Today's Earth date: January 14, 1992

Horcus won his match almost instantly. We're so far beyond being normal humans that the prisoners never really had a chance.

But Horcus destroyed half the venue in the process. Something like thirty spectators were just… gone. I feel sick about it, and all Horcus has done is complain about how little XP he got.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Armond was right. B4 was more challenging than the previous floors.

The frequency and complexity of traps went up. In addition to the spears triggered by pressure plates, they found traps that shot arrows, opened trapdoors to drop a victim several floors, and raised walls behind the party to cut off their path back to the surface.

The most unique trap revealed holes all along the walls, but only a small trickle of dirty, stagnant water came out. Wayne's guess was that the trap was originally meant to fill the room and drown its victims. Toads were amphibious, so the bufos would be fine if that trap had worked. Humans, however, were very much not amphibious.

The encounter frequency held steady until the party pushed to B5. The bufos were now flanked by Superbad Crawdads–the same adds from the party's mini-boss battle outside of the Water Temple. They weren't anywhere near as fast as the toadmen, but two or three of them mixed into a room of four armed bufos made fights much harder for the Zeroes.

Armond's new Rock-a-Bye spell helped, but the crawdads were immune to the sleep effect. The bufos were not, but they sometimes resisted the spell or only dozed off for a few seconds.

Hector's Wall of Iron ability consistently benefited the party. At twelve feet wide and seven feet tall, the instant barrier gave the barbarian much more control over the battlefield. Losing visibility to the curtain of iron created new kinds of challenges, but the boost in defense was worth it.

Fergus' new Water Elemental summon was useless against bufos and crawdads. The elemental's attacks seemed to buff water-based enemies instead of damage them. The summon would be helpful elsewhere, but not here in the Lighthouse basement.

Margo's Darkest Hour ability was similar in that regard. The entire room went pitch black when she activated it, and she was the only one granted the ability to see through it. Wayne could imagine a context where that would be an excellent Backstab set up, but in this dungeon, blinding the whole party wasn't helpful.

At the stairs to B6, the party stopped again to camp. By this point, they averaged a floor a day, a terrible pace if the basement had fifty floors like the Lighthouse above the surface.

"We won't stay in here for fifty days or more," Wayne assured his tired party. "As soon as it starts to feel like we're missing a step in fights, we're heading out to recover and regroup."

"We can take it," Hector replied.

"This isn't about being tough. I know all of you would keep pushing, but there isn't any urgency for this run. Having to come back is better than someone getting seriously hurt because we were tired."

The party nodded and quietly ate their rations.

Wayne hadn't leveled up again, but he did get three more unlocks.

From spamming Periscope as they explored, Wayne finally got a second unlock from the submarine sim Wolfpack:

Metox Indicator – Will flash whenever the sub is being painted by Allied radar.

The system labeled it a passive skill, so he hoped that meant some sort of automatic threat detection. Any protective upgrade like that was always welcome in Wayne's mind.

The second unlock came from Cyberball:

Incoming – A defensive play to counter a long pass.

That was an active skill, and it sounded interesting, but Wayne lost all interest in it when he read his final unlock for Phantasy Star II:

Gra – Create sudden gravitational waves that compress whatever is in the area.

Experimenting with spells like Upsidaisy and Wink-Wing from Tunnels & Trolls had already transformed Wayne's approach to combat. The ability to toss and yank enemies around the battlefield gave him a great deal of control over the chaos of a fight, and he found that more and more he approached fights like a dance where he commanded all of the performers.

The control wasn't complete, of course, but enemies who couldn't manage their own positioning were far less dangerous.

His new spell would give him even more control. Casting Gra amplified the effects of gravity on the chosen target. If a bufo was standing still, Gra slowed their movements with the sudden increase in weight to their bodies and weapons.

If a bufo was jumping across the room, Gra pulled them toward the ground. The force wasn't powerful enough to halt all of their forward momentum, but the pull took them off target, confusing the enemy and exposing them to attacks they weren't prepared to defend.

If a bufo was stuck to a wall or ceiling, Gra had the potential to peel them off, but the success of that application varied. If they had all four points of contact secured in place, the bufo was likely to resist the spike in gravity, but if they had an arm free–to wield a trident, for example–Gra left them scrambling for a better grip.

The potential Wayne loved most, however, was combining Gra with Upsidaisy. Bouncing enemies up and down by alternating between the two spells didn't do much in the way of damage, but the abrupt changes in momentum confused enemies, sometimes to the point of dropping their weapons completely.

Wayne's immediate love for Gra didn't mean his other unlocks were less effective, though.

Metox and Incoming Play ended up synergizing well together. The first gave him a mental alarm if he was being targeted at range–by bubbles or tridents in the case of the current dungeon–and Incoming Play enhanced Wayne's ability to dodge a projectile. That was an active skill, however, so he had to use it quickly. When he got the timing right, he felt an intuitive awareness of the threat's trajectory, and time seemed to slow, giving him the chance to dodge or defend.

At B10, the party began debating a return to the surface.

They abandoned that thought at B12.

"I don't get it," Margo said, looking around at the endless emptiness. "Where did everything go?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

All of the traps, statues, coral, and enemies were gone. This floor, just like B2, felt blank and unfinished. With nothing to see, fight, or avoid, the party's pace quickened, and the theme continued to B17. Days of nonstop combat were now endless walking, every turn revealing a new but wholly uninteresting stretch of dungeon.

At B18, the dungeon transformed.

The inverted layout of the previous floors continued, but the ocean theme was gone. Nagas replaced the mermaid statues, and Fergus was quick to point out that they were barely different from the mermaids they saw before.

The nagas held the same poses and had nearly identical anatomies. Instead of alluring faces of beautiful women, these faces were angry and threatening, baring teeth with angry eyes.

