“That,” I said, pointing to the crystal column, “is the most obvious trap I have ever seen.”

“What are you thinking?” asked Joe, “Something like a mimic? Crystal grows super fast to engulf you?”

“Could be,” I said, “I didn’t actually have anything in mind, just that there are no monsters anywhere, nowhere obvious for them to hide, and in the middle there is obvious bait.”

“Who built this place?” asked Alco, awe in his tone, “It is much too stable and consistent to be from dream or chaos alone.”

“We got a message from some unknown source, leading us here,” I said, “Whoever sent that message made this for us.”

“For you?” he asked.

“For us,” I confirmed. The lore in the game probably had their ‘great sorceress’ as the architect of all this. Better take charge before we start to get bogged down.

“You,” I pointed to Alco, “go with Joe, see if there are monsters hiding somewhere, maybe mimics like Joe said. Stick mainly to the outer area, don’t get too close to the crystal column.”

“You,” I pointed to Kyber, “we’ll follow them, looking for valuables in the desks.”

“And me?” asked Lindsey.

“Can you keep watch? If something big pops up just shout a warning or slice in half. Also let us know if you see anything magical that I miss.”

Hearing no objections, we got to work. Joe opened drawers, touched random things, and just generally tried to provoke any mimics that might be hiding under the guise of office supplies. I followed after, scooping up ink and other office supplies to replenish what had been destroyed. I didn’t spot anything magical anywhere, except the crystal in the middle.

After finding them to be somewhat less antiquated, ballpoint pens appearing more frequently among other things, I diligently collected the office supplies laying around in easy reach. Couldn’t have my assistant working with subpar materials. I instructed Nico to transcribe the notes he had been scratching into paper using proper ink, so that I could read them directly if there was a need. Unfortunately, there was nothing else of note to be found. No hidden compartments in the desks and file cabinets, no magical traps, no mimics, no clues written on the whiteboard (which I also appropriated, markers and all).

Unwilling to drag this out, and still a bit annoyed at how much we had needed to screw around with NPCs tonight, I approached the gleaming column in the center. I got within about ten feet of it before noticing the trigger. Something would happen if someone got a step or two closer, crossing a faint but not particularly well hidden line. I stopped and called out a warning about the trigger, then crouched down and focused on what I could see of the column from here.

The first thing that stood out, which I had seen hints of from farther away, was that the magic was clearly broken into five segments, all seeming largely similar. It was way too complicated for me to figure out any details from this far away, but I could definitely guess at parts. There seemed to be a bunch of complicated stuff, all ultimately leading to two final results: self-destruction, or self-destruction which also destroyed what was contained within. The other major fact that I could determine was that the radial trigger didn’t connect to either of those two results, at least not in any way that I could see. It did something else.

“This might not be a trap. Maybe a puzzle room or rare spawn treasure room or something. Joe, do we have any other cases of rooms showing up in different variations?”

“We’ve had at least one report of the monsters being different on day two, and I think a few reports of the office layout showing up differently between day one and two. What do you think we are dealing with here?”

I took a moment to consider my response. We probably wouldn’t destroy the rewards just by approaching, and there weren’t any obvious clues anywhere.

“Probably a puzzle or something. The process starts when we get close to the column, but I don’t know what it will be. Our response to whatever happens will determine if we get the rewards, or if they get vaporized.”

“Well, let’s get on with it,” Joe said, taking a few giant strides toward the crystal. As soon as he crossed the invisible line, a message bloomed into my awareness.

[Defend the Crystal! Wave 1/5 begins in 0:30.]

The three of us players stiffened at the announcement, the NPCs didn’t react immediately, but looked at us warily. I guess they didn’t get game messages.

As the thirty seconds ticked down, I cast my eyes about the office floor again, trying to see where the enemies might come from. Under the desks? Would they just spawn at the edges in plain view?

The seconds ticked by, and I just couldn’t see anything. Not physically, and there was nothing magical happening at the edges. Embarrassingly, it took until the timer reached ten seconds that I set my sights on the windows. Huge sheets of tinted glass, around us on three sides.

“The windows!” I shouted, “Knock over some of the desks for barricades, see if we can limit the approach!”

“What is happening?” cried Alco, as the timer struck zero.

“Too late,” I said, as the first meaty clunk sounded.

[Defend the Crystal! There are 27 enemies remaining in this wave.]

“Ok, forget that. We have twenty-seven incoming. You!” I address the NPCs, “how many bolts do you have for those crossbows?”

“Fifty,” they both responded right away.

“Ok, don’t take any shots except to save your life, there will be more enemies coming later. Try to stay behind us.”

