"Let's start with a bang!" I propose. "Let's make sure they'll never forget us after this tournament!"

"Yes! Let's make sure they never forget my cute monsters!" Adds Clara, imitating my pose.

Let's… ignore her for now.

Ricard shakes his head. "No. Let's stick to the basics. We should aim to survive for as long as possible. The longer the audience can watch us play, the longer they'll remember us. We should follow your sister's advice and plan everything just for the sake of winning."

"My sister has nothing to do with this," I counter, "Her advice and training were to get to this point. Now that we're here, we can do whatever we want."

…please, don't tell Marta I said this, or she will kill me both in the game and in real life.

"Hmm…" Laura intervenes. "While I agree with Mad Rat that we should have fun, there's no need to throw away our hard work to get here… I believe we can design the dungeon how we want, just keeping in mind that winning is our objective."

"As long as we always keep winning in mind…"

Ricard quickly agrees, leaving me no option but to agree too. I don't want to make them think I'm selfish.

"Fine…" Tsk. I didn't get to do whatever I pleased. "But even so, please allow me to design our dungeon this time! I promise you, I won't do anything crazy… too crazy, I mean. I'll keep it within a reasonable margin! And I'll listen to your advice and ideas too… I'll even leave all the invasion plans to you, as well as keep some budget for the monsters and other stuff we might need for the invasions."

Clara once again imitates my pose before saying, "I want to create our dungeon too!"

"And Lemon will help me," I quickly add.

Ricard and Laura send a wary look at me and Clara, standing side by side with identical poses, for a while.

"Then, we'll be in charge of the invasions?" Asks Ricard. "Fine by me."

Laura glances at the already excited Ricard, who must be already planning what monsters and tactics to use, and even more excited Clara, and sighs. Me? I'm completely normal.

"I don't mind it, but you'll have to share and explain it to us. We won't confirm our dungeon setup until everyone approves. I mean for both sides."

That sounds surprisingly reasonable… but… Tsk. Again, I won't be able to do whatever I please.

Why do I say 'whatever I please'? It's because I'm sure I can manipulate my little sister to agree with whatever I want. It won't be 'our' idea, but 'my' idea, just that Clara won't notice it. Hahaha!

Or at least, that's what should have been.

"Fine... Let's do that…" I agree.

Having decided how to proceed, we begin by reviewing the tournament rules and our future opponents. It isn't that we don't know them, but that we want to make sure we aren't missing anything – and no, this time we aren't relying on Ricard to explain them; we won't make that error twice.

As I'm sure you all remember, there are 50 spots for the DMA tournament for each category. But with fifty participants, it's impossible to make a classic bracket elimination, as 50 isn't a power of 2.

So, how are they going to make the bracket work? The answer is simple: they don't! Hahaha!

No, seriously. What they do instead is split the participants into ten groups of five, make them battle each other, and pick the three best teams in each group. Then, to those 30 teams, they add the previous year's winner and finalist, for a total of 32 participants…

…and voilà! You have a perfect bracket number!

There are several reasons the tournament is set up like this, like making sure no favorite team is unlucky and gets eliminated too early, or to add extra content for the viewers, but the main reasons are these two:

To ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to shine and to promote fairness.

The first is simple to understand. Since each team will play at least four games, everyone will get sufficient screen time. This is both good for the players and the audience. Few things make you feel worse than having your favorite contestant eliminated right away, unable to watch them anymore.

The second is for the tournament's health and rules. Since the teams will have to use the same dungeon, monsters, traps, etc. until the end, the first matches are always harder. Being matched against a difficult team early on could guarantee your elimination everywhere else, but it doesn't apply here. It will just make it harder for you to be the highest scorer in your group.

Furthermore, players will do anything to win, even if they're undermining themselves, ensuring their future failure, which often leads to gimmick dungeons.

Gimmick dungeons might work once or twice, giving easy victories early, but guaranteed failures after the gimmick is known. In a normal bracket system, a team that uses them might be able to skip right to the semifinals, but here, they might not allow you to even reach the bracket!

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Furthermore, gimmick dungeons aren't fun to watch. Maybe the first time they are, but after that, every time it's the same…

So that's why the tournament is set up as it is.

"Before we start, why don't we take a look at the other participants? It might give us a clue of how to proceed…"

No one disagrees with Laura's proposal, and we all make the participant list appear in front of us. I start by reading the names of the teams in the other groups before moving to our own.

"Sword&Sorcery… Doesn't this name sound kind of familiar?"

Ricard flinches at my words, but I don't pay attention to his reaction. This is because, as soon as my eyes land on the names of the teams we will face in our group, I freeze. My brain stops working, and a sudden headache threatens to make my head explode.

I can feel everyone's eyes locked on me. Cold sweat falls down my back.

