The Mad Rat’s Lab

I bring the two elements I chose to their respective bowls.

Only two? But aren’t there three bowls, you ask? You’re right, but I thought about it for a while, and I can come up with a single solution. And that solution requires two of the elements, not three.

Fire, wind, earth, and water. Inside the spinning bowls, there are representations of the four, but this doesn’t mean the actual element is in there.

I don’t want to brag about my superior intellect, but there’s no way I can mistake a crystal figurine of a bonfire for ‘Fire’, even if it has the same colors and glow. It’s the same for ‘Wind’, the tornado, which is made of a solid white substance.

On the other side, both ‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ contain actual earth and water. The former is a clump of clay, and the latter is carved on ice.

But this leaves me with only two elements, right?

Wrong!

I don’t know about the fire. Maybe, creating fire with a skill would work and identify it as ‘Fire’... Not that I have a skill that can create fire anyway, so I don’t know nor do I care.

But I do know about ‘Wind’, or air to be more precise. Air is transparent. Air is everywhere. Air fills the whole room. Which means… The bowls have contained ‘Wind’ since the start, I didn’t need to do anything at all!

I’m sure the answer to this riddle is to fill the bowls with the remaining earth and water, in the order written on the altar: fire, wind, earth, and water. Since fire is out of the equation, I must leave the first bowl empty, aka wind; and put the clay and the ice in the other two, in this order.

“Hahaha! In the end, I surpassed you. After talking so much about how good you are at riddles and tricky stuff, I beat you at your own game… Fufufu! Hahaha!”

While laughing, I put the clay inside the central bowl. Then, I extend my hand to put the ice inside the last one, but before I can drop it, the lights turn off and the same laughter as before fills the room.

When my vision returns, I can see the altar in front of me, as well as the four bowls circling us. At first, I thought I had succeeded, that it went well, but then I notice the central bowl is filled with something dark. When I look down, I see my Champion’s body on the ground… as well as my translucid legs.

“Noooooo! I was so close! I’m sure I got the correct answer, so why did I have to run out of time!?” I pull my fur. “This isn’t fair, I should have won this match! I had the correct answer… If only I wasted less time thinking… or laughing after I realized the correct answer…”

It’s now that I realize there’s a familiar message in front of me.

“...shit!”

There’s no victory or defeat screen, though. There won’t be until both of us die, or until my opponent destroys my dungeon core. I haven’t lost yet, it’s possible to achieve a draw.

“Thank god we went with the Total Victory mode…”

The advantage of the Total Victory mode is that it doesn’t matter if you die first, as long as the opponent dies too. Taking into account the surprise I prepared for him in the last room, I would say the chances he’ll die are quite high.

Since I’m already dead and have to wait until the match is decided, I sit on the ground and do what any normal person would: open the screen to watch my opponent’s progress… and hope for their death.

“Fufufu! Hahaha! This can’t be true!” Immediately after the screen shows Brainiac’s progress, I start laughing. “I was so worried here, without knowing he’s done for, hahaha!”

On the screen, Brainiac remains completely immobile. Popping its head from the wall, I can see my Spitter, staring in his direction. He’s petrified, and he will remain like that until the Spitter looks away, which it won’t, or the maximum petrification time passes. But by then it’ll be too late, as the Good Follower will be upon him.

“Enjoy your last moments, Brainiac. You’re done for, hahaha!”

I take out my imaginary popcorn to enjoy the show that’s sure to follow, relieved I can avoid total defeat.

 

---

 

‘Oh, no! This is bad…’

The weird worm with chicken parts squirms, sticking its head sticking out of the wall. It opens its mouth and spews a mouthful of a green substance at me.

I would easily avoid it if I could move, but I can’t. While petrified, I can’t attack, move, or use skills; and the game wouldn’t allow me to talk with my teammates, if I had any. Champions have a natural resistance to this kind of effect, so the petrification will disappear soon. The problem is that it’ll be too late by then.

Status effects are king. This is why I love them, and why I abuse them as much as I can.

This is also why I picked the Dream Vestiges faction, which is the faction that uses them the best thanks to so many monsters having innate skills that have status effects. It’s so easy to break the game with them!

But everything has its drawbacks.

Status effects are very powerful, but they all fall into one of three categories. One, they are either easy to break or very difficult to apply. Two, they have a limited amount of time they can affect their victims before a cooldown period. Three, they work on everyone, regardless of ally or enemy.

They’re difficult to use because of the limitations, but when you learn how to work with them, they’re amazing. This is why I beat the crap out of anyone who dares fight against me!

At least, this is how it should have been…

Who could imagine I would fall for a status effect at the worst moment? Is it luck? Is it a stratagem? How could I know there was a hidden enemy, or that it had petrification in its arsenal?

You never know what to expect when you fight the Flesh Monstrosities, this is why I hate them so much. I’d even say about half their victories are just because the opponent didn’t know what they were up against!

Aagh, this is so unfair! I had this game! I’m sure there’s nothing after this room! If only I didn’t lower my guard…

And what’s up with those Stitched that could use Dragon’s Breath!? I didn’t know it was possible! I’ll have to investigate it after this match finishes, I won’t fall two times for the same trick.

Returning to the fight, I can only watch as the Ice Prison immobilization wears off and the orc-dwarf monster comes closer.

By the time the petrification effect wears off, it’ll be in melee range. By then, it’ll be too late for me.

I won’t be able to use Ice Prison to stop it, and if I use Entangle or Poison Cloud, they will affect me too. Not even Sweet Dreams will do, as I’m against not one but two enemies. It’ll be a waste of MP, and the only thing I’ll achieve is to heal my opponent.

