Is it just me, or is each fight harder than the previous?

  I mean, it makes sense that only the best teams can win and advance to the next match. But we’ve already fought against the winners of the previous tournament, as well as a team with players who ‘could see the future’. Don’t we deserve a break?

  Come on, game! We deserve to fight a weaker team!

  “Nngh,” I struggle to get free, but my feet and arms are bound. “This is bad…”

  I never thought I’d have to say this, but I’m trapped. Trapped in a giant spiderweb.

  “How did I end up like this…?”

  The answer to my question is actually pretty simple. I made a mistake, got rammed by a truck-sized spider, and fell into the massive web below.

  There’s, though, one weird thing about this spider web: there’s no spider. Well, there is, and it’s monstrously large, but it’s as if there wasn’t one, because it ignored me and ran away instead of going for the kill.

  “Tsk. Our opponents are too smart.”

  They could send the megaspider at me while I’m unable to fight back. They could send me unending waves of Giant Spiders to drown me in numbers – which, by the way, when compared to the first, look tiny in comparison despite their actual name. The players themselves could also come and deal with me.

  But none of the above matters, because I could fight back. I could spend all my MP to kill as many spiders as I possibly can. Approaching me themselves would put them in danger of falling for the web’s immobilization, and attacking from a distance is my specialty. And sending the ‘boss’ spider here would just put it in danger… Especially taking into account that I have a self-destruct skill that can inflict a ridiculous amount of damage and turn the situation around in the blink of an eye.

  Coming for me now is bad for them, so the safest approach is just to ignore me. If they ignore me, I can’t do anything but waste time, trapped in the sticky spiderweb.

  Tsk. They know my weakness. They know that the best way to deal with me is to ignore me until everyone else is dead.

  If there’s a saving grace, it’s that this is a game and not reality.

  To avoid frustrating players any more than necessary – let’s be honest here, being trapped is always frustrating –, there’s nothing that can permanently block them in DMA.

  For spiderwebs, that limit applies to the time the units are immobilized. Up to a maximum of ten seconds for those that aren’t visible, which act more like traps, and up to double that time for those that are in plain sight from the start, those you can avoid. The time is always affected by the spiderweb’s cost, and only spiders and other special units are immune to their effects.

  Ten to twenty seconds sounds like nothing… Until you’re in the middle of a fight to the death. It’s then that you realize how dangerous it is.

  Unit size also matters. The immobilization effect on trolls and similar units is shorter, and massive units like dragons can simply plow through them, suffering a mild slowing effect instead.

  I just need to wait, and the web’s effects will disappear. But… Will it be too late by then?

  Just as I raise my sight from the web around me, I see the massive water curtain fall. Ah, right, I forgot about that…

  I panic. I have no idea where Laura is, or what she's doing, but I don't have time to care. I’m in trouble.

  The spiderwebs forming bridges for the spiders to move from one side of the cliff to the other snap one after the other when the water touches them. Rock and debris fall with the water, followed by quite a large number of Giant Spiders, caught by it.

  The thing is… I CAN’T MOVE! It isn’t a matter of safely avoiding the water or not, but a matter of ‘if I’ll survive the hit’.

  “Aaaaahh! I don’t want to die like thiiiiiis!”

  Give me an opponent I can’t defeat! A player ambush! A demigod, dragon, and elder god combo! I don’t care, just not this shit!

  At least… At least, give me an excuse to blow myself up!

  Not even Grand Finale’s invulnerability can save me from falling into an endless abyss that has an instant-death penalty applied to it!

  Ignoring my pleas, the water crashes down on the massive spiderweb at the bottom, the one I’m trapped in. At first, the spiderweb seems to resist the force, giving me hope. But when the majority of the water and rock debris touches it, it starts creaking.

  “Come on, resist! You can do it!”

  …I never thought I’d be cheering for a spiderweb, even less for the one I’m trapped in.

  The spiderweb creaks, but surprisingly holds. A testament to the material’s resilience. The water sneaks through the tiny gaps in the densely woven silk, but the gaps are so small that it starts to accumulate on top of it. In other words, the soil’s filtration can’t keep up with the rain, and it starts flooding.

  I can feel the water climb up my feet. At the same time, the water’s weight deforms the spiderweb downwards.

  “Shit. At this rate–”

  Before I can finish my sentence, everything comes down.

