The Mad Rat’s Lab

“Hyaaaah!” With a cute shout, Clara comes at me.

I said I’d take them seriously and intend to do it, but letting them make the first move should be ok. It isn’t like the fight will be decided in a single move.

Clara’s teammates are all alive. This makes the fight a 4vs1, but they’re still at a disadvantage even with the numerical superiority. The stat difference, added to the vastly superior experience, means I’ll most certainly win.

But Clara should know my strengths and weaknesses. They could surprise me with something unexpected, snatching the win against all odds.

If so, my honor as a pro player will shatter, and my sister will be happy.

Maybe I should lose on purpose…? No, what am I saying? She’ll surely notice and it’ll be worse.

I observe Clara get closer with calm. I won’t move until they make the first attack.

Most players want to use weapons in DMA because they can’t in real life. Or because they look cool. After all, where else can you wield a sword and slash at monsters in a frenetic battle?

But Clara doesn’t. Since the first time I saw her Champion, she has been unarmed.

I won’t be deceived, though. I once tried a Champion similar to hers just to test it out. Thanks to the tentacles, which behave like whips when you swing your arms around, the reach of her attacks is wider than you would expect.

The tentacles have the reach of a whip but can apply skills that require touch.

Touch skills are among the strongest in DMA because they have the shortest reach. In general, the shorter the range, the stronger they are. High power range skills, in contrast, require higher resources to use or have significant drawbacks.

The reason I use a sword instead of touch skills is because Parry is the most OP (and hard to use) skill in the game, and it requires a melee weapon. Otherwise, I might have considered going unarmed.

“Don’t get distracted! Hyaah!”

I avoid Clara’s swing by a paper-thin margin.

“I never get distracted in combat. I’m not like our brother.”

Following her attack, the mage of her party launches a bunch of Magic Missiles at me.

Against Magic Missiles, you must first check if they have the auto-targeting upgrade, so I make a jump to the side. The key is to make a big enough jump to force them to turn around, but not so big as to expose oneself to other attacks.

As soon as I move, they change paths. Now I know they have the tracking upgrade.

Even if the Magic Missiles can track you, it’s possible to avoid them by using cover or evading at the last second, but their high numbers make it impossible to avoid them all by simply evading.

When I jumped away, I had to move away from Clara for a moment. Her teammates take this chance to launch an Explosive Arrow and Shockwave at me, followed by a second Magic Missiles barrage.

Clara did tell them how to deal with me. This is going to be an interesting fight!

Their attacks are synchronized to hit at the same time, but their aim is purposely off. They do so that it’s impossible to avoid them all. Or it should have been.

I make a backflip, using my wings to stabilize in mid-air. I move away from the Explosive Arrow’s area of effect and completely neutralize Shockwave by staying above ground. As for the Magic Missiles, I dodge or parry most of them while mid-air in an amazing show of skill.

Magic Missiles aren’t that strong, I can take quite a few hits without worry. But taking useless damage goes against my philosophy, so I still do my best to avoid or parry as many as I can.

“She avoided all that…!”

“But we hit her! Let’s continue like this!” Clara shouts to raise the morale.

When I land back on the ground, I notice I’ve taken more damage than expected. “Huh…? Why? Ah!” I exclaim in a low voice, in realization.

There’s a pink and purple link between me and Clara. She must have used Mental Corruption on me.

Unavoidable skills like Mental Corruption are my best counter because they can’t be avoided, parried, or blocked by cover. But their weakness is that they don’t do great damage. Clara’s Mental Corruption, for example, can barely keep up with my natural HP regen.

“Is that all you’ve got?” I taunt them. “You won’t defeat me like this.”

“W-we’re just warming up. We’ll surely defeat you. Hyaaaah!”

With another cute shout, Clara runs up at me, quickly closing the distance naturally created while avoiding all the attacks. Meanwhile, her teammates wait for a chance to strike.

Heh… not bad. And all this taking into account that they’ve had less than an hour to adapt to each other’s battle style.

As she attacks, I avoid and Parry as needed.

It’s unwise to spend everything from the start, especially against unknown opponents, so I’m bidding my time. Once I know more about them, it’ll be my time to strike.

“Why are you avoiding all my attacks!?” Clara glares at me. “Let me hit you!”

I shrug my shoulders. “I thought you wanted me to take this seriously?”

“Muuu…! This isn’t fair…”

This is nothing, Clara. When I start attacking, you’ll wish I never did.

