“I can apply my power defensively, so long as I can see the attack,” I said, “and Joe has the physique necessary to engage them in melee, so the two of us should be able to keep them from getting to you while you attack at range.”

The three of us stood outside the door to the tenth floor. Strategizing. Definitely that, and not delaying our showdown with the horrible creepy shadow monsters.

“In case your powers can’t really affect them, just keep an eye on things, since you’ll also be able to see anything magical going on.”

I was much less worried about the shadowy figures I had seen in yesterday’s footage, and much more worried about what I might see in the magical layer. This game had a distinct way of not pulling any punches, and I could easily see how my and Lindsey’s expanded perception could be turned against us if the genre shifted even a little bit in the direction of cosmic horror. Considering the antagonistic ‘great spirits’ mentioned by that barrier NPC, even if they were just endgame world bosses or raids, I suspected that we were in for some cosmic horror in that confrontation no matter what. And how large in scale were our powers going to get, that we might be able to confront a foe implied to be so vast, even if we needed a raid group to do it?

“How strong do you think our powers will get?” I asked aloud, the question escaping without my conscious decision. It had struck me that it was a distinct possibility that any horror that we may be in for could come from the scale and power of our own avatars, rendered in such a high fidelity world, rather than from our potential enemies.

“Well, eight slots for powers, the rate of gain will almost certainly slow, plus there will probably be some passive choices along the way… so I’d guess it caps at maybe level 40.” Joe said, thoughtfully. Then he met my eye and continued, “Stop stalling. It won’t be that bad. I could almost handle them on my own, and now there are three of us.”

“Right,” I said, a little sheepishly, “let’s get this over with.”

Joe pushed open the door, and as he did I saw a faint membrane of magic across the threshold. It seemed to have something to do with restraining entropy, maybe? Some extremely specific variety of entropy. Weird. We stepped into the tenth floor, Joe, then me, then Lindsey. As we entered, all eyes turned to us. But… also they didn’t. What?

I took in the familiar view, just like in the footage, the walls, ceiling, and carpet were all normal, but everything else - people, furniture, office supplies, everything - was rendered as a perfectly matte black silhouette. No contour could be seen, no texture, no reflections of any kind, nothing to imply that the black shapes were actually three dimensional objects at all. And they hadn’t turned to look at us, despite my initial feeling. In fact, they were busily carrying out their pantomime of office work, totally ignoring our presence. This floor was narrower than the first, roughly fifty or sixty feet across, but deeper, extending for probably more than two hundred feet. The work stations here were packed in, rather unlike the previous floors. Those had given me the impression that the office workers of the past had rather more personal space in their work areas. This floor reminded me of modern offices for lower level workers, each person having only enough space to work at the expected efficiency level, calculated with exacting precision by managers who had been educated on the details of the models and factors involved in the calculations. The layout was a bit haphazard compared to those real life offices, likely a concession to gameplay, allowing us a chance (though clearly not a good one) to sneak through without triggering the shadows to attack. I focused on one of the umbral figures.

[Hollow Men]

Which struck me as odd, as it was identifying all of them, not the individual I was looking at. He was also covered in magical patterns, forming a complete shell around his body. The patterns were complicated and fragile, with a lot of moving parts, so I figured it would take me a little while to sort out what might be going on.

“They’re more like magic items or like the barrier than like the mobs we’ve fought so far,” I said. Though they certainly lacked redundancy and any sort of self-repair or reinforcement, so maybe not so much like the barrier.

“Maybe constructs, like some kind of shadow golem?” Joe speculated, “It would explain why powers don’t really work on them. In old RPGs golems were usually immune to magic.”

I nodded my agreement. It was as good a reason as any. Strangely, I couldn’t see anything in the magical shell that might explain resistance to powers targeting them. In fact, powers could probably disrupt the shell quite easily. Everything I could figure out in the shell seemed to relate to making them behave like office workers. I looked at a desk instead, seeing a somewhat simpler shell that served much the same purpose. The shell on the desk, with it’s less complex desk behavior, allowed me to notice a detail I had missed initially.

“They’re all connected,” I said, “The magic threads through space somehow, but they’re all part of one single construct.”

Then it hit me.

“The magic on the outside keeps them contained, and acting like office workers. I think it might also be what makes them look normal in peripheral vision, but the effect is too weak to conceal them if you look directly at them. Once we do something to interact with them, however, the fragile outer shell breaks and whatever’s inside gets out.”