  With a massive crumbling sound effect, the two walls of the cliff, the spiderweb connecting both, the water, and the stone debris start intermingling with each other, pulled down by gravity.

  And I, too, mixed with them.

  Falling, entangled with the spiderweb’s remains, and underwater, I have but one thought remaining: ‘Why did this suddenly turn into a water dungeon…? Theme changes aren’t good for your dungeon’s health, didn’t you knoooooow!?’

  I ascend to the heavens in my fantasmal form, pushed upwards by divine force – also called game mechanics by nerdy guys like Ricard.

  The destruction brought by the water rush is displayed in front of me in its full glory. I enjoy the view with a mix of happiness and regret. Happiness because I wasn’t the only victim of this incident: it took many other lives with it. Regret because I died without being able to fight back, obviously.

  The ascension continues. Unable to steer my body, I can’t do anything, so I limit myself to observing my surroundings as my body approaches the battle noises coming from above.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  It’s still too far and dark for me to see what’s going on, but that must be the fight between Laura and the enemy team.

  At some point, the rock wall, still dripping water, suddenly disappears. No, it isn’t that it ‘disappears’ but that it’s ‘completely gone’, a hole between twenty to thirty meters taking its place.

  I wonder how many liters of water that cavern contained.

  “That must be where all that water came from…” I marvel at the sight of such a simple yet effective trap. Our opponents have my respect. They know where the good stuff is.

  Too bad we were the first to encounter it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have died so pathetically.

  “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

  My body, pulled by the game towards Laura’s position, my closest and single alive teammate, finally reaches the place where the action is taking place. And let me tell you: what action that is!

  Laura, her life on the line, jumps from one platform to the next while a horde of spiders, led by the truck-sized megaspider, chase after her.

  Meanwhile, two opposing players keep launching spells at her from the opposite side of the cliff. They know their dungeon perfectly, adeptly jumping from one place to another without hesitation, using only the platforms that won’t crumble under their feet. They also use the remaining spiderwebs to realize unbelievable stunts, utilizing the ‘immobilization’ effect to avoid falling just enough time to prepare deadly, accurate shots or cast spells.

  This feels like watching an action movie, a movie where the protagonist is a beautiful and sexy girl who agilely treads through the dangerous path ahead while the villains (the other players) do whatever they can to kill her.

  Which reminds me…

  “Oh, no!” I put my hands on my head, “I forgot the virtual popcorn! What am I going to do now!?”

  …Don’t look at me like that. It’s important, okay? Important to me.

  *Booom!* A Fireball explodes, missing Laura by a narrow margin. But the shockwave does its job, and the nearby rocky platforms, already weakened by the water rush, start crumbling.

  Laura reacts by jumping away, but she lands on a ‘fake’ platform, which crumbles as soon as she touches it, and starts falling, forcing her to use Blink to save herself.

  Our opponents, knowing the skill’s cooldown, know this is an opportunity and immediately attack.

  Using the fact that the two cliff walls are coming closer at the top, almost meeting where the dungeon core is, one of the two unsheathes his sword and jumps. As if he had done this hundreds of times before, he accurately aims at Laura’s neck as he falls.

  “Lily! Behind you!” I shout.

  As expected, she can’t hear me because I’m dead.

  I can only watch as the player, like an assassin from a certain video game, falls on Laura’s back, ready to kill her… When she suddenly turns around, her eyes are glowing pink.

  “Hiss…! Charming Eyes!” It’s been a long time since I last saw that skill in such a timely manner.

  The player’s body stops responding while mid-air, unable to deal the decisive blow.

  “Fufufu,” she chuckles. “See you in hell.”

  Laura places one foot on his stomach and, using the wall behind her to leverage her strength, not only stops the ‘assassin’ in mid-air but also sends him packing down, towards the endless abyss, soon to meet a fate similar to mine.

  “Ahahahaha!” I crack in laughter. “To think you’d fall too! I call this divine retribution! Hahahah!”

  They were the ones who destroyed the massive spiderweb at the bottom. Dying after destroying it… If that isn’t ‘divine retribution’, I don’t know what it is.

  Up to this point, things were looking dire for the heroine. 2vs1, with the spiders chasing after her, Laura’s circumstances weren’t good. But now that one of the two enemies is gone, the heroine can finally breathe. She starts climbing at an astonishing speed, and it’s all because the attacks coming from the other side are half those from before.

