The computer sat inert in my inventory. There were no obvious places for physical media other than the tape reels, no ports that I recognized. The only connector on it that I could recognize at all was the severed power cable. The severed power cable. Fuck.

I looked back to the door, briefly considered going scorched earth so I could get a closer look at the power outlets, but decided against it. Who could say if doing so would wreck whatever construct was providing power? If it did, I’d have to wait for the room to respawn anyway. And a cheap shot could still probably take me out, even if I was just scouring away everything with sunfire. Not worth the risk and time, and, the more I looked at its exterior, the more I realized that I had no idea how a computer like this operated at all.

I shook my head, chagrined by my foolishness. I started down the stairs to check out the next floor. I would certainly need to build up the infrastructure inside my inventory if I wanted more complex tools for my minions. In the interim, I could at least examine this thing and see why it had felt so spiritually heavy.

A quick peek inside the device revealed something I had not expected. Instead of primitive circuit boards, there was a haze of yellow fog. Looking at it, I got the impression of complicated electronic parts. It was like the physical manifestation of the same sort of effect as the splotches which replaced written words. I focused on the haze and the impression gradually sharpened until I was certain that I was looking at tape drive components, instead of indistinct fuzz. This whole thing was just a storage drive? Damn, my estimation of old tech might have been a bit off…

Then, while I was focusing, there was a flicker. A small section of the haze was gone, replaced with actual circuit boards. Was it loading the inside of the tape drive as I watched? I hadn’t yet seen anything quite like this in Dreamshards, but I had definitely seen delayed loading and rendering in other games. This might be my first good look at the inner workings of the game. Was my inventory’s time dilation interfering with the process somehow, or was it the complexity of the object that allowed me to catch it in action?

I tried to spot the next flicker, straining my mystical and mundane senses to the absolute limit. Normally, within my inventory, I could become very nearly all-seeing. I stopped partway down the stairs, and sat down. I blocked out my external awareness as much as I was able, directing all of my attention inward. I sank more deeply into my inventory than ever before. I intended to leverage my advanced perception and this opportunity, and would not risk any distraction.

The next time it happened, I noticed two things. The process was accompanied by fine filaments of green glass or crystal, possibly the construct the game was using to represent the execution of this loading function. It had always been careful to give other functions a plausible in-game mechanism, so why should this one be any different? The second thing was that whatever it was that I was seeing seemed to appear, disappear, then return with the chunk it was loading before vanishing once more, leaving behind another section of the interior of the tape drive.

I watched as the thing performed its loading function twice more, bringing more and more of the interior of the tape drive. I entered a state of flow, noting more details with each appearance of the construct. Each time, time seemed to slow further. It was a spider, I saw, spun from almost perfectly transparent glass and the most fragile green essence I had yet seen. I couldn’t even get a feel for what qualities the essence might have.

On its next appearance, I seized the little spider, and it unraveled into nothing in an instant. But that instant was enough for me to learn a bit more. Each time it vanished, the final time after it returned with the next segment to load, it wasn’t returning to anywhere. It was self-destructing. There was a subtle difference between the other disappearances and that final one in the sequence, but I could see it now that I had laid metaphysical hands on the thing.

I could also tell that it was more complex than even Nico in his current, expanded state. And yet, the game interface did not identify the spider to me in any way. It felt like it was probably made of the same sorts of things as the other monsters I had captured, but I hadn’t gotten a good enough look to know more than that. The ancient computer components, it was now clear, were not the treasure here. The chance to potentially hijack the game’s material loading function was. I had no awareness of my body at the moment, but the sheer elation I felt at the mere prospect told me that I was smiling.