 

---

 

The closer we get to the third objective of Calaban’s party, the worse everything looks.

We’re in a dwarven residential area, with houses excavated on the solid rock. Instead of the usual 2D planning of villages, this one is 2D. The houses are stacked on top of each other, with intricate carvings on the walls; stairs that go up and down; and archways that serve both as a tunnel and bridge, connecting the streets and houses at several levels.

Furthermore, there’s this decadent smell filling my nostrils. There isn’t a single corpse to explain the foul smell, though.

It’s almost like a ghost town.

And I say ‘almost’ because there’s an important aspect we can’t neglect. The streets are filled with holes and most of the houses have crumbled. The remnants of sturdy barricades, completely shattered and left to decay, fill the streets.

This must have been where a huge battle was fought.

If I’m right, according to the murals we found in that room, we’re either where the dwarfs made their last standing before inevitably falling… or where it all began.

But isn’t it weird? I mean, after a battle like this, it wouldn’t be unusual for at least some bones to remain, don’t you agree? But there are none at all. It’s as if someone thoroughly cleaned all the bodies.

If you listen carefully, you can hear muffled cries from all around, but there’s no signal of monsters in the streets.

What’s more perturbing of it all, though, is this: the few doors that remain standing, are barred from the outside, unlike what you would expect in such a situation.

“This place is too eerie…” I shiver. “Can we leave?”

“Yeah. I don’t like this place. Let’s leave.” Balmy answers, her voice coming from uncomfortably close.

“Hey, Balmy. Why are you sitting on top of my head yet again? Scram!”

“Noooo!”

I shake my head and try to pull her off my head, but she resists with her all, grabbing my fur as if her life depended on it. Fuck this annoying flyrie…

“Oh, well…” I shrug my shoulders while shaking my head. “I’ll go inside that dark and dangerous-looking house, I just wanted to save you the trou–”

“Kyaaah, noo!” Balmy quickly flies away. “Bye-bye, Koala. Good luck! Hey, Moo. Do you mind if I sit on your shoulder?”

Heh, it’s a critical hit! As expected, it worked! Now she is Moo’s problem, hahaha!

“We can’t leave yet, we must look around and investigate first.” Thunder Thighs walks past me and answers my previous question.

“Do you believe we’ll find anything here? There doesn’t seem to be anything of interest.”

“You never know until you try.” She leaves those words behind and heads towards the house I was pointing at when executing the ‘how to get rid of Balmy’ plan. “Are you coming?”

“No, no,” I quickly shake my head. “It’ll be better if we split up. I’ll investigate another area.”

Are you kidding!? You’d have to pay me to go into that creepy house!

I watch her enter the creepy house, followed by her teammates. Split to investigate doesn’t mean we must go alone. It’d be too dangerous when we have no idea what we’re up against.

We too get together and start climbing some random stairs. My idea is to look at this from above. Maybe from there, we’ll see something we can’t see from ground level.

“Keep your voice down. There must be monsters nearby.” I warn them.

“Wouldn’t it be better to face them head-on?” Muribelle bumps her fist into the other hand’s palm. “It’s best to make the first strike.”

I shake my head. “Not when we don’t know how many there are.”

“Fine…”

The stairs are short, connecting to a street less than three meters higher than the ground level. To continue going up, we have to keep swapping between taking stairs, crossing bridges, and walking through narrow passageways.

By the time we reach the equivalent height of a fourth floor, we’ve spent more than ten minutes walking around. Dead ends, paths obstructed by debris, collapsed bridges…

This place is one of the worst labyrinths I’ve ever been in! If not because we have been going around, making sure to keep track of where that creepy house was all the time, I’m sure we would be lost by now.

*Thump!*

“Kyaaaah!”

When passing next to one of the barred doors, something hits it from inside, making Balmy shout.

Following her scream, there’s a moment of silence. Then, as if awakened by the noise, the screams we’ve been hearing since we walked into this ghost city flood our surroundings with renewed vigor. Banging sounds soon follow.

*Thump, Thump, Thump!*

The door shakes as something slams into it from the inside.

“You’ve done it now… Congratulations, Balmy. You’ve alerted all the nearby monsters.” I shake my head, putting on a stern tone.

“S-sorry…? B-but what are we going to do now!? Aren’t we screwed? We must run away right now!”

Not necessarily. The streets were deserted and there was no sign of recent movement. This, added to the reinforced doors makes me think that the monsters can’t reach us until they somehow escape from the sealed houses.

