The Admin rubbed his face, leaning back in his chair. He couldn’t find it.

There was a glitch somewhere, and he had no idea where it was.

His first instinct, that it had something to do with the Floor 93 catgirls (the ones he’d awarded the title “bane of my existence”) hadn’t panned out. Sure, they were annoying, had far too much control over the Floor 97 kobolds, and would probably run into the players at Floor 80 in a few cycles, but this wasn’t related to them. They hadn’t been back to Floor 100.

The problem was, nothing else had been to Floor 100 either. At least, the door hadn’t registered anything passing through. The dragon on that floor hadn’t pressed any buttons. No alarms had been triggered. No movement had been detected. All systems were working properly.

So how had the button been pushed? What had pushed it?

He summoned a fresh ice coffee, glaring at the group chat box icon on his screen.

He was smarter than this. He could do it. He could figure this out alone.

With a groan, he maximized the chat box and started typing.

***

Dear Diary,

We got almost to the door of Floor 89 today. Aya’s lightning makes the sand completely liquid for a couple seconds, and then it turns into a caramel consistency. We can run across it, but it’s only marginally safer than running over straight quicksand. So she’s going to stick to making sure no R.O.U.S.s jump onto the ice.

We made it about… four fifths of the way to the door. I could see it. But a bunch of the giant rat things were following us, and they all attacked when we paused to figure out what to do. I’m pretty sure tomorrow we aren’t going to wait, and I’m just going to teleport us to the door. Kimi and Lilly want to fight through the rats, just because, but no one else wants to. Not when an easier option is available.

Although we did test to make sure I can teleport through a door as long as we all have keys. We can. It would really suck if I couldn’t, because then the giant rats would be able to gang up on us.

It’s weird that writing giant rat is somehow easier than writing R.O.U.S. It’s like my brain is used to writing in lowercase letters, and suddenly switching to capitals, even for four letters, takes me a while. Even though I capitalize the first letter of every sentence. It’s like I have to use a different set of skills to write out R.O.U.S. than to write giant rat.

Sometimes things really don’t make sense in life. And I’m not even talking about things that even thinking about for a little while make my brain hurt, like how we all got here. Or what this place even is. Like, why does it exist? Where did all the monsters come from? How did so many people arrive at the same time?

Yeah, it’s better to just not question some things. Don’t think about the first cycle, don’t think about what the raptors were before coming here, and don’t think about why writing R.O.U.S. takes so long.

Just accept that some questions won’t be answered, and move on.

Move on to funner topics. Like how we’re going to have a snowman building competition, to see who can make the best snowman. I think Mika might win, on the basis that she’s the most artistic and also knows a lot about snow. But Staab (oh yeah, Staab and Y are in the competition) was from Quebec, so he’s built a ton of snowmen.

Oh yeah, I have to see what I have to make eyes and stuff for the snowmen.

Goodnight, Dungeon!