The next chamber wasn't quite what we expected. We assumed it would have been something like the entrance. You know… some stone chamber with some traps or monsters. Instead, the door at the end of the corridor exited into a luxurious massive entrance hall to a building, with white marble floors and wood-covered walls. Before us, there was a wide staircase and I could see wooden double doors to the sides. A chandelier lighted the room and a red carpet went from where we are to the staircase and up the stairs. I could see another double door on the first floor in the wall opposite the staircase, and there were more exits to the sides there as well. Everywhere, there were paintings of well-dressed people in some grass-covered areas.

‘What the fuck?’ Lilyth asked, voicing all of our thoughts.

‘Seconded,’ Savri spat.

‘The Madness seems to be quite literal,’ Caei added, a bit in shock. ‘We really shouldn't be making any assumptions here.’

A golden envelope suddenly sparked into existence in front of us and gently fell before my feet. At the same time, there was the sound of the door slamming behind us. We turned around and saw that the door we entered through had disappeared and was replaced by another set of double wooden doors. Caei tried to open them but they wouldn’t budge. There were windows on each side of them, but her Blood Lances and my Abyssal Bolts wouldn’t even leave a scratch on them. Though given all we could see outside was a dark forest I don’t think leaving would be such a good idea.

‘Guess we are stuck here,’ Caei sighed in defeat.

I picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside there was a handwritten invitation.

You are cordially invited to attend the Main Event in the dining room on the second floor of the mansion. There are four door keys hidden somewhere in the building. Be warned though: whether you arrive as the main guests or the main course is entirely up to you.

‘I hate puzzles and looking for stupid shit.’ Lilyth groaned.

‘Oh, c’mon,’ I protested. ‘Puzzles are fun.’

‘I suggest we find this dining room,’ Caei said, bringing us back to reality. ‘Just in case we need to run quickly to it.’

Lilyth agreed with her and added:

‘I suggest we look for the keys in the ground floor rooms first. I imagine there might be some stair-related fuckery happening later on. Would be bad if it happened when saaay a face-eating monster that eats faces was chasing us.’

We couldn't dismiss that as a possibility.

‘A face-eating monster that eats faces?’ Caeileera laughed though. ‘Isn’t that a bit redundant?’

‘It could be a vegetarian face-eating monster,’ Lilyth retorted. ‘Then it wouldn’t be eating faces, now would it?’

‘That… is a strangely valid point,’ Savri said, uncertain. ‘I am both amazed at and terrified by how your mind works, Lilyth.’

And that was all that needed to be said on the subject.

To further make us doubt her sanity, Lilyth then approached the stairs and started poking them and the carpet with one of her knives.

‘Worried about mimics?’ Sav asked, amused. ‘Those are a myth.’

‘Have you ever seen a mimic confirm that, Master Sergeant?’ Lil responded. ‘Or, maybe you are a mimic trying to convince us that your kind doesn't exist.’

Savri put her hand on her face and shook her head.

‘Just so you know, Lilyth,’ she sighed. ‘If you are going to insist on testing that hypothesis I am going to take one of those knives and shove it so deep up your ass it will come out of your mouth.’

I could tell she was dead serious.

‘Yes, Master Sergeant,’ Lilyth replied while sheathing her knife. ‘I was just joking, Master Sergeant.’

‘Good.’

‘Damn,’ Caei whispered to me, amazement clear in her voice. ‘I really wish Sav was with us earlier.’

‘Yes,’ I laughed quietly. ‘I’ve never seen anyone able to cow Lilyth into submission that easily.’

‘Either speak up so that the rest of the class can hear you, or stop whispering.’ Sav suddenly told us.

‘Yes, Master Sergeant!’ we straightened up and said as one.

Maybe Lilyth is not the only one here who is cowed.

There were four round indentations in the double doors by the staircase, two in each slab forming a vertical line. Every depression had a square hole in the centre.

