The Mad Rat’s Lab

BigHat comes at me with quick steps and bloodshot eyes. “Hey, Succo, why didn’t you heal me? I almost died there!”

“Uh, I…” I stutter, not sure how to answer. “...I tried, I swear! But for some reason, I couldn’t move. I swear, it isn’t my fault. There must be a trap nearby, or maybe a monster… In the battle log, it says I’ve been charmed…”

“A trap…?”

We examine the area around us, but we find nothing. The only sign of life other than us four is the black cat, hiding behind a machine in a corner of the laboratory.

Thinking I’m making a fool of him, BigHat’s eyebrows start twitching. “Do you think I’m stupid? There’s nothing, stop making excuses. You didn’t want to waste your MP saving me, admit it! It’s the same as with the bug you were talking about before we split up.”

“But it was true! We found it later with Muribelle. It was an invisible butterfly that slowly took away my HP!”

“And why did it only affect you, then?”

“Because you and Muribelle are always dealing damage to everything around you, and Odomiru is always caught in between.”

“Yeah, sure”

He can be so stubborn. He always thinks of himself as the central figure of our group, and everyone must follow his orders. He’s always right, and we’re always wrong. He’s the player with the highest skill in our group, but this doesn’t allow him to treat us as inferior.

What’s worst is that I wasn’t the one who put him in danger, so why is he taking it out on me? Is it because he likes Muribelle and doesn’t want her to dislike him?

“Also… also, why are you blaming me? It was Muribelle who hit you, not me.”

Yes, it’s her fault, not mine. If it weren’t for her, BigHat wouldn’t have had to focus on evading her attacks and he wouldn’t have fallen for the ice nova. It’s also because of her fireballs that he almost died.

BigHat remains silent. Muribelle, on the other hand, looks at me with a bewildered expression, the word ‘betrayal’ written on it.

“A-are you talking about me? W-what did I d-d-do?” She points at herself. “I was doing my job…”

BigHat finally explodes. He was holding back because it was her, but it seems his pride is more important. “Hah, your job, you say…! I didn’t know your job was to get me killed.”

Muribelle looks away. “I… I did my best, okay? It’s your fault I couldn’t help properly, you know?”

“My fault? It was you who shot those fireballs at me.”

“Uh… guys…? Can you stop…” Odomiru tries to interrupt their argument, but his calm voice is drowned by the Muribelle’s.

“Yes! It’s your fault! I tried my best to get the monster’s aggro, but because of your stupid auras, there was no way to get it! I didn’t have any option left but to use my most powerful attacks to force it to hit me, but even that didn’t work.”

“My ice auras have nothing to do with you attacking me!”

This is going to take some time… We’re in real need to improve our teamwork. If we continue like this, there’s no way we’ll achieve anything in the next game event.

Is it our lack of coordination, or that our skills don’t match? Or maybe it’s because of our personalities? It’s my first time playing with a team, so I’m not sure about it.

Not wanting to listen to their argument anymore and mildly angry because they don’t believe what I said, I turn in the direction I last saw the black cat. When I find it, I try to make it come closer, but regardless of what I do, it won’t come. If I get closer to it, it just runs away and hides behind the closest machine, pile of metal scrap, or whatever it finds.

“Why is this werecat following us if it doesn’t want me to get close? It makes no sense.”

 

---

 

*Boooom! Booom! Booom!*

“Succo, I’ll need a heal… Fast.”

This is chaos, utter chaos. A group of suicide bombers just blew everything near them. Odomiru, who happened to be close to them, took the hit, and now he’s asking for my help. Thank god I was far away because, without his tanking skills, I would have died for sure.

But I can’t go help him right now, there’s a giant spider with a mushroom on its back blocking my way. I know they can use their threads to immobilize me if I’m not careful, and trying to sneak away to help him would spell my doom.

“Fuhahaha! I’m invincible! Look at this, Succo! They’re killing themselves, I don’t need to do anything!”

Meanwhile, our red slime companion is entangled with a group of plant-infested humans. They’re clumped together and their vines and roots are squishing her body in all directions, obscuring her body. As she says, they’re killing themselves by merely touching her but, as long as she stays there, she can’t help us at all. Furthermore, she makes it sound like it’s the perfect situation, but her HP is falling at a similar speed as that of the monsters entangling her, just at a slightly slower speed.

There’s lightning flying everywhere, hitting both ally and foe alike. It’s because of those rat-headed madmen, who maniacally cackle in between their spell attacks. There are also bat-like slimes falling from the ceiling that can silence us, a trap or monster that constantly drains our MP, and a group of human-headed animals saying perturbing things everywhere.

“Guess who’s on the menu today!”

“I beeeeeeg you for forgiveness. Leeeeeave me alive, pleeeeeeease!”

“I was once like you. Will you join us today? Buhehe!”

They haven’t done anything but roam around, saying random phrases, but the psychological damage isn’t negligible.

But this isn’t everything. No, if this were all, it’d be still doable. The real problem is that giant monster fighting BigHat. The monster, some kind of orc or troll given its green skin and tusks and covered in disgusting fat clumps, has been fighting against us since a long time ago.

And it won’t die.

It doesn’t matter how hard we attack or how long the fight takes. The big monster, which I assume is the boss of this abandoned area, won’t die. With a big effort, we managed to reduce it to half HP, and the only thing we achieved was to enrage it, making it deal more damage. Thank god it returned to its normal attack speed when we allowed it to heal a bit.

Furthermore, as we kept fighting, more and more monsters came from the surrounding areas.

