A loud knock on the front of his desk woke William up from the rather delightful nap he had been taking. Raising his disheveled head, pushing his long blonde hair out of his face, and pushing up his spectacles, he stared up at his colleague, the head of the Dungeoneer Guild of Nasvim, Peter 'Iron Heart' Matthews. Today, the man was dressed in a suit, with a noble look about him. William put his head down on his desk again.

"Good morning, Peter. To what do I owe the pleasure?" William spoke through a yawn, before closing his eyes lazily, only opening them again when a hand slammed down on his desk once more.

"Damn it, William, it's already late in the afternoon! I told you to stop napping when on duty! How many times am I going to have to reprimand you? Your disciplinary folder already has its own space on the shelf! You're our top Dungeon Behavior Analyst, so for the love of the Gods, act like it!"

William turned his head on the desk, looking up at Peter through the hair that had once again spilled over his eyes. The view of the room behind him helped him keep his eyes slightly open, as the candles near the door were unlit, letting the room be bathed in the dim glow of the sunset, which cascaded in from an open window to the left of him. "Can't you just call me the D.B.A? That's so much easier to say." He spoke through another yawn, thinking about his next nap already. He didn't want to be awake today, since they'd ran out of coffee beans about a week ago, and there weren't any shipments coming through for another three days.

"William, if you don't get your head off that desk in the next five seconds to take a look at these reports, I'm going to confiscate the next coffee shipment that arrives, and you'll have to wait another two weeks." Peter slapped a small pile of parchment on the table, and pushed it toward him.

William forced himself to sit up straight, although he still felt drowzy.

Gods, I want coffee...

He slowly pulled the reports a bit closer to him, and started reading through them, with little interest. It was just some second floor crap.

Why did he wake me for this? There's other analysts... Hold on.

He woke up a little bit at a particular sentence. "The bodies are going missing?" He started muttering, as he tried to imagine what might prompt skeletons to pick up and move entire bodies. They didn't need to eat. They wouldn't bury them, as there's no dirt on that floor. If they just wanted their gear, they could just remove the armor and weapons there at the scene of the battle.

"How was this noticed?" He looked back up at Peter, who had an uncharacteristically grim expression clouding over his face. It was scarred heavily across the left side, burned and melted flesh having never quite healed from a fire drake that had attacked him on the thirty second floor. He stopped exploring after that, and ended up getting the position of Guild Head through a number of connections, and his own merits.

"A dungeoneering team composed of five, four newbies, and one veteran. The newbies didn't understand, but the veteran didn't want to take any chances after they found this. They're still down in the lobby." Peter reached into a bag he'd dropped at the foot of the desk, before placing a femur down on the desk, still caked in dried blood.

William was a bit surprised, but he'd seen worse than human bones before. "Inspect item." He commanded, staring intently at the bone.

Bloody Bone Club (Low-Quality): Formerly the femur of Henry Jamison. Crudely excavated from his body and converted into a makeshift weapon for use by skeletons.

"Skeletons using weapons? On the second floor? Was this an isolated incident?" William looked up at Peter, more awake now than he was a minute ago.

Dungeon Break? No, there would've been a surge in the monster populations on every floor, and we'd have caught that weeks ago. Dungeon Frenzy? No, those are too sudden. This would've been gradual. Unless...

Stolen story; please report.

"We haven't had any other reports, but if one group is using weapons, it might be safe to assume others are as well. There's still the case of the Jane Doe we found murdered on the stairs to the first floor a few days ago. She might be part of it." Peter grabbed a chair from near the wall, where it had been used to help William reach a particularly high shelf earlier. He then brought it over, and sat down in front of the desk.

"Did they see anything that would classify as a unique or named monster? Perhaps a skeleton wearing armor, or behaving differently?" William looked back down at the report, scanning it to find anything else that would help him figure out what this meant.

The first floor is a damn guide, like the dungeon itself wanted to have us knowing what we were doing before we went in. The second floor shouldn't be dangerous immediately. What the hell happened?

"No, they said that they didn't see any other skeletons, strange or otherwise. The whole area seemed to be quiet, except for that one encounter, from what they described." Peter had taken out a flask of whiskey. Normally William wouldn't let him drink in here, but he knew that when Peter was stressed, he used the drink to help numb the pain from his burn scars, in order to focus. He didn't begrudge him the boost.

Still wish I had some delicious coffee, especially now that this is showing up.

"Depending on how quiet it is in that area, based on those words, I'd say it's either a unique monster, or a named one. Possibly a leader type. It's the second damned floor for crying out loud, none of those appear before the fifth floor, and it's filled with damn slimes!" William stood up, walking over and looking through his various books, until he stopped, pulled out an old, thick tome, and dumped it on the table, before opening it while blowing large amounts of dust off the pages.

Where is it, where is it... Here!

He flipped to a page that depicted similar events to what was being described here. "First floor of the dungeons... Higher rates of spawning... No, that's not it... Sudden burst of strong monsters, no... Change in tactics, here it is."

The book held the recorded histories of many analysts before him. There was no title. It didn't need one. The thickness alone spoke for itself.

"When the dungeons change in tactics, normally it's something for every floor. However, when it changes for a particular floor, most notably the first floor, that means either the floor itself is evolving, or that a monster is influencing it. This is too similar to that kind of example, with this being the second floor. That means we're dealing with one of two things." William looked at Peter, feeling the blood drain from his face.

"If we're lucky, it's just the evolution of a single floor, and we'll have to tell the newer adventurers to be on their toes, or provide them some training until they acclimatize to the new difficulty. However, if it's a leader type monster, then unless that monster dies quickly, there's a chance for a Catastrophe to occur."

I don't think I'll need any coffee for the rest of the day...

"Remind me, what are you talking about when you say 'catastrophe?'" Peter took a drink from the flask, as his scar twitched slightly. The pain must have been flaring up. The medicine he took for that injury never did quite work.

"One hundred seventy three years ago, the kingdom of Sarillum, using a dungeon as one of the main sources of their income, had the same incident happen there. Instead of killing the monster, they used it as if it were some sort of training device, training their soldiers, and their own adventurers. Eventually, the monster escaped, after having killed enough adventurers to overpower the rest. It hid its strength, Peter, until it was ready. Then a month later, there was a Dungeon Break that proceeded to wipe out their entire kingdom in three weeks. The bordering kingdoms had to combine their collective armies, adventurers, mages, and most of their treasured artifacts to push it back. It took them thirty years to finally end that nightmare. That's why we call the eight Great Dungeons, 'Catastrophe Dungeons.'"

William was tempted to go out and force some of the top dungeoneering groups to sweep the second floor clean of everything, monster or otherwise.

Forget it, this will keep me up for the next few days...

Peter didn't move for a few moments. "I see." His voice was low, little more than a whisper. He then stood up, and walked out of the room, intending to go get his armor, and his old warhammer. This was a situation that deserved his, and everyone else's, singular, undivided attention.

About three hours later, he had managed to get a hold of four of the top ten exploration teams, before sending them out to sweep the first and second floor clean of all monsters, and had half a dozen groups of dungeoneers, ranging from new, to experienced veterans, all guarding both the stairs to the first floor, and the stairs to the third floor.

By the Gods, they'd find and exterminate the damn thing long before it could make any more changes to the dungeon's behavior. If they didn't... He didn't want to know the outcome.

William, in the meantime, had begun poring over old history books, looking for other examples of where something similar had happened, hoping to find another example of the same situation, with less than terrifying consequences. He didn't.