The Mad Rat's Lab

"Is it just me, or is this dungeon kind of weird?" I say as soon as I see the revealed parts of the dungeon we have to invade next.

"It is! It's just a straight line! We won't have to worry about getting lost here, hehehe!"

True to Clara's words, all the revealed areas of this dungeon are placed in a straight line. If you want, you can pick up a ruler and trace a single line from the dungeon entrance to the core. If anything, it's unusual. Also, although this straightness makes it very easy to follow the path, putting a large dungeon in a single axis makes it occupy much more space than you'd expect. To put you into perspective, if I want to fit the whole dungeon into the minimap, I need to zoom out so much that the dungeon looks like a strand of hair.

To break the monotony of a single straight passage, there are parts where the walls are irregular, and places where it widens before narrowing again. Who knows if this is for aesthetic reasons or if it serves a nastier purpose? Anyway, what matters is that you can trace a straight line from beginning to end.

Oh, and of course, we only know about half of the dungeon's layout. We can only imagine that the missing parts will follow the same straight pattern.

"This isn't the only unusual thing…" Laura points at the monster and trap list. "Have you read this?" No, I haven't. Not yet. "There isn't a single monster here."

Wait. What!? A dungeon with no monsters at all!? How can this be!?

Alarmed, I try to grab the list, but before I can reach out my hand, Laura starts reading it, saving me the trouble. "Several instant-death falling traps. Invisible walls… which are probably for some kind of labyrinth. Then there are lots of classic traps, most of them based either on damage or crowd control effects… they range from simple displacement to complete temporary immobilization."

Usually, traps that apply crowd control effects and don't deal damage aren't used unless you combine them with something else, because they're useless otherwise. Spending cp just to make the opponents waste a few seconds isn't worth it.

So, if there are no monsters… what could they synergize with? I have a bad feeling about all this…

"There must be a reason why the dungeon is designed this way. I just can't understand why yet…" With her eyebrows furrowed, Laura struggles to come up with the answer.

"Isn't it just because it's cool? Hehehe."

"No, Clara, no…" Ricard shakes his head. "No one in their right mind would design a dungeon like this if there wasn't a reason for it. Side passages can not only help with making the invaders waste time, but can also be useful to move monsters around and create a sense of insecurity. A straight dungeon is the easiest one to clear, and nobody who took this tournament seriously would make such a mistake." After his explanation ends, I watch Ricard as his eyes anxiously alternate between the dungeon map and the list in Laura's hands. "It's just that I can't come up with the reason. I feel like I should know; I feel that I've seen this before somewhere, but it somehow evades me…"

A moment of tension fills the room until I decide to break it. We can't waste time.

"Alright, so… What do we do?" My question makes everyone look at me. It's as if they're waiting for me to speak first.

Hey, don't wait for me to decide! I was asking precisely to avoid any responsibility that might arise from making a bad decision. How am I supposed to comfortably make bad decisions now that you're relying on me?

My eyes switch from one of my teammates to the other, looking for help. Laura? Maybe Clara? Or, god forgive me… Ricard…? But as soon as I land my eyes on them, they refuse to look back, avoiding my gaze and turning their heads away.

Shit…! Don't complain later if everything goes to shit because of me, okay? I refuse to take responsibility for my decisions, both bad and crazy!

"Aah, this is exactly what I was missing." As soon as the blinding teleport light fades away, Ricard starts rambling. "Do you see these marks on the walls? I'm sure that if we pay attention to the end of the dungeon, straight ahead of us, we'll see–"

As Ricard explains, we unconsciously position ourselves in a semicircle around him. He, who appeared closer to the dungeon portal, is now facing in the opposite direction, towards the dungeon core. But before he finishes explaining, he suddenly points forward, and a sense of dread overcomes me.

"Everyone, dodge!" Ricard shouts, suddenly throwing himself to one side.

We immediately follow Ricard's warning, throwing ourselves in the same direction as him. After Marta's training, both our reflexes and team coordination have improved significantly, allowing split-second decisions.

Right as gravity takes hold of me and I start falling, bright light floods in, coming from the direction of the dungeon core. It quickly advances, covering everything in a straight line even before our bodies touch the ground.

It was so close! We almost got caught by it!

When I safely land, I observe in a mix of horror and amazement the two-meter-wide beam, occupying the whole central passage, going from the dungeon core to the entrance portal. Where the two collide, there's an intense light effect produced by the clashing of two powerful energies.

I swear, if the dungeon entrance portal wasn't indestructible by any means, there wouldn't be anything remaining at that spot. Not even dust.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Oh, by the way, there's no option to turn the entrance portal's indestructibility off, because it's an indispensable requirement for invaders to be able to leave the dungeon without surrendering, as well as an important landmark that can be used for guidance in certain dungeons.

True to video games, the beam doesn't lose strength or disperse as it advances. It also emits a slight buzzing noise as a danger warning.