If not for the fire damage I took a while ago I could fight back and achieve victory, but I’m too low for it to matter. Furthermore, I have no idea if, or when, that petrification skill will affect me a second time.

The orc starts to attack me. ‘I’m done…’ “... for. Oh, the petrification wore off, it’s shorter than I expected. But it’s too late anyway…”

My HP falls below 50. Ah, I’m poisoned too? Not like it makes any difference.

But I won’t allow myself to be defeated like this. I dodge and strike back, waiting for when Ice Prison will come out of cooldown, to immobilize the orc and escape my fate. But fate isn’t always so kind.

“Hmm… I guess that seals it.”

I’m not happy with this result. I should have won! I had the better plans, I had the better strategy! But my opponent played mental tricks on me, and I fell for them…

The message appears shortly after I die.

Hahaha, my dungeon proved to be good enough to defeat him. I wasn’t expecting any less than this, this is the bare minimum.

A draw is acceptable, taking into account his despicable methods and my lack of luck. Luck is also a skill. I won’t complain anymore, since I didn’t lose. A draw means I’m at least as good as he is, if not better.

It’s time to reflect on what happened. Analyze my failures, watch the replay to see how he moved through my dungeon, and prepare for the next match.

Because I’m sure there will be a next match. I’ll make sure there is one. Otherwise, how am I going to show everyone I’m better than him, and that it's me, not him, who deserves all that praise, as well as the title Evil Mastermind?

Next time, I’ll be ready. I’ll surely win the next match. With superior intellect and tactics.

 

---

 

After the initial excitement of watching my opponent die, I calm down.

“It’s a draw, huh…?” I stroke my nonexistent beard while reading the window in front of me. “It’s a shame I was one second late… Otherwise, it’d have been my victory. I’m sure of it.”

I’d cry if I lost because of running out of time, but a draw is acceptable. And more importantly, I got to enjoy his last moments! Hahaha! To think he’d resist to the bitter end, knowing it was all worthless!

The best thing I did while preparing the dungeon was to predict he’d choose the Stitched to fight. This is why I put the new, improved, not-so-worthless, and extremely powerful version of Stitched inside the capsules.

…I mean powerful for a Stitched.

They’re still weak, slow, ugly, braindead, and kinda useless; but they aren’t AS useless as the rest.

To think I’d get so lucky with the mutation ‘pulls’... I always wanted the Stitched to get a powerful skill. I joked about them getting Dragon’s Breath, but they got it! After more than thirty pulls, I had two successes: one Stitched with Echolocation, utterly and completely useless; and one Stitched with the most powerful innate attack of the whole game!

It would have been perfect if the Stitched had enough EP and MP to cast the skill, which by the way, they don’t… and by a large amount at that. They have 50 EP and 30 MP, and Dragon’s Breath requires 300 of each.

So I did the only logical thing a mad scientist can do: I ignored all advice against spending useless amounts of cp on a weak mob. I raised their levels, gave them skills to upgrade their EP and MP to a ridiculous amount, and even gave them the Blood Power skill.

And after all that, they can use the skill a single time before killing themselves! Hahaha! How pathetic are they?

But it was worth it!

Can you imagine the surprise the enemies will get when they find out a random Stitched can use the same attack as a dragon? They deal far less damage, but the visuals are the same, so they won’t know at first glance! Aaah, I’m looking forward to releasing them in my dungeon…

Or maybe not. Today I discovered it’s a nice boon to have unknown monsters ready to use in PvP. Like the Spitter, which I somehow forgot to add to my dungeon since a long time ago. It did a great job in both this match and the one I was playing with Laura, and I’m sure a great part of it was the fact that my opponents didn’t know about its existence.

So maybe… maybe I should keep the fire-breathing Stitched hidden too?

Nah, who am I trying to convince? A Stitched with the same skill as a dragon is too good to not use.

They’re kind of useless anyway, I was lucky they performed as well as they did today. It’ll be better to put them in my dungeon, with all the rabble. And with rabble I mean the other Stitched.

“Now it’s time to leave the game or my parents will get angry at me for being late for dinner. It was a fun match, and I had the chance to beat that Brainiac guy at his own game, hahaha! To think he was boasting so much, but died to my tricks. On top of that, I was so close to achieving victory… One or two seconds faster, and…”

The in-game sound for a received message interrupts my thoughts. It’s from Brainiac. He’s taunting me, saying I relied on luck and petty tricks to kill him, and showing off for killing me.

“How dare he…?” I grin at his bullshit. “How dare he expose my secret techniques like that? Petty tricks? They’re not so easy to come up with, you know? And to divulge them like they were against all fair play… Which they are, but this and that are two separate things.”

I write a message in response, saying that I’d be happy to oblige. If he wants a rematch, a rematch he shall have. But not now, nor any time soon. I need time to prepare.

This time it was kind of abrupt and I didn’t have much time to get ready, but for the next time…

“Get ready, Brainiac. For I’ll have something ready for you. Something you’ll never forget… I swear on my honor. Fufufu! Hahaha!”

 

“…

Petty tricks? This is the name the losers give to the awesome tactics used by the winners.

Everything’s fair in love and war.

Use your imagination to come up with traps, monsters, and rooms your invaders will love to hate. Force them into danger. Put their skills and wits to the test. Have them try their best or die trying.

For those who succeed, there won’t be a greater satisfaction. For those who don’t, they’ll cry in shame and come back for more, for they will have to bear the taunts from all the players who succeeded before them.

…”

- Fragment from ‘Strike Hard Where It Hurts’, one part of ‘The Dark Teachings’ series. What Andreu didn’t know at that time, was that a certain person took the ‘love’ part quite literally. He was in for an unexpected outcome.