The Mad Rat's Lab

Chapter 301 - The first and last raid


The elevator opens its doors, and a group of players quickly comes out, as if chased by something. As soon as they've all left, the doors close and the elevator leaves, going back to where it came from.

One of the players takes an imposing stance and suddenly demands, "Turnipman, situation report."

"But, sir, four of our members are waiting for the elevator to come back. We can't be sure of their situation…"

The man glares at his subordinate. "Now!"

"Y-yes…"

The player called Turnipman, intimidated by the leader's presence, makes a fake cough and immediately starts his report.

"Three deaths and two once-per-dungeon activations, all of them defensive ones, sir. One member is missing since it fell into the water canal, but the three fallen comrades have been successfully resurrected. None died twice, our weakest player currently has their stats reduced by 20%."

The party leader groans, "Three and two already…? What about the bosses? Did you find the other three?"

His assumption is based on the fact that all players who can create Raids must have reached level ten and unlocked the fourth Boss slot. There are almost no Raids without at least four Bosses, according to his experience.

"No, sir… That winged minotaur was the only one we've found."

"What!?" He slams the wall, producing a loud metallic sound. "All those casualties were from a single monster!?"

Right at that moment, the elevator doors open once more. The newcomers, startled by the team leader's shout, silently decide it's better to fade off into the background. They leave the elevator and quickly join the rest of the members observing the duo.

"This Raid's balance is shit!" Roars the leader. "The monsters are way too weak to pose a challenge, but a single boss can kill us in two strikes!? And then, the ten of us can't even all fit into the elevator in a single trip!? Garbage!"

"I-it's nine, not ten. One of us is missing…"

"Shut up! It makes no difference!"

The two argue for a long time, until the leader finally calms down. It's then that the leader turns towards the remaining seven players, who are awkwardly observing them, and gives the order to continue the raid.

"We won't surrender. I'd rather lose than run away," he says. "There's no guarantee the Raids we do will always be good. Use this as training for those times."

After a short break right next to the elevator, they resume the invasion. After a suspicious door, they come out into an enormous and tall room. When they walk over the metal platform and approach the railing, they can finally see a grotesque spectacle worthy of the worst of nightmares.

A mountain of meat chunks and corpses, stacked on top of each other until it reaches ten meters. Their wet surfaces, glistening and reflecting the light from the house-sized furnace at the opposite side of the room, give them the feeling they've been butchered not long ago.

"Bleegh… I feel like throwing up." One of the players says.

The nine players, following the leader's orders, hesitatingly climb down the stairs and approach the mountain's foot.

As soon as they get close to the meat mountain, two four-legged monsters appear and jump at them, but the nine players quickly and effectively deal with them. They then start going around the mountain in a circle.

"What are we doing now?"

"Newbie, don't ask the obvious!" Turnipman smacks the player's head, sending a wary glance towards the leader. "D-don't ask stupid questions. In places like this, there's always something of value or a hidden piece. We're looking for it. Now shut up, we don't want to catch the monster's attention."

The leader snorts, having heard everything. Turnipman sighs, relieved that the leader was happy that he didn't need to intervene directly.

"Open your eyes wide," says the team's leader, "I smell danger nearby. There must be–"

His sentence is suppressed by the sound of the meat mountain collapsing. Something huge emerges from within.

"Rooar!"

The giant meat golem roars as soon as it appears. It then charges towards one of the players in a straight line.

The sight of a large monster rushing at them makes a few of the least experienced players shake in fear. Even if they're inside a game, the graphics and immersion are so amazing that they can't stop themselves from thinking it's real.

One of the players watches, paralyzed, as the monster raises its fist high in the air, ready to strike. Before the fist falls, the leader kicks the player, shoving him out of the fist's way.

"Don't stand still, you fool! Tsk, useless newbie…" The leader clicks his tongue and turns towards Turnipman. "Second boss?" He asks.

Turnipman stops and watches the golem for two seconds, answering, "No. From the stats, a normal mob."

