The Mad Rat's Lab

"Not this agaaaaain!" I desperately shout, swinging my arms around. "Aah, I don't remember the path! I'll be stuck here forever– Gufu!"

"Dark Grab!"

A sudden force pulls me in the opposite direction, making me feel as if my body were to split in two. My vision shifts, and I suddenly find myself standing on the ground once more, as if nothing happened. Well, not nothing, because about a quarter of my HP is gone, but it's still better than finding myself at the labyrinth's start.

"Cough, cough…! What a ride." It all happened in an instant. The surprise, combined with the forces throwing my body around, is enough to give anyone motion sickness. "Thanks, Baldy. You saved me."

"Hahaha! Of course, you can always rely on me! I'm the staunch and reliable teammate that's always ready to help you."

Just because he saved me, I won't comment on that. "..." I said I won't, but I'm really tempted to.

"Are you fine?" Asks Clara, worried.

"Yeah… I'm fine. Just slightly dizzy." I shake my head. "Anyway, we have no time. We must continue–"

As I speak, a hand grabs my shoulder, and I feel hot air blowing at my ear.

"Fuuu… I've got you∼!"

"W-what the fuck!?" My body automatically jumps away, getting as much distance as possible from the sudden aggressor. "Didn't you say there were no monsters, Baldy!?"

I raise my staff and prepare to cast spells, ready for battle. After Marta's training, we've all learned to stay on guard at all times, prepared to fight against unexpected dangers. But instead of joining me, my teammates start laughing.

I hear three people's worth of laughter, which means…

"Lily…" I glare at her. "Didn't we all agree to stop fooling around during this tournament?"

Laura shrugs and makes an innocent smile. "If you can do it, why can't I too?"

…Shit. She got me there.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Alright, follow me! I'll bring you to the exit."

"But what about the light bursts?" Asks Ricard.

Laura wears a smile and points at her head. "Don't worry, I've got everything covered. Let's go!"

She starts running without any hesitation. We follow after her. Unlike when we were trying to find the path forward, she doesn't make a single mistake, nor does she bump into the invisible walls. We advance at a speed that's clearly superior to anything we've done before, rushing through the labyrinth as if we knew the layout better than the palm of our hands.

"After we reach the end, we'll find something creepy," says Laura, from the lead. "I've warned you, so don't be scared."

"Define 'creepy'," I demand, running right behind her.

Creepy as in, it's dangerous? As in, it gives you the chills? As in, we're all going to die? I need details to determine how bad it is.

Laura winks at me and makes a playful smile. "You'll see when we reach it∼, fufufu!"

If she acts like this, I'm sure it won't be anything dangerous. Let's leave it at this for now and let her have some fun. "Fine, have it your way..."

"Nooo, I want to know! Tell me!" Clara thinks differently. She speeds up, passing next to me, and grabs Laura with her tentacles. After a bit of struggling, she ends up riding Laura's back.

A shiver runs down my spine, and my hair stands on end. Ugh, how scary… If it were me, I'd be willing to say or do whatever Clara wanted just to get rid of her.

Oh, by the way, this is the same way Laura carried the Imp earlier. The Imp, unable to follow Laura because Blink only teleports the user, has been with us all the time. It is currently being carried by Ricard.

"Hey, Lemon, stop! I'm taking damage from touching you."

"Then, tell me and I'll let you go."

"I guess we'll all have to suffer in our own ways... Fufufu!"

"Tell meeeeee!"

Ricard and I exchange a look and nod at the same time. We aren't going to do anything to stop them. There's no way we're going to intervene in that. As long as it doesn't get dangerous, we won't take any action whatsoever to stop them.

As expected, Laura is a great guide. Without a single mistake, she guides us to the end of the labyrinth. She makes us hide when the machine fires, and we resume when the light disappears.

Like this, we clear the labyrinth relatively quickly. But as soon as we turn the last invisible corner and leave this place, which, for an unknowing passerby, must seem like a simple empty room, we come into what looks straight out of a horror film.

The previous clean and straight walls disappear, and the light grows dim. The uneven ground twists and grows, creating slopes and stairwells around a central empty cylinder, creating an infinite number of places to hide from the Annihilation Ray (temporary name). Somehow, it all makes me think that gravity means nothing in this place, that it's possible to walk on the walls and ceiling.

But that's just the environment. What makes this place scary is the enormous number of statues. Everywhere I can see, humanoids of all sizes and races fill my vision.

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Screaming. Running. Begging for their life. The statue's disfigured and life-like expressions are a sight to behold.

Some statues, hidden in the corners, look fine, but the others aren't as lucky. As if cleanly cut by the sharpest knife in the world, they all miss an arm, their heads, or their whole upper torso.

They were unlucky to be inside the light beam's path.

Furthermore, as if the eerie statues weren't enough, purple clouds of fog slowly slither over the ground, hiding what lies inside them.

"...it's certainly creepy," I agree with Laura's previous warning.

"Right? I told you."

I take another look around, searching for anything dangerous, but other than the purple clouds, there's nothing in sight.

"Do you think they're dangerous?" I ask Laura.

"I guarantee you they're poisonous or have some other nasty effect. We should try our best to avoid them."

"I see…" I nod, although I'm not sure that will be possible. Well, we can at least give it a try, as she said.

