"Where? Where is it coming from!?"

A blue-eyed man shuffles around. He alternates between covering and uncovering his eyes with one hand and fiddling with a game screen with the other. In his frantic search, he keeps making the same moves, walking back and forth.

"Why don't we push forward instead of wasting time?" A more serene and calm voice calls to him. "We're wasting time."

"There must be a clue somewhere! There's no use pushing forward when we'll have to face this again next time! Furthermore, it's better to spend time now that no monsters are attacking us than to wait until later."

The man suddenly stops and turns his head towards the other player, a succubus wearing suggestive clothes.

"Hey, Lily. Why don't we inspect everything around us and find out? They won't check the replay, so they won't know unless you tell them…"

He fiddles with his hands, waiting for the answer. But his companion just observes him with her hands crossed. She slowly furrows her brows, watching her teammate's actions, and at the same time, the tips of her lips tilt upwards.

"It was you who repeatedly told us not to inspect anything during our matches, remember?" She says. "When I asked why, you said it was because, during the event, the function will be disabled. So what are you saying now, to ignore it all? Are you going to take back your own words, Baldy?"

Baldy pulls his hair and groans. "I know, but this is driving me crazy!"

After the shout, the blue-eyed man waves his right hand around, encompassing what little remains of the once neat laboratory and the purple light coming out of the cracks in the walls, ceiling, and floor.

"Can you explain it to me? Why is it that the MP-draining effect persists, even if all the monsters are dead? It makes no sense! I keep getting drained unless I close my eyes, but to my knowledge, there are no MP-draining effects of easy access outside of Abyss' units. It can't be a trap or field effect, and the only beings we can see are ours."

True to his words, inside the laboratory, the only beings that can be seen are himself and the demon lady, as well as their support mobs.

"Are you sure about that?" The woman makes a mysterious smile.

"Of course I am! Didn't you pull them all out of their hiding with your Imp?"

"Yes, but that was before the thing that made the whole building shake and the light intensify." The woman's smile grows larger, her amicable smile transforming into an evil one. "You know, there could be hidden monsters crawling on the other side of the cracks, hidden behind the blinding light. They weren't here when I sacrificed the Imp, but they could have appeared shortly after."

She disgustingly wriggles her fingers, as if to scare her teammate, who, ignoring her, rushes at the closest crack and looks inside.

"It's too bright…" He groans, immediately regretting it. "I can't see anything." After shaking his head, a reflex action to try and recover his sight faster, he turns to the woman. "Hey, Lily. If you came up with that idea, why didn't you tell me sooner?"

The demon makes the nastiest smile so far and shrugs her shoulders.

"Because it was funnier to watch you suffer. Payback for not helping me earlier."

"You demon…"

"Why, thank you! Fufufu!"

Having tormented her teammate for long enough, the demon player decides to take action. She waves her hand, and dark flames fill the wall's surface, going through the cracks and affecting whatever's on the other side.

"Ooh, it's working!" Says the man, paying close attention to the battle log. "The effects are disappearing!"

The woman makes the flames disappear with another wave of her hand.

"This won't do. Spending MP to get rid of an effect that drains MP is a bit… You know what I mean."

"Of course I do! It's very inefficient. But now that we know where the draining effects come from, we can plan how to counter them, hahaha! To think they'd put tiny monsters on the other side of the walls and make the light act like this so we can't see them… To achieve this, they must have made thick walls with plenty of holes to pass through, or maybe there's a wide gap between the rooms' walls. It could also be interconnected rooms that don't align, the 'bigger on the inside' approach, where–"

"Baldy," Lily interrupts him, "let's go."

"S-sure. Benjamin the Third, take the lead!"

With those words, two players leave the ruined laboratory behind, ready to face whatever awaits them next.

"You know, it'll be hard, but if we can avoid looking at the cracks, we'll keep our MP."

"Is that even possible?" The woman counters her teammate's proposal. "Take a look around, there are cracks everywhere."

"You're right… There's also the option to keep our eyes closed and leave all the work to Benjamin the Third, hahaha! Let's do that. Benjamin the Third, our ace, will do all our work!"

"I'm the one doing most of the work, though." The woman rolls her eyes and says in a low voice so the man can't hear her. "Haa… It's useless to argue with him when he's like that."

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"Oh, no! They've learned how to deal with our Abysslings!" I suddenly shout, in the most exaggerated way I can. "We're doomed!"

Clara, surprised, tilts her head.

"Abysslings… Ah, you mean the Streallea. Why do you call my babies like that? Why don't you use their name?"

That's because there's no way I'm going to put any effort into remembering the name of a unit I don't ever want to have any connection with, of course. But if I say it out loud, Clara will be sad, so I don't.

"...because it sounds cuter?" Yeah, there's no chance she'll believe it when I put the words 'abyss' and 'cute' in the same sentence. Oh, well. Who cares? "Our sworn enemies (for this match) have discovered how to deal with them."

"Oh, no! My babies–" Clara stops and tilts her head. I can almost see a big interrogation mark appear on top of her head. "Wait. Don't they respawn infinitely?"