"Perfect," The tips of the leader's lips tilt up in a feral smile. "Everyone, surround it, don't let it run away!"

"What about the adds?" A player asks.

"Just leave them be and focus on the golem!"

The nine players split up, trying to surround the enemy. The irregular terrain and the presence of other monsters make it more difficult than it should be, but that isn't the biggest obstacle they face. They quickly notice that, for an unknown reason, their speed has dropped, affecting their coordinated movements.

Another problem is the golem. With agile movements defying its size, it rushes straight at the tank, who provokes it with a skill. The golem starts smashing its fists on that player, as if trying to nail him into the mountain.

"Heal! I need a heal!" The tank shouts, realizing it's taking more damage with every hit. "Heeeea–"

*Crunch!* Half the tank's HP vanishes with the golem's next strike. The monster, having killed its previous target, immediately chooses its next victim and runs towards it at maximum speed.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Rooar!"

Watching the monster get closer after killing the team's tank so quickly, the targeted player's knees start shaking. Instead of standing his ground and fighting, the player runs away.

"What was that!? Don't let your teammates die like that!" The leader starts giving orders. "Healer, make sure nobody falls below half HP at any time, okay?"

"But keeping everyone in top shape is a waste of MP. I can't keep it up f–"

The team's healer tries to argue, but the leader interrupts him. "It's worse having to use Resurrection later! Do as I say!"

Following his orders, the healer nods and chases after the player being targeted by the golem.

Turnipman takes this chance to intervene. "That was one of the monster's skills. It has a chance to–"

"Not now!" The leader cuts off Turnipman's explanation.

"But it's important to know–"

"Not now, I said! There's no time to waste analyzing the enemy's skills." The leader then shouts towards the rest of the scattered team. "Everyone, ignore formations and just attack! Attack the golem and don't die!"

Listening to the leader's change of plans, the players stop trying to surround the golem and instead look only for their survival while launching all kinds of ranged attacks at the monster. Those players with mainly melee skills start dealing with the adds instead, not daring to approach the meat golem running amok. The attacks fall on the golem's bulky body, and its HP bar depletes significantly.

Meanwhile, the player chased by the golem… "Someone save meeeeee!" He shouts.

"Stop running so I can save you!" Shouts back the healer, chasing after him.

"If I stop, I'll die! Uaaah!"

Thanks to his erratic movements and speed, he has managed to avoid most of the golem's attacks so far. But for the same reason, the healer finds it impossible to approach him or aim his spells properly, so the running player's HP keeps steadily falling after every hit.

"Save meee!"

"Then stop running– Huh?"

As if suddenly getting tired of chasing that player, the golem suddenly turns his head to the right, towards the healer's position. His body accelerates faster than the healer can react. The golem's body passes over the healer, stepping on it in the process.

"Dodge!" His teammates try to warn him of the incoming danger, but the healer, stunned, can't move.

*Baam!*

Like a falling meteor, a massive fist lands on the immobile healer, throwing meat chunks everywhere and erasing a third of the player's HP. The golem immediately follows his first attack with a barrage of new ones.

"We can't let the healer die." The leader shouts. "Everyone! Use this chance to strike! Pasota, use your ultimate now!"

The healer is the single player in their team who has access to the Resurrection skill. If he dies, they won't be able to replenish their numbers.

Following his orders, all the players jump at the golem, melee players included. The large number of attacks and spells land on the golem's back. But the monster takes all attacks without minding them, focusing all its attention on smashing the helpless healer.

"Nooo, stooop! Don't do it!" Turnipman shouts, knowing what outcome will await them if they follow the leader's orders, but nobody listens to him.

At the same time, one of the mages starts chanting, and a blue light condenses around his staff. The light then flies from his staff towards the meat golem, landing near its feet. Ice quickly grows from the ground, fully encasing the large meat golem in ice.

"Roaaar!"

But then, the golem roars and the ice instantly shatters.

"My skill… didn't work…!?"

