The two players leave the entrance hall behind, where the imp is being attacked by several unidentified monsters, and slip through one of the doors into a wide and short corridor, closing the door behind them.

  To the right, they find a glass wall partially covered in black mold. A few steps in, there’s a metallic archway, and at the end, a locked door. There are the same light-emitting cracks on the walls, ceiling, and floors here, too.

  “A checkpoint…” The man says. “Knowing Mad Rat, there must be a laboratory on the other side of this door. We’ll have to find how to open the door first…”

  The blue-eyed man starts fiddling with the stuff on the tables as well as the furniture on the walls, searching for something.

  “There must be a secret lever or button. Can you look over there while I check this side?”

  The man asks for help, pointing at the other side, but instead of helping him, the demon woman approaches the closed door at the end of the corridor.

  “This is an abandoned building,” she says. “There’s no electricity, so the door shouldn’t work. Since the path forward can’t be blocked, as the game wouldn’t allow it, the door can’t be locked. He wouldn’t have made a mistake that breaks the immersion like that.”

  She grabs the door by a protruding metal part and starts pulling. Slowly, the door starts opening.

  “Ugh…! It’s very heavy! Baldy, stop wasting time and help me pull this.”

  “...sure.”

  She could have asked her support minions for help, but they’re hard to control when they require precise instructions. Having a teammate who can help, it’s easier to ask him.

  The man slowly approaches the door while shaking his head and muttering in a low voice. “Sigh… Why can’t I predict his actions? Have I lost my touch?”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “No, nothing. It’s nothing.”

  Between the two, they pull the door open. But when they try to let go, they find their hands are stuck to it. That isn’t all. At a slow speed, their hands are getting sucked into it.

  At the same time, the door starts to transform. It looses its sharp edges and ripples appear on its surface as the shape changes into a blob. The color changes too, and the previously opaque metallic door loses density, allowing some light to freely pass through.

  “Shit, I didn’t expect this. It got us both because of me…”

  “The Sticky innate skill!? No, this isn’t all there is… Ah! It must be an engulfing slime mixed with a mimic at the least. There might be something else too… He really went all in just for a monster that works as a trap–”

  “Stop blabbing and think of a way to get us out of here!”

  The woman’s shout interrupts the man’s ramblings, but by then, the man has been sucked into the monster up to the waist.

  Unimpressed, the undead shrugs his shoulders and takes out his sword. He says something unintelligible and starts spinning while inside the monster.

  “...Whir…ind…”

  The metallic blob starts thrashing.

  An HP bar appears on top of it, quickly falling as the man spins inside of it. The sudden movements throw the woman away, freeing her. She takes her whip out and uses it against the thrashing monster, and between the two, they kill it shortly.

  The grayish goo loses consistency and falls to the ground, creating a puddle.

  “Ahahaha!” After emerging from the dead monster, covered in goo, the man starts laughing. “You can’t stop me with something like that, Mad Rat! Eating me, a melee fighter? It’s useless!”

  The woman approaches him and puts a hand on his shoulder. She sends him a glare, shutting him up.

  “Good job killing it so fast, but… are you sure you’re fine? Knowing him, I know it can’t be this easy.”

  “Why do you say something like tha–” In the middle of talking, the man opens a screen in front of him and tilts his head. “...huh? Where did my MP go?”

  “I told you it wouldn’t be that easy…” The woman sighs, shaking her head.

  “No, no. It makes no sense. It’s been less than five minutes since we came inside, and we haven’t been fighting that much! Unless there were dozens of Abyss monsters hidden in plain sight, all of them draining our MP at the same time, there’s no way my MP can, be, so, low…”

  The man trails off. At the end, he opens his eyes wide and points his finger at the demon woman.

  “This must be it! I’m sure he did such a crazy thing! ...what about you?”

  Understanding what he means, she opens a similar screen to the one he opened not long ago and takes a look at it.

  “Me too,” she nods.

  The man puts his hands on his head and starts shouting, pacing up and down the same spot.

  “Aaaargh! He really went and did it! How many monsters did he put to drain us so fast? Is he stupid? What would he do if we had planned for this and brought skills that can solve our MP problems!? We would have won by a landslide, and they wouldn’t have had any way to make a comeback for the next matches.”

  “I told you we should expect something like this to happen.”

  “I know! It’s just I thought they would lean more on his side than on his sister’s… I never expected him to want to use a single Abyss monster because he hates them.”

  He suddenly stops his back and forth and locks his gaze with his teammate’s.

  “What are we going to do for our next matches? I expect the rest of the dungeon to be similar to what we’ve seen or even worse. Do we have to go in with our eyes closed, so we don’t get drained? We have nothing to counter this constant drain… it isn’t only the MP either! In the battle log, there are messages about my HP and EP being drained too!”

  “We’ll think about this later. For now, let’s try to explore as much as we can before we die.”

  “How can you be so calm, Lily? Can’t you see we’re in deep shit? How are we going to face them in the following matches when we have nothing that can deal–”

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  The man’s expression warps to a frown and jumps forward. He passes next to his teammate, almost smashing into her.

  “W-what are you doing now…?”

  She turns around in time to see him releasing a dark glow from his hand. The light extends forward and stops upon hitting something invisible. Then, it drags the invisible object towards the man.

  “Aha! I got you this time! I got you before you could drain us any more! Now it’s time to dieeee! Ahahaha!”

  He laughs like a maniac when the previously invisible monster turns visible. In a frenzy, he starts swinging his sword around once more, and soon, a new whirlwind of metal slashes at the decrepit humanoid.

