I command Abohemoth to follow Clara’s trail. She’s fighting both Druid and Wizardess at the same time, and although she has them in her grasp – I mean it literally – it’s just a matter of time until they figure out what’s going on and fight back.

  Fighting players 1vs2 is never the best idea; that’s why I’m going in their direction: to help her.

  The humans, like waves, fight against our advance. But they’re too weak. Too small. The Abohemoth runs over them as if they were a joke, trampling over them. Some die, some don’t. Some fight back, but most don’t deal any damage to my monster due to its immense stats and Shell innate skill.

  It doesn’t matter anyway, because my objective isn’t to kill them but to ignore them.

  Stopping now would be a huge problem. Trample requires a minimum speed to work. If we were to stop, it would be impossible to start again. We’d have to open up a space by killing them all first, something that might be impossible due to their sheer numbers.

  From atop my monster, I watch the houses and buildings pass. I’m at the same height as their roofs.

  Between the continuous movement, the constraining buildings around us, and the humans below, this situation makes me feel as if I were riding a boat in a river.

  As my monster and I sail down the river, navigating the buildings to avoid a crash, I observe the fight between my sister and two opponents.

  Using the initial surprise to her advantage, Clara has grabbed both of them with her tentacles. Suppressed by her tentacles

  Ah, by the way, yeah, you’re right. When I threw her with my ‘cannon’, it was over several buildings. The distance wasn’t much – otherwise, it would have been impossible due to the ‘cannon’s’ short reach – but the path to them wasn’t a straight one.

  Suppressed by her tentacles, our opponents aren’t able to fight back. It’s all thanks to one of her newest skills: Null Zone.

  Is the concept behind Null Zone that your mind starts to break down under the mind-corrupting sight and presence, making you unable to fight back, or something like that? I don’t want to know.

  By the way, the skill does work with the effects that drain your MP (sanity).

  While stacking the effects of five skills sounds easy, they must be applied simultaneously, which makes it significantly more difficult than it sounds. It’s just that the Abyss units innately have ways to help them do so, like the MP-draining passive, or tentacles that stick to their victims even after being severed.

  Abyss’s skills are some of the most broken but hardest to use skills in the whole game, as per usual.

  And thank god this is an Abyss-exclusive skill, and only for Champions and Bosses, at that, because otherwise…

  Just imagining it gives me the shivers.

  “Damn my sister… She fully went down the ‘horror from the abyss’ route…”

  Much to my chagrin, every skill Clara has taken since we started playing further reinforces her Abyss-themed playstyle. Which isn’t surprising, as most players do this, but…

  …but I’m sure you understand. Liking it is a completely different thing.

  I keep sailing down the street, keeping an eye on my surroundings so that my monster doesn’t smash into a building, which will cause it to slow down, and at the same time, keeping track of what’s going on with my sister’s fight when something unexpected happens.

  From below the mess of tentacles and two struggling humans comes a bright blue flash. Wizardess and Druid disappear, leaving my sister bewildered.

  “Huh?” I tilt my head. “Could it be… Selective emergency teleport?”

  This is as Ricard told us. They’re smart. Unlike most players, they didn’t choose a random place to wait. They had a way to get out if things didn’t go their way.

  “Haha, what are you doing now, Lemon?”

  I chuckle, watching my sister’s reaction. Not understanding what happened, she wildly swipes her tentacles around, maybe thinking they went invisible. As expected, she doesn’t find anything and instead starts to aim them towards the nearby buildings.

  I must say that the sight is pretty terrifying.

  “So they escaped…” I shake my head, feigning disappointment. “Oh well. Since I’m free now, it’s time to wreak some havoc.”

  Now that I don’t have to worry about fighting other players, I can fully focus on crushing the annoying and puny humans below me.

  They shouldn’t have left me alone. I’ll make them regret their actions.

  “Let’s go, my dear mount-ship. Let’s turn this river into one filled with blood! Fufufu! Hahaha!”