  You know. Sometimes, one plus one is more than two. Especially when their attacks are coordinated.

  “They should have waited instead of rushing at her… They had it already, but let it go. Oh well. It’s good if they make mistakes, hahaha!”

  As she struggles to climb up, Laura makes it clear she has no intention of fighting. Her goal is the dungeon core, currently unprotected.

  Our opponent realizes this, too, and stops attacking to focus everything on going up. But even if he knows the path perfectly and is at a superior height, he can’t keep up. He starts losing ground to Laura, who has Blink.

  What started as a fight for survival turns into a race to reach the goal in first place. Who wins the race wins the match.

  “Come on, Lily! You can do it!” I start cheering, even if she can’t hear me.

  As the race continues, the spiders are gradually left behind, unable to keep up. Laura’s superior speed, paired with Blin,k is too much for them. The distance between her and the remaining opponent shrinks as the two approach the top of the cliff, where the dungeon core lies.

  It’s a shame, but I must admit it. I was dragging her down while I was alive. There’s no way I could have kept up with her current speed.

  “And the genre changed yet again. From a horror game to a submarine simulator, and now it’s a platformer.”

  Still. Laura’s aggressive Blink use… I swear I’ve seen this before, but where was it…?

  Ah, I know! It’s Marta’s style!

  Now that I think about it, Laura is the one who has the most similar skillset to my older sister when she plays as Anthemia. Both all-rounders, both have Blink. I never realized it until now, but Laura might have been the one who learned the most during Marta’s ‘Hell Training’.

  “Come on, Lily! You’re almost there… You almost caught up with him!”

  This is such a bitenailer. I don’t want to look, but I must!

  The two are almost at the top of the cliff, just a short stretch remaining, when Laura finally catches up to our opponent and takes the lead.

  “Come on, just a bit more…! This isn’t enough yet.”

  Don’t forget that there’s a ‘safety distance’ to the dungeon cores. As long as there are allied units within a few meters, they can’t be broken. Furthermore, ranged attacks don’t work on them. This means that Laura needs to approach and break the dungeon core before our opponent enters the ‘safety distance’.

  “Come on, you can do it…!” I actually start biting my nails out of anxiety.

  Finally, after what seems like an eternity, but is actually just a few seconds, Laura reaches the top and starts running on the ground towards the dungeon core. She runs toward the core, and without stopping, she swings her fist mid-charge.

  Our opponent is too late. He isn’t close enough to stop it.

  “Yes, yes, yes! We did it! No, you did it!” I quickly correct myself. “Good job, Lily…!”

  *Clonk!*

  When Laura’s fist touches the dungeon core, it produces a dull sound. The core should be, you know, doing a sound like ‘crash’, and then dispersing into light…

  Something isn’t right.

  It’s then that both I and Laura notice something. Hiding behind the dungeon core, there’s a small spider – when I say ‘small’, I mean when compared to the Giant Spiders, not to real-life spiders. Laura crushes the spider under her heel and punches the core a second time.

  *Clonk!*

  “Haaah… haaah…” Right at this moment, a mocking voice comes from behind us. “Didn’t expect this, did you?”

  “Tsk. I had to try even if it didn’t work, don’t you think?” Laura smiles, seductively licking her lips. She knows it’s too late, so she has stopped caring. “Won’t you move away for a moment? A beautiful girl like me needs some privacy… fufufu.”

  “You think I’m a fool?”

  The player, still heaving, starts walking closer with a smile on his face.

  “You see… That trick with the spider, placed here to annoy anyone who could beat us… We learned it from your teammate. How ironic that it won us this match.”

  ‘Her teammate’? Is he talking about me…?

  “Wait, whaaat!?” I shout. “How dare you say this!? That’s slander! I swear, I didn’t do anything! Not this time, at least!”

  Though I do recall putting something like this near my dungeon core a long time ago and never bothered to change it…

  From behind the smiling opponent, a swarm of spiders starts to show up, led by the megacolossal spider that sent me packing down the cliff. There’s no way Laura can win the fight that’s about to start anytime now.

  Ah, yeah… Now I remember why I was in this team. I wasn’t baggage just to slow Laura down, I came here to deal with these kinds of situations. But now I’m dead, so…

  “Is this… Is this our defeat?”