In front of me, the corpses of our (not) very cherished monsters are strewn throughout the room, forming a clear line.

“It looks as if a gigantic beam obliterated every unit that was in its path… Oh, yeah… that’s what actually happened! Hahaha!”

I try to make a joke to avoid crying. Not literally, you know what I mean.

From my side, Ricard sends a killing glare at me. Is it because of my comment…? I was joking, Ricard. Joking!

I signal him to calm down with my hand. “It was a joke, don’t take it too hard, ok?”

“I know… it’s just that all our plans have been destroyed in the first few seconds of the match… well, let’s see how much damage we took…”

After saying this, he starts to reorganize our troops at the same time he counts how many deaths we had. Isn’t it dangerous to go into the beam’s area of effect?

Curious about the giant machine I saw before Ricard dragged me away, I steal a peak at the enemy’s dungeon through the portal.

Hmm… it doesn’t look like the enemies are moving. It must be because of this long and straight path right before the giant machine. Yeah, I’m sure of it. If they were on this path, they would be dead too, and killing your own units with your attacks isn’t the smartest thing to do...

Does this mean they’re hiding somewhere else?

I look around, but I only see two similar paths right next to the one in front of me. They’re elevated, but with a gentle slope that goes downwards. Now that I look at them, this path goes is also going upward.

It isn’t possible to move between the paths because the height difference is too big, which means the only way we can go is towards that giant machine, following the straight path… Then, if the other two paths are the same…

Oh, now I understand! The giant machine is at the point where the three paths meet, so the dungeon is clearly designed with it in mind! Maybe they can aim it towards any of the three paths!

I can’t see it from here, but this must mean the other two portals are on the two side paths…

“Hey, Baldy. I have both good news and bad news.”

“...”

He turns around to look at me but doesn’t say anything. He’s making the worst expression I’ve seen him make in quite a long time. An expression that’s almost as grim as that time I literally ran away from him in the middle of one of his ‘knowledge drilling’ sessions.

It must be because we suffered too much from that light beam.

“Well, I’ll say it anyway. The good news is that I don’t think the giant machine is going to fire another beam anytime soon.”

“...yeah… If it’s what I think it is, it’ll take about five minutes to fire the beam again. It doesn’t take too much time to fire but it has a very long cooldown period… *Sigh!* Then, what are the bad ones? Isn’t it bad enough what already happened?”

He turns around and makes a hand gesture to indicate he’s listening to me. I’m sure he wants to continue what he was doing before I interrupted him.

“The bad news is that the enemy dungeon is designed with the machine that fired the beam in mind. I’m sure the three portals can be controlled with it, with straight paths with nowhere to hide from its attack.”

“...is that so…? Yeah, why not? They really got us with this…”

“But I also have some other good news! Hahaha!”

I pause for a moment, looking at his back. He doesn’t react whatsoever.

“They designed the dungeon in this way so that we can’t avoid the beams, but they can’t hide from them either! We can use this to our advantage!”

Finally, he turns his head to look at me. Did he really think everything was lost because we took so much damage and the enemy didn’t lose anything at all?

Well, there’s no way I can accept this situation! I must pay them back!

“You see, we already have the perfect measure against them! Thanks to our fast elite units, we can reach the machine before it can fire again! Sure, they can block us with their own units, but if they do so, they’ll be in the beam’s area too! Fufufu! Hahaha!”

Ricard’s expression finally returns to normal, but he’s still not convinced about my plan.

“But this isn’t good either… regardless of how many units we use, they only need to sacrifice a similar number… no, an even smaller number of units to block us. So we’ll only be losing anyway.”

I tsk at his words.

*Tsk, tsk, tsk!* “What are you talking about, Ricard!? How can they effectively stop us if we’re faster than them? They’ll need to use a lot more units to block us than you imagine. If they don’t, we’ll reach that giant machine and break it. I’m sure it’s quite expensive, so if we destroy it, the balance will turn in our favor. And they can’t afford it, so they have to spend more troops than we do.”

“Hoh, I understand what you mean…”

“Also, there’s something else… Fufufu…”

I turn around and look through the portal. Then, I rise my right hand and make a squeezing gesture with it, as if I was actually destroying the giant machine, that’s pointing in this direction, from the distance.

“I have a very nasty plan in mind, you see… if I can manage to lure at least one of their champions… Fufufu! Hahaha!”

He waits for me to finish my evil laughter.

“Anyway, we can’t waste time! First of all… Baldy! How many losses did we take?”

“If I didn’t make a mistake, we lost 12 stitched, 5 imps, 2 hellspawns, 8 zombies, and 1 skeleton. I can’t understand how did all of Lemon’s units manage to survive…”

“I see…”

I nod at his words. If I’m honest, I thought we would lose quite a bit more units. These numbers are within an acceptable range for it being such a strong and unexpected attack.