I tried to grab the spider the next few times it appeared, causing it to destroy itself in each instance. If I tried to take it on its initial appearance, it didn’t get a chance to load more material. I struggled to do so each time, as there was not much left to load. My window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

Each time I snared one, I had but a moment to make sense of what I was seeing. It seemed that the time dilation had reached its maximum, or at least the most that I could manage right now. I could sense something like the precepts that other monsters had inside the spiders, but they were far too complicated for me to puzzle out in the brief moments I had to examine them. I was left with only the brief after-images of which precepts were activating last, and a few missed captures had left me with only a tiny section of computer that still needed to be loaded. I had only a few more chances before I’d need to go find something else complex that needed loading, and I wasn’t entirely willing to trust that I’d get another chance so easily. Loading this computer could easily make loading subsequent ones much faster, or the game might load things more aggressively now that I’d shown clear intent to interfere with the function.

Grasping what might be my last chance, as soon as it appeared I transferred the spider from the inside of the computer to Nico’s office, intentionally leaving behind that final component to light up before each previous spider self-destructed. There was an awful grinding feeling as the spider and one of its internal components were separated. It disappeared, and my heart sank.

Then it reappeared, putting the second to last component in place. Another spider appeared, disappeared, and returned with the final component, destroying itself when the task was complete. The spider I had modified just sat there, between circuit boards. I moved it, as gently as I could, back into Nico’s office. Now that it was done, I relaxed. I could feel the tension draining out of my essence. It was not entirely unlike resting after an intense workout, but for my soul. I suppose that wasn’t far off what actually happened.

After a moment to catch my spiritual breath, I examined my prize. It was a tiny thing, roughly palm sized if you included the legs. It was also more complicated than any magical item or construct I had seen so far, edging out the complex magical shells surrounding the Hollow Men, but only narrowly. I couldn’t make heads or tails of much of it, but now I had time to work through it slowly. The behavior sections made the most sense to me, but even they were not easily comprehensible.

There were four obvious parts, the final one I had roughly ripped free. Obviously the part that dictated that it destroy itself, though potentially not the mechanism by which it accomplished the task. I’d need to be extremely careful to find and remove that part as well, if it existed. It was also possible that the part I had removed controlled more as well, but as that component had ended up rather mangled upon being removed, I had no easy way to check. In any case, that empty section in its behavior area was a golden opportunity. Nico wanted an assistant. Even though it didn’t have any identifier in the game system, it was pretty likely that this thing was complex enough to handle that sort of a role, if the proper precepts could be put into the empty space I had made. A query sent to Nico came back instantly:

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

[Yes. A spider secretary will suit our enterprise just fine. I shall train her at once! Our workflow will be optimal!]

Well, he sounded happy. I returned to my body, standing and stretching after sitting still for so long. Who needed a computer when I could have item spawning instead? Well… I guess I still did, but item spawning power would make getting a computer trivial, so it worked out in the end. There was every likelihood that there would be systems in place to prevent me from abusing or even using this at all, but I’d cross that bridge when the time came to burn it. For the moment, though, I would bask in the feeling of accomplishment.

I made my way down the stairs, and looked in on the nineteenth floor. The layout was different from last night. The open area of the office was much larger, with a much higher ceiling, and there was a hall leading down to some private offices. The butterflies were already present, flitting from desk to desk, and the crystal reward column was nowhere to be seen. I guess the wave defense setup had been a rare instance after all.

I left the butterflies behind, making my way down to the final floor of this section. Anxiety rose inside me as I reached out to open the door. I reminded myself that the Hollow Men had initially been in a passive (if creepy) state. So long as I didn’t do anything dumb, it probably was perfectly safe to scout this floor. Probably.

Steeling myself, I pushed open the door, and stepped through. I found myself standing in the yard of another suburban home. This one was neither shrouded in evening gloom, nor brightly illuminated, but somewhere in between. I got the impression of early evening, the sun going down but not yet setting. In the context of this floor, I was facing west, the sun both in my eyes and also glinting off numerous objects scattered all over the yard. It was not too different to the mass of clutter making up the barrier blocking the lower floors, though with an entire yard and house to spread out over. More worrying, every single random object was enchanted, and not a single one was anything simple.

I moved through the yard, careful not to disturb a single thing. The random stuff didn’t have a name or boss identifier, but without knowing what anything did, I didn’t want to risk it. I crouched down near the simplest enchantment I could see nearby, one that was on some sort of portable music player, if the attached headphones were anything to judge by. After a few minutes of inspection, I thought I had a decent estimate for what the enchantment should do… but the answer itself made me question whether or not I was missing something or misunderstanding.