"No. We don't have time for that." Suddenly, Ricard stops his monotonous, machine-like monologue and interrupts us. "Thirty seconds. Just thirty seconds! That's how long it took for the machine to cool down between the last two shots."

"What do you mean? We all know the cooldown is getting sho–" I tilt my head and ask, but Ricard cuts me off. He grabs my shoulders and starts shaking me.

"Don't you understand? It's thirty seconds! It's half the original cooldown. HALF! From one full minute to thirty seconds, it's half the time. Just half! Half!"

Ricard starts repeating the word 'half' as if he were a broken recording.

Um, okay…? Did Ricard break? He's starting to sound strikingly similar to those Mad Cultists…

"Not only that! It isn't just half the time, but the time between shots is getting shorter and shorter, and it does so faster every time. Now I know for sure! There isn't more than one machine, nor does it have an irregular cooldown time. It's just one machine, but the players must have given it a component that reduces the cooldown by 1 second every time it fires."

Now that he says it… Yes. As expected, I have no idea what he's talking about.

Wait a moment. Did Ricard just say '1 second every time it fires'? Then, that means…

Laura and I exchange a look. Her previous cheerfulness, happy that I found this place as creepy as her, was completely gone. There's fear in both our eyes.

"Oooh fuck. This is bad…" I mutter. "It's exponential, which means…"

"...The more it fires, the faster it'll fire, and the faster it fires, the faster the cooldown will be reduced…"

Now we understand why Ricard is so anxious. This is extremely bad. Bad, as in 'we're all going to die soon'. This dungeon can't be cleared if there's no delay between light bursts.

"Hey, hey," Clara pulls at my sleeve and asks in a low but confused tone. She's ashamed she's the only one who doesn't understand what's going on, but doesn't want Ricard and Laura to know, "What are you talking about?"

I'm sorry, Clara. There's no time to explain. "Baldy, I need numbers."

"We've spent about 25 minutes here, and the cooldown is now at 30 seconds. Taking into account that the machine fires for 5 seconds, which significantly increases the loop time at lower cooldowns…" Ricard wipes his face with a hand, taking some time to think. "Uh… If I didn't make a mistake, it should be at around the 35-minute mark."

"Unless we reach the dungeon core within 10 minutes, the machine will start firing uninterrupted." Clarifies Laura.

I look at the map and zoom out. Comparing our relative current position to the dungeon core, we have…

I gulp. "Everyone," I say in a serious tone. "Run. Now!"

Wearing anxious expressions, we sprint towards the dungeon core, ignoring the statues, the purple clouds, and any other possible danger in favor of speed. It doesn't matter if we take damage or die now, because if we aren't fast enough, we'll die anyway.

"Hehe, this is so much fun!" …sorry for my mistake. Everyone is anxious except for one person.

Soon, we hide to avoid the light beam, but as soon as the light disappears, we leave and resume our desperate sprint.

"The purple clouds aren't dangerous at all, hehe! They just apply a small, slow effect. Lucky!"

At some point in time, Clara split up and went inside one of the purple clouds. She must have used her tentacles to climb the vertical wall and enter the purple cloud ahead of us.

"Sigh… Lemon, don't stray from the group." I'll never understand her thought process.

Regardless, Clara is wrong. Slow is the worst effect they could have. We can't waste a single second, and a slowing effect is the worst of our nightmares.

"Yees! I'm coming back…" I watch Clara's spinning silhouette, slightly obscured by the purple cloud, suddenly come to a halt. "Ah! A Gorg–..."

Seeing her suddenly stop, I know something must have gone wrong. That, or she's fooling around. I swear, if it's the latter, I'll force her to write a 10.000 word essay to apologize. And if I find a single spelling mistake, I'll make her rewrite it all from the start.

"...Lemon?" What's a 'Gorg'? And why did Clara stop, as if petrified? Statues, stopped moving, petrified… "Gorgons! There are Gorgons inside the purple fog!"

Bad things never come alone. As if the slowing clouds and the reduction cooldown of the light beam weren't enough, now we have to deal with Gorgons and petrification too!

If we turn to stone, we can't move. And if we can't move, we waste time. Or worse, get hit by the light beam and die.

By the way, do you know what happens to someone who has been turned into stone and then turns back to normal, after having half their body disintegrated? No? Well, I don't know either. But I'm sure it isn't beautiful.

It's a good thing Clara spotted them ahead of time. If they petrified all of us at the same time… I don't want to think about it.

But still… The Gorgons, the Extinction Glare (temporary name)... Why were we precisely missing the most important information of all!? Are we really that unlucky!?

"Baldy, pick up Lemon and carry her. And Lily, throw your Imp and make it grab all the Gorgon's aggro–"

I stop in the middle of giving orders because I see Laura throwing the Imp into the purple cloud. As they say, great minds think alike.

As soon as the Imp touches the ground, it starts making an annoying noise, provoking all enemies into attacking it. It will only last for a few seconds, but by then, we'll have rescued Clara and exited the purple cloud.

We carried the Imps with us to deal with emergencies. Since the Gorgons are the first (and possibly the last) monster we've found, if we don't use the Imp's suicide skill now… Then, when?

The world turns purple when I dive into the slowing cloud. Then, I watch as Ricard lifts Clara's petrified Champion. Around us, a few Gorgons are glaring at the Imp, completely ignoring us.

I can finally do a leader's job. Give orders, and let the others do the work. This. This is life!