When we get near the cssroom, we find all the students rushing out, pushing the others out of the way to be the first to get to safety. They scream and shout, fear on their faces, which surprises me. Shouldn’t they be used to dying all the time by now?

  “Hyaaaah! It’s those worms! We’ll die, this time for all eternity!”

  Aaah, this expins it.

  “Don’t you have any manners? In situations like this, you should give priority to us, dies!”

  “Fuck off! Don’t you know the worms only targeted males? The ones in most danger are us!”

  Yeah, yeah! Give it to her! Aren’t they always asking for gender equality? This is true gender equality! Why is it only us who have to worry about thick and long…. things, going into you-know-where, but we should give them priority to leave first? To hell with them!

  …Ah, yes, right. They’re already in hell.

  Going against the flow is impossible, so we stick to the wall so we’re not dragged away by the students. Until they all leave, we won’t be able to see what’s going on inside the css.

  The stream of panicking students slows down when most of them have escaped the cssroom. Now that there’s less noise, we can start hearing the painful cries from those that couldn’t.

  “Take it out! Take it oooout! I don’t want to die…!”

  “N-no! D-don’t come any c-c-closer!”

  They’re all male voices. It seems like the pattern hasn’t changed. I signal Laura to take the front, to which she agrees after spinning her eyes.

  Hahaha, it won’t work. I don’t care if you mock me, I won’t take any risks with this. If women aren’t in that much of a danger, or they aren’t in any danger at all, they should be the ones to take the biggest risks.

  Laura steps inside, and I follow closely behind. I peek from behind her, ready to use her as a shield if the situation requires it. She doesn’t seem to mind that I stick so close to her, even if it is for this reason.

  Desks and chairs are everywhere, scattered and broken. Students lie on the ground. Some of them twitch as if they were possessed, while the others are immobile, dead. The single woman in this mess, younger than most of the ones we’ve seen so far, cries over the body of her ‘sweetheart’. She seems to be doing fine, though.

  And the dreaded white substance!

  The disgusting thing forms pools on the ground, filling my heart with fear for a moment. However, when I remember it isn’t what we first thought it was, I don’t find it as disgusting and my mind calms down.

  We observe as the teacher shambles towards the single remaining student. Trapped in a corner of the css, the student shivers, holding his knees close to his body and muttering to himself without end.

  “Aaah…! Not me. Not me, not meeeee! This is a dream, a dream, a dreamdreamdream… hahaha, yes, this is a dream and I’ll wake up soon… ”

  Unperturbed, the demon pushes his hand forward and introduces something into the student’s mouth.

  We can’t see what it is because his body is obstructing our view, but shortly after, the student has a seizure. Simir to the other students, his body shakes and twists as if he were possessed.

  Is he being eaten from the inside…? Ah!

  A crazy idea comes to me, and I start paying close attention to the other students. I watch in a mix of horror and relief as one of the students who were shaking dies. A long and thick white worm soon pushes its way out, coming out of a hole near the student’s butt.

  This is exactly as the description we’ve heard before. Between twenty and thirty centimeters long and five centimeters in diameter, the worm is as perturbing as it could be. But there’s something else I notice too.

  “Ahaha! I see… Interesting. Interesting indeed.”

  I nod to myself, lowering my tone to match that of a ‘hardened detective’. As expected, Laura turns to look at me with a ‘did he go crazy?’ expression on her face. I ignore her.

  “I just solved the case in front of us, dear Lauttson. The Mad Rat Detective strikes again! Fufufu! Hahaha!”

  Why was I so scared? This is a game, after all! Even if everything is set up for us to fall for the illusion, it shouldn’t have taken me so much time to solve it.

  “The worms… haha, the worms are a distraction,” I chuckle, “It was aaaaall a lie. A very eborated lie, one that only I, the great Mad Rat Detective could have spotted, but a lie indeed!”

  Laura tilts her head and turns her attention to the worms. As soon as they come out of the dead students, they rush into the nearest ventition vent they can find. Like the one that came out of the st victim.

  “I saw it all with these eyes of mine! Hahaha! It’s all a montage!” Making sure to sound as snobbish as possible, I start expining the trick. “See the students that died in this pce? Aren’t they all perfectly fine? Well, they’re dead, but they don’t look like mummies like the ones before. Furthermore, if you pay attention, you can see it. You can see the worms, hiding inside the student’s clothes before popping out of the hole they already have in their pants! Everything is fake! There’s no need for me to worry anymore! Hahaha!”

  Aah, I feel so relieved. I can rex my sphincter and stop covering my butt with my hands…

  “I knew it couldn’t be. Even if DMA is a game that gives so many options to the pyers, it made no sense what happened here. A skill that turns corpses into mummies, and worms that come out of other units? It was all bullshit!”

  Laura nods to my perfect deduction, acknowledging my superiority as a good secondary character should. “Good job spotting the trick, but…”

  What ‘but’? There’s no space for ‘but’ here! I gre at Laura. I swear… you don’t want to take the spotlight from me. You don’t want to make an enemy of me, Lauttson!

  “But… this only expins the weird deaths. It doesn’t expin where they come from, nor who’s behind all the attacks.”

  Fuck.

  She could spot the single weak point of my perfect deduction. Maybe I should give her more credit.

  “You’re right… But I did solve the mystery behind the impossible deaths in this dungeon. Anyway, let’s talk about this ter, the ‘teacher’ doesn’t seem to like our presence here.”

