Today's Earth date: March 26, 1992

There's been nothing new to write about. We've only reached the fifth floor, and the Temple just keeps getting bigger. I keep picturing all the people we're helping, and that's keeping me going.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

The difficulty increased on floor two. The layout was different, and a few inches of dirt were packed over the floor–a fact they easily confirmed by kicking through to the bottom with their toes. To Wayne, that felt like some real damn lazy game design. Paint the Water Temple green and dump dirt on the floor to turn it into the Earth Temple? Really? That's all you're going to do for such a ginormous shift in elemental themes?

And then the dungeon punished Wayne by showing him that the dirt was actually a mechanic.

Eels the size of pool noodles with proportional centipede legs burst out of the soil to surprise attack the party in unpredictable intervals. Instead of sticking to a spawn point, it was like they roamed the halls endlessly, so sometimes attacks came in quick succession only to be followed by a long lull of total quiet.

The system said that these were "voltage worms," but the head of an eel was pretty distinct, so Wayne recognized it easily enough. Seeing the long mohawk fin run down its back confirmed it.

On Earth, most eels weren't aggressive to humans from what Wayne understood, but voltage worms skittered toward the party with wide, feral eyes, their jaws snapping. They never slowed their pursuit. They didn't care about defending themselves. The voltage worms didn't stop chasing until they were dead.

And their bite was like being hit with a lightning spell, if that wasn't obvious already.

Instead of bursting through floor tiles, krakens on this floor broke through dirt, adding slapping tentacles and swarming seahorses to the party's fight against ten or more of the voltage worms.

At first, these encounters happened in rooms with open doors and clear hallways. As the party progressed deeper into the floor, the rooms began blood-locking again. Pressing their backs to the walls worked fine one floor up, but with voltage worms charging at them, the Zeroes had to be more aggressive. They still used Wall of Flame to cheese the kraken and the sea horses, but the kraken didn't die swiftly, giving it plenty of time to slap and bash a Zero who moved away from the wall to fend off a voltage worm.

They tried adding Wall of Iron to the mix to shield them from the kraken, but dropping two walls across two back-to-back battles exhausted Hector, putting his safety at risk and slowing the party overall.

Armond proposed an alternative tactic. Instead of using Wall of Fire, Hector cast Zapathingum to buff his weapon. Next, Armond cast Ner to buff Hector's speed while Fergus cast Gifoi on the kraken, killing many of the seahorses by proxy as they passed through the flames attacking the sea monster buried in dirt.

They used a similar tactic in the Lighthouse Basement against the bufos. In that case, Gifoi was used to stall an attacker, but the speed with which flames appeared around an opponent–as opposed to launching a fireball–was just as important here.

Their room-clearing tactic for this particular spawn setup turned into Wayne and Hector dashing forward to attack the kraken as it escaped the soil. At the same time, Margo cut a wide angle to shoot arrows at the kraken. Her ranged attacks did much less damage than Wayne and Hector, but every hit point counted. And then Fergus cast as aggressively as the frontliners swung their swords, his flames appearing around the kraken the moment it escaped the ground, making it look as though it was already burning underground.

By the time they cleared the second floor, the rooms had progressed to two sets of kraken spawns in a space that was wider but thinner than the original rooms. The party again adapted to the change and worked their tactics to be smooth, efficient, and effective.

Along the way, Margo pointed out four sets of dwarvish that she could see with her Prism ability. After a brief discussion, the party decided to continue crawling and agreed to camp at one set to translate when they needed to rest. If they didn't figure out the combination, so be it. They could still open the hatch on the bottom floor.

That said, Wayne much preferred the idea of setting up camp in the hidden stairwells. He wouldn't have to worry about a voltage worm avoiding a cull only to attack him when he was sleeping on the ground.

After a brief lunch at the end of the second floor, the party pushed into the third floor.

"The dungeon keeps iterating," Wayne said.

Fergus nodded immediately.

"This is also something you see in game design–taking one idea and then making it more and more complicated and difficult."

Platformers, from the classic Mario Bros. to indie darlings like Celeste, operated on this principle. In the case of the former, the first level wasn't much more than a straight run with a few jumps, but later levels had more jumps with pits. And more enemies. Then the pits got bigger again and on and on. Celeste built on that framework with more advanced movement mechanics and more complex level design, the entire game having a perfectly gradual rise in difficulty with ever evolving challenges.

Wayne sighed. He missed video games.

"Does knowing the game design connection help us?" Fergus asked.

Shrugging, Wayne answered, "I suppose expecting the rooms to progress like that is better than not knowing. If anyone notices a pattern or a theme of how they get harder, that might help us."