I thought back to my initial impression when I had entered. I looked at the Hollow Men, but not at the magical shell. I tried to unfocus my magical perception, to not pay attention to the surface level patterns, and regretted it almost immediately. Something in there was looking back at me. I stumbled back into the wall.

“Yep, there’s something fucked up in there.” I mumbled.

Getting a handle on my initial shock, and pushing down my unease, I continued to try to observe past the shell. I couldn’t really perceive more than a vague sense that there was something there, large and menacing and looking back at me. It was like trying to look at some large predator animal through multiple layers of dense wire mesh, you could see it pacing and read hostility in its body language, but the details of its features didn’t really come through. Maybe there were multiple shells, the one I could see clearly being only the first?

There was something else. Two somethings, in fact. One was a strange glimmer of light, nestled deep within the entity behind the Hollow Men. I couldn’t really tell more than that, but it definitely didn’t belong. The other was sitting on a desk, probably ninety percent of the way to the far wall, among a particularly tangled maze of desks. I didn’t have a clear line of sight to it, and it was quite far away. In all likelihood, the only reason that I had noticed it at this distance was that it was made to be seen. It was giving off potent pulses of magic at regular intervals. I pointed directly at it.

“That’s our target, I’m certain of it.”

Lindsey was a bit pale. She started at my declaration.

“Lindsey? Are you alright?” I asked.

“Yes… it was just… I can hear it,” she said, stuttering slightly.

“You can hear it? The shadow spirit thing?” I asked.

She nodded. Maybe I had been focusing too much on visualization?

“It says that humans are disgusting, and that when its… father? Creator? When its creator finds us we will all be returned to our pen like good livestock.”

“That’s pretty messed up,” Joe interjected, “So you guys ready to kill these things or what? I don’t like our odds of sneaking all the way to that spot you pointed out.”

I focused on the shadowy presence, and tried my best to listen. I thought I could hear faint whispers at the very edges of my perception, but I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t just imagining it. Oh well, something to work on later.

I nodded, and looked to our third member. She nodded as well.

“Go ahead and pull,” I said, summoning a golf club to my hand.

Joe smiled and sprung into action. His clawed hand separated a nearby shadow’s head from its body, both falling to the ground soundlessly. I saw the magical shells pop like soap bubbles, revealing something significantly more resilient looking beneath. I didn’t have time to scrutinize this new layer, as the Hollow men had, as one, turned on us. I stood near Joe, just out of clubbing range so I could swing freely, and did my best to fend off our attackers.

At first, things seemed manageable. We had our backs against the wall, near the door, Joe covered the right side and I covered the left. They weren’t mindlessly swarming forward, uncaring of their safety, the way the simple monsters on the other floors had. Their motions were jerky, seemingly from the roiling mass of shadow trying to escape from the inner shell. Every now and again one would succeed and a mass of shadow would surge out from a fissure in the shell, only for a new shell to snap around it, reforming into its original shape. It seemed that their irregular movements or impromptu pseudo-teleportation couldn’t be brought to bear against us. But their movements were also much more coordinated than the monsters on earlier floors. While a vigorous swing of my club could take off an arm or otherwise cause serious damage to a single shadow, I was not nearly as tactically minded as they were, not in the heat of combat.

One of the Hollow Men stepped forward to swing at me, but I was in a good position to strike, so I swung my club through its head with all my might. The club met some resistance, as though I were striking a body made of glued together cotton balls, and left me off-balanced as the shadow fell to the ground, unmoving. Two others moved up as the first fell, one to either side. They lashed out, aiming for my left shoulder and head respectively. My power flickered out and removed the offending claws, though I was careful to take as little as possible in order to avoid inviting the creature itself into my inventory. The shadowy material that made them up didn’t survive the transition, and instead I only managed to capture fragments of the magic making up the inner shell. Likely missing some critical component, the parts I had taken rapidly fell apart. The two who struck me moved back into defensive positions among the horde. The missing parts of their magical membrane reformed almost instantly over their stumps, leaving those two mostly intact but less dangerous. If they were bothered by having parts removed from them, they didn’t show it.

I was glad that my power had worked to protect me, but doing so had taken substantial effort. Already I was feeling a tiny bit of strain. It wasn’t much, but it would quickly add up. I wouldn’t be able to simply take all the claws of the shadows who attacked me and win the battle that way. I tried to be more defensive, and see how far we could get before Joe started to tire, but my lack of coordination and combat experience still hurt me. I also hadn’t noticed any limbs or heads spontaneously severing themselves, so I figured Lindsey’s power either didn’t work on these things, or she was still trying to sort out how to do it.

