The Mad Rat’s Lab

Here we are, in our second tournament dungeon!

After crossing the dungeon portal, we recover all our HP, MP, etc., as well as get resurrected if we died. This is so we can go all-out in every dungeon instead of having to save resources for later: a very important thing when you are assaulted all the time by monsters and traps going for your life. Of course, single-use skills are also reset, like the Grand Finale skill and the status reduction it creates. But I didn’t use it, so it doesn’t matter.

And also, it gives players who messed up, or who were unlucky in the random matchup, to have another opportunity to classify for the second phase. Or Main Tournament, if you prefer. Because being unlucky, getting killed in your first dungeon, and then being automatically disqualified is bad.

The DMA developers are benevolent towards the players, in that they let them choose when to start the invasion into the next dungeon by crossing the portal instead of being teleported after crushing the dungeon core. So we can take some time to relax before starting the next invasion. If the team members are dead or scattered, only one player needs to cross the portal and all the others will teleport too.

Anyway! Returning to the dungeon.

We are surrounded by white and polished marble walls, with engravings in the middle section. Neatly ordered tiles with geometric patterns on the floor, and brasiers every now and then on the walls. This clearly looks like some kind of temple, maybe an underground one, but I’m not sure.

The first one to say something, having finished looking around, is Ricard.

“Humans! This place smells of HUMANS!” With a deranged look in his eyes, he enthusiastically rises his arms. Only to be dejected soon after as he remembers a very important piece of information. “...what a shame we can’t get souls in the tournament, because I’m 98% sure this is a human dungeon! Why…? Just WHY can’t we get our special resources in the tournament!?” Finally, he drops to the floor and shouts, dejected.

It’s like watching a movie about the three steps needed to go from euphoria to despair.

You ok, Ricard? You already knew about it when we read the tournament rules, so why are you reacting like this now?

I walk there and pat his shoulder two times, in pity. Don’t get used to it, ok? Because this is going to be the first, as well as the last time, I try to console you for something as stupid as this.

“So we should expect humans. Anything else?”

Laura and Clara shake their heads in denial of my question. Ricard… he’s still on his knees, blabbering nonsense, so let’s ignore him until he recovers his sanity. Or at least until he returns to his normal state, which isn’t exactly sane but will do for now.

“Ok, then let’s start moving. As usual, Baldy will take…”

I stop talking when I see Ricard’s soulless expression. He has a vacant look and doesn’t react after waving my hand right in front of his face. If I’m honest with you, right now, he looks like a real undead. It’s kind of scary because his Champion is an actual undead, a Death Knight.

“...never mind. Lemon, you’ll take the lead. Followed by Lily, then me, and the last one is Baldy.”

A good leader needs to adapt to the situations at hand. Right now Ricard is… let’s say he isn’t feeling well. So I can’t count on him right now.

I already knew something like this could happen, taking into account Ricard’s antics. I wouldn’t dare say it’s a plan B because of… well, certain stuff you might see later on, but when I was playing with my little sister to rise her level, I did some runs with her taking the lead so that she could get used to the position.

So everything’s going to be fine! …I hope so.

 

The first thing we find in our way is humans. Only humans. This must be an all-human player team because it’s weird we haven’t seen any other unit type so far. Unless they are planning to surprise us later on, that is.

Ricard is still a soulless husk. He is reminded every time we kill one human that he can’t ‘enjoy their juicy and tasty souls’, in his own words, and gets depressed again. He’s recovered enough to be able to talk and give info tips, but I still don’t want him to take the lead. Just in case.

“More humans ahead!” Warns my little sister. After killing the group of four humans, she complains. I’m sure she’s pouting, but her Champion doesn’t allow us to see it. Because it doesn’t have lips. Or a face at all. “Muuh… I hate when they are so weak! Before I manage to stack some of my skills, they’re already dead!”

“That’s what happens when you have lots of DoT skills and the enemy is weak. It’s the same in all other games.” I say. “But don’t be depressed, in exchange you are very powerful against strong enemies!”

She and I have opposite builds. I excel against multiple weak enemies and she’s the best against single and powerful ones.

“You could also take a few instant damage skills if you like. But then you’ll lose your specialization, like me.” Adds Laura. “I believe your build is very important for us as a team.”

“Is that so…?” She clenches her tentacle-fist. “Thank you, Lily! I’ll show you how I melt any strong enemy we encounter! Hehehe!”

 

We fight a few more human groups. They are all quite weak.