I’m not sure if it’s related or not, but there has been an intermittent *Blip!* sound now and then. We saw sealed rooms before fighting the giant monster, so I assume every blip we hear means one of those doors has opened.

We wanted to run away as soon as we saw this, but BigHat refused. He said there must be a way to kill the boss, that we only need to wait for it to exhaust its EP and MP, and told us to fight the monsters while he kept it busy.

By following his order, the only thing we achieved was to get into this chaotic situation.

“Fufufu! Hahaha!”

Following the laughter, lighting fills my vision. It hits the spider I’m fighting and jumps at me. Immediately after, the spider opens its fangs and bites me. I try to dodge, but the paralyzing spores have taken effect yet another time and I can’t evade in time.

“...Shit! I’m not a fighter, I’m a support! This is why I said to run away…” I complain after removing the paralyzing effect.

While paralyzed you can only use skills on yourself, which happens to be perfect to remove the paralyzing effect, assuming you have the skill to do it. I’m the only one who can use skills to remove status effects, so I’m the only one who can fight the spider without the risk of dying.

The role of keeping the spider at bay fell upon me, but I’m not a fighter! I have no magical attacks because all my MP is dedicated to healing and support skills. The other skills I have are Danger Detection – which has been warning me non-stop since we came inside this area – and other miscellaneous ones that aren’t suited for combat.

I’m the scout and healbot, not a fighter!

My only means of dealing damage are basic attacks, which aren’t very effective when the enemy has resistance to physical damage.

“Won’t you die already!?” My dagger hits the spider’s head. The change in its HP bar is hard to see, assuming there’s any at all. “Tsk!”

If only Muribelle was here… she’s the one with the burst magical damage. I’d gladly switch places with her.

From the corner of my eye, I can see a glob of plant-infested humanoids. The only sign of her presence is a tiny red dot, visible in between the vines. Her previous gleeful shouts are muffled, making it impossible to hear what she’s saying.

…I take it back. I wouldn’t take her place even if I could.

“Odomiru!” I shout. “Are you free now? Can you take my place?”

“But what about the paralyzing spo–”

“Don’t worry about them! I’ll heal you if needed, but I can’t do my job like this!”

“...fine.”

Reluctantly, Odomiru comes my way. It only takes him two hits to get the spider’s aggro, as my damage capabilities aren’t exactly what you’d call great.

“Thanks!”

“...”

Now that I can finally do my job, I quickly move near the mob surrounding Muribelle. At this rate, she’ll die before the monsters do.

“...I… heal. Succo… heal! …die… please…” I listen to Muribelle’s muffled voice.

“Alright, alright, here I go… Heal!”

From the gaps, a green light pours out and her HP bar fills up. I then take a step back, expecting she’ll do something crazy. Shortly after, there’s a fire explosion in the middle of the monster clump, blasting everything within five meters.

“Fuhahaha!” Muribelle drags herself out of the mountain of dead monsters. She makes a victory pose. “They had no chance against me! Fuhahaha!”

Yep. As expected, she’s as crazy as ever.

“...why didn’t you use Fireball before? If you cast it at the start, it would have been a lot easier.” I cross my arms and adopt a serious posture.

“I… I thought they would kill themselves and I had to do nothing at all. By the time I realized I’d die first, it was too late to use Fireball or I’d have killed myself too… Hehehe…” She dares to laugh in this situation. “Umm… Succo… After the last fireball, I have less than 10% HP. Can you heal me again? Pretty please?” She begs me.

Although she’s a fire slime, unlike BigHat, she doesn’t have resistance to fire damage, so she took the same damage as the monsters did from her own Fireball.

“Sigh… Fine, come out of that corpse pile. I’ll heal you.”

“Alrighty! Hehehe…”

After healing her, I turn around, leaving her giggling like a fool. I heal Odomiru’s paralyzation before he can get hit by the spider’s web. “Muribelle, go help Odomiru. I’ll make sure BigHat doesn’t die.”

“Alrighty!”

The big monster is doing as fine as ever. I’m not sure what BigHat wants to achieve, taking the monster’s resilience into account, but I hope he doesn’t get us killed.

“BigHat, now that we’ve dealt with most of the monsters, let’s run away before more can come. Oooi, can you hear me?” I say while casting Heal on him.

“I hear you! We aren’t running away! We’re going to defeat this monster. I’m sure I can do it!”

What the hell is he saying? “Do what, exactly? Can’t you see you’re doing nothing to it?” The monster is back at full HP now that the only one fighting it is BigHat. “It’s a waste of time.”

“Shut up! If I said we’re killing it, we’re doing it!”

I shake my head. It’s useless to argue with him.

It’s right at this moment that the boss opens his stomach mouth wide. Is this a finishing move of sorts? “BigHat, evade!” But right at this moment, there’s a pink flash and BigHat doesn’t react, allowing the monster to bite him.

*Crunch!* With a disgusting sound, BigHat’s HP falls to zero and dies.

“Ah… He died.”

He should have the Aegis skill to prevent death in situations like that. If he couldn’t evade on time, he just had to activate it, so… What happened? Why did he die?

Slipping through the boss’ legs, I see the silhouette of the black cat. I didn’t notice it followed us all this time.

 

Losing BigHat might have been the best thing that could happen to us. After being forced to play without him, we discovered our teamwork improved, and we didn’t have to plan everything according to his permanent ice auras. We ditched him and searched for another fourth member.

We never came back to that dungeon and did our best to forget everything about it. Still, I sometimes find myself contemplating about the mystery behind the charm and the black cat.