“Do you think it’s possible to defend the dungeon with the remaining ones if you exclude the elite units?”

“Hmm… maybe. As long as the enemy's focus isn’t on us, we should be able to do it.”

With the enemy focus, I’m sure he means the other players. But if my plan works, we won’t have to worry about them attacking our dungeon with all their forces.

It’s also important to take into account our dungeon isn’t designed with that light beam in mind. What I mean is that as long as we don’t stay near the portals, we can defend the dungeon properly because the beam doesn’t penetrate through the dungeon’s walls.

“Nice! Then I’ll take all the elite units with me. You go back and tell Lily to run to the third gate and chase after me as soon as possible. We only have until the machine is ready to fire the second shot for our plan to work!”

“Ok. Good luck, Mad Rat!”

“Thanks. But I don’t need it! Hahaha!”

Of course, this is an in-character bragging. I do need luck because the plan will be wasted if no enemy champions come.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I need to make them think it’s indispensable for them to come and personally stop our assault for my plan to be completed. Of course, it’ll be ok if we can destroy the giant machine without much trouble, but the best is going to be if I can lure at least one enemy player.

“Then, I’ll go.” I say. “I’m leaving the defense to you and Lemon, ok?”

“Yes, sure. Go and avenge our units!”

The time for me to behave and act like the leader I’m supposed to be is here! After this, my nickname, Evil Mastermind, will fit me perfectly! Nobody would question its veracity! Fufufu! Hahaha!

“Oh, one last thing, Baldy! When you tell Lily to come, tell her I need her to use her Charming Eyes when I give her the signal. It’s necessary to surprise the enemies with it for my plan to work, so I might not be able to tell her later. It’s very important, so don’t forget!”

I quickly leave the room, the elite units following after me. I lead them towards the third dungeon portal, which should lead to the passage on the right of the one where we were until now.

I’m not the fastest one here, but I’m the only player, so all the monsters are following me. I feel important with so many strong units moving behind me.

“You wait and see! You sent us a gift at the start of the match. I really enjoyed it, but you know…? It’ll be a shame to have it all to ourselves! So I’ll share the gift with you too, ok!? Fufufu! Hahaha!”

I laugh as I run. What I just said is for our audience to enjoy. One must keep acting every time they can to please them.

Though I can’t deny I enjoy acting like this too.

----------------------------------------

There was one enemy player, with his support units, invading through the portal I want to use. I didn’t want to fight against him, so I had to wait for him to go further into our dungeon. He took his time, but he finally left the area and we’re now free to put our plan into action.

“Let’s go, everyone!”

I ‘motivate’ the monsters behind me. Of course, it’s a completely wasted effort, but it’s important for the roleplay.

“What we’re going to do now is very important! We’re going to run through this path toward the giant machine and destroy it before the enemies can stop us! Hahaha!”

I make sure to shout as loudly as possible. Let’s see if the enemies can hear me somehow… Maybe, if the enemies hear it, it’ll help to make my plan work.

“As the slowpokes they are, there’s no way they can stop us! Everyone, follow me!”

I run through the portal and enter the enemy dungeon.

As I already expected, we’re now in the right elevated passage. From here I can see the central one, below us, from which we received the first attack; as well as the leftmost passage, which looks exactly the same as the one I’m currently in, but mirrored.

The monsters follow me, keeping up with my speed. As I said before, they’re as fast or faster than me, so it isn’t a surprise.

If we keep moving unimpeded like this, we’ll reach the machine before its cooldown ends, so they must come to prevent it. It’s fine if they don’t come and we can destroy it, but if they do come, I want at least one enemy player to come too.

There’s no way Laura can catch up with us at the speed we’re moving when she comes… but I only requested her help assuming they’ll come and force us to stop. If they don’t come, it doesn’t matter if she can catch up to us or not.

I can see the polished stone bricks pass by at a very high speed. It’s funny running as fast as you can in this game because you don’t get tired. The only thing that happens when you run is that you use your EP.

There’s no sign of the enemy yet…

We’ve covered half the distance when I see enemy movement near the big machine. It looks like they’re coming! If we stay like this, we’re going to meet at the point where the three paths are very close to each other; which means the height difference between this passage and the middle one won’t be too much.

Oh, look at that! There are two players coming! It looks like they really don’t want us to destroy the big machine! Hahaha!

The two players are using a golem champion. It’s difficult to know what stats or innate skills they have because of how the faction works, but one of them wields a giant mace and the other has parts that look like a rocket launcher… So I can guess their roles.

By the way, both of them are humanoid. Two-meter-tall humanoids. The game forces every player to use humanoid champions, after all. And they remind me of those mechs from anime and video games.

I don’t like mechs at all... As you can expect, I like biological sci-fi stuff over technological ones. Though it doesn’t matter right now.

“Hey, look at this! A rat is trying to sneak into our dungeon and destroy the Big Gun!”