"Woow, what's this? It's beautiful!" Clara says right next to me.

"Stop," I grab her tentacle just before she touches the light. "What were you trying to do? Kill yourself? Sigh…" Clara… Are you crazy!? Do you have a death wish!?

"But I didn't do anything! …yet."

Yeah, that's the right word. Yet. You didn't touch it yet, and that's the reason you haven't died yet. I glare at her while thinking this, and she shrinks back.

Then, around five seconds after the beam of light flooded the passage, the light disappears as quickly as it came.

"How could I forget about this?" Ricard smacks his head a few times. "It isn't even the first time we've faced this machine, and the dungeon's layout was a clear sign we'll be against it. It was the Magic Engineers all along. I'm the one that's supposed to guide you all with my knowledge…"

Ricard's right. I've seen this before. A light beam that annihilated everything it touched. But where was it? I can't remember; it must have been a long time ago.

Wait a moment. Isn't it the first time Ricard properly identified the danger before it hit us instead of after it did? I guess Marta's 'private session' with him worked wonders. At first, Ricard took it as the greatest of honors, but when he came back, his eyes were dark and his focus was lost, as if the world was ending…

…I'm not sure I want to know what happened there. To my knowledge, nobody has dared to ask him yet.

"It all makes sense now," Laura interrupts Ricard's self-blaming session. "The straight dungeon, the lack of monsters, the traps designed to stall us… It's all designed for this instant-death beam to kill us."

I furrow my brows and ask. "How do you know it's an instant-death effect?"

At my question, Laura points towards the dungeon portal. There, I can see the corpses of two of her Imps. It seems she managed to save one from the beam somehow, but the other two died miserably.

"I know through the combat logs."

After deciding there was no use bringing monsters with us, because they suck against traps, we decided to only bring her Sacrificial Imps, just in case they were useful somewhere. They're garbage when it comes to defending our dungeon anyway, so we lost nothing by bringing them with us.

"We were a bit unlucky that we didn't know about this light beam and the machine that creates it," says Laura, "But there's nothing we could have done against it anyway. It's only that we almost died right at the entrance."

She's right. This dungeon, designed to exploit the instant-death beam, is like The Surprise. It doesn't matter if the enemy knows ahead of time, because it's impossible to avoid.

"But there's something we can do about that, right?" I recall the traps filling the dungeon. "There must be some way to deal with that light."

We all turn to look at Ricard with an expectant look. Yeah… do your damn job properly, you annoying walking encyclopedia! Don't explain useless and unrelated things. Explain what matters!

"Everything has at least one weakness. This machine, other than being ridiculously expensive, always comes with a cooldown time. It depends on the range and the beam's width…" Ricard thinks for a while before answering. "I'd say it'll take around one minute between bursts."

"Around one minute…?" Laura frowns. "This will barely be enough for certain traps and narrow stretches."

"Then we just have to try harder, hehehe!"

I don't think that'll be what saves us, Clara... "Is there any way to stop the beam, Baldy? Or a way to take no damage from it?"

"Hmm… unless you can turn invulnerable or have a skill that prevents death, not really. Any object you use as cover, even when classified as indestructible, will disappear as soon as the light touches it."

"But the dungeon portal is doing fine!" Points out Clara.

"Only the portal, the dungeon core, and the walls marked as indestructible can survive the beam. Oh, and the doors that block the access to new dungeon areas. But there are clearly none in this dungeon."

"So, in short," I summarize, "we're screwed."

Although making the dungeon impossible to clear, or at least close to impossible, can be a valid tactic to force other teams to get fewer points, there's a rumor saying that the game administrators will check every dungeon and watch the replays of the teams invading them before they choose the fifty teams that will enter the 'real event'. They say they'll evaluate how good or bad your dungeon was, and if they don't like it, they'll automatically eliminate you, regardless of how many points you got. This is to ensure no unfair, and more importantly, no unfun dungeons will appear in the tournament.

Nobody knows if this is true or not... But unless they're crazy, not a single team that takes this seriously will accept the risk.

The reason I'm explaining this? It's simple: there must be a way to clear this dungeon without deaths. A way that's not only possible, but actually quite feasible by skilled players. Like the dungeon we've designed.

The problem is… HOW!?

"We'll need to wait between light bursts to move," I state the obvious. "Let's wait for the second burst and calculate the time between them before moving. Now, we just need a volunteer to test the first narrow stretch…"

"Me, me! I want to do it!" Clara excitedly raises her hand. I mean… tentacles.

"Oh, uh… sure. You go first, then." How weird. I was sure nobody would volunteer, and I'd have to do it.

Although she currently looks horrible, I'm glad my cute little sister is here to give me a helping hand. I'm sooooo tired of having to do things for the team. I'm the team leader! I should only give orders while the others follow them!

…Because that's how it works, right? Fufufu! Hahaha!