Another meaty impact, followed by the sound of shattering glass drew my eyes. I got my first look at what we were dealing with. It was an enormous insect, huge bulbous compound eyes sticking out of the sides of its head, gleaming neon yellow in the light. There were clumps of black fur around the body, and a long tube that curled down into a spiral. Six black chitinous limbs dragged its body inside the office through the shattered window, and once it was inside flapped its wings, revealing vast shimmering yellow sails edged in black.

[Incinerate!] Joe shouted, directing his beam at the first invader. Its wings instantly turned to ash, though the five foot long insect took nearly a second to stop crawling towards us.

“Are we fighting giant butterflies?” Joe laughed, scanning around for more targets to cook.

More impacts, and more glass shattering heralded the arrival of more monstrous lepidopterans. Now that Joe had pointed it out, I could see that they were definitely butterflies, though the massive proportions really pushed them out of happy friendly territory and squarely into the realm of horror movies.

We had two breaches opposite the entrance to the floor, and one to the right. Joe was covering the right, so Lindsey and I moved to take out the insects pulling themselves inside from the other two broken windows. She was carving up two as I considered what I could do safely. I couldn’t use any molten sun energy for fear of blinding my allies. I guess I’d have to just be a shorter range, bargain bin version of Lindsey for this encounter. As I moved towards another enemy, Nico spoke up.

[I want one.]

Ok, I guess that works too. I eyed another bug, one in the process of dragging itself onto the office floor. I was reluctant to try that though, as the butterflies were somewhat larger than Nico, who had knocked me on my ass to capture willingly. I had grown by leaps and bounds since then, but the thought of trying to capture one still brought up feelings of dread.

My internal conflict had given the monster enough of an opening to lunge toward me, its weird coiled mouthparts unfurling to reveal hooks and blades across its length. It whipped its weaponized proboscis toward my face, my power flashing out at the last moment to tear away the offending appendage. I was able to center myself as the creature flinched back in pain, and found that the defensive use of my power against these cost me almost nothing. Unlike against the Hollow Men, I probably could just face tank these and come out on top.

The wounded butterfly surging past me, instead of toward me, catching me completely by surprise. Damn it! Survival wasn’t the goal here. I lunged forward and removed the back half of the creature, as much as I could get by lashing out blindly. That put a stop to its advance, but I could hear more clicking of chitin on glass, signaling the arrival of more foes.

I dumped all the butterfly parts I had collected into the sun. Might as well recycle the essence or experience or whatever it was they were made of. It looked like either these were lacking some sort of magical weight that the Hollow Men and the fragments of their magical shells possessed, or my power was expanding even more than I had thought. Could be both. It was so hard to tell without a static bar to measure against.

The next butterfly that rushed me with its mouthparts, I ducked under and made contact with its carapace. It was still only the work of a moment, but I did need more focus for what I was about to try. I wrapped my power completely around the giant butterfly, and claimed the entire thing for my own.

I experienced what could charitably be called an abbreviated version of what happened with Nico. The butterfly was a tiny spark before me, neither willful nor complex. It transmitted its one and only precept, [Attack Crystal], as if it were a shield.

Becoming mine would inevitably make this impossible, so I simply crushed whatever mental component contained that command. It was the only part of this process that took any effort at all, and it was minimal. The result was a completely catatonic butterfly drifting in my void. I wasn’t sure I could fix what I had just done, or if there was a more elegant way to do it, but in the middle of a fight wasn’t the time to figure that out. Nico, though, had started life as a boss monster. I’d bet that he had some tools, somewhere in that tangle of essence that made him up, to fix and adjust minions.

[Yes.]

Good enough for me. Bringing my attention back to the outside world, I found that another butterfly was already clawing its way through the hole. Worse, Lindsey was no longer covering the other broken window. I moved back to try to cover both, collecting another butterfly trying to rush past me as I did. Grabbing the second one was much quicker and smoother now that I had done it once. I looked back and saw the NPCs standing around looking uncomfortable near the column, their crossbows loaded and ready. Lindsey was on the left side of the room, covering another window which had apparently been broken while I had been subjugating my first butterfly. Capturing them cost me more essence, so hopefully there would be some time between waves, or I’d need to be a bit more conservative with how many I grab.

It was difficult, trying to cover two windows. I could take the monsters out quickly, but I had to physically get a hand on them first. When a third window was broken on this side, I had to fall back to the column.

That, it turned out, was a mistake. Once they had space to properly situate themselves inside the office, the monstrous bugs stopped crawling, and started flying. Before I could do anything about it, two butterflies whipped past my position. I threw out my hand and captured one, but the other was already gone as I reached with my other hand.

