The Mad Rat’s Lab

“I’m sorry, Clara. Yesterday I received a message from a guy asking for a match. I can’t play with you today.”

“Muu… this isn’t fair!”

“Ea, ea… It’s alright. We’ll have lots of chances during the summer.” I pat her head as she pouts.

It’s Monday morning and for once, I don’t have to go to class today! No awful teacher today! Hahaha!

Why? Because it’s summer. Holidays! No class or homework! We can spend all the time fooling around and doing whatever we want! Like playing games, playing DMA, or playing DMA with friends, for example.

The three examples are the same? Nah, you’re wrong.

So, since we don’t have classes anymore, I can take my time having breakfast, and the same is true for my two sisters.

Since they don’t have holidays like us, our parents woke up earlier and we’re left to our own devices. There isn’t any difference from the usual, as they always woke up before us even when we had to go to class.

Clara is enthusiastically chatting with me, nagging me to spend time together, while Marta is eating silently, glaring at me from time to time.

“But you don’t need all day for just one Dungeon Battle, we can play before or after.” Clara keeps pushing.

“Well… you’re right about that, but I also need to plan and design a dungeon capable of beating him. He bragged about being good at designing dangerous traps and such stuff, I must make him eat his own words…”

“Oh, what a surprise,” comments Marta, “I never expected you to take anything this seriously.”

Excuse me? I always take everything seriously! When it comes to beating the crap out of other players and making them cry, I always do.

“But, as much as I hate to admit it, he’s right about this, Clara. If he wants to create a specific dungeon or monsters to deal with the opponent, he must spend some time planning and creating what he needs.”

Is it just me, or do you also feel weird when Marta agrees with me without any insult?

At our older sister’s explanation, Clara reluctantly agrees. “...fine. But you’ll owe me one.”

Owe you one? For what, exactly?

After pouting for a while, Clara asks me. “So, what’s that player’s name?” She lowers her head and, in a lower voice, adds something else. “I’ll have to make him regret it for the rest of his life…”

I can’t hear what she’s saying but, for one reason or another, it sends a shiver down my spine.

Dangerous…

“Ahaha, the name. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it because of how bad it is. It reminds me of Ricard’s awful naming sense…”

“...yeah, I understand… another reason to punish him, then…”

Our eyes glaze over at remembering the frustration of having to use Ricard’s name for our group during the tournament. The problem is that, since we reached the semifinals, we got somewhat famous, and that awful name stuck to us like glue.

“You mean the League of Evil?” Asks Marta. “Believe me when I say I’ve seen way worse names…” She stops when we both glare at her. “...why are you staring at me like that? A-anyway! So what’s his name?”

“It’s Brainiac. Hahaha, so stupid.”

“Hehehe.”

Clara and I chuckle at that guy’s name. But contrary to what I expected, Marta furrows her brows instead of doing the same.

“Brainiac… I know that name,” she says. “I think… yes, it’s the name of the guy who follows Incognita everywhere. He acts like a snob and is extremely rude to everyone else.”

Wow. I never thought I’d see the day Marta called somebody else ‘extremely rude’. How rude must he be for this to happen? But it’s weird, he didn’t sound rude in the message he sent me.

“He always looks at me with disdain and calls me bitch.”

Aaaah, now I understand. Question solved.

She said Incognita, right? If I’m right, he’s Marta’s rival, isn’t he? Well, not Marta’s but Anthemia’s.

“Hehehe… Brainiac, huh? Target acquired… Hehehe…” Clara starts smiling while muttering something. Though her eyes aren’t smiling.

Yeah… I don’t want to know the meaning behind that smile. Not a chance.

“Alright!” Having finished my breakfast, I stand up. “I’m sorry, my ladies, but I must go first. I have work to do.”

Work as in devising heinous schemes, preparing deadly traps, and inflicting as much pain on my opponent as possible.

“Good luck, Andreu!”

“...you better don’t lose, or I’ll have you train with me for another week. Now that everyone knows you’re related to me, I can’t have the guy who follows my rival be better than you.”