  My sister, you ask? I’m sure she’ll quickly realize what’s going on and move on to do her part of the plan.

  “What are we going to do now!? I knew it was a bad sign from the moment I saw that crazy rat riding the turtle-elephant…!”

  Druid panics, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me. My hat falls off my head. I slap him away, annoyed, and pick it back up.

  “Panicking won’t help,” I say, dusting it before wearing it.

  “You’re right. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine…” I wave my hand to make him know I’m not angry. “Just don’t shake me. I hate it when someone does it. Don’t remind me of that fool…”

  “Haha, you’re right.”

  It’s Barbarian. It’s always her. I keep telling her to stop, but she keeps doing it. What’s worse, unlike Druid, she’s stronger than me and I can’t get free.

  A foolish friend can sometimes be worse than your worst enemy.

  “Haaa… Anyway, I understand your reaction. They too took me by surprise.”

  “You!?” Druid exclaims, making a foolish face.

  His reaction makes sense. They’re used to me predicting everything right. Even the few times I don’t, I always have a backup plan. But this time truly took me by surprise.

  Although Baldy didn’t tell us, I predicted that the Abyss player would have the Null Zone skill from the replays. That’s why I prepared the emergency teleport, in case we got caught by it. But that isn’t what threw me off.

  Who would have expected them to hide a spring trap inside a fake cannon, and for one of the two players to be inside it on top of that?

  “Yes. But it isn’t what you think. What surprised me was the spring-trap-cannon.”

  “The what?”

  “Haaaa…” I rub my temples. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Our roof trip, although short, wasn’t useless. From what I’ve seen, I’m now sure I was right. Since Baldy told us a lot of things, they allowed that guy, Mad Rat, to think of a plan to counter us. It’s hard to make proper plans against the unknown, but now that I know what we’re facing, it’s easy.

  I analyze the data I have and contrast it with what I already know.

  “Hmm…”

  The Abyss player is just a nuisance. Without a way to get close to us, she’s irrelevant. Both Druid and I can deal with her easily. Due to her single-target kit, she can’t survive our human horde either.

  The real problem is the giant monster and the crazy raider, which are perfectly suited to counter our human-wave tactics to delay the invaders. The only ones who can deal effectively with those two are Druid and I.

  It sounds bad, but we’re prepared for situations like this one.

  On the other side, Barbarian and Rogue should have an easy time. The most dangerous element, the elephant-turtle, is inside our dungeon. There’s no need to worry about them.

  After thinking for a while, I come up with a perfect plan to annihilate our opponents. “Alright. This is what we’ll do.”

  I start to explain the plan to Druid. He has to delay them at the designated spot, while I get ready at the magic tower.

  “But how do you expect me to stop something so massive?” Druid asks, worried. “You know I’m best against multiple opponents at once…”

  “Don’t worry. Your Earth Wall should be pretty effective. Allow our units to do the rest.”

  “Earth Wall, you say…?”

  “Be ready when I give the signal.”

  “Fufufu! Hahaha! Nothing can stop me! Nothing!” I laugh atop my monster, letting the flow carry us toward our objective. “We’re almost there, my terrible dear monster!”

  The way to clear this dungeon is simple. First, break the statue resembling a dungeon core in the central plaza, activating the other statues on the three exterior plazas. After pressing a button on those three, the dungeon core will reveal itself on a fourth plaza, the furthest one from the dungeon portal.

  Then, we just need to destroy the dungeon core… And Bam! We win.

  And nothing, and I say NOTHING, can stop us!

  Thanks to allowing us to move freely, we’ve long crushed the statue in the central plaza, and our next objective is right in front of us.

  “Hahaha! We’re unstopp– Huh…?” An explosion in the sky makes me stop laughing. “...Fireworks?”

  Immediately after the explosion, a bunch of vines pour out of the ground, grabbing Abohemoth’s chubby legs. But as soon as they tense, before they can have any effect, they snap.