"We'll start watching more closely for those," Armond said.

The progression transitioned into more elaborate rooms–some with extra obstacles like low walls and some with pits–but the Zeroes managed.

Home Row became a staple of their room-clearing process at Armond's insistence. He hated the feeling of teleporting as much as anyone else, but he argued that combat was all about positioning. The ability to instantly reset theirs made them infinitely safer.

Wayne could launch Margo across the room with a Backstab Bomb while he and Hector rushed the kraken. At the same time, Hector used Distract to draw the aggro of everything in the room, including the voltage worms hiding in the dirt beneath their feet.

Then Wayne hit Home Row, and the party was back to their places from when they entered the room. Armond said it was like being able to play all our trump cards with less risk. Wayne, Hector, and Margo were across the room to launch their best attacks one moment, and then they're back across the room in a blink.

The party devised more tactics as a result. Calling for a Homewrecker meant launching Margo across the room with Backstab Bomb while everyone else held their ground. As soon as she got her Backstab off, Wayne used Home Row to put her in the backline again.

A Silent But Deadly meant that Wayne ventured out as a Fart to possess a monster while Margo turned his body invisible with Hidey Hole.

Yellow Snow meant that Armond cast Smog and then Fergus froze the enemies to let the poison do its work.

Hold My Seat was the riskiest but also one of the party's more deadly tactics. Margo would turn Fergus invisible. Wayne would launch him across the room with an Upsi-Toss–A two spell combo that lifted the target in the air with one spell and sped them forward ten yards with the other. The second Fergus came out of hiding to summon an Earth Elemental. Armond protected him with Pentagram and Deban. The double barrier gave the party's wizard enough time to send a summon into the fray and then pop off one or two more spells. Home Row brought Fergus back to safety before the barriers went down.

The party stopped to camp in front of what they believed to be a hidden access door for the secret stairwells, and one hour later, they moved their camp into complete safety. Where the hatches had simple 1-2-3-4 passwords, the doors listed elements instead of numbers. Pressed in the order of the Chosen Hero journey–Water, Earth, Fire, Air–the door opened. Fergus figured it out pretty quickly once he had finished the translation.

And the party got the best sleep they'd had since the journey began.

The fourth floor added bufos to the challenge. The fifth floor added naga. The sixth floor made the pits bigger, to the point that the majority of the room was a yawning maw of death. Wayne used Home Row twice–once on Hector and once on Armond–to save them when they lost their footing and went over the edge. On the seventh floor, self-loading crossbows periodically fired bolts across the room, so the party had to mind the timing of arrows while fending off monsters and avoiding pits.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Just as the scope of the challenges grew with each floor, so did their quantity, so the floors took progressively longer to clear. The third floor took three days, the fourth floor took five, then the the sixth took seven, and so on.

The most entertaining moment in that time was against the first bufo. When blood sprayed out of the warrior toad, it was white instead of red, a fact didn't realize until he turned to see a spray of white liquid across Fergus' face. When the other party members, like Wayne, lost all control of their laughter, fear flooded the scholar's eyes.

"Is this…" Fergus asked, mortified as he looked at the white liquid all over him.

"No, it's not," Wayne said. "I think that's my Naughty/Nice setting. I saw some censorship on Earth that turned blood from red to white like that, and uhh… well, the result looked weird there too, especially when a room was covered in it."

Wayne found the white blood to be distracting, so he switched his system back to Naughty.

Otherwise, party banter stopped completely. They experienced more frequent headaches, and they grew more irritable with one another. They wanted to sleep in beds. They wanted to eat something other than jerky. They wanted to not be on guard for their lives in every moment of every day.

By the time they stopped to rest at the end of the seventh floor, the Zeroes had each gained two levels while Wayne gained one.

With Wayne as the exception, all of the unlocks for the other Zeroes were from Buck Rogers.

Fergus, now level 20, learned:

Grenade, Gas – Similar in effect to twentieth century tear gas, anyone entering the cloud without protective gear must make a saving throw or become incapacitated for two to seven rounds.

Smart Suit – Incorporates internal circuitry and microcomputers for climate control, defense, and communications. The smart suits purchased by team members include contained atmosphere spacesuit capabilities.

Armond advanced to level 19 and learned:

Diagnose – Is the ability to determine the nature of an ailment or internal injury.

Treat Disease – Is the ability to treat diagnosed diseases. Prerequisite is Diagnose.

Margo, also now level 19, learned:

Acrobatics – Is the skill of balancing, juggling, avoiding falling objects, and other unusual feats of dexterity.

Disguise – Is skill in the use of makeup and costume to assume a new appearance.