  “Whirlwind! Ahaha! It’s a whirlwind express to your death! I’ll take your soul and those of all your teammates and make you suffer for all eternity…”

  Meanwhile, the woman leaves his teammate behind and takes a peek at what awaits them on the other side of the now-empty doorframe.

  As the man speculated, what she finds is an old laboratory. The equipment, apart from being dusty, looks outdated. The pc screens are small and wide, there are no wireless devices, and there are mountains of books and papers everywhere.

  Even so, disregarding the few black mold patches and the cracks on the walls, the laboratory is immaculate. There are no signs of battle or an accident.

  “Using Whirlwind against a single enemy isn’t very efficient, but when you don’t have any time to waste, it can be the best option… Sigh. I would have picked a strong single-target skill if I had known about this. Aaah, I hate wasting my stats so much, but it’s more efficient than having them drained for longer…”

  The man, having finished his battle, joins the woman.

  He observes the abandoned laboratory for a short while before popping the same game screen in front of him, and starts alternating between looking forward and reading the screen.

  “Hmmm…”

  The woman watches him turn around towards the wall and repeat the same process.

  “...What are you doing?”

  “I’m checking if my stats are drained or not.”

  “I see…” She crosses her arms and lets him do as he pleases.

  The undead man proceeds with his investigation. He peeks into the laboratory, then watches the screen. The wall, the screen. Floor, screen. Ceiling, screen. The gray puddle on the ground, screen. A crack in the wall, screen.

  He even goes as far as putting his head inside a nearby drawer before taking it out and reading his screen once more.

  “Baldy… are you doing this on purpose? We can’t waste time, remember?”

  Tired of waiting, the woman puts an end to his actions. But acting as if he didn’t hear her, he starts nodding to himself.

  “Yes. I’m sure of it now,” he starts explaining. “There are monsters inside the laboratory.”

  “...we already knew about this.”

  “No, no, it isn’t that simple. It isn’t only that there are enemies inside, but that they indeed have skills that can drain our stats. If you look at them, they drain your MP, like the Abyss’s monsters. But there are also ones that have skills that can drain our EP and MP by proximity, and not only if we look at them. And I’m sure there will be some who have on-touch skills too, like this slime in front of us…”

  He pauses for a moment, glaring at the dead monster. Since in the tournament players can’t identify their opponents, to preserve the players’ surprise elements for as long as possible and keep the tension during the matches, they’ve decided to do the same during this match.

  “...I’m sure this one has MP draining skills too. As I was saying, there are monsters that can drain us both if we look at them or stay too close to them. The single thing I haven’t been able to identify is this constant HP loss I’m suffering. It doesn’t matter where I am, or where I look, my HP keeps decreasing steadily.”

  “Your HP?” The woman raises one eyebrow. She then makes a wicked smile and raises her hand, covered in dark flames. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix you up,” she says.

  “W-wait! Lily!? What are you planning on doing?” He watches her as the flames expand, approaching him. “Don’t do it! Killing me isn’t a solution to the problem! Being dead is way worse than having my HP sucked!”

  He tries to run away, but the black flames quickly engulf him… “Hyaah! Did you go crazy? Are you trying to kill, me…?” …and disappear as soon as they appeared. “What’s going on?”

  “I stopped the HP loss,” she says with a completely natural tone. “Take another look. You’ll be fine now.”

  “...Huh?” The man tilts his head, dumbfounded, and does as she asked. “You’re right… It disappeared. I’m fine now. Hey! That was too dangerous! Why didn’t you tell me before you did it!?”

  “It was more funny this way, don’t you agree? Fufufu!”

  “More fun!? This isn’t time for this shit! I was trying to come up with counterplans for our next matches, but you do this kind of thing… Sigh! At least tell me what was going on so it doesn’t happen again, will you?”

  “Look below,” she says, pointing at the ground.

  “Oh…!”

  When he lowers his head, he finds a dead butterfly on the ground. With vibrant, bright red on its wings, it looks very beautiful.

  “I forgot about them. In fact, I never expected him to use them in a Dungeon Battle because they’re critters. I guess I was wrong.”

  “Yep, you were,” the woman taunts him, a smile still on her face. “About half of the time you’re wrong, fufufu!”

  “Hey! Are you playing with me!?” The man huffs. “If you’re so eager to use Hellfire, why don’t you use it inside the laboratory instead of on me?”

  She opens her eyes wide and asks, “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  Soon, another burst of black flames leaves the woman’s hand and extends over the laboratory’s equipment. The floor, the computers, the desks, the books and papers… Almost every space in the room is covered by fire.

  And, reacting to the flames, there’s a huge reaction.

  All the hiding monsters pop out of their hiding space and rush at the demon woman, the one who attacked them.

  At the same time, from the black mold patches, a mix of tentacles, mouths, and eyes bursts forth, wriggling around and trying to grab whatever they can; and a low, rumbling growl resounds, making the whole building tremble. Slowly, more disgusting figures start to appear behind the cracks that were simply emitting light until a moment ago.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck! My MP is melting! I never expected this would happen. Should we run back?”

  “To where?” The woman shakes her head. “The previous room is filled with monsters, remember?”

  “So we’re trapped!?”

  “I can use my imps as bait again, but who knows what we’ll find next or how long we can go before losing all our MP and dying.”

  The plan proposed by the woman doesn’t fully convince her teammate, as he shakes his head, but he agrees with her anyway.

  “You’re right, we can do that. I’d rather avoid it because it’ll mean we’re sure to die, that we’re just delaying the inevitable, but… I’m sure they’ll be struggling in our dungeon too, so we just have to hold on and hope they die before us. Let’s try it.”