The Mad Rat's Lab

Chapter 288 - I didn’t sign up for this


The winged ball of fire continues to fall, approaching us from above. We try to run away, but as expected, it changes its path to make sure it'll hit us.

"Brother, do something! We're going to dieeee!"

Clara starts shaking my shoulder, and as a consequence, the rest of my body too, while shouting. She's exaggerating quite a bit, as she knows that the explosion that will come after the impact isn't strong enough to kill us.

Not in a single strike at least.

"Stoooop!" It's really hard to shake her off. The multiple tentacles grabbing me, as well as the disgust they cause, make it hard. "What do you want me to do? It isn't like I have any way to redirect them or dodge…"

My thoughts interrupt my words. Don't we have someone perfect for this?

I turn towards my 'test-subject' and grab her shoulders, staring right into her eyes. "Lily. We need you."

"Yes?" Laura seductively puts one finger over her lips and slightly tilts her head. "What do you need me for?"

This little demon… She must know what I want to say. She might have reached that conclusion before me, but she's pretending she doesn't know with a devilish smile on her face.

And is it just me, or her eyes are glowing dangerously?

"Depending on the request, you'll have to compensate me later… You know what I mean, fufufu!"

For some reason, a shiver runs down my spine. I'm starting to think it'd be better to die a miserable death by comets…

Clara pushes Laura away and opens her arms, doing her best to cover the succubus so I can't see her Champion.

"Noooo! Don't rely on the nasty succubus, brother. I'll do it. What do you need?"

"...you?" I look at her with skeptical eyes.

I don't want to offend, but… What are you going to do when you have almost no ranged attacks? I could at least try to kill the angels before they reach us, but you? Are you going to scare them off? Haha, what a joke!

No, wait. That could work. Her Champion is just that horrify–

Laura steps to the side and starts patting Clara's head.

I'll never understand why she doesn't feel any disgust when doing that. Every time I do it, and I only do it when the situation demands it, I want to burn my hand to purify it.

"Fufufu, don't interrupt while the adults talk, Lemon."

"Guuu… I'm an adult, too!"

It sure doesn't look like that. But I won't say it out loud, I don't want to die yet. I'd rather have her act childish than put my life at risk. Do you know how many opportunities she'll have to take action? We still live in the same house!

Clara crosses her arms and pouts – at least, I imagine she does – but stays quiet. See? You're contradicting yourself with your actions.

"What did you want to ask? That I get the falling angel's attention? Fine, I can do that. But there's a price attached to that…" Laura smiles and licks her lips seductively.

I knew she was playing with me!

"Stop fooling around. We both know now isn't the time for that."

"Fine…" Laura pouts before turning around and starting to run away. "You're no fun, Mad Rat."

Oh, come on! Don't act like Clara now! I have enough with just one spoiled child.

Luckily, she stops playing around and takes this seriously. After gaining some distance from Clara and me, she makes a dark spear appear on top of her hand. She then throws it at the falling angel with a cute yelp and winks at me.

…She's taking this seriously, right!?

The pitch-dark spear made of shadows hits its objective, and the angel, who was aiming at Clara and me because we're closer, changes its path towards Marta. She successfully got the aggro.

Then, she patiently waits for the comet to fall while waving her hand at us.

*Booooom!*

As we expected, as soon as the angel makes contact with the ground, it generates a large explosion, dying in the process. But Laura, thanks to the improved range of the upgraded Blink, safely steps out of the visual effects of the attack, unharmed.

"Fufufu," she laughs, dusting her immaculate clothes. She approaches me. "For my effort, I deserve a reward."

"You haven't earned your reward yet," I say, pointing at the sky, where several more angels are falling towards us. "You won't get any reward until you've finished your job properly."

Laura pinches my cheek.

"I don't mind doing some extra work, but the reward better be worth it, Mad Rat. You won't go back on your word, will you? Fufufu!"

"..."

Shit, she got me. I shouldn't have played along with her. There's no way to beat a demon in a battle of wits.

After dealing with the comet-angels, we find the stairs going down to the next level. What comes next isn't part of the revealed areas, so we have no idea what to expect.