  “Hahaha, it won’t work!”

  It won’t, thanks to the Juggernaut skill. This is why I keep saying that my monster is unstoppable. Well, kind of unstoppable.

  I’m sure it’s Druid who did this, so I search for him and find him hidden within the crowd of humans.

  “How foolish to stand there!” He should have stayed on the rooftops. “Now, get trampled to death! Hahaha!”

  I steer Abohemoth towards him, but he looks calm, as if he expected this.

  Tsk. This is annoying. I wanted him to scramble to get away, panicking for his life… It isn’t as fun if he doesn’t resist.

  My monster advances, crushing everything on its path. With every step, one or more humans perish. Those who survive foolishly swing their weapons, which bounce off my monster’s thick skin.

  The trampling continues.

  Druid watches as we approach. His Poison Cloud, Entangle, Fireballs, and other spells are ineffective against us. But then, right before we reach him, he slams his staff on the ground.

  The ground shakes, and this time it isn’t because of my monster. An earth wall rises right in front of us.

  “Ah, shit…!”

  *Crash!*

  I react too late, and the Abohemoth’s size makes it impossible to stop in time. Luckily, we smash right through the wall, and the damage my monster takes from the crash isn’t much.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  But that isn’t what matters. The real damage has been done.

  We’ve stopped. Completely. To a halt. Trample doesn’t work when we aren’t moving at a certain speed.

  The human swarm surrounds us, completely limiting our movement. If previously we were a ship sailing through the river, now we’re on land, unable to move even a millimeter.

  Damn video-game physics… Why did they have to turn off realism for this precise matter!? They’re always talking about how realistic the game is, but they had to keep on unit collisions!? And make it so that unit size doesn’t affect them!?

  I call bullshit.

  “Not so funny anymore, isn’t it?” Druid, just two meters away, taunts me.

  “Aaah, this is bad…”

  It isn’t a matter of dying or surviving. It’s a matter of being unable to move, a stalemate. If we can’t move, it’s just a matter of time until Ricard and Laura lose their battle.

  I could solve this easily if it weren’t for those damn Spell Jammers, but…

  “...Did you expect me to say that? Hahaha! You’re too naive!” I raise my hand, pointing at a nearby building. “Jump there, my monster!”

  Following my order, Abohemoth disappears and reappears on the building’s roof, with me on top. This is the power of Blink! The emergency measure in case we get stuck!

  …Also used to catch someone off guard with Gluttony.

  I gaze below, at the astonished Druid.

  Tsk. Blink needs space to work. I would have loved to munch on him, but it’s impossible to use Blink to approach him because of the human crowd. Teleporting to the roof was fine, but teleporting into the crowd is impossible.

  So this is why he stood his ground below us instead of waiting on the roof… He’s smart.

  Druid and I stare at each other in a stalemate. This won’t do. I must find a way to push through.

  I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I could make my monster gain speed running over the roof, then jump down, and continue ‘sailing’. But it won’t work because Druid just needs to raise another Earth Wall to stop us, repeating the cycle.

  This is bad. I wouldn’t mind this situation if Wizardess were here, too. At least it would be a 1vs2 stalemate, which is beneficial for me. But with just Druid, it’s really bad.

  Furthermore, who knows what she’s doing right now…

  Druid and I keep glaring at each other. This stalemate is killing me.

  I need a diversion. I need something to distract Druid, so my giant monster and I can slip away… Maybe I could set fire to the city to escape…?

  As if responding to my idea, a nearby tower-like building, taller than the surrounding buildings, suddenly erupts into flames.

  “...” I swear it wasn’t me. “What the hell’s going on now?”

  Shortly after, another similar building erupts into flames. And another, and yet another… Following the pattern, about twelve or so buildings light up around the town, clockwise, until a final and larger one, placed right in the center of the town, lights up like the others.

  The fire extends way over the building into the sky, further than it should have been possible, accumulating above the central tower into what looks like an artificial sun.