Hector reached level 19 as well, and added the following to his repertoire:

Intimidate – Is the ability to create an aura of menace and danger. Successful intimidation during combat will cause enemies to be taken aback while they decide whether to fight or flee.

Protective Goggles – Are self-regulating shaded goggles. They can react very quickly to light flashes and so are extremely effective against dazzle grenades.

Wayne advanced to level 23, making these his new stats:

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 23

HP: 306/306

STR: 40

AGI: 32

VIT: 23

LCK: 37

He finally got his sixth and final unlocks for Super Monaco GP and After Burner II.

From the former came the active skill:

Flag Girl – She begins the countdown for the start of the race and waves a flag.

And the latter unlocked a passive skill:

Super-Sophisticated Battle Computer – Knows the course and will guide you directly to your targets.

Next, he picked two new games to activate with Christmas List, and both were TurboGrafx-16 titles.

Bloody Wolf featured an Arnold Schwarzenegger knockoff on the cover with a big knife in his hand and helicopters coming behind him. Games of that era shamelessly ripped off Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone over and over, so if the game involved tough guys with guns, you probably got a blatantly plagiarized action hero in the art. Then you could expect the plot to probably involve rescuing a kidnapped President.

The President got kidnapped a lot in the late 80s and early 90s for some reason.

At any rate, the catalog had this to say about Bloody Wolf:

With the entire world watching, you must rescue the President from terrorist guerrillas. Blast your way through choppers, snipers and missile-launching subs to crush the enemy.

And Wayne begrudgingly learned this passive skill:

Fins – Useful for fighting in swamps or rivers. Dramatically increases the speed of your underwater movement.

Not that he needed that exact skill a few days ago, but whatever.

TV Sports Football was one of the countless generic sports titles released in that era of gaming, and the catalog blurb was equally uninspired:

The crowd's roaring…the cameras are rolling…now, it's up to you. You'll call all the plays, as digitalized sound captures every bone-crunching hit and the announcer calls the game. Enjoy full-season play!

Earning Wayne this passive skill:

Strength – Refers to how hard a defender tackles, how good a running back is at breaking tackles, how far a quarterback can throw, and how far a kicker can kick.

Strength didn't appear under his onetime bonuses, so he was certain it didn't affect his strength attribute. Based on the theme of the game and the description, he guessed this skill buffed the football robots he could summon from Cyberball.

"Are we still worried we aren't getting enough experience?" Armond asked over that day's meal.

Wayne chuckled. "When it rains, it pours."

Margo raised her hand. "Are video games on Earth this difficult to keep track of? In terms of unlocks?"

Shaking his head, Wayne said, "There are a lot of very complex games out there, but Christmas List isn't like any of them and is way messier. Instead of one streamlined story from the first page to the last, our system is more like twenty different books have been cut together to make a barely coherent story."

Wayne opened his system menu and pulled up his list of unlocked games:

Crystalis - (6/6)

Ultima III: Exodus - (6/6)

Pirates! - (6/6)

Railroad Tycoon - (6/6)

Lightspeed - (6/6)

Spellcasting 101 - (6/6)

Cyberball - (6/6)

After Burner II - (6/6)

Super Monaco GP - (6/6)

ESWAT - (6/6)

Phantasy Star II - (6/6)

Pat Riley Basketball - (4/6)

It Came from the Desert (4/6)

Tunnels & Trolls (4/6)

LHX Attack Chopper (3/6)

Chessmaster 2100 (2/6)

Centurion (4/6)

Wolfpack (3/6)

Buck Rogers (2/6)

Golden Axe (2/6)

The Secret of Monkey Island (1/6)

Splatterhouse (1/6)

Oddworld: Abe's Exodus (2/6)

Ninja Spirit (1/6)

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (1/6)

Devil's Crush (1/6)

Bloody Wolf (1/6)

Sports TV Football (1/6)

Professional Write (1/1)

Quicken (1/1)

Four Score (1/1)

Pictionary (1/1)

Kaboom JVC Stereo (1/1)

Stunts (1/1)

The Games People Play (1/1)

"I'm sorry, Margo," Wayne said after reading the list. "We have thirty-five games, not twenty, all cut together."

"That sounds like a lot."

Wayne nodded. "It's a lot to keep track of, and the naming conventions aren't intuitive, but we're getting by. I'm going to grab some sleep, and everyone should do the same. We have two more floors to go and we're done, which I'm guessing includes a boss fight."

"Must be nice to only need two hours of sleep wherever you are," Fergus said, frowning. "Unlock something that lets us sleep on the train from anywhere, please."

"Alright," Wayne said, laughing. "I'll start praying."

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