“Who do they think they are?”

  Damned retards… To treat me like I’m some useless bastard only because I made a single mistake. Everyone makes mistakes! And mine wasn’t that big anyway, it’s just that the timing was the worst possible, and we all died…

  But even then! To put all the blame on me and force me out of the team. Isn’t that a bit too much?

  “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all how wrong they are!”

  I’ll achieve what we couldn’t together. I, by myself! I’ll reach the end of this dungeon and show them I’m better than they are. Then, they’ll be forced to have me back on the team.

  My foot crosses the cave entrance to The Mad Rat’s Lab. This is the first step towards my victory.

  Before continuing, I I check my support mobs. Two Dryads serving as the backline and one Wardancer to take the front.

  I can’t understand why most players use Dryads as tanks. A Wardancer with their innate dodge is way better. Sure, Dryads have good defenses, but their innate skill makes them immobile while rooted, making them bad at blocking the enemy’s advances. Furthermore, the skill cost reduction is more useful to spellcasters and archers.

  With me, a Druid, working as the leader, the team is complete.

  A Druid is one of the best Champions you can bring into this dungeon because it is immune to one of this dungeon’s most dangerous elements: the mushrooms.

  Checking the support mobs before starting is a good practice to have. Recalling I’m missing a member after thirty or more minutes and having to restart the dungeon is something I’d rather not repeat.

  “Everything’s fine,” I say to myself. “Let’s take the slide today, too.”

  Taking the slide is a calculated danger when playing as a team. If the slide splits the party members, you surrender and restart. It’s quick because you haven’t wasted any time yet.

  I’m not taking the slide to skip the cave’s slope. If I’m lucky, I’ll appear at another part of the dungeon, skipping quite a large part and saving a lot of time. If the teleport happens, it’ll be good.

  “Go into the hole,” I order my support mobs, pointing towards the slide’s entrance.

  It has been tested again and again by multiple players, and the slide’s teleport portal always works the same. There’s a small chance it activates, and when it does, it will be active until a player passes through it.

  Then, when a player passes through the inactive portal’s position, there’s another small chance it’ll activate for the next.

  This means it’ll only teleport a single player to a random point in the dungeon, and the other players will safely land in the entrance. Any support units passing through the portal before a player will be teleported too.

  Since I’m the only player, I don’t have to worry at all. We’ll either all be teleported, or we won’t.

  It’s been like this for a long time, and no player has ever reported it working differently, so there’s nothing to worry about.

  I throw myself into the dark hole in the cave’s wall after the second Dryad enters it. During the slide, I can feel the slippery slope on my back, and the wind pressing on my face. The darkness was intimidating the first time, but now I’m usually more scared of the teleportation light, the single thing that breaks this slide’s darkness.

  Not today, though. I safely land near the giant cavern’s entrance. My support mobs are waiting for orders.

  “I wasn’t lucky… It doesn’t matter.”

  I shrug my shoulders and start the dungeon invasion.

  This is just a way to save some time. It didn’t happen, so I won’t obsess over it. Restarting the dungeon, betting time and effort into a random chance… Now that would be a waste of time.

  “The fuck–!?”

  Right after turning a sharp corner, a small bird almost crashes into my face. I instinctively protect my head with my arms when, suddenly, the bird starts glowing and growing in size.

  I step back. Better safe than sorry.

  The bird… no, the monster, starts taking a humanoid shape with big wings and a bird-like head. A constant burst of fire pours out of the monster’s skin.

  “It’s him…!” I exclaim as soon as the monster’s appearance is fully revealed.

  This is the monster that capitalized on my mistake and wiped out our entire party!

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Aah, how lucky! It’s a perfect opportunity to take revenge. The monster is alone, and since I’m recording this to demonstrate I’m not useless, I can use this to further convince my teammates…

  The monster stands still, observing us with an impassive face. The flames burn our skin, steadily reducing our HP bars and healing him at the same time. At any time, that annoying arcane burst will fill the whole passage.

  “Back off!” I order my support mobs to go back.

  This isn’t a good place to fight. A narrow passage isn’t a good place to fight a monster that has passive area effects. I’m here to win, and to win, you must make use of any advantage you can get while negating the opponent’s.

  I order my monsters to run back to the spacious laboratory room, always occupied by the labcoat guy.

  Once there, we split up and take battle positions. Under my orders, the two Dryads take root on opposite sides of the room, and the Wardancer takes the middle. I safely hide behind him.

  Unaware of our trap, the monster flies into the room soon after.

