The threshold for the Gatekeeper’s realm on the third floor is a two-meter-wide archway inscribed with some sort of figures in motion, an explosion of abstract art that is completely lost on me. It’s tall enough that Amber passes through it without any trouble, and about two seconds later I’m following her, stepping through the rippling, liquid blackness.

The first thing I notice upon arriving on the other side is grass underfoot, bright and sunny in a way I’ve never before seen in person. I blink for a few moments, doing my best to scan the surroundings; Amber is making some sort of hand gesture, but awkwardly I have no idea what it means, so she has to hiss “Stand down” at me out loud before I get her point.

I dismiss the mix of Motes and smart-orbs that I started forming upon walking through the gate. We’re not looking at a fight. We’re looking at something much more peculiar.

A number of people have seated themselves on a blanket, eating a meal together.

None of the three are looking our way just at the moment, and around them on all sides is glorious grass, useless grass, grass like I hadn’t seen in more than thirty years. It’s not true that Worldships don’t have enough space or enough resources to have parks, and it’s especially not true that we don’t expend resources on anything that is frivolous. I mean, I guess if you define the enrichment of children and tending to the emotional need for open spaces and greenery as a non-frivolous need, okay, but the grounders and the statics say a lot of things about the Worldships, and most days it felt like all of it was vicious, vile lies.

As the group of people talks to each other, I take a moment to examine them to see what I might be able to discern about them before we get started.

The largest of them seems to be bestial in nature; if I had to guess, I would say that she’s female, but with the fur and seeing her mostly from behind, I can’t be sure that’s correct. To her right is a person who looked to be a young adult, maybe around my own height, though I can’t say for sure because they’re still seated. The last one is substantially shorter than the other two, but she appears to be quite physically fit, to say the least. Her musculature is… well, it might be a good thing this doesn’t seem to be a combative challenge, because it would give even Amber’s a run for her money.

Between the bestial woman—how does her tail work?—and the abundance of plant life, I lose my bearings for about a decasecond.

Once I come to grips with the peculiarity of the situations, I start to deliberately focus on everything other than the other people as a means of trying to see what I can learn about the situation without talking to them. But there’s only so long that I can stare at trees and grass, no matter how rare of a sight they normally are, and eventually, my eyes track back around to the trio on their blanket.

“Adam?” Amber’s voice is quiet. “Is this… unexpected?”

“I… I guess.” I try to keep the panic out of my voice, in the hopes that keeping the panic out of my voice will help keep the panic out of my mind. “I’d rather the puzzles, or a fight, really. I’m not much for…” I let my words linger as I extend my hand toward the unknown people before me.

For a moment I think we’re being ignored, but almost as if on demand, the male figure stands up and turns around.

Now that I have a better view of him I see that he doesn’t appear to be unhealthy in any way, but he seems to be lacking in any real degree of fitness. In fact, in terms of physical prowess, I would assume he is the least likely of the three to prove a threat if there is any physical altercation.

Unfortunately, this is a social challenge, so I doubt that will be the situation.

Well, there’s always an opportunity for things to go horribly wrong. So there’s that to brighten things up.

“About time you got here. I was starting to wonder if the guests were ever going to show up,” the man says with his attention upon us. “Or wait, are we the guests? Eh. Either way, welcome. I got food and drink for everyone; have a seat.”

As I go to respond, Amber holds me back and moves slightly in front of me, “His tone and demeanor seem friendly, but the fact his words are foreign is a concern.”

It takes a couple of seconds for me to realize what she is saying. If she is unable to understand him, but I am able to, he must not be speaking a language that is commonly used around here. Could he be speaking some ancient dead language that Omniglot is able to translate, or is this something I should be worried about even more? Maybe some sort of spell is being cast, but I didn’t notice any mana moving around; and there aren’t any runic formations, not so much as a single glyph.

“What are we dealing with here?”

“I already explained to you that since there was a puzzle and a fight on your first two floors, the third would be a social challenge.

“The problem,” Amber continued without missing a beat, “is that they shouldn’t be moving yet. We are supposed to be given a little bit of time to adjust to the surroundings and to have a chance to blend in before the events start.”