"When are traps more dangerous? When you know the layout, or when you don't?"

"It depends," Laura answers my question. "For basic traps you can find anywhere, it's better when you don't know the layout because, unconsciously, you tend to lower your guard when you know the path; and knowing there are some in the dungeon won't help."

"Ah, it makes sense…"

"But more complex traps are the opposite. If you know there will be a rolling boulder or a drowning trap somewhere in the map, knowing the layout will make it easy to spot them."

Clara, who's happily taking the lead now that Ricard isn't present, chimes in on our conversation.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Or you can use Baldy as a safe way to check for traps. He'll gladly show you how to detect them until he makes a mistake, and then, 'Ooops!', hehehe!"

"Yeah… he's a useful trap detector." I nod my head. "He's resilient and knowledgeable, a perfect combination for a trap detector. Especially the former."

"You guys… You know he can see the replay and listen to you, right?"

Laura shakes her head in disbelief. Why's she acting like that? Shouldn't she be used to it by now?

Furthermore, does it even matter if Ricard gets angry? His only weapon is the unending 'knowledge drilling' sessions. What is he going to do, bore us to death with them?

Now that I think about it, that's possible. I've committed a grave mistake. One that I'm willing to repeat as many times as it takes, even if I'll regret it later, because messing with Ricard is too funny to ignore.

We continue climbing down the unending stairs. The previous floor's floor, which should now be the ceiling, disappeared at some point, turning into clouds. The staircase now fades away in the distance, covered by the clouds, high up above our heads.

I'm not sure if this could be possible in a fantasy world, but in a game, it's pretty easy to do. You just need to define a plane and change what it shows when the camera is on either side of it.

You can achieve incredible things with this, but I'm not going to enter into detail right now.

A few more comet-angels come our way while descending the stairs, but Laura deals with them in the same way as before. After a long time, the stairs cross another layer of clouds, and they come to an end.

We find ourselves inside a celestial-themed temple. The ceiling is still very high, and there are the same large columns that appeared near the entrance, but this time it isn't a single wide-open space. There are proper walls obstructing our vision.

"Hmmm… where do you think Baldy will be?"

The two shrug their shoulders at my question.

"Die and stay dead. Stop imitating us, you have no business coming back from the dead!"

The first sign we have of Ricard's whereabouts is his voice. By the irritation in his voice and the contents, I'm sure he's fighting against one of those sacred cats, the ones that have nine lives.

"Damn cat, I said die! Aah, it's a waste of time to get souls like this… They should give me nine souls instead of one, one for each time I killed them!"

Suspicions confirmed.

One of the best parts of this being an actual Dungeon Invasion, instead of a Dungeon Battle or the event, is that we can obtain cp and special resources while training. As long as it doesn't interfere with our activities, we can do it and obtain what we deserve.

…Which means everyone but me can obtain them, because setting the situation so I can capture units and spending time capturing them isn't included. Souls, despair, and pain are fine, but not bodies.

But don't worry, I'm not envious. Yeah, not at all. Why would I envy them? There's no reason, right? Ahaha…!

I clench my fist tight, holding my sudden urge to smack someone. Someone who's loudly showing off that he can get souls, just not as efficiently as he would like to.

We follow Ricard's voice and find him stomping on the head of a cat's corpse.

"And, stay, dead!"

He freezes when he sees us. Then, he starts scratching the back of his head and pretends nothing happened.

"O-oh. You found me, hahaha…!" His eyes swim around and stay like that for a few seconds, until he suddenly starts talking nonstop like usual, changing the topic. "I wasn't sure where I was after the fall, so I started to look around… I also found the path to the Auditory room. I didn't know if it was the only path to rejoin you or what, but just in case, I decided to look around first. It turns out I was right to avoid it, hahaha!"

Ricard informs us of the route to the Auditorium, where the dreaded chorus of doom awaits us. After comparing our maps, we discover it is, as we expected, the only way forward, and that we must somehow cross that room. So we stop wasting time and follow Ricard towards the Auditorium.