Two figures stepped up to strike me, moving up from positions which prevented me from moving away lest I leave Joe’s flank open. I struck one with an underhand swing, not entirely unlike a golf swing, cleaving its legs out from under it. The other struck me, losing its hand in the process. The one that still had legs retreated, and I clubbed the legless one on the ground to ensure there were no surprises from it. Then they did it again. Two stepped up, one sacrificing itself (this time lost its head) and one taking a clean shot at me where I couldn’t really maneuver to safety, then retreating without its hand. Then they did it again. This time, after I struck one down and was forced to exert my power to avoid injury, I noticed that the one that I took out was already missing its hands. They had sacrificed a useless unit to put me in a more vulnerable position. They were optimizing their resources to attack the weakest position! Bastards! And once they managed to get through me, they’d overrun Joe, then finish off Lindsey in the back. At this rate, we would have to retreat. Thankfully that was still an option, since we started the fight here rather than trying to thread the metaphorical needle.

Well, if they were going to mechanically throw their useless units at me, then I suppose I could just ignore their bait. The next time two stepped up, I could see how they were moving in such a way that I couldn’t easily see the shape of their hands. I ignored the one that looked easier to take down, and overreached a bit to clip the other one in the head. It went down, and the disarmed one bull rushed me. The impact didn’t impart much force, but it was as if I had suddenly been dunked into a tank of freezing water.

“Whoa! Fuck!” I gasped, not expecting that at all. My power lashed out reflexively, and tore away most of the magical shell on the shadow’s front. Pain lanced through my head at the sudden strain. Worse yet, it only intensified the feeling of utter cold that suddenly gripped me. I could hear something whispering to me from somewhere nearby, could sense the hostility in its tone, but I couldn’t make out any words. With both arms, I shoved the mangled shadow away, its shell reasserting itself as it fell to the ground, unmoving.

“You alright Will?” Joe called, not breaking his rhythm.

I reasserted my position, menacing the encroaching shadows with my club. It didn’t seem like I was seriously hurt, though the cold had left me gasping for air. The strain from using my power this way was mounting, and I was starting to struggle with it.

“Yeah, for now. I’m running out of steam though!” I called back.

A different route then. If they were going to mechanically trap me into spending some of my resources, else be hit with that cold and have it even worse, then I would spend as little as I needed to. But that also meant that it would be predictable, and I could spare attention elsewhere. If I could help Lindsey sort out the issue with her power, she could absolutely shred these things. She seemed to have cultivated a broader range of magical ‘senses’, but I almost certainly had greater ‘visual acuity’ in that respect.

So I fell into routine, letting the Hollow Men put me into a trap over and over again, one that I just wasn’t skilled enough to avoid even knowing it was coming. I let go of the frustration I felt at that and instead reached out with my senses. I felt the faint sensation of Lindsey’s power snapping out like a metaphysical whip. It seemed to grow thinner the further it got from her, until it reached our opponents. Each time, I felt there was something different about her power, though I couldn’t have said what it was. Each time, when her power met shadow, it dissolved rapidly.

The cold I felt at its touch. The barriers around this floor. This was some sort of spirit of entropy driving the Hollow Men. It sapped all powers directed at it. But it was still a process, it took time. It was able to stop Lindsey’s cuts because it only had to contend with the narrow tip of her power used at a distance. Would it be able to fully eat away a more concentrated mass of power at closer range?

“Lindsey, try it at closer range! They are eating away at the power, but a greater concentration should get through!”

She moved up next to me, and the next time the Hollow Men tried to force an error, it was against Lindsey. That was a mistake. It took her three tries to get it right, but each activation of her power took a small fraction of a second. Before they could pull back, she had severed both of their heads. From there, the remainder of the fight was fairly straightforward. Though they did not swarm mindlessly like other monsters, the Hollow Men still seemed to lack any tactical sense with respect to retreating when they were overpowered. They tried to avoid Lindsey in favor of attacking Joe or (in most cases) me, but they wouldn’t actually flee, so we switched places: Joe and I in the back, Lindsey in front of us. They couldn’t not attack, it seemed, and after another few minutes every shadow lay broken on the ground.

We were all panting and hurting by the end of it. Joe from the light physical injuries he’d sustained engaging them in melee, Lindsey from exerting her power so much in a short time, and me for repeated use of my new defensive measure, plus my unscheduled ice bath. But we had won. We beat the Hollow Men, and now all that was left was to claim our prize. Surely it would be that simple.