“How long of a delay is there normally?” I ask, pondering the implications of the change. “Or is it possible that someone else is already here and we have joined their challenge?”

“It shouldn’t be possible,” she responds quickly, “But I suppose there are theoretically anomalies that could make it possible, albeit with statistically insignificant odds.”

“Look, this isn’t a social challenge,” the strange young man announced. “Sunflower just wanted to have us visit for this. I mean, I’m the main character, after all, so I have to show up if we’re doing this. The name’s Victor Atkins.”

Amber leans her head in and stares at him, “Why am I now able to understand you?”

“Ah. Kralliyen,” the man says while pointing towards the bestial woman, “was likely speaking her native tongue, and I must have been speaking in her language as a result.”

He then points to the other woman, “Or maybe Zelathyn here was speaking dwarven instead. I would prefer they only speak in the common tongue, but, well, I don’t even know when I’m speaking a different language. It has its uses but it also has some annoyances. Mostly people thinking I’m being rude for speaking a language around them that they don’t understand.

“Luckily, plot is making both of our common languages the same for the sake of this story.”

I can’t help but stare at the man.

This Victor seems to have no ill will against us, but he is speaking about things I’m unsure of. Mostly in regards to this sunflower that he mentioned. Was this going to be a gardening challenge?

Of course I’m mostly focused on the fact that he knew the term social challenge. It’s something that he shouldn’t know or I’m sure Amber would have mentioned to me earlier that the imprints we might run into are capable of meta-awareness.

“Look, I understand you’re worried. I mean, it’s how Pastafarian designed you. Or maybe Sunflower’s taking some liberties.”

“Pastafarian?” The bestial woman stands up, joining the conversation. “Sounds like he would do better as a chef instead of a writer.”

“You’re assuming that the writer is a man,” the shorter woman says, joining the conversation. “It might be a woman for all we know. It’s just like the conversation we had about Sunflower. Since none of us can ever meet the writers who create us, we can’t know for sure anything about them except what they program into us. Although I do think the name does sound more masculine.”

“We had this argument about what we do and don’t know and what we only think we do and don't know. We don’t need to drag it into yet another godforsaken isekai.”

I have to speak up. Their conversation is going away from us like a ship through a wormhole and I can’t allow that to happen in case there is something related to this challenge I might be missing.

“Alright, so it’s obvious that you all know that this is a social challenge in a dungeon,” I say, hoping that I’m right; otherwise I have made quite the faux pas, “Can you just tell us how to get past this challenge?”

Letting out a slight sigh, the man named Victor moved back to the blanket, “Just have a seat and talk with us, I guess. It’s obvious that you don’t know you’re fake so you won’t follow the script. I wonder if life would be better if I didn’t know I was just a character like you do. Oh and don’t bother introducing yourselves; I already got your names from the script.

“Adam and Amber,” he says with worrisome matter-of-factness. “Although the former likes to pretend that his middle name is short for Leviathan right? There was a joke about that in the original script that we are so far past it’s pointless to think about.”

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I turn my attention to Amber and lower my voice, “Do Temples normally have the social things know about us ahead of time?”

Amber shakes her head lightly as she replies, “I have never heard of that being the case, and the fact it is the case greatly worries me. Either this Temple has a way to gather information about us or there is something much more troublesome going on.”

“Would you guys like to join us? I do have a house we could go into if you like, but its furnishing is weird as it's part of the walls and flooring and just gets pulled out. It had to work like that otherwise it wouldn’t fit into one card.”

Surely the man didn’t mean that he could just conjure up an entire building as if it was nothing. Even stretching the logistics of it I couldn’t see that being possible with the resources available, yet the man did make the comment.

“What do you mean by that?” I hear myself ask. “Does your card shift the house out of this dimension and into a parallel one then bring it back later?

“Ah no. Nothing like that. The house is just in the card and I take it out and put it where I want.”