I start chuckling, my laughter gradually growing in volume and intensity, after listening to Clara's question.

"Yes, yes, they do. Hahaha! HAHA– Cough, cough!" I do so until I almost choke on my own, and my sister panics and starts patting my back with a worried face.

"A-are you okay?"

"Oh, sorry, sorry. I'm fine now." I wave her off, and she returns to searching for the remaining fragments.

Thank god the drool coming out of my mouth is just a cosmetic element… Otherwise, I might have actually choked on it. I was fooling around, but it got way too out of hand.

Anyway, there's a reason why I acted like that. As my sister said, the Abysslings – no, I won't call them by their real name – respawn infinitely. It doesn't matter how many Ricard and Laura kill, they'll eventually recover their numbers until they return to the original amount.

You see, there's one little trick in DMA that most players like to use, especially those in the high rankings, and even more those who like to play PvP.

It's something called 'abuse the game's systems'.

How do you do that? Well, there are multiple ways you can do it, but in our particular case, it's simple. You just need to add a trigger and make them cheap.

Hahaha, I know this doesn't explain anything, so I'll elaborate.

When creating dungeons, if you've reached the required player level, there's the option to create arena-like rooms: rooms that spawn monsters according to certain rules. Usually, players create rooms that force a series of progressively harder combats upon the invaders to test their skills, but that isn't the only way to use them.

For example, you can create a room that spawns infinite monsters until the players complete an objective. This is more or less what we did, but doing just that would be too lame.

Of course, infinite monsters are completely broken. They're waaay too strong! That's why the game balances it by increasing the cost to create the arena room significantly for every monster you add that will respawn.

Normal monsters that only spawn once cost the same, but respawning ones cost way more.

Was it… Fifty times?

I'm not sure how expensive, but you have to pay an absurd amount for each monster, which makes it a no-go for PvP matches. In general, adding fifty monsters is way better than putting one that will infinitely respawn when you have a limited cp budget.

After all, fifty monsters are fifty times stronger than a single one!

…I've already said I'm making up the numbers. It might be fifty, or it might be more or less. I just don't remember.

Anyway. Although it's incredibly expensive, infinite arenas can be freely used in PvE because there's no need for forced balance in PvE, and there's no cp limit. You can make your dungeon as ridiculously difficult as you wish anyway, without the need for infinite monster arenas. And if you add one such arena and the players start hating your dungeon for that, it's your problem. You can't blame the game for that.

I've just said infinite arenas are a no-go for PvP, but there's always a way to break the rules. This is how we made it.

First, create the cheapest monster possible. In our case, the critters from my sister's faction: the Abysslings (non-official name). There's nothing cheaper than a critter.

They, like many Abyss units, have a passive innate skill that drains the MP of the invaders if they look at them, although they have a much weaker version than the ones of the normal monsters.

Second, create a trigger to make it start spawning and another to stop. The harder the trigger, the cheaper the room's cost becomes, as it starts acting more like a trap instead of an unavoidable obstacle.

Forcing the invaders to kill our Mimic, which can be safely ignored, is a pretty strict trigger that reduces the cost significantly.

By the way, the trigger can be changed from one monster to another, in case we deem it necessary for the following matches. After all, nobody wants Ricard and Laura to avoid triggering the infinite monster arena just because they found out that killing the Mimic is the trigger.

And third, but no less important, to make it look like it isn't an infinite monster arena. This can be the trickiest one, but we managed it spectacularly.

Our infinite arena wraps around every other room, like a skin. When you see the 3D model from afar, the rooms look like they have a thick line around them instead of the usual thin contour.

Then, the arena is connected to the other rooms through cracks in the walls, floors, and ceiling. This should allow for two-way communication, but the game doesn't allow arena monsters to leave the room for balance reasons.

They can attack and be attacked, but they can't leave through the cracks.

Regardless, this doesn't matter in our case, because the Abysslings just need to find a crack in the walls and peek their head out for them to do their job. When they stand still, thanks to the bright light coming through the cracks, they look like black dots. When there's enough of them, they resemble eyes observing the invaders.

"Brother, I can't find anything..." Clara snaps me out of my thoughts. Then, seeing me still engrossed in the screen showing Ricard and Laura's progress, she adds. "Are you still with that? And why did you suddenly tell me about the Streallea?"

The what…? Ah, yeah, the Abysslings.

"Oh, no. There's no reason, I just wanted to tell you. And at the same time, laugh at Baldy and Lily's foolishness."

There's nothing better than laughing at someone's foolishness. Doubly so when they don't know yet that all their efforts are futile.

"Oh, okay!"

Clara simply nods, and we continue searching for the remaining pendant pieces.

"Squeeze every aspect of the game to your advantage. There's a thin difference between spending your cp effectively and wasting it, and that's something you need to master.

One more monster or trap, or even one monster level. Every single cp point you can save counts. Spend as little as you can to achieve what you need, and use what you saved to improve on other fronts."

- Excerpt from 'A journey to the top', a guide to help players reach the top ranking in DMA.

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