  “So this is what Wizardess has been preparing,” I mutter to myself.

  My instinct tells me to run away, but my brain tells me it’s too late. But my heart tells me I still have a chance. If I time Blink properly, we can escape what’s coming next…

  …Maybe?

  You see… Abohemoth is absurdly strong against weak attacks, as Shell negates a flat amount. But the same isn’t true when the damage surpasses a certain amount.

  I don’t know what you think, but… That thing in the sky? I’m sure that counts as ‘strong’.

  The ground below Druid rises like an elevator, and he steps on the same roof as I am.

  “It’s too late, Mad Rat.” Druid counters my thoughts, saying out loud what I refuse to acknowledge. “You’re going to die.”

  “Who says that? You? Hah! I could crush you anytime!”

  But I don’t want to waste Blink to approach him as long as there’s a chance to survive, so I won’t.

  “If you say so…” Druid shakes his head and prepares to cast another spell.

  What will it be this time? More Entangle? When will he learn that thing doesn’t work against us?

  As expected, roots grow out of the ground, climbing up Abohemoth’s legs. They grow thicker and thicker, covering my monster’s body until they reach me, immobilizing the two together.

  No, wait. This is wrong. This isn’t Entangle, this is…! “Iggdrassil’s Roots!” I shout.

  “Good call.”

  Shit! Iggdrassil’s Roots is an ultimate-like skill! One of the strongest crowd-control skills that not only stops movement but also prevents the activation of every movement-related skill, regardless of whether they are active, triggered, or passive ones!

  But it has a fatal flaw: its user. The user must stay close, immobile, and if they’re killed, the skill’s effect disappears.

  I gaze above me. If that sun falls, the impact isn’t going to be small.

  “You fool! You’re going to die too!”

  “I know. And I don’t mind it.” Druid wears a calm expression. “Once you’re down, Wizardess can finish this easily.”

  Fuuuuuck! This is bad… I panic, this time for real.

  “That’s… That’s only if I don’t kill you first!”

  I cast one Chaotic Beam after the other, aimed at the defenseless Druid, hoping for a miracle. But my hope is crushed when Druid starts healing himself.

  Meanwhile, the sun has finished forming. It changes shape; the bottom part spirals down.

  It’s about to do its thing… whatever that thing might be.

  Now I understand why Druid had to immobilize me. The process is awfully slow. It’s possible I could have just run away from its blast if he didn’t, regardless of Blink.

  “...”

  And to think I was this close to achieving victory.

  If only I hadn’t hesitated. I should have jumped down the roof, charging at Druid and hoping to eat him whole with a single cast of Gluttony.

  By the way, do you know how much Gluttony’s damage has been charged this match, with all that trampling? I’m sure that, by now, even the most resilient of stupidly overpowered monsters would die from a single chomp.

  I’ll never be able to release it… What a waste.

  “N-no, don’t do it! Wizardess!” I know she’s somewhere nearby. “You’ll kill your teammate, too! Maybe the whole city… N-no, the core! You’ll destroy your core! Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose because of it?”

  “Your crazy act won’t fool me, Mad Rat.” Wizardess’ voice comes from above, somewhere in the sky. So she’s here. Did she come to mock me in my final moment?

  “Any last words?”

  I remain silent. I won’t give her the satisfaction of hearing me beg for my life.

  “No? Then, be purged by fire.”

  Wizardess lowers her hand, and the blazing energy starts moving. I feel the pressure crashing down, obliterating everything in its path.

  “Noooooooooo!”

  I never said I wouldn’t cry, just that I wouldn’t beg for my life.

  “Stop running already, Baldy! You’re delaying the inevitable!”

  “I don’t want to!”

  It’s all Andreu’s fault that I’m in this situation. He was the one who designed this dungeon, and also the one who created the key to open the door to the dungeon core.

  The key that’s giving away my position in real time to Barbarian so she can chase after me.