The man takes out the card and I can’t help but tense up while noticing as Amber does the same. Not a good sign, but not a bad one either as they haven’t made any obviously malicious actions. They just know things that they shouldn’t and speak in ways that no normal person would.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” the dwarven woman says, forcing me to split focus between the two of them. “If you aren’t aware that you’re not real it’s obvious that you won’t remember any of this. Either that or you’ll just go through the usual it was all a dream trope or something similar. Although if pasta whatever is a good writer that could still be fun, despite it being a touch predictable.”

The bestial woman smiled baring her teeth, “If you don’t want to relax and talk, I could always rip into your flesh instead. Not like it would kill you since we’re just part of a crossover event.”

“No fighting,” the young man bellowed, “This is supposed to be silly and fun and such so no bloodshed, or I won’t let you train me anymore.”

The bestial woman snorted, “Sunflower would decide that not you.”

“Be that as it may, stop it,” the young man said while walking around before stopping, “This place should be big and flat enough.”

Then with the card raised up my visor started to examine the card, but my attention was diverted away from the information it was started to gather as something else attracted my attention.

A two story building had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and there was nothing to indicate that any magic had been cast. There was no rise in mana, there were no elemental essences lingering anywhere and most importantly there was no apparent stress placed upon the young man named Victor.

“We can’t go in there,” Amber whispered into my ear, “It’s probably a trap. Considering all the oddities already I think it better we stay on the cautious side for the moment”

I couldn’t think of anything to argue with her, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure if she was right. This certainly screamed trap but at the same time it was as if someone was offering me an escape pod on a ship that might survive a crash, but might be ripped apart and launch me into the void of space to die quickly, but excruciatingly.

Besides we have already dealt with the floor that had focused on such things.

That said there’s no reason to go in.

“We don’t need to go inside. I’m fine with staying here and enjoying the sun and grass.”

“Ah well that’s fine too,” without even turning to look at the building, the man known as Victor started to put the card back into his pouch just as the building vanished from sight, “I just thought I’d offer.”

Even if this was a social challenge there had to be some pattern, puzzle, or logic that was being overlooked.

All this talk about crossovers, writers, and scripts was almost as if he was trying to create a battle simulation program or a career training video. Perhaps if I acted like that was all perfectly fine something would shift within the programming and put it back on track since this scenario was, hopefully, going against its design.

“You seem to suggest that all of this is fake. That Amber and I are not really here or something like that.”

“Well yes and no,” the short woman known as Zelathyn said with a smile, “See right now you are here, but we aren’t really sure when right now is. We are just words on a screen or some paper or whatever the person reading all this is using. At the time of this all happening when it is intended it’s probably a screen unless someone wants to print it out and read it that way.

“I suppose it’s also possible that they could be using text to voice functions, but still that's beside the point. We all only exist when people are seeing, hearing, reading, and thinking about us. That’s true for all of us. We only started to exist because of Sunflower and you only started to exist because of Pastafarian, and we will only get to have more life if it is given to us by our respective authors.”

I once heard someone say that the best way to destroy the abilities of someone who follows every rule, knows every tactic, and what the expected reactions are is to avoid everything that they could expect. To leave one's actions to the metaphorical roll of a die. Perhaps that is what this challenge is about: to make one question their own sanity or to get them to think we have broken when we haven’t.

Perhaps to see past it and act on it without truly becoming a part of it is the way to escape.

As I have no better idea and Amber isn’t speaking up anymore, I give it a shot.

“So,” I begin hoping that I sound as confident as the social oddities have so far, “you said there was a script about me? How was it supposed to go?”

The bestial woman growls a bit, “So now you believe us?”

“Well I’m not sure,” I start as Amber puts a hand on my shoulder that I shrug off. I can’t let myself get distracted or I’ll lose focus. “What you are saying has a certain level of logic to it. At the same time, however, there are many layers of illogicality to it. I’m just curious what the story that this crossover that you talked about was going to be.”

Suddenly a scroll of paper appears in the man's hand that he starts to unfurl.

“I’d have rather had a stack of papers instead of a scroll, but I can only store one thing per card. Luckily I just got a fourth one, which is helpful. I have a sleep spell stored in here though since the script did say we should put you to sleep to open up the dream trope in case Pastafarian wanted to go that route next chapter.

