Zero Noir was not having a very good day. He had been having a great time up till now, fully enjoying the powers he had and the dungeon that he managed, but something had happened recently that had forced him out of his comfort zone. He was cursing himself under his mechanical breath, berating himself for not sending a representative to that meeting that had occurred a mere two days prior. Of course, the fact remained that he had ignored the call to send anything to that meeting, but that was a different issue altogether.

He was scrambling, and had been for some time, as he had been given a task that needed to be completed as fast as possible, but without cutting corners or neglecting to add polish. He had a rough idea of what he could make that would satisfy the demands that he had been given, and he had to admit that he had been thinking of making something akin to what was required for quite a while now. However, up until this point he had always found something to divert his attention and efforts from this project.

Now, however, he had been forced to start and then complete it, and more than that, he was on a timetable. The initial stage had been completed, but that would not be nearly enough for what was to come tomorrow. Thankfully, his fully mechanical body allowed him to process things at a much faster rate, allowing him to immediately set to work on the other parts of the work that he had been assigned.

And what was that work, you ask? Well, as had been shown when Kain first entered the dungeon to conquer it, a simple series of layers with increasing difficulty would not cut it in terms of allowing either Kain or Alexis to fully rampage. Hell, back then Kain wasn’t even remotely as powerful as he was now, so a standard dungeon structure would not be nearly enough to handle one of the two monarchs, let alone both at once.

As a result, Zero Noir had begun construction of a new layer in the dungeon, one specifically designed for one singular purpose. This layer was, in its current state, utterly empty and completely devoid of any and all features. It was a massive, and I do mean massive empty space with nothing in it but pure white in all directions. It was a place that could and would shift and change to be whatever terrain was needed, be it urban sprawl, dense jungle, frozen or muddy tundra, plains of pure ice and snow, or even something straight out of a work of fiction.

This was to be his crowning achievement thus far, a place that could emulate any environment and/or force that could be thought of. With it nearly complete, he had no other choice but to name it something that would both describe it, but also that would be aloof and somewhat mysterious. Unfortunately for Zero Noir and anyone else who heard the name, it would quickly be apparent that Zero Noir had an absolutely terrible ability to name anything creatively.

This was how the infamous ‘White Room’ was born, and soon after it would gain a reputation that was well earned. For while it could emulate nearly any environment or gathering of being within said environment, it had a secondary, or perhaps tertiary purpose beyond mere emulation. After all, there were a lot of ways to torture a sentient being that thrives on stimulus, and one of the worst, most sanity-destroying ways is to lock them in an empty, featureless, pure white room with nothing but their own thoughts and words as comfort.

Eventually, the White Room would be known far and wide, in fear and adoration, both for the massive amounts of stimulation that it could create, as well as the ways it could be used to torture people with a complete lack of stimuli.

…

The White Room was essentially complete right now, and all that was needed was a series of tests. Zero Noir flipped between various standard settings, switching the empty, vacant space into a scene straight out of Ruler of the Golden Finger Bands (please don’t sue, Tolkien Estate!) and then immediately after to an urban sprawl filled with wandering Infected Humans. After that, the White Room played out an exact copy of the opening moments of a certain Lake-bound Slasher’s first outing while wearing a Hockey Mask before switching to showing the final scene from Xenomorph vs. Yautja: Requiem and then to a last desperate battle between some humans and a bunch of bestiality-loving blue alien cat people over the resources of the particular word that they were fighting on.

Scenes from countless different fictions and other scenarios followed each other in a seemingly endless conga line, playing out hypothetical situation after hypothetical situation, environment after environment, until Zero Noir was satisfied that his work was up to his standards. He finished the last shift and rest the White Room back to its natural, empty state and checked the clock, only to discover that he was nearly a half minute away from the deadline. He had inadvertently cut it rather close and was only able to avoid the wrath of Kain and Alexis by around thirty seconds.

When Kain and Alexis did arrive not even a second after their scheduled time of arrival, Zero Noir thanked his lucky stars for the fact that he would occasionally become hyper-focused on a certain task, ignoring and not even acknowledging anything else for the entire time. That was one of the good things about having a mechanical body; it meant that you didn’t need to waste time with things like food, drink, sleep, restroom breaks, and such while you were on a task.

Of course, he now had to do something he absolutely despised doing, and that was being around other people. There was a reason he rarely interacted with anyone outside of a handful of times, and it was not that he was antisocial. Rather, he was an Asocial Introvert, and that meant that he found himself overly stressed when having to be out and about or when he had to be around people at all. Still, he had a job to do, and the sooner he finished it the sooner he could get back to watching his shows and reading his books.

He put on a decent presentation for his masters, showing them a number of simulated situations for them to muck about in, and the two seemed absolutely ecstatic with every feature that was shown off. This, surprisingly, made Zero Noir feel a bit happy. He wasn’t used to receiving such honest and potent praise, even when back on Earth, and although the Asocial Introvert didn’t much care for being around people, he did get a rise out of having such praise heaped upon him.

Eventually, the two monarchs requested for a certain simulation to be brought up, and Zero Noir obliged. He watched the two descend into the White Room, readying themselves to face the trial ahead, and as they did, Zero Noir got an idea. They didn’t need to know what his idea was just yet, and they would almost certainly appreciate it after the fact, and so Zero Noir set up a few devices to record what was about to happen, sat himself down, and then got angry at the fact that, as a machine, he couldn’t eat any popcorn.

This would be one hell of a show.