‘So the question is: Does the sequence matter?’ Lilyth mused, while carefully examining the indents. ‘A lot would depend on are these keys identical, or is there some well… key… difference between?’

‘Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?’ Caei asked. ‘Let’s first get at least one key and then worry about where to put it.’

‘Just thinking out loud,’ Lilyth explained.

‘I think the sequence does matter,’ I suddenly blurted out, not quite sure why.

I looked around. Two paths above, two below. Two depressions above, two below. Could that be it?

I outlined my thoughts to my friends.

‘Makes sense,’ Sav said. ‘Good thinking, Akster.’

Our first choice was the doors to the left of the entrance. Lilyth stopped us and went to examine them on her own.

‘Push doors,’ she said.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

‘Shouldn’t be trapped then. Caei said.

‘Unless there is something above them,’ Lilyth pointed out.

‘Wouldn’t those need to be slightly ajar for that to work?’

‘Some string that will break when we open them?’

Caei frowned.

‘Possible. Or someone could have fucked with the handles, I guess.’

‘You should stand on the stairs,’ Lilyth suggested. ‘Safer for you that way.’

I signalled that we should follow her suggestions. When we were at a safe distance Lilyth took one of her shoes off, stood to the side of the door and pressed the handle with the sole. When nothing happened, still using the shoe, she pushed the door open. Nothing, though the corridor on the other side was fairly dark. Lilyth walked away from the wall and looked at whatever was on the other side. She then crouched and looked up. She then moved to the side and slightly tensed, though when she started putting the shoe back on, we started to get down but then she shouted for us to stop.

‘Stay there. I think I can see something, though it’s too bright here for my darksight to work. Need to check the other door with something else.’

We obeyed and Lilyth took one of her knives. She held it by the spine, walked to the side of the secondary door and pushed it open with the handle.

There was a soft twang sound, a flash of metal and something impacted the floor with a loud crashing sound.

‘Pretty ingenious,’ Lilyth said as if nothing had happened. ‘There was a slack thin rope on the other side. Probably some fancy material or divine fuckery. Opening the primary door stretched it. If I were to guess this was a secondary mechanism. The primary got released when I opened… well the primary door. When I pushed the secondary, the rope broke and quite a heavy-looking blade fell down. Give me a moment.’

Lilyth peered in without leaning past the threshold.

‘Too dark. Aki, I need you. Can you send your Abyssal Spark inside?’

‘Need to get closer,’ I replied.

‘Stand on the other side of the door, then. DO NOT lean in.’

‘What are you checking for, Lilyth?’ Caeileera asked.

‘Secondary traps.’ she answered matter-of-factly.

‘That would be evil,’ Savri said.

‘And that’s a problem for our “gracious hosts”, how exactly, Sav?’ Caei asked.

The demoness raised her trigger finger, opened her mouth to speak, lowered the finger, and raised it again.’

‘I got nothing.’ she finally said.

When approaching Lilyth I got a good look at the blade from the trap. It looked heavier than I was and somehow managed to hit with enough strength to embed itself in the marble floor.

‘Gods…’ I gasped as I imagined it hitting one of us.

Lilyth gave me a dead-tired look and began examining the corridor.

‘Looks safe enough,’ she finally pronounced and stepped over the blade.

I wanted to stop her, but she was our pointslime. It was her job.

‘Aki?’ she suddenly asked. ‘Need some more light on the floor before me.’

‘Afraid of pressure plates?’ Caeileera asked without a hint of amusement.

By then both she and Sav got down and got to see the blade.

‘Ayup,’ Lilyth replied and lay down on the floor to get a better look at the corridor.

‘Officially consider my comment on mimics retracted,’ Sav apologised. ‘As Caei said we really shouldn't be making any assumptions here. Had you asked me about… a trap like this I would have also said that no such thing would be here, because, frankly, building such a thing should be impossible.’