“Ah anyway. Before I get too off topic the short version is that we were supposed to sit, talk about our stories as a way to plug each other in a silly manner and talk about our past or future with a mix of both truths and falsehoods so we could point back to say see I revealed it but have some of it as fake. Then if anyone asks, our writers could just spout off saying how April fools day chapters aren’t canon and the authors decided to go another direction and how it was just throwing things at the wall to see how it felt in the script.

“Although you have quite the interesting thing. I suppose we could talk about this big reveal from your past.”

If this man knows stuff about me from before I was brought here, then there would certainly be more validity to what he was saying. He will either know something that hasn’t been even thought of since I got here or he will be making up something that is purely fictitious. If I’m honest I’m not sure which would be the bigger concern for social challenges.

“You like all these seconds things though. Mega seconds, pico seconds, ultra seconds, maybe light seconds. I don’t know about those sorts of things and honestly, it’s a good thing you know the terms I use so I only need a moment to say this… actually did you know a moment is a proper measurement of time?

“It’s actually ninety seconds but people basically use it to mean just a little bit of time. Sunflower put that into our script for me to say but honestly, I think it could be cut out to make the chapter a bit less bulky. When I said that you were going to retort that it is only slightly shorter than a hectosecond before I say…”

“You’re getting off topic,” Kralliyen growled, “Finish your thought. This chapter is almost over. I don't know about you but I’d rather get this over with and go back to dealing with the war.”

Did the furry woman say war? Perhaps this is actually a bizarre way to bring about the proper social challenge. Maybe something about preventing a war that’s about to start? Something along the lines of having a very idiosyncratic book that had been written by a madman. Something that could allow us to glean something we wouldn’t be able to otherwise, but in a way that couldn’t be fully trusted.

“Ah sorry,” the man restarted apologetically, “Kralliyen would be anxious to get back there. Probably hoping to get in some bloody fights.”

“Anyway, I just find it funny that for how strict of a person you seem to be that Pastafarian would have this in your back story.”

Here’s where it will all prove itself to be false.

“I mean sure this says it happened about a year and a half ago…”

Of course, he would start with something like that. A general timetable that could allow for a lot of situations to occur.

“And it was after you had gotten an injury, but that was really just an excuse.”

That seems a lot less random. He couldn’t possibly…

“Luckily, nobody saw any of it or understood why it took you so long, otherwise you probably would have had a hard time keeping any friends, or possibly your job, if she pushed hard enough.”

This was beginning to get too accurate. There shouldn’t be anyone who knows about that.

“And of course, since nobody knew that you were slacking off because you were dreading the inevitable result of finishing the jump...”

I have to stop him from saying the rest. If he says it I could lose a lot of Amber’s trust in, well, my character, because it was a pointedly awful thing to do and an abuse of my position. The question is what could I say to get him to stop? He’s just reading it off that paper and even if I destroy the paper he might actually know it. Same with his companions. What could I say that…

I know exactly what to say.

“SPOILERS!”

The trio all direct their attention towards me and stared without a word until a moment later. Actually no closer to a Hectosecond, but that man's words about a moment and everything else has gotten me flustered.

“Ah, I guess I did ruin it by saying that this fact was actually true instead of a possible truth mixed in with some lies. Good catch.”

“Anyway it’s been long enough you can both go out of here. As you would put it your social challenge is over.”

Amber charges to the man getting close enough that you would struggle to put more than a finger between them and stares at him, “And why is that? What did we do that warrants it being over?”

“Nothing really. You just lived in this silly chapter for long enough.”

“So,” I say partly to get attention back to me and partly for verification, “We just had to deal with you three until enough time passed and we would be allowed to go?”

“Not quite,” the man says with a laugh, “At least not about enough time passing. See, Sunflower wanted this chapter to be a minimum of two thousand words and we’re already past three thousand. Unless editing dramatically alters it we should still be way over that mark so we’re fine and you two can just go. Although if you remember this happened or not is all up to Pastafarian.”

While I wanted to question this further, a greater part of me wanted to leave right away and not think of this trio or their pasta sunflower.

In the end, I stick with the latter mindset, and with Amber at my side we begin to leave the challenge as fast as our legs can carry us.