are doing their job properly, are directing awkward or angry gazes at Alicia.

“...she’s going to spend all the time looking at that screen, isn’t she…?” He shrugs his shoulders yet again and suspires.

 

Andreu and his team didn’t know about this until later, but the ‘random weird monsters’ part of the dungeon was creating many more victims than they expected. Mostly because the invaders didn’t know how to fight against them, but also because of the mistakes they made.

Even so, the only team to suffer complete defeat in that part of the dungeon was the first one. Let’s say that they got four free kills thanks to someone’s recklessness, and the chain of events it generated.