There was a click and a whistle, and the creature dropped to the floor, a bolt in its eye. Kyber had fired from the hip. He met my eyes with one of his heads.

“Numbers,” was all he said. I may have somewhat underestimated his power. I nodded my appreciation and turned back to the wall I was supposed to be covering. Another one had made it inside, and was getting ready to launch itself towards us.

“Take care of that one too,” I said, and ran back toward the entrance.

I scooped up desks, cubicle walls, cabinets, anything I could. The bugs had to maneuver around the cubicles, unable to fly smoothly over them. We needed those barricades after all. I ran back to find an additional body next to the first that our reptilian sharpshooter had bagged, and there didn’t seem to be any more coming in through that side. I checked the status of our objective, finding it hovering just within mental reach.

[Defend the Crystal! There are 2 enemies remaining in this wave.]

Looking around, I found the final two insects rapidly being reduced to fractions of insects by Lindsey. The carpet on her side was sodden with pale green ichor. Joe’s side, on the other hand, was charred beyond recognition, and he had set fire to a few of the cubicles over there.

[Defend the Crystal! Wave 2/5 begins in 1:30.]

The top part of the crystal crumbled just as we received this new message, releasing three golden boxes.

“That’s not a lot of time. Kyber, what is the radius of a barrier that we can make with all this stuff?” I asked, hoping that his language skills were sufficient for working under pressure.

“To that desk,” he said, pointing to show which, “more precise is not good now, yes?”

“Yes, great, thank you,” I said, as I ran around soaking up everything that wasn’t nailed down except for the desk that he had indicated. I dumped debris in a rough circle, leaving the sector toward the entrance clear. I wanted to leave an opening so I could easily go out and collect a few more, and also keep some materials for where Joe inevitably burned away parts of the barricade. I finished shortly after the countdown had finished, but before any of the incoming insects could intercept me.

[Defend the Crystal! There are 81 enemies remaining in this wave.]

This might get tricky…

The second wave actually went much more smoothly than the first. With the added barriers, they had to crawl over them to reach the center, which prevented any from rushing the crystal. Joe was scorching a full 120 degrees by sweeping his heat ray back and forth, instantly vaporizing wings and gradually cooking the crawling survivors. Lindsey covered a somewhat smaller sector. She was quicker to kill them, once they got close, but was likewise trying to clip wings to avoid being rushed by fliers.

I was relegated to the smallest sector, and I mostly let them rush me in order to make live captures. The second wave had some searing orange sections on their wings and were marginally larger, but didn’t require noticeably greater effort on my part to involuntarily recruit.

The NPCs didn’t need to fire at all during the second wave. They stood around awkwardly, watching the slaughter. And me, they watched me too. Damn utility powers.

The third wave introduced butterflies which were slightly larger still, with some bronze patches added to their increasingly ornate wings. There were also nearly two hundred of them. They were very slightly harder to capture for me, and no harder for the others to ground. Lindsey ended up finishing off more, as Joe had to retreat and set the barricade alight to deal with the larger wave size and longer cooking time. Near the end of the wave, though, Joe leveled again. This had happened a few times throughout the fight, and I had lost track of what level he was at the moment, but apparently this one came with another increase in power, as his heat ray had doubled in visible brightness. We mopped up the wave pretty easily after that.

[Defend the Crystal! There are 352 enemies remaining in this wave.]

Upon seeing the first enemy in this wave, it became clear that this might be as far as we could go.

[Neon Anartia Jatrophae]

A whole wave of floor bosses, it looked like. They were not slightly larger than the previous wave’s enemies, but instead easily double the length. They couldn’t flap their wings at all, which were even more elaborate, featuring black spots. For all their size, they burned just the same. Soon, though, we were faced with two, then five, then twenty at once.

I tried to capture one whole, and found that crushing its precept kicked back like being hit by a truck. Whatever metaphysical weight the previous waves were lacking, these were clearly not. I decided not to go for a second one. Nico would have to be content with one, plus the pile of smaller ones I had built up over previous waves.

This would not be so easy. We probably needed to go all out. I took a look at our loot pile so far. We had freed a small pile of golden boxes, and a single glass one. This wave, if I was reading the segments of the crystal correctly, would reward us with another gold and two more glass. The final wave had just the single large glass box.

“You two, if you have a clear shot, take it,” I instructed the NPCs, then turned to the others, “Joe, set the whole barrier on fire, and use stoke flames. If we can’t get past this wave, no use saving resources for the fifth.”