…But there’s no need to tell her, right? We must make bad children feel bad for their wrong actions.

“No. Let the moooooonsters come! I was starting to get bored! Mooohahaha!”

Yeah… This is why I hate crazy teammates.

“Wait a moment!” I catch Balmy before she flies away and calm Moo at the same time. “Let’s check this out first. Muribelle, be ready. Coordinate with me. Moo, you smash the door.”

“Finally! Mooooooo!”

*Crash!* With an animal cry followed by a powerful kick, Moo breaks the door.

“Nooooooooo! We’re all going to die!” Balmy hides behind Moo as Muribelle and I get ready.

From inside the dark house, a dark… humanoid…? Well, from the inside, something dark emerges. An extremely muscular but short humanoid, with a horse head and black skin. And by black skin, I mean night-sky black.

As far as I know, there shouldn’t exist a monster like that in DMA.

“Is that one of the corrupted dwarfs…? No, it doesn’t matter now. Muribelle, attack! Fireball!”

“Fireball!”

Our simultaneous Fireball attack burns the humanoid to ashes. Well, the corpse remains because this is a game. But not for long. Soon, its body breaks into black smoke. It then flies away, as if moved by the wind.

“That was pretty weird, don’t you agree?” Muribelle voices out everyone’s thoughts.

“Yes…” I nod. Monsters usually don’t disappear like that. “But what do you think? Aren’t they about as strong as the other monsters we fought before?”

“I don’t care. Let’s go find more! They can entertain us while Calaban’s team looks around.” Moo beats his chest enthusiastically, pointing to another blocked door.

“You’re right. We can increase our points like this and–”

Interrupting our conversation, the shouts and banging noises suddenly rise in volume. Are the other monsters enraged at this one’s death?

*Crash! Thump! Baam!*

We can hear the sounds of breaking windows and smashed wood from all around. Soon, more dark figures appear, rushing in our direction. Some have animal heads or extremities, others walk on all fours. Some even have animal heads instead of limbs. They all look different, but they all are humanoid and have black skin.

“We must leave this place right now!”

Why is it that Balmy only makes sense in situations like this? It makes one think about the mysteries of life.

“She’s right. Follow after me. Moo, you take the aggro of those who get too close. Balmy, since you can fly, make sure he doesn’t die while we run.”

I move to the edge of the cliff and look below. It’s too high to jump, so we must look for another path.

Right at this moment, Calaban’s party is running out of the creepy house. Maybe it was them who made them go crazy? Yeah, I’m sure of it. After all, it can’t be our (my) fault. We (I) are always right.

“Wait for us!” I shout. “We’ll be there shortly.”

Going down is always easier than going up. It’s thanks to something called gravity. To make our way back down, instead of looking for stairs or shortcuts, I just look for a suitable place to jump down.

Not like I’d know how to trace back our steps anyway, plus is faster this way.

We take falling damage, but it’s better than dying from the monsters or doing a suicide jump from the initial height. If you break the height into several jumps, the damage you take is severely reduced.

With about half our HP bars gone due to fall damage, except for Balmy who can fly, we meet up with Calaban’s party. The black monsters are starting to gather. If we don’t leave quickly, we’ll be surrounded and forced into a battle of attrition we can’t hope to win.

“Did you do this?” Calaban asks as soon as we get close enough.

“I don’t know.” I feign ignorance. “But it doesn’t matter now. We must run away before it’s too late.”

What does a normal adult do when he knows he has made a mistake? Shift the blame to someone else. And if there’s no one else you can blame? Then, you shift the topic instead.

“Sigh… alright. Let’s go! We’re breaking through. Koala, your team takes the lead as usual.”

“Okay.”

With a combination of my and Muribelle’s skills and Moo’s occasional support, we blast through the hordes of black humanoids and open a way forward. Our objective? To leave this ghost city behind as soon as possible.

Calaban’s party, on the other hand, struggles to keep the black horde chasing us at bay.

In this situation, you’d say the worst position is at the front, meeting the enemies head-on. But, funnily enough, the most dangerous area is the back because it’s the one with the most concentration of dark humanoids.

“Chain Lighting! Yes! This is where I thrive! Fufufu! Hahaha!”

If only I had Shared Voltage right now, it’d be amazing! Leaving it out is the worst decision I’ve made in a long time.

 

The Mystery Event’s secrets were slowly getting unraveled by the players. Things in the labyrinth were changing over time, unknown to most of them. But they’d soon find out.