"Hey, brother," asks Clara. "Isn't this 'All Shall Despair, the Real Deal' team from one of your crazy followers? Hehe, we're going to fight them so early!"

Ugh! It's a lethal blow! A critical strike! I never expected this from my own sister!

I drop to the floor, clutching my head in pain.

Is this a brain attack? No, a heart attack? It must be, right? I didn't know you could get a heart attack while you were inside the game, though… It wasn't in the 'health warnings' section…

"Aaah, I feel like I'm going to die…!"

How the fuck did those crazy bastards get a spot into the tournament!? It shouldn't have been possible!

"Fufufu! Hahaha!" I maniacally laugh while observing my surroundings.

Everything is ready. The monsters, the traps, the dungeon layout… Everything is perfect. Perfect, for my REVENGE!

"Fufufu! Hahaha!"

"You're going to choke, brother."

"Nah, it'll be fine."

There's nothing to worry about, Clara. You can't choke on your own saliva inside the game. Believe me, I've tested it.

It's only thanks to Clara, Ricard, and Laura that I could accomplish this. They helped me dive into the dungeons containing the monsters I needed, and provided me with their own monsters to complement my design with the bits I couldn't get. Especially Ricard, who uses undead that I can't capture, and thus can't create units using them.

There are limits to what we're allowed to do in the DMA tournament. For starters, the total cp of everything can't surpass 200.000 cp. This allows for complex and interesting dungeons, but doesn't allow us to go too overboard with it.

Another limit is the maximum cp for any monster. We aren't allowed to spend more than 3.000 cp on any single monster, not including the cost to level them up, and the maximum level of any monster is 10.

This applies to Champions too, of course, which, by the way, won't receive any stat boost, like all other monsters.

The limits are placed to ensure balance and to give lower-level teams like us a chance to compete with the ones that have reached the maximum level. The DMA staff don't want a clash of titans; for that, they have the usual PvP matches between top-rankers. What they want is spectacle.

Taking all the limits in mind, with the help of my little sister, I've created the most dreadful dungeon ever! The most dangerous! The deadliest!

Filled with impossible-to-avoid traps and tricks, and the trickiest of monsters…

"Fufufu! Hahah– Cough, cough!"

"See? I warned you."

In case you're misunderstanding, I didn't choke on my own saliva, okay? I just got so excited that my lungs stopped working properly. That's all.

I quickly recover and open the 3D map view. For the last time, I'm going to check that everything is perfect. That's what a true mad scientist does: chuckle internally (and externally) after planning everything, observing the results of his hard work.

From the dungeon portal to the blackened labyrinthic tunnels, to the carefully crafted traps and laboratory bits in between them. Inspired by my dungeon, the one we've created follows similar principles, placing extra emphasis on 'unexpectedness' and 'inevitability'.

I pick up a tiny creature from the ground. It's a beetle with a metallic black sheen, with two large antennae on its head, and six wiggly tentacle-like legs.

It's a monster I like to call The Black Horde. Well… that's, in fact, its real name.

"Haha…" I chuckle. "You, my dear little friend, will be the bane of the invaders… They'll regret stepping inside our dungeon, but there won't be anything they can do about it, hahaha!"

Do you know what you can do against a monster you can't kill, but also can't allow to live? Just run away, that's the only option. That, or cry and complain about how unfair life is. Hahaha!

There's also my final, best, and worst weapon of mass destruction. The unstoppable, indestructible, and absolutely lethal final boss…

…although there are no 'boss' monsters in this tournament.

"Didn't you like to feel despair? Aren't you always bragging about how much you adore me? I bet you whatever you want that you won't think the same after going through my dungeon! I'll force you to your knees, crying and begging for mercy. I'll release all my pent-up frustration on you, who have been an unending source of headaches! My revenge… My revenge will be LEGENDARY! Fufufu! Hahaha!"

"Brother, you're going to choke again."

"...no, I'm not."

Clara's snarky comment sours my mood, and I stop laughing. I save the last changes and prepare to leave.

We're going to meet with Ricard and Laura after this. We'll tell them everything we've planned, and they'll do the same. With Ricard's knowledge about the DMA tournament and about a few of the teams, and Laura's experience, they should have a plan in mind for attacking the other dungeons.

We've designed the defense, and they prepared the offense. Now it's time to put everything together.

"Now we just have to make Baldy and Lily agree with our design…"

Clara happily slides next to me, placing her horrifying head near my arm so I can pat her. Yeah… no thanks.

"Don't worry, brother. I'm sure they won't find too many problems with it. It'll be fine, hehehe!"

…I don't like how that 'not too many' part sounds like. Oh, well. There's not much I can do about it.

Once more, Andreu was digging his own grave. He didn't know it yet, but he was going to regret his plan more than anything else he had done to date. And that's taking into account that he had already committed several grave mistakes in the past.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

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