Hmm… I don’t understand what’s up here. Normally, a team would design the dungeon to be as dangerous as possible, because one way to obtain points is to kill invaders; but this dungeon has been too easy until now.

Maybe the other team hasn’t read the rules? Or are they simply a group of noobs? I don’t know, but I feel uneasy.

It’s just as I’m thinking this that the passage ends and we enter some kind of fighting arena. There are empty seats all around us, protected by a translucent film of some kind of material. And from the ceiling, the sunlight enters and illuminates the area. Were we underground until now?

But we don’t have a lot of time to look around because, from several other entrances that were previously closed, heavily armed humans enter and surround us as soon as we reach the central area.

They are a mix of Heavy Warriors and Knights, four of each. They are two decently strong units from the Iron Lords faction. I’m unsure about their cp costs, but they must be between 200 and 400 cp.

How do I know they are Heavy Warriors and Knights? Well, it’s easy to see because Heavy Warriors always wear their characteristic heavy armor, and the Knights must always wear a cape.

This is a lot more dangerous situation than the previous fights. For once, there are more than four enemies, at a total of eight. But they are also a lot stronger. If we exclude the stats obtained by leveling up - because I’m sure we are higher level than they are - each enemy is only slightly weaker than each of us. And there is twice the number…

“This is getting serious.” I say. “Both the quality and quantity increased quite a bit from the previous groups… Lily, Lemon, get ready for an intense fight!”

I then look at Ricard. He’s still downcast, so I shake him up a bit and also slap him twice on the face. I promise it’s just to wake him up and not to relieve me of the stress caused by his behavior!

“Wake up, Baldy! It’s time for a serious fight!”

He ignores me even after the slaps, so I decide to use the trump card. Also called the taboo phrase you must never say in front of him unless you want to trigger his ‘crazy mode’. And that is…

“It’s time to kill some humans!”

“...kill …humans?” Light returns to his eyes as he understands what I just said. “Humans? Where are the humans!? I’m going to kill them all and consume their tasty souls, hahaha!”

He returned to normal. Well, as normal as ‘that’ can be. Let’s not mention he won’t be able to get their souls, just in case.

“...yeah, humans. So do your job properly and try to get the aggro of as many of them as you can.”

It’s a good thing our team doesn’t rely too much on physical attacks to deal damage because the Heavy Warriors are difficult to kill if you only have physical damage.

Oh, yeah! Do you remember I like to complain so much about humans not having innate skills? Well, it isn’t completely true. Don’t misunderstand, they do not have any innate skills! It’s just that… When trained into higher-tier units, some of them automatically obtain certain skills. They aren’t unique or innate in any way, so you can give those skills to any unit you want, but they are free skills that don’t cost any skill points to obtain.

Though this doesn’t solve the part where they can’t have anything truly unique. Because any other player can give their units the same skills as those obtained by the human units, only that they cost one skill point.

And no, if I create units with human bodies, my units don’t get those ‘trained’ skills, because I didn’t ‘train’ them. That’s why I don’t want to use humans at all if possible.

The skills that the Heavy Warrior and Knight always have are Heavy Armor and Dauntless, respectively.

The Heavy Armor doesn’t affect us very much because a lot of our damage comes from spells or skills that deal other types of damage, but the Dauntless skill is different. It is one of those skills that are designed to face stronger units. And the Knights have decent stats already, so a 20% increase in damage isn’t something to scoff at.

By the way, I’m not sure if I explained to you or not, but Champions don’t get the 100% stat buff in this tournament. So yes, it follows most of the normal Dungeon Battle (pvp) rules. But even without the buff, I believe our stats, or at least Ricard’s, are higher than theirs. So they are going to benefit from the 20% increase in damage this combat. Fuck our bad luck.

As a side note, resistance skills to the same damage type don’t stack. If you have a skill that increases the resistance by 20% and another that raises it by 30%, you only get 30% resistance. This is obviously for balance reasons.

A very funny consequence of this is what happens with dwarf units. Because they already have the innate 20% reduction damage on all types of attacks, basic resistance skills do very little on them. That is, unless you upgrade those skills…

So, roleplay-wise, you either end with naked dwarfs that tank all damage with their Stone Skin skill or with highly armored dwarfs that are almost immune to that kind of damage.

And I’ve been to dwarf dungeons where the player actually gives the dwarfs the proper equipment. Basically, I fought against dwarfs wearing a loincloth, and also against tin cans with eyes. Hahaha! It was amazing!

While I’m remembering the dwarfs wearing loincloths, the humans are getting closer.