‘Based on your description of how it was set, this looks as to have been set up less like a trap and more a challenge to be overcome,’ Caei thought out loud.

‘Yes,’ Lilyth agreed. ‘This is something I’ve noticed about the bridge room too. This isn't some mansion. We need to stop thinking about it as a real location. This is a house of horrors designed specifically to torment us. To torment me, as I suspect, because I know exactly what kind of a design this is. This is a video game.’

‘Holy shit,’ Sav unexpectedly said. ‘You’re right… This crap did seem familiar.’

Lilyth cocked her head in confusion.

‘How do you know what video games are?’

Savri went pale.

‘I… uh…’ she started stuttering, but seeing her obvious discomfort Lilyth waved her off.

‘I suppose this doesn’t matter right now and at this stage, nothing should surprise me about this world, anyway.’

The look in her eyes did say that we would return to this conversation. Still, Lilyth gave us a brief explanation of what video games were. Savri did come to her to help with some of the terminology.

‘So, essentially, Caei summed up, what you are saying is that the challenges and puzzles in those are set up in those not because they should be possible, but rather because the practicality of those is irrelevant?’

‘Yes,’ Lilyth confirmed. ‘This is why you sometimes need to find some plate with an animal head to open a door. Or you get arrow traps in the walls.’

‘I mean you can set a magical variant of those,’ Caei shrugged. ‘All you need is a Rock Spikes spell and some magical circuitry.’

A look of pain crossed Lilyth's face. I remembered she was able to cast that before the fall down the pit incident.

‘Then it means the string holding the blade was really the only one there. There is no trace of the other here.’

Oh right. Earth Arcana allows for that too. It’s probably some “gravity” effect like Caei’s floating disk. Or Lilyth's Blade of the Black Rose.

‘Magic traps are the worst,’ Savri spat. ‘Most wouldn't bother setting them up because they require a lot of mana to work. But a temporary set-up designed by a god?’

She shuddered.

‘Assuming, there even are more traps,’ I added.

‘Reverse psychology?’ Lilyth sighed. ‘Have one magic trap and then nothing else because the one would keep us on our toes forever. I think nothing would stop this Madness thing from just spawning one if we got lax. Because well… god.’

‘So we can’t make any assumptions, except we have to or it will bite us?’ Caei mused.

Hang on, I thought as something started gnawing at the back of my mind.

‘Psychological Warfare,’ Savri added, sounding resigned. ‘The best or the worst kind of warfare depending on which end of it you are.’

Lilyth laughed.

‘I wanted to become a lecturer at my uni at one point. I would design the most fucking evil multiple-choice tests ever. Thirty questions, twenty-nine of them with A as the correct answer and the last with B.’

‘You are one sick fuck, Lilyth,’ Sav chuckled. ‘You know that, right?’

‘What are multiple-choice tests?’ Caei asked.

‘Oh, a question where you are given multiple answers and have to choose the right one. There being a pattern in answers like A-B-C or god forbid A-A-A really trips people up in stressful situations when you have, say, a time limit. So having an exam where most questions have A as the correct answer and the last one has B would break people because it would make them doubt EVERY single answer. Especially, if you have a crazy low time limit and your future sort of depends on it. Fifteen minutes for thirty questions is not a lot of time.’

Then it hit me.

No. They wouldn't… would they? The invitation… no.

Led by an impulse I went back up the stairs and tried just opening the doors. I heard Caei and Sav call after me, and I realised I was pulling a Lilyth but I had to know. As I feared, the doors weren't locked.

‘Motherfuckers,’ Caei spat. ‘Seriously, really? How did you know, Aki?’

‘“We shouldn't be making assumptions”. The biggest one we made? That the doors were locked. The note never said they were. Just that the keys were hidden. And we never checked them, did we?’

Lilyth was staring at me slack-jawed.

‘I fucking hate this place,’ she grumbled, and based on Caei’s and Sav’s expressions they were rapidly developing a hatred of it too.