Dear Diary,

The first players got here today. It was the group of min-maxers. They all ordered strawberry milkshakes. They said they were doing a “speed run” so they only stayed long enough to eat and resupply.

Apparently a speed run is where you go through a dungeon as fast as possible. You don’t focus on doing it right, just fast. Which I guess could be fun, once you’ve been through a dungeon a couple dozen times. I think other people will start speed running, especially if these people make it before any other players get to us.

Which they might. They’re here like a full day earlier than we expected anyone to be down. Depending on how speedy they are, they might make it to the yetis by tonight. I know they’re at least to the slimes, because one of them respawned here after being dissolved by acid.

I hope they manage to get to the last floor tonight. As sucky as it would be for the other players, it’ll be great for us. Aya doesn’t know anything about the floors above us, other than Staab’s floor of course, so it’s a mystery to all of us. I guess if another player gets here before the min-maxers get here I could ask.

We’re all getting pretty excited about going up. The time is getting close, and we all feel the need to explore. I’ve seen all the girls staring up at the ceiling when no one is around. I can’t wait.

Oh! The marble championship! Mika got gold, I got silver, and Staab got bronze. The last race was intense. Mika set up a jump for the marbles, but remember how the marbles explode now? Yeah, she had to set the course up so that the marbles went up high enough, but not so high that they blew up when they landed. We did four laps on the course, and every time the marbles got close to the jump we all kinda backed away slightly, in case something went wrong and it all exploded.

It was super fun!

I think next cycle we might make a long-jump course, and get them to explode on purpose. That would be cool, I think. But I’d lose the marble, so it’d have to be a pretty bad marble.

Or maybe not. Maybe a good but not great marble? Like, the marble that came in tenth in the prelims. A marble that can hold its own in a race, but couldn’t quite win.

I wonder what the girls- the other racers now that we’ve got two guys… I wonder what their tactics will be. If they’ll take the best racers knowing they’ll lose them. Or if they’ll take the worst racers so they aren’t losing anything when they explode. Or maybe they’ll choose at random, like some kind of horrible lottery.

Or maybe, just maybe, they won’t overthink it because they’re just marbles which don’t actually have feelings or thoughts and don’t care about racing. Doubtful, but possible.

Who knows.

Goodnight, Dungeon!