  Conveniently, the demon teacher has no more students to infect with those worms, so he turns his attention to us. He approaches with unsteady steps. His eyes are rolled up, and a rge amount of saliva drips from his mouth.

  In horror, I observe the neck swell up. Like a wave, the swell extends under his skin towards his head, takes a sharp turn and disappears under the shirt.

  “Is there something burrowing under his skin!? B-but the worms– Ouch!”

  Laura smacks me on the head. “Leave it be for now. Surviving comes first!”

  “Ah, yeah… thanks.”

  I almost lost my composure here.

  I avoid the fist at the st second, scrambling away from the professor.

  *Crash!*

  The wall, not as lucky as me, crumbles after the impact. A rge hole appears on the cssroom’s wall, connecting it to the adjacent cssroom. Luckily, the students and professor on the other csses evacuated long ago, not long after the shouts started. The only victims are the wall, and a few desks and books.

  This demon is a Greedling! He shouldn’t be that powerful!

  “Fuck! Why is this demon so strong!?” I compin. “Lily, you’re from the same faction, you should know!”

  Next to his HP bar, it says it’s a level 10 monster. A Greedling has lower stats than my base ones, so even if he has a higher level, we should be on a simir strength… but I can’t break a wall with my fists! My most powerful spells like Chain Lighting or Chaotic Beam deal almost no damage! It makes no sense!

  Laura’s whip momentarily stuns the professor. We use this chance to get some distance. None of us are suited for close-quarters combat.

  “I-I don’t know… It makes no sense…” Laura shakes her head.

  If she doesn’t know, how am I supposed to? I might regret saying it, but at times like this, I miss Ricard’s expnations. His interminable ramblings about unreted stuff can be quite helpful.

  Sometimes… Okay, I was wrong. I actually don’t miss him that much.

  “Roaaar!”

  The demon roars before running in our direction. He runs with his arms extended forward in an extremely clunky way. He isn’t that fast either, we could run away, but then I’m sure we’d fail to clear the mission.

  The way he runs… it reminds me of a certain monster created out of corpses… “This is my style, don’t copy it!” I burst out.

  Why is everyone always copying me!? I’m tired of it already!

  A desk flies my way, thrown by the demon. I duck to avoid it and the desk smashes into another one behind me. But my action slows me down. By the time I realize my error, a rge shadow appears above me. It’s the demon. It has jumped and is falling on me with terrifying force.

  “Shit!”

  Reluctantly, I activate Rat Transformation. My body quickly changes size and shape, safely avoiding the mass falling on me. I run away, and the demon falls to the ground. I watch the crater created where I stood.

  That could have been me…

  As soon as I feel safe, I undo the transformation, supporting myself on one of the few desks that remain intact. I steady my dizziness. “Ugh… I want to puke…”

  “Mad Rat. If we can’t defeat it in a straight fight, let’s kite it until it dies.”

  “Sure… let’s do, that…”

  My eyes keep spinning. Just give me some time to recover first.

  Kiting is the best tactic when you outrange and outspeed the enemy, as long as you have spare time. From what we’ve seen, the demon has no ranged attacks and relies exclusively on brute force. Since both Laura and I have multiple ranged attacks and spells and are faster than him, kiting should work.

  We should have tried it from the start… but we thought it was a better idea to kill him fast. We wanted to clear this event quickly, and then investigate why it happened.

  Relentless, the demon keeps chasing after me as we kite him. Or I kite him, while Laura attacks from behind.

  The reason why it’s chasing after me while ignoring Laura? Isn’t it obvious? Do I need to spell it for you? He wants me to be the next victim.

  I know my precious area isn’t in danger. I know that everything was a very eborated trick. Still, it doesn’t make this situation any less disgusting. If I have to be chased, I want it to be a pretty girl! Why does it have to be a disgusting green-skinned and burly human, with worms crawling under his skin!? Furthermore, he puts stuff inside the males he catches that ter comes out of their asses…

  …just that thought alone can give anyone nightmares.

  After changing tactics, the fight proceeds without a hitch. Slowly, the damage accumutes and the demon’s HP bar disappears. The damage it takes is increasing as time passes, but also seems to slowly recuperate.

  “Is it taking more damage than before…? Something doesn’t feel right.” Alerted by the unusual behavior of the demon’s HP bar, I decide to inspect him.

  It generally isn’t a good idea to inspect a monster during combat. It takes a while, and it’s easy to get distracted. But the monster is almost dead, so… what’s the worst that could happen?

  “Aha, this is why! His maximum HP is falling like crazy. That’s why.” If the maximum HP falls but the current HP doesn’t, it looks like it’s healing when, in fact, it doesn’t. “Wait, his stats are crazy high!?”

  “Max HP, high stats…” Laura ponders what I said, “Ah! I remember now. I heard of a monster like that. If this is the case, the best way to kill it is…”

  Bck fmes engulf the demonic professor. It was way weaker than we thought, as just two damage ticks after, he falls to the ground. But instead of dispelling the fck fmes, Laura keeps them activated. The answer shows up shortly after.

  The lump burrowing under the demon’s skin stops moving. Then, the skin parts and a white worm pops out. Roasted by the bck fmes, the worm wiggles in pain and dies. Only then does Laura release the Hellfire.

  She approaches the two corpses. “Haa… I was right. Come watch this.” She signals for me to get closer. “I know what we’re against.”

  “In what other game can you have monsters that can live inside other monsters while contributing to their battle prowess? Or monsters that are formed by multiple other monsters? And what about monsters that ate smaller ones, working in synchrony as if they were a single entity?”

  - From an unknown source.