  “Blast him! Poison Cloud!”

  A continuous stream of arrows and spells comes from the two Dryads. At the same time, the Wardancer engages the monster in melee, and my Poison Cloud engulfs the enemy.

  While my monsters keep the enemy busy, I run around him and check the entrance. This monster wasn’t alone the last time, that's why we struggled against him.

  “I must know if the others are here too or not… Seems like they don’t.”

  When I pass near the enemy, he fires flaming projectiles at me. Added to the passive burn, it stings. But now that I know we’re safe, it’s time to counterattack.

  “Flash!”

  A burst of light blinds the flaming bird-human. Right then, a ray of searing red light pours from the monster’s hand. The light passes next to the Wardancer, failing to connect.

  “Haha! Eat this!”

  That’s the best way to keep enemies that attack very slowly but deal lots of damage at bay. If their attacks miss, it doesn’t matter how much damage they do. You just need to time it properly.

  The Sun – the name is displayed on top of the monster’s head – flies up, getting out of the Wardancer’s reach, but the two Dryads keep launching ice, light, and lightning attacks at him.

  Before the fight, I disabled all their fire attacks so they don’t heal the enemy.

  I manipulate my Poison Cloud to chase after him. It's fine if he gets too high up in the air. The Wardancer was taking too much damage and needs to rest anyway.

  Right as I’m about to approach to heal my monster, The Sun emits an arcane pulse. Having nowhere to run, I have to use the passage to get out of its range.

  By the time the pulse disappears and I come back, I find the enemy flying near the left Dryad. He opens his hand like before, and launches a powerful red beam of light that lands squarely on my monster’s chest.

  “This is bad…”

  Given the time it takes to unroot, my Dryad will die at this rate. Even blinding him will achieve nothing as the spell has already connected, and the Dryad can’t move!

  I run at my maximum speed and even use Blink to bridge the gap between us.

  “Force Field!”

  The invisible wall works as a shield, buying enough time for my Dryad to unroot itself and run away. But it cost me a lot.

  “Aah, this is bad…” I observe my MP take a huge hit because of my skill and Poison Cloud. My HP is falling again. “I had to get too close.”

  I undo the Force Field and manipulate the Poison Cloud to affect the enemy once more. But The Sun ignores me and chases after the Dryad, forcing my monster into a corner.

  I set them to run away from danger, and a stronger monster that deals damage when you get close is certainly dangerous. But being in a corner, my Dryad doesn’t know where to run, so the AI collapses and stops moving altogether.

  The AI isn’t smart enough to get out of this by itself yet… The Sun just stays still, floating in mid-air, and letting the Dryad slowly die.

  “Go there, Sebastian!”

  After my order, the Dryad finally escapes the fire, but by then, it’s too late. With another gesture from The Sun, several small stars appear above our general area and start falling.

  “I can’t interrupt that one…”

  I observe as the stars fall. I shift my position and use Blink to avoid the most I can. When the dust settles, I’m still doing fine, but I can’t say the same for my Dryad.

  “Shit! And I can’t use my most powerful skill because it deals fire damage…”

  That’s the mistake I made the first time I fought him. I healed him right before my teammates dealt the finishing strike, and he ended up killing us with his next attack.

  With another look at my status screen, I realize my MP is about to disappear. Keeping Poison Cloud up all the time was too much of a drain. But I didn’t expect The Sun to move so much after what I saw in our last fight…

  I have to deactivate Poison Cloud, so I do it.

  I take this short pause to take a look at The Sun’s HP bar. With another push, we should be able to kill him. Between me, the other Dryad, and the Wardancer, we can win, I’m sure of it. It won’t be as clean as I first thought, but a win is a win regardless…

  “...Huh?”

  I turn my head in time to see a purple swarm of Magic Missiles coming at me from the other side of the room.

  With Blink, I teleport behind a large piece of laboratory equipment. This way, I evade most of the hits, even when they’re targeted, since they hit the cover instead. The sudden position change is hard to track.

  For a moment, I forget about The Sun and look towards the direction the surprise attack came from. “Who is it…?”

  What greets me is the sight of my other dead Dryad. Now I understand why I didn’t see any attacks coming towards The Sun from that side. I didn’t realize until now, in the heat of the battle.

  Furthermore, two other humanoid enemies are facing me. Two humanoids that weren’t there a while ago. Two humanoids that I made sure weren’t anywhere nearby when I decided to take revenge upon The Sun.

  “What, the, fuuuuck!? Since when are his comrades here!?”