  According to the tournament rules, any element that’s required for reaching the dungeon core must either be static or always possible to find. In our case, the electromagnetic key to open the last door can be freely moved around, so it had to fulfill the second condition: its approximate location is always displayed in the opponent’s minimap.

  Andreu convinced us by saying that it doesn’t matter, that it’s a good thing because you can manipulate the invader’s moves like that, an advantage instead of a drawback due to the labyrinthine passages, traps, and his latest monster that’s designed to counter anyone who steps inside our dungeon.

  His plan did work until this match, where his monster isn’t present, and Barbarian and Rogue are too good to fall for mere traps.

  Laura warned me when the two stopped chasing after me and went straight for the electromagnetic key, leaving me no option but to retrieve it before them, to avoid the worst outcome.

  But now, Barbarian and Rogue are chasing relentlessly after me, the key giving away my position.

  Barbarian has even more reason to chase after me, and there’s no way I can escape. Even if I do, they’ll find me again.

  Giving the key to Laura would be even worse. She knows the traps better than I do, and her survivability is lower than mine. Swapping roles is a bad idea. Furthermore, she might instantly die if Rogue ambushes her.

  *Swish!*

  Barbarian’s axe passes next to my ear, embedding into the wall in front.

  “Are you trying to kill me!?”

  “I am, because you don’t stop running away. Face me like a man, and I’ll stop.”

  “Aren’t you going to attack me as soon as I stop?”

  Barbarian awkwardly laughs, her champion’s hairy beer belly shaking disgustingly. “Ahaha, you got me…”

  “This isn’t fu– aah, ugh!?”

  My foot hits something invisible, and I trip, rolling on the ground. My face hits the wall in front, right next to Barbarian’s axe.

  “...tripwire?”

  “You’re right,” Rogue says, emerging from behind the corner. So this is where he was. I was worried he’d gone after Laura.

  I shake my head to dispel the dizziness and get ready to run away when a burly hand grabs the axe’s handle.

  “Got you now, Baldy.”

  Barbarian’s face approaches mine. His unkempt beard tickles my nose. I’m sure she activated the damn Duel skill again!

  “Lily, help meee–”

  “It’s useless. I disabled all the traps.” Rogue interrupts.

  “Hahaha! Good job. We’ve finally got hold of him for real.”

  “Remember, our target is that key. Do whatever you want with him, but don’t lose it.”

  Barbarian laughs, licking his lips. With one hand, she swings the axe around as if it were a mere toy. With the other, she holds his shaking belly. She’s still putting on that fake voice, lowering her tone to make it sound more masculine.

  “Baldy… let’s play.”

  *Gulp*.

  This is extremely obnoxious.

  “Cough, cough.” I painfully incorporate myself.

  Everything around me is in tatters. The buildings, the human horde, Druid… even my Abohemoth. The buildings have collapsed or melted away.

  About a tenth of the town is now gone. Disintegrated. Only I survived, thanks to my Indomitable Will skill and the fact that it was a single-hit attack.

  In front of me, Wizardess aims her staff at my chest.

  “It’s game over,” she says.

  “I know…” I don’t even have enough MP to activate Grand Finale, having wasted it all in a desperate attempt to kill Druid and escape.

  “You’ve been a worthy opponent. Not for your skill, but your unpredictable plans. But even that has limits.”

  Unpredictable plans, she says…

  “Reckless behavior can always be overcome by meticulous planning.”

  Is that so? I don’t quite agree with that, taking my experience with Marta and Clara into account. What beats unpredictable plans isn’t skill or planning, it’s a mix of luck and the capacity to adapt on the fly.

  “Ha, haha…” I try to stop my laughter, but I can’t. Wizardess’s self-promoting monologue is pushing me over the edge.

  “What are you laughing at? I can kill you anytime I want.”

  She’s right. One or two spells, and I die. I can’t even pretend to put on a fight. But that isn’t the reason I’m laughing.

  “Hahaha! After all that self-indulgence, you want me to stop? I’d be weirder if I didn’t laugh! Hahaha!”