Ooooh, shit! Now I have a reason why I must win! I’ll die if I have to train with Marta for another week!

I quickly go to my room and start grinning like a fool.

“Alright! It’s time to think about what nasty stuff I can put into my dungeon. Fufufu! Hahaha!”

 

---

 

“Hmm, Dream Vestiges. This will surely be a tricky match.”

It’s nothing new, I knew from the start it’d be a tricky match. It’s only that the Dream Vestiges are especially tricky because of the status effects they apply.

While the demons are tricky because of their skills and the fact they like to apply status effects to make the best use of their damage output, and the fairies are tricky because they play hide-and-seek with you and your units; the Dream Vestiges’s status effects are more powerful than any other faction’s.

Lower your guard a single time, and you might soon find yourself dead. Not because of a powerful monster or attack but because you can’t avoid what’s coming next.

Just take a look at the innate skill some of their ‘good dreams’ units have: Sweet Dreams.

Of course, the first thing you think about Sweet Dreams is that it’s a very good support skill. If you can stay out of combat, you can achieve a complete recovery in a short time.

But that’s naive. Extremely naive.

The true power of Sweet Dreams is to force the opponent to sleep and then prepare an ambush while it can’t move or defend itself. One moment you’re fine, and the next you can only tremble in horror, in your phantasmal form, as you watch the enemy surround your sleeping Champion…

Sometimes, the line between a good and a bad dream is blurry.

For this match, we went with the following rules: everything is allowed, and the total cost is 10.000 cp.

We both agree that the objective of this match is to show our ingenuity. For this, we can use anything at our disposal. But at the same time, there’s no need to spend lots of cp to achieve it. Fewer but better is the objective.

We’re also playing in the ‘Total Victory’ mode. Usually, the one who survives the longer or the first to break the opponent’s dungeon core wins the Dungeon Battle, but the Total Victory mode is different. To win, you must survive, and the opponent must die. Anything else, like both dying or both reaching the core turns into a draw.

To achieve total victory means you win in every possible way and the opponent loses in every aspect, after all.

“First, let’s see what we’re up against.” I start looking around.

Everything’s… white.

The ground has bumps and is squishy. Bright blue sky... It’s clear. We’re standing on a cloud. I never thought I’d be able to experience this dream-like bullshit in real life. Well, it’s inside a game, but you know what I mean.

Further ahead, there’s a small fence, and five sheep are jumping over it. They jump over the fence from the right side and disappear into the cloud on the left side before reappearing from the right side to repeat the cycle.

Hah, how cliché! Sheeps jumping a fence! And there’s even a number on top that looks as if it were made of clouds, counting their jumps.

“But why is the number going backward? It started at 20 and is decreasing instead of going up… Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

A countdown means something will happen when it reaches zero. Maybe a trap, or a powerful monster. Or both at the same time. Maybe the sheep will turn into monsters and attack me. Or the trap will activate if I kill the sheep to stop the countdown.

It’s also possible the countdown itself is a trap so that I lower my guard and fall for the actual trap…

“A psychological trap from the start? I like it! Bring it on, sheep!”

Contrary to my words, I start to look around anxiously, trying to anticipate what’s going to happen. But the only thing I see is clouds everywhere. That, and my support mobs.

Today I only brought one of my Good Followers with me. They’re quite expensive, and I didn’t want to spend most of my cp budget on them instead of my carefully crafted traps.

Other than the Good Follower, I only have my newest experiment with me.

Before coming, I was facing a dilemma: how am I going to check out for traps? I don’t have too much experience when I’m the one facing them, so I generally use other units as trap finders.

Trap finders have the incredibly important and safe job of exploring ahead of me, activating all traps that don’t target Champions exclusively, before I reach that place.

The problem is that trap finders tend to die easily, and I can’t risk my only Good Follower’s life for this job. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not against using them as trap finders. Is just that today, I only have one, and losing it will mean I’ll have trouble fighting against any single, powerful enemy Brainiac might have prepared for me.

So I can’t take the risk.