“Hahaha! Do you really think a bunch of humans can scare me!?” Ricard shouts again, before rushing ahead. He’s the tank and I told him to get their aggro, so he’s doing his job properly …I suppose you can say it like this.

“When Baldy gets their attention, you bring them down one at a time, ok, Lemon?”

“Yes, brother!”

“Also, Lily, focus on healing. Don’t let Baldy die… again. I’ll try to assist where it’s needed. They are quite strong units and are scattered, so Chain Lightning won’t work properly.”

Following my instructions, Clara latches her tentacles on her first victim, and Laura prepares to dash in with Blink and save Ricard when he’s reduced to low HP. And I… I wait for the right time to act.

A little bit more… Just a bit more… Now!

I cast Chain LIightning against the poor knight with the monstrous creature attached - also called my little sister - when his HP bar is almost depleted. The spell reaches the first knight and then jumps to another knight. They are scattered, so it only jumped one time; but thanks to timing it properly, the 20% increased damage, plus my usual 40% extra spell damage, the spell leaves the second knight with less than half HP.

And the first knight, left at 1 HP, immediately dies to Clara’s DoTs.

“Lemon, that one’s the next one!” I point at the knight that received the lightning jump.

“Hahahaha! Come and see if you can kill me! Hahahaha!”

Meanwhile, Ricard is spinning, using the Whirlwind skill, and attacking all the enemies in range at the same time. He’s currently surrounded by four Heavy Warriors and one Knight.

I don’t know if he did it on purpose or what but… the Heavy Warriors excel in defense, so they don’t deal too much damage. And thanks to his innate skill, Essence Siphon, which heals him for 20% of the damage he deals, added to Laura’s healing, he’s holding his own pretty well.

We killed one knight, one is going to die soon, the third is attacking Ricard, and the last one… It’s chasing me. I got his aggro after casting Chain Lightning and it’s now chasing me through the whole arena.

“Stop it, you jerk!” I shout. “I’m a squishy mage, you know!? If you want a duel, go fight that crazy undead over there!”

Ignoring my words, the Knight continues to chase after me. Every now and then, I slow down and the knight gets close and hits me.

What am I doing, you ask? Well, I don’t want to spend too much EP running away, so I’m moving slower to save as much EP as possible.

But the main reason is: I allow him to attack me every time the Lightning Shield timer is reset. I take some damage from the knight’s attacks, but he takes more damage from my Lightning Shield, so I win after every clash. Without doing anything, just running away! Hahaha! Also, sometimes the Lightning Shield stun activates and I can rest for a short while.

“Lemon, get closer to Baldy! I’m going to use Chain Lightning! Also, Lily, heal her! She’s going to die soon!”

After receiving the attacks from the first Knight, and now the attacks from the other knight, she’s getting dangerously low on HP. After all, Knights do a lot of damage.

Laura quickly casts Revitalize on Clara. Then, as I told her, she gets closer to Ricard and I cast Chain Lighting targeting the knight Clara was fighting, who’s almost dead by now. The spell hits the first knight, and then it bounces between the four heavy warriors and the other knight, who are attacking Ricard.

The first knight is almost dead, and the other enemies are severely damaged thanks to staying in Ricard’s Whirlwind’s range for a long time. If you add this to the Chain Lighting and Shared Voltage combo…

The first knight gets stunned, and both the normal Chain Lighting and Shared Voltage trigger jump to the nearest enemy, dealing a large amount of damage. The Chain Lighting keeps jumping and triggering Shared Voltage every time it should reduce an enemy to 0 HP, and then the Shared Voltage lightning jumps and spreads the remaining damage.

Even if there are only six enemies in the mix, with so many lighting triggers, it looks amazing.

“Hah! Look at that amazing visual effects!” I say. “Added to Baldy’s Whirlwind skill, it looks like an electric tornado, hahaha!” I shout, rising my arms and laughing maniacally.

Well, that’s it! This’ll end the fight! The remaining enemies were low on HP, so the Chain Lightning must have made quick work of them. And Ricard’s Whirlwind will deal the last hit.

“Heeee… It looks nice, brother! But don’t forget about that knight that’s still chasing you!”

Oh, shit, I forgot about that one.

At this exact moment, I see a sword slashing at me. This is some kind of skill, isn’t it?

I’m fucked.

 

“It’s easy to get distracted and stop looking at your surroundings during a battle. That’s why assassin units are one of the most feared units when playing this game.”

- Basic knowledge every DMA player knows, or is forced to acknowledge after getting killed by one.