The music player was enchanted to turn itself inside out if activated. It was, however, a one way transition - the effect could not be reactivated or reversed to return it to its normal state. It had nothing to do with sound at all, of that much I was totally certain. I wasn’t entirely clear what exactly it might mean for it to be turned inside out, whether it would be a destructive physical process, twist space somehow, or possibly something even stranger, but that was what the magic seemed to be made to do.

Moving on to another relatively simple enchantment, I found a basketball enchanted to measure the distance to whatever you pointed it at. Being roughly spherical, however, made pointing it complicated. Worse, it wasn’t defined anywhere in the enchantment. Worse still, there didn’t seem to be any way to actually get the information out.

Was this level just a graveyard for failed enchantments? Unlike the last boss level, where the key stood out clearly, was this level going to involve trying to find a needle in a needle stack?

I turned back toward the house, and jumped nearly a foot in the air. There, sitting on the front porch of the house, was the boss.

[The Consumer]

It was in roughly the shape of an overweight man, sitting back in a deck chair. Unlike the previous boss, this one was not an unnerving silhouette, but a soft grey blob. Even the illusion of humanity projected by its shell was different. Instead of an uncanny valley rendering of a person, this one was a caricature made by an artist who had not been paid for his work. It was barely recognizable as something that was supposed to look human, and not even in any disturbing way. It didn’t even seem to be paying attention. Sure, the magic shell was looking my way, but the spirit inside might as well have been sleeping.

As I looked deeper, I caught sight of some sort of a structure, drifting in its depths. Hadn’t I seen something similar in the last boss? I also got a sense of this one’s essence, and suddenly I understood why it wasn’t bothering to look at me. Where the last one had been the extinguishment of all light and heat and energy, this one was the inevitability of endings. It didn’t need to do anything to destroy me. I was already on that trajectory, and nothing I could do would avert that fate. It was all I could do not to lie down then and there and just wait for my demise.

I shook myself, pulling away from its corrosive influence. The worst part was that I had no idea if that was some sort of mind attack, or if it was just calling out to something deeply embedded in the human experience. It certainly hadn’t been my first brush with existential dread.

The magical shell containing the spirit lumbered to its feet before I could wander off to inspect more of the enchanted items, and started shaking its fist in my direction. A game message blooming before me.

[You! What are you doing! Get away from my things!]

I could tell that the message originated from the shell, not the spirit within. It seemed perfectly content to be hauled about, making no move to resist or assist the magical construct. I looked at the sections of the shell that were activating, and it seemed like it was primed to respond to speech. Were you supposed to talk your way through this boss? That was fine by me. Easier than digging through an ocean of complicated but useless magic items, and despite the difference in attitude, I didn’t think that fighting this spirit would be any more pleasant than fighting the last one had been.

I was just about to voice my response, when I felt an eye on me. I experienced a tearing sensation, then the floor around me was pulled away, dragged in a direction that was none of the three spatial dimensions I was familiar with. I was left in a roiling mass of clouds, sparkling with colors I had never imagined and could scarcely keep in my head the moment I looked away.

A ripple passed through, and I was suddenly standing in the yard of a different house. This one was tidy, with a little pond occupying most of the side yard. Floating in the pond were canvases, seemingly freshly painted. It was impossible to tell what any of them may have once depicted, as the paint was running, leaving blobs of color spreading through the water.

Next to the pond was an easel. Standing next to it, palette and brush in hand, was another boss. This one was different. Behavior code sparked and sputtered across its shell, activating seemingly at random and winking out without effect. The sections of the shell which looked like they controlled simple movement were being triggered directly somehow. The spirit inside appeared to have assumed direct control over its faux body.

It turned its head to look at me, and the impression of a smile began to spread across its face, soon spilling past the edges.

“Hello, human,” it said, bypassing the game interface entirely, the air itself vibrating to produce the crackling voice, “I would like to have a conversation with you.”