Instead, I created the most pathetic creature I could think of. One that’s utterly useless in combat, but won’t die regardless of what happens to it. Instant death, fire, electricity, poison, status effects… Nothing can kill this guy! Not even an infinite abyss or teleport to the other side of the dungeon will tear us apart!

Hahaha, are you curious? All right, I’ll tell you.

This is a Monstrous Hybrid that uses a certain short, sneaky humanoid and an almost unkillable furry little critter.

You’re right! I’m talking about Goblins and Sacred Cats! This little critter has both the Slippery skill, which can negate damage if it’s higher than a percentage of its health, as well as the Nine Lives, which prevents it from dying the first eight times it should.

But even with all those skills, I was still worried about being split and losing my trap finder, so… I also gave it the Recall skill with the first skill point it gets upon creation!

This skill is useless except for support mobs, or for when you play with other players.

…who am I trying to fool? This skill is useless, period. A whole skill point invested in this is a waste.

That is unless you’re more worried about missing the monster than keeping it alive. Which happens to be my worry, because with Slippery and Nine Lives, I don’t fear it’ll be killed anytime soon.

Or anytime at all. Not before I die, anyway.

As for how this monster looks, imagine a centaur. Now change the horse’s body for a cat’s, and the human torso for a goblin’s. Make sure the goblin is ugly, as they all are. Then make it smaller, until it barely reaches a meter in height. Congratulations, you have my monster!

I was too lazy to name it properly, so I gave it this name: Unkillable Scouting Unit For Exploring Traps. Or Usufet, to keep it short.

As I observe the cooldown reach three, I quickly give it an order. “Usufet, go and check for traps!” I say, pointing at the sheep in front of us.

When Usufet reaches the fence, the sheep that is about to jump pauses, looks at it, snorts, and makes the jump.

“And here I was hoping something will happen… uh, wha…?”

The surroundings start shifting when the cooldown reaches zero. Soon, instead of the cloud and bright blue sky, what fills my vision is a dark room. I, my Good Follower, and Usufet are all here.

“...I hate Dreamshifts so much…”

What’s a Dreamshift? It’s a special feature of the Dream Vestiges. When a certain condition is met, all enemy units – and sometimes allied units too – will be teleported to another part of the dungeon without any warning. For roleplay purposes, is as if you were shifting from one dream to the next.

The condition for this to happen was for the countdown to reach zero. And I did nothing to stop it.

The only distinct feature in this dark room is a pedestal with an owl on standing on top.

“An owl…? Aaaah, shit! I know this one! I must give orders to my Goo…” My vision briefly shifts to a lower point of view before returning to normal. “...ood Follower before… It’s too late. Shit!”

In my phantasmal form, I observe the body of my Champion sleeping on the ground. Aaaah, I hate those owls so much! They can fly and stand in unreachable places, and can also use the Sweet Dreams skill!

*Click!*

Shortly after an activation sound, the noise of rumbling machinery fills the room, and the ceiling starts to slowly fall.

“Aaaaah, I don’t want to die like this! I must show my superiority!”

 

“...

And since we’re talking about the Dream Vestiges, did you know they don’t have a special resource like other factions do? They have two instead!

Since the whole faction is based on the duality of good dreams versus nightmares, they have one resource for each one. If they inflict good status effects like buffs, temporary shields or use the Sweet Dreams skill, they get ‘Good Dream’ points. On the contrary, if they inflict fear, madness, or any other negative status effect, they get ‘Bad Dream’ points.

As you might expect, those points are then used to unlock and create new monsters from that type. This means the players can focus on a single one of the two paths, or create a mixed dungeon and use both.

In general, it’s best to go both paths at the same time so that you can achieve better results; but efficiency is best when you focus on a single one, so… I’m not sure what’s best.

Of course, in terms of efficiency, nothing can beat my undead when I go into a human dungeon. Humans have it so easy to obtain new farmers and tend to use such high numbers to compensate for the lack of innate skills, that they’re the perfect targets!

…”

- Random ‘knowledge drilling’ done by Ricard the first time they invaded a Dream Vestige dungeon together.