What's even worse, right after the golem's HP falls below the halfway mark, the speed of its attacks and the damage increase even further. The healer, still incapable of defending, can't dodge the attacks and dies.

"Use all your other CC skills!" The leader roars, "We must get that bastard right now!"

Turnipman approaches the leader once more, saying, "It won't work. I tried to warn you it wouldn't work, but you–"

"Shut up, Turnipman! Go and do something useful instead of nagging!"

Listening to the leader's angry voice, Turnipman steps away, shaking his head. "Haaah… I'll have to look for another team after this mess ends…"

The player knows that, if they don't listen to him, what awaits them isn't anything other than defeat. He raises his bow and releases an arrow. Regardless, he will struggle until the end.

"Hmm… Hmmm…!"

I watch with a mix of worry and satisfaction the replay of the first and only team that chose the Raid option for my dungeon. I enabled it yesterday, but nobody came until today.

The results are…

"Aagh…" I groan. "This won't do. It's a disaster."

Sure, it always feels great watching a decent team coming into my dungeon just to fall apart and break, never to play together again. Destroying friendships, camaraderie, and all that stuff. But if I were to focus only on this, I'd be ignoring all the problems.

From just this one Raid, I've realized my mistake. You can't just turn a normal dungeon into a Raid and hope for it to somehow work. There's much more work you must do if you want it to work.

"Well, at least there's something good. It's just one team that came, so not many players can give me a bad review, and my dungeon ranking won't fall… Not too much, at least."

Aah, who could have known that balancing a dungeon for a team of up to four players and for a ten-player team would be so different?

Although you can theoretically bring way more support monsters inside a normal dungeon than players into a Raid, the two are way different. For starters, support mobs aren't a requirement, but a bonus. Having them killed, sacrificing them intentionally, or even completely ignoring them are completely valid options you can't use with players.

Even space isn't that much of a problem. You can cram tens of monsters into a tiny space, and nobody would complain. Hell, if you're good with it, you can even surround yourself with them, treating them as giant plushies, and be done with it.

But the same doesn't hold for other players… It's annoying and stressful to be in contact with other intelligent beings for a prolonged time, don't you agree?

This is something I didn't consider. The narrow passages, the tiny elevator, the traps, and the other elements that work perfectly for four-player teams didn't quite fit when it came to that Raid team.

Another thing I didn't take into account was the monster balance. The same number of monsters isn't quite enough when they have to fight more than double the usual number of invaders.

Well… it isn't that much about the number only, but the fact that there are no dumb support monsters. Having extra 'brains' makes ambushes a lot easier to deal with, and most fights that require timing or teamwork turn into a joke.

As for the Bosses… the extra stats, which are already quite high because I've used two or more units to create them, were ridiculously high. The Overgorger in particular, whom, luckily, they didn't encounter. I wouldn't be surprised if the Overgorger could've killed that party's healer with a single punch, not even needing to use Gluttony at all.

"Sigh… This puts me in a difficult situation."

I must make a decision right now, because I can keep the Raid option activated until I fix this mess. I can't use my actual dungeon as a Raid. So I either spend lots of effort to change everything, possibly starting my whole dungeon from scratch, or throw the whole idea out the window and forget about Raids altogether.

Before I make a decision, I open the calendar. It's then that I realize my schedule is quite busy for the next few days. All of them have the same word written in capital letters, filling the whole space.

It says: TRAINING!, exclamation sign included, right next to a skull drawing.

Haha, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I didn't forget. This time, I can't feign ignorance unless I dare confront Marta's wrath.

"Bye-bye, Raids… See you in the future… Maybe, if I feel like it."

Unless otherwise specified, Raid Bosses would automatically scale their stats based on the number of invaders, adding to the original 100% stat buff. This could make the bosses absurdly strong, and if there were no gimmicks to defeat them, the battles could be unfair. Many players didn't fix this problem until the invaders complained about it, but by then, it was already too late and their ratings plummeted.

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