The guy using the ranged golem taunts me as we get close enough. We’re now in range for our spells and ranged attacks to hit each other.

I stop and wait for him to continue.

“You’re really fast, you know? We almost let you complete your job… But now you can’t do anything! You like to run, huh!? Then let’s see how you run away from THIS! Hahaha!”

At the same time, he raises his two hands, and from each one, four missiles are launched and come in our direction.

Yeah… as he said, there’s no way to outrun the missiles if they can track us. But this doesn’t mean I plan on running away from them.

“Fufufu! I thought you were too scared to face us directly, but it seems I was wrong…” I lower my head as I ‘apologize’. “But you came to play with us! Then, I’ll show you how to properly play with your opponents! Chain Lightning! Hahaha!”

As the missiles come, my lightning strikes them down, exploding in mid-air, and we don’t take any damage.

The missiles aren’t counted as units, so the Shared Voltage skill doesn’t activate. But the Chain Lighting does work. As long as less than ten of them come at the same time, ten is the maximum number of jumps of this skill after all, I won’t allow a single missile to touch us.

Now, it’s my turn to taunt them.

“Did you really think you could defeat me in a ranged battle!? And with multiple weak projectiles!? You’re too naive! Fufufu! Hahaha!”

“But we don’t only have ranged attacks you know!? Haaaaah! Come here you crazy rat!”

The melee golem launches itself at me. Are those rocket shoes? They look cool. As soon as he reaches me, he swings the oversized mace at me, but I manage to avoid it on time.

It doesn’t matter how big it is if it moves slowly, and the user doesn’t know how to wield it properly. Not like I know how to use weapons, that’s why I use spells, hahaha!

“You missed! Oooh, that one was very close! Hahaha!”

I keep laughing and taunting him.

The battle now has turned into a huge melee between all our support mobs and theirs. We’re slowly winning ground because all our units are specially selected to work against dwarves and golems.

We don’t need to kill them here, but it’s good they aren’t getting overwhelmed because I have my hands full with the enemy players, evading the melee attacks and destroying the missile swarms, and can’t help them in their fight.

But it looks like both teams have secret agendas. I see the giant machine turning in this direction as it starts to charge. The five-minutes-cooldown will finish soon, and it’ll be able to fire again.

I think I know what they want to do... But I’ll make it go against them. In fact, I was counting on them using the giant machine during the combat… it looks like we’ll win! Fufufu! Hahaha!

Now I only need to survive until Laura comes here…

“Mad Rat! I’m almost here! I’m coming as fast as I can!”

I don’t turn around because I’m in the middle of a fight, but I can clearly hear Laura shouting at me as she runs in my direction.

“You got reinforcements? It doesn’t matter because you’re going to share the same fate! You’ll all perish here!”

The melee golem player laughs at us as he sneakily gets closer to the edge. The other golem, the ranged one, is doing the same.

Do you think I’m stupid? I can see what you’re trying to do, and I won’t allow you!

“Do you really think so?” I return the taunt as I grin. “I think you’re wrong about one thing… it’s you two who are going to die… Hahaha!”

The giant machine is about to release its light beam once again. Soon, the whole passage will be bathed in the light once again, obliterating everything in its path.

Only that, this time, it won’t be us the ones affected by the beam… But I need to time this properly… The machine charges the coils, and the light emitted intensifies… just a bit more… NOW!

I grab onto the melee player before he can jump to the lower floor as I shout to Laura.

“Now, Lily! Use it now! Then take all our units and jump into the other passage. Quick!”

She hesitates for an instant but quickly understands what I mean. She uses her Charming Eyes skill against the enemy ranged player, who’s stunned because of my action of grabbing onto his teammate, and then jumps onto the other passage.

Now the ranged golem player won’t be able to move either for the next five seconds. It’ll be too late by then.

Our elite forces jump after her, all of them taking a little damage because of the fall. Though it’s a negligible amount compared to the damage taken by the light beam… which, by the way, is already coming in our direction.

“Let go, you maniac! Don’t you know you’re going to be killed too!?” The enemy player shouts and struggles. He even punches me in the face, but he only manages to activate the Lightning Shield trigger and gets stunned. Hahaha, how unlucky you are! “Let go, I said!”

Meanwhile, I…

“Fufufufu! Hahahaha! When you prepare such an amazing gift for another player, it’s only fair they give something back to you! Fufufu! Hahaha!”

…I laugh as the light beam comes. Gotta stay in character even when death is just a step away. And I mean it literally.

I shout one last time before the light beam engulfs us. “Lily, go and destroy the giant machine! I’ll finish the job here!”

[https://i.imgur.com/ZGSK4Pl.png]

“What I enjoy the most is using the enemy’s plans against themselves. If you know what the enemy’s going to do next, it’s very easy to thwart their plans and use them to your advantage.”

- Famous phrase from one of the oldest highest-ranking players, in the top 100 ranking.