  “I already told you, your crazy act won’t work on me.”

  “Crazy act? You won the battle but lost the war. You can kill me, but this isn’t my end. It's our end! Now, let’s go down together!”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You don’t understand, Wizardess…” I mock her, shaking my head with a grin on my face. I then raise my hand to point towards the distance, where a purple pillar of light has appeared. “...I was the decoy all along.”

  “!”

  Aaaah, yes. That’s the expression I’ve been looking forward to the most.

  I die, completely satisfied, under Wizardess’s attack, reacting to the surprising event by sheer instinct. But it’s already too late. There’s nothing she can do.

  Some time ago.

  “Hehehe… Hehe, Nin-nin!”

  While placing two tentacles clasped together in front of her chest, Clara runs through the town building’s roofs.

  Slipping through undetected, she uses her long tentacles to move from one building to the next, avoiding the human horde below.

  The streets, wide enough for a monster like Mad Rat’s ‘ultimate creation’ to rampage through, make it impossible to jump from one building to the next, and any flying or teleporting could be detected. But her silent, skill-less movement isn’t any of the above.

  Her mobility, paired with her black skin, hides her from the eyes on the ground.

  *Boooom! Crash!* “Hahaha! Die, puny humans! Die under my monster’s paws!”

  Mad Rat’s rampage, though, is what helps her the most when it comes to staying undetected. Any player would have quickly spotted Clara, moving through the roofs, but the players defending this dungeon can’t focus on anything other than Andreu and his giant monster.

  “Don’t worry, brother. I’ll accomplish my task. Nin-nin!”

  Moving from one plaza to the next, Clara clears the conditions for the dungeon core to appear.

  Despite Andreu’s unstoppable charge, and the distance between the external plazas being quite large, Clara’s progress is a lot faster than his, because she can take a straight path while he has to maneuver between buildings.

  After activating the switch on the third plaza, Clara sees a new dot appear on the minimap: the dungeon core’s location.

  “Almost finished, hehehe!”

  With those words, Clara’s Champion melts into a pool of black goo. The black goo drips down the statue she was riding, slides over the plaza’s ground, and climbs up a nearby building’s wall. It achieves all this without alerting the humans populating the eerily silent plaza.

  “This move is so cool! I wish I could use it more often. The cooldown is too long…”

  But when she returns to her original shape, she discovers something unexpected. Several buildings are burning, and the flames are rising into the sky.

  “Woaaaah, this must be what brother told me about! The crazy defense mechanism!”

  Andreu didn’t know about it in detail, but he had told her that ‘something crazy might happen’ and that she ‘wouldn’t have too much time after’.

  “I must make haste. Nin-nin!”

  The dark shadow resumes its advance, unaffected by Andreu’s ongoing crisis.

  Jumping from one building to the next, she takes special care to avoid being seen by the flying Wizardess near the town’s center, using the houses’ tilted roofs as cover.

  Clara watches the fire form a sun. She also watches as large roots grow from the ground, capturing Andreu and his monster. She doesn’t stop even when the sun crashes down, obliterating a part of the town.

  She never stops until she reaches the last plaza, where, right in the middle, the dungeon core awaits.

  “Nin-nin. I’m here!”

  During Andreu’s rampage, most humans flooding the city have moved in his direction, like mindless automatons following the automaton in front of them, leaving most streets empty.

  Still, a few valiant souls with fixed positions are ready to defend the core to their last breath.

  The tentacle menace descends to the ground, and all eyes are immediately drawn to it. At the same time, the last remaining defense activates: a purple pillar of light, signaling that the last line of defense has been breached.

  “My brother’s sacrifice won’t be in vain!” Clara declares.

  One by one, the defenders fall, ‘devoured’ by black tentacles. Although she struggles against a high number of enemies, the ones she’s facing are too weak, and her skills have improved significantly over the course of Marta’s training.

  “It’s my win, hehehe!”