On the way, we find a few more cats and traps. Nothing relevant or dangerous, though.

"Here it is, the dreaded Auditorium," says Ricard, pointing at a door in front of us.

We all gulp. The worst part of this 'training', at least from the parts we know about, awaits us on the other side.

"Who's going in first?" Silence follows my question. "No voluntary…? Then, do you want to play rock-paper-scissors to choose the first vict– Uh, I mean, the first voluntary?"

Everyone's eyes shake, stealing glances at one another to encourage them to take the lead. We must look quite pathetic right now.

"Aaagh, this won't do!" Suddenly, Ricard slams his fist on the wall. "I can't show this to Anthemia. Not when she has prepared this for us to shine in the DMA tournament!"

He approaches the closed door and grabs the handle. The door is enormous, at about five meters tall and over three meters wide. But there's another smaller door, human-sized, embedded into the larger one.

Ricard pulls the door, opening it. At the same time, the rest of us take a step back.

"There's a trick to all ritual skills. For this one, we just need to take into account the cooldo–"

Right in the middle of talking, the sound of a chorus comes through the door's gap, and Ricard's Champion drops to the ground like a puppet who lost its strings.

Haha, how ironic. The undead, the first one to fall. You aren't that resilient now that you can't defend yourself, huh?

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. An undead who falls to a death curse, how pathetic." I say, shaking my head, to avoid facing reality.

…someone. Anyone. Save us. Or at least, save me.

No, no, no! Snap out of it, Andreu. This is the best chance we'll ever get. Sure, Ricard is dead, but the ritual must be on cooldown. Furthermore, I'm the only one who has a chance to stay alive after it hits me once…

"Fuck this! Let's go! Let's use Ricard's death for something. I'll rush in. Lily, Lemon. Follow after me. Don't think, just run. Run, and kill anything that enters your sight."

I don't wait for their answers, kicking the door and rushing inside. I hear them saying something behind me, but I don't listen to it.

The Auditorium's enormous columns are the first thing that greets me, followed by the irregular terrain. Raising and falling at irregular intervals, filled with holes and crevices, the room makes the sound distort, creating the eerie sensation that the music is coming from everywhere at the same time. The walls are filled with boxes, as well as the stairs to reach them.

Still, it somehow gives the feeling that this place is sacred. Divine even.

"There's one! Waaaaaah!"

I rush at a human wearing a brown hooded robe. I slam my staff on its head and cast two spells at it before it dies. The monster doesn't defend even when at risk of dying, to avoid interrupting the ritual.

I stop and listen. The chorus continues. Mixed in the voices, there's also the sound of battle, surely coming from Laura and Clara.

"Tsk. I hoped killing one would suffice… I guess there's no luck with this."

Now that I know what one of the enemies looks like, I scan my surroundings, searching for brown robes. There's the tip of a brown robe next to that tall seat, and another on the box above me…

Shit. I feel like I'm playing hide-and-seek with a whole school worth of kids at the same time.

Search, approach, and smash. Search, approach, and smash. I keep repeating the same actions, slowly getting rid of the annoying chanters. But after I've killed around five or six of them, I notice my HP suddenly falling to the exact amount I get after Indomitable Will triggers.

Here goes my safety line… How long was it? Thirty seconds at most?

"Shit… I didn't sign up for thiiiiiis!" I shout at the top of my lungs.

"Flesh Monstrosities

Difficulty: Extreme

Special Characteristics: Trait Stealing

Be careful against the Flesh Monstrosities, as you'll never know what you'll fight. Having complete freedom to customize their units, they can use the innate skills and stats of most units in the game for their own. This is a double-edged sword, though: some units can end up punching way over their weight, while others will end up as useless failures.

The Flesh Monstrosities are the faction that's hardest to develop, as they must capture every unit they want to use, which takes a long time. But they're also the ones with the highest ceiling, as they can use the most expensive units from other factions to create a monstrosity stronger than any other unit in the game. This is balanced by the extreme cost of their units, which means they'll always be at a numerical disadvantage in fights.

Faction not recommended to new players."

- From 'A brief introduction to all factions'.

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