The fish portion of their bodies were the same until just before the mermaid tailfin. In the nagas, the snake body continued on for a few more feet.

"It's like they changed their minds about decorating," Fergus said, looking closely at one of the statues. "Perhaps they did, actually."

"What do you mean?" Wayne asked.

"Remember the notes we found in the wereshark dungeon? The first two entries talked about changing from Water to Earth and making a 'Naga update.'"

Wayne opened his documents and pulled up his transcript from that crawl. Fergus was right, the first two entries were:

2.1.1 Water to Earth

2.1.2 Naga Update

"Nagas are often associated with water, though," Fergus said, thinking out loud. "So maybe those updates aren't connected?"

"But nagas can survive out of water where mermaids can't," Wayne pointed out.

Fergus' face lit up, and a grin began to curl the corners of his mouth. "Just like toads compared to frogs. If the dwarves were ordered to change a theme from water to earth, those adjustments are smaller than outright replacing everything."

"If the Cuts were still underwater, these floors would be too, right?" Margo asked.

Fergus pointed at the rogue, nodding. "Yes! And mermaids could move about freely in that case."

"Mermaids and ocean don't fit with an Earth Temple, though," Wayne said. "We already saw the Water Temple, so why would they put more water-themed content out here instead of by Cuan?"

"A good question," Fergus said, his eyes still on the naga statue.

There were no traps or enemies on that floor, however. The same was true of B19 and B20. The deco had changed, but the party didn't encounter any threats.

On floor B21, the dungeon changed again.

Wayne's party dropped down from yet another inverted stairwell to find a nearly empty dungeon level.

Not only were decorations missing, but so were all the walls and doors. From where they landed, the party could see all the way to the outer border. Perfectly flat floors. Perfectly flat ceilings. To Wayne, it felt like standing in the middle of an unfinished high-rise office building. Where those floors had basic framing and exposed ductwork and wiring, B21 was simply empty.

The scope of the emptiness felt impossibly artificial, like no room this big could exist without supports. Wayne found the environment to be disquieting.

The only variance on the floor was a grouping of items in the distance. When the party traversed the emptiness, they found a hole leading to B22 surrounded by bunk beds, crates, a desk, and blank cube faces. Some of the cube faces were stacked neatly. Others were broken and lying in a pile like rubble.

The setup looked like one of the dwarven quarters they saw in previous dungeon basements.

"This stack isn't for cubes," Fergus said, moving batches of blank cube faces to access a stack hidden in the clutter.

When Wayne approached to see what Fergus meant, he used Resource Values.

Forgemaster Memo, Average Value of [no sales data available].

These appeared to be like the project change order he saw back on B1. And there were a few dozen of them.

"Might as well make camp here," Wayne said. "I'll need a bit to translate all of this."

Several hours later, Wayne had them translated and organized. The original stack hadn't been in order, but he believed he had that corrected.

Many of the tablets were a variation of the following:

Lighthouse Test 4

43 enemies defeated

1 miniboss defeated

1 boss defeated

2 casualties

Basement undiscovered

The numbers shifted slightly, but every Test tablet ended with "Basement undiscovered." Wayne counted 17 of those tablets in total.

Amongst those, he found more project change orders. Put in sequence, they read like this:

Project Change Order 1.3b:

Weaken L20-35

Increase recovery items

Increase overall experience

Project Change Order 1.5b:

Revise L44 puzzle

Reduce boss cycles from 5 to 3

Address undiscovered basement content

Project Change Order 1.5.2b:

Address undiscovered basement content

Project Change Order 1.5.3b:

Critical Issue - Address undiscovered basement content

Project Change Order 1.5.4b:

Urgent Critical Issue - Address undiscovered basement content

Project Change Order 1.5.5b:

Urgent Critical Issue - Address undiscovered basement content

Project Change Order 2.0:

To align with Water Temple changes, please implement the following immediately:

-Reskin water content to earth content

-Disable "Under the Ocean Moon" quest

-Disable "Scylla Rises" quest

-Update relevant loot tables

-Move unusable content to storage

Note: Region environment patch to go live in 12 hours.

In addition to the above, reassess budget allocation for basement content. To date, 0 testers have discovered basement levels. Submit reassessment within 24 hours.

"Reading these makes me feel pretty confident in the theory that all of this was intended to be water-themed at one point," Wayne said. "Want to bet the 'Under the Ocean Moon' quest is a reference to the were-monster content we've seen?"

With only a few creative leaps, Wayne could imagine a storyline that combined fantasy ocean tropes with a were-virus-esque plotline. That would explain the weresharks as well as the "Pale Weresnail" they fought in Vientuls. That also made the presence of a massive lighthouse far more narratively consistent than what was around Iomallach currently.

The other quest, "Scylla Rises," felt familiar to Wayne, but he couldn't place why. If he had ever heard the name Scylla on Earth, he couldn't immediately determine where or when.

"The rats beat us to this too," Wayne said, the realization deflating his posture as he rubbed his eyes. "They've been using water monsters and the were-attribute in their fleshmancy."

Fergus frowned. "Meaning they either looted this dungeon already or found one like it."

"I'm going to take a nap then," Hector added.

Fergus gave the barbarian a curious look.

"We gotta explore the rest of the dungeon now. No more having the option to cut this short."

Wayne nodded. "Hector's right. We need to see this through."

After thinking for a while, Wayne stood. Everyone but Fergus was already asleep. He looked up at the Zero Hero and tilted his head.

"I can cover way more ground alone," Wayne said. "If the floors below us are empty too, it's a waste of time to drag the entire party through thirty of them."

"But you need Margo. She's the only one who can see where the hatches are."

"I have a plan for that too. I'll keep you updated via Voice."

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