Lindsey pulled back into the circle, bisecting heads when a car sized butterfly managed to crawl too close. I embraced the role of tank, and found that I could still take hits from these heavier insects, my power taking the sections of carapace which would have made contact with me. The cost was steeper than on the first wave, but I estimated that I would be able to hold out to the end, even with hundreds more bugs to go.

After the second massive insect that Kyber killed with a single bolt, I decided that a change of plans was in order, “Alco, give all your bolts to Kyber.”

He looked somewhat hurt by the order, but complied. His marksmanship was good, but it wasn’t supernaturally good, which could make the difference here.

While I was giving orders, I felt my power snap out in defense. Apparently I had hammered that reflex into the power itself, or something. I turned in time to see a second strike incoming, felt my power flash, and then there was pain.

I screamed and lashed out at whatever was in front of me, releasing a burst of solar energy and reducing the offending bug to goo. I took a moment to try to sort out what exactly had happened.

[Your power removed much of the attacking limb, but not all. The attacker followed through with partial limb.]

My reflexive defense had only taken away part of the threat. Fuck, that hurt. My right arm hung limp, the shoulder on that side totally destroyed. How was I even standing with an injury like that? I noticed that I was bleeding suspiciously metallic looking blood, somewhat similar to the metallic look of my star… Well, hopefully my idiocy had only gotten me injured, and that my outburst hadn’t blinded any of my allies. I pulled back further from the burning perimeter.

Unfortunately, it looked like Lindsey was suddenly having trouble targeting accurately. Joe wouldn’t be able to hold them back on his own. He could strip wings instantly, but it still took him several seconds to finish each one off.

[Defend the Crystal! There are 166 enemies remaining in this wave.]

Damn it, we had made it more than halfway.

“Joe, fall back. We can’t hold any longer!”

I stored all the golden boxes, finding there to be ten in total. Lindsey had made her way near me, so I guided her to the glass box. Joe had opened the last one, and it seemed fair to give her this one, since it certainly wasn’t her that messed up this wave. The box disappeared as soon as she touched it, leaving her holding a dark blue rock of some sort. I helped her back toward the entrance, where we turned to watch the butterflies swarm toward the now undefended crystal.

As soon as one reached it, it lashed out. There was a sudden stillness, and all the living butterflies were gone, as was the second to last segment of crystal.

[Defend the Crystal! Wave 5/5 begins in 1:30.]

Well that was interesting. We would at least get to see the floor boss. We waited out the timer, Joe soaking up glowing experience shards from the ongoing disintegration of the mountain of corpses. He leveled once more, in a burst of fiery essence, and seemed surprised by what he saw on his interface.

“Level eight gives a passive. I think I’m going to have to look at these later… some of them are really out there.”

As he said this, the timer finally reached zero, and the sky outside the office darkened.

[Defend the Crystal! There is 1 enemy remaining in this wave.]

There was a terrible cracking sound, and a massive chunk of the ceiling was ripped away, exposing this floor to the sky.

[Neon Anartia Jatrophae Gargantua]

It was almost identical to the ones from the wave before, except that its wingspan was easily greater than a hundred feet. It was so massive that you could hardly tell it was a butterfly at all. All you saw were the huge dome eyes, made of hundreds and hundreds of individual cells, the great patches of neon color behind it, the enormous spiny proboscis, the massive segmented black legs.

Its proboscis shot forward, striking the crystal and ending the final wave. There was that strange stillness again, and the sky was suddenly clear, no butterfly blotting out the sun.

“Let’s go through loot tomorrow, my interface says I’ve got about ten minutes left before I wake up,” Joe said.

“Can you find your way back?” I asked, turning to our NPCs. Alco seemed a little shell shocked, but one of Kyber’s heads nodded, the other looking back towards where the boss disappeared. He pushed open the door leading back to the stairs, and pulled his stunned companion along with him.

Lindsey handed me the fist sized blue rock. It turned out to be sort of spongy in my hand. “I do not want this,” she said, “I suspect that the game is making fun of me.”

She was still blinking spots out of her vision, but apparently she could see well enough to trigger the label on this item. I looked down and took a look at what had annoyed her.

PRIMORDIAL SOUL TRUFFLE

This fungus grows easily in spirit and material both. Its mycelia enter into a symbiotic relationship with spirits, providing various benefits in exchange for essence. This fruiting body is prized both for its ability to spread the fungus, as well as for its use in culinary sorcery.

I guess she didn’t want soul fungus? I didn’t blame her. I stored it away to deal with later. I was still a little disappointed that we couldn’t secure that huge reward box, but we would need a bigger and better geared team to even have a chance. These lower floors were no joke. Maybe when the second wave of keys went out, we’d get the people we needed.