The interior of the dungeon was larger than any of them had anticipated, every detail still captured in flawlessly crafted glass sculpture. Crystalline columns bloomed from spotless glass-tiled floor at regular intervals, adorned with glass mosaic torches that still seemed to give off as much light as the real thing.

“…this place gives me the creeps.”

“I-It is a bit too quiet, yeah…”

“I’d expected… something by this point.”

It had been dead silent since they’d finally stepped inside, the five of them wandering for minutes on end with no discernible changes in scenery, the same hallway stretching on and on and on without end.

The interior design didn’t help at all with the slow exploration either, their reflections bouncing back off of every surface as they delved deeper inside, making the entire place seem significantly more claustrophobic as their own faces stared back at them from every angle.

“It’s not that bad in here, is it? I mean, I love their choice of decor, really makes the place sparkle~”

Not sharing in the rest of the party’s slowly growing discomfort, Monica had paused to inspect her own reflection in one of the mirrored columns, contorting her face into ridiculous shapes at it while also looking herself over closely.

“Y’know, I’ve never really gotten to take a good look at myself like this before. I guess I get why people keep wanting to kill me, I’d be jealous of anyone that looked this good too.”

“…are you having fun back there?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, plenty, why do you ask?”

The mage turned back to Prim with a quizzical look plastered across her face, clearly not understanding the issue as the halfling gave her an increasingly familiar glare.

“You’re the one who wanted to explore this place, I just figured you’d be more… I dunno, explorative?”

“I don’t think “explorative” is a word…?”

“That’s not the point I’m making!”

Monica threw her hands up in mock surrender, doing her best to not provoke the crafter’s ire any more than she did on a normal basis.

“Okay, okay, calm down pipsqueak. We are exploring though, right? There just… hasn’t really been anything to explore besides this hallway.”

“She’s g-got a point.”

“I know, but… guh, there must be something here!”

Prim bonked her head against another of the pillars in exasperation, the sound ringing out a crystal clear tone that echoed down the hall, fading out of earshot just as quickly as it had begun.

“How do we know it isn’t another of those looped hallways, like the last dungeon?”

“Oh, um… it can’t be that, I’ve been checking.”

Glass gestured back the direction they’d come from, a long string of tiny lights dotting the trail behind them.

“Same thing I did for that old mine… just drop a few cheap gatherables every now and then and you’ll eventually find them again if it’s looping…”

“That’s… pretty smart actually, yeah.”

If the Brawler had picked up on the less-than-subtle jab at his usual level of awareness, he surely didn’t show it all.

“I’ve been dropping them for… a while now. And nothing ahead of us yet still. So it’s still just a really long hallways…”

“Great, then they really do just want us to keep walking blindly.”

“Eh, at least it’s a pretty hallway to be stuck in.”

Monica had already resumed their long forward march, prompting the others to finally start moving again, all of them except the kitsune clearly on edge about the seemingly empty dungeon as they tread on.

The only thing that greeted them for another long stretch of empty time was the sound of their own footsteps echoing against the glass. Four pairs of boots and four spindly pairs of arachnid appendages beating out a steady rhythm as they all fell eventually in step with one another.

“So, what do you all think is here?”

Prim eventually piped up, her voice a bit louder than usual, clearly uncomfortable with the dead silence blanketing them all.

“Hmm… w-well, Land’s End seems like a pretty… important name? S-So I’d imagine there’s something i-important in here, somewhere. No idea what, t-though…”

“Yeah, I guess that’s fair enough… what about you, Glass?”

“It’s a dungeon, so… a boss and some chests…?”

“…anything more than that?”

“…maybe two bosses…?”

“…right, thanks. Well, since you have the most experience and imagination of the lot of us, what do you think we’re here for, fox girl?”

There was a long pause, as if she was deep in thought about how to respond.

“What, no idea at all? C’mon, one of you has to at least give me a real guess.”

The same pause continued on, seemingly deeply considering her answer before she could muster the ability to share it.

“…oh come on now, nothing? It’s not a test, just give me something to talk about here so I don’t go stir crazy.”

This time the pause was even more impressive, the full weight of thought pressing down like a hammer upon metal, the still silence almost enough to drown out the echoes of three pairs of boots and four spindly pairs of arachnid appendages, the mage seemingly taking enough time to craft an answer to her inquisitive guildmate’s query worthy of being called a masterpiece.

“Guh, you’re no fun at all, I just… wait a second. Monica has never stayed quiet this long in her life-”

Spinning on her heel with a look of panic, Prim turned back to face the rest of their party. Elise looked back at her confused, Glass stared vacantly about the hallway, and Silk’s eyes widened with the same realization the crafter had reached.

“W-What’s wrong?”

“Why isn’t she- hells.”

Failing to return any kind of response whatsoever was their guild leader herself, who, as they had only just now finally noticed, was no longer present among them all.

“…how did she…? She was walking in front of me…”

“Wait, y-yeah, me too, I should’ve seen where she went…”

“C-C-Chkchk! Chk chkchk chk!”

Silk ran about in panic, the three of them that should have been walking behind her having only now noticed she’d vanished into thin air.

“She can’t have gotten far, right? Look, let’s backtrack and look for a side passage or trap door or something, she might’ve just wandered off somewhere close by.”

Nodding, the four of them explored the immediate area, rubbing against mirrored walls and checking behind glass pillars, crystalline torchlight ensuring not an inch of the hallway went even slightly unlit.

Their search proved fruitless however, regardless of how hard they searched, neither hide nor hair of their wandering fox turning up anywhere they looked.

“Shit. This is great, now she’s learned to just vanish into thin air too.”

Elise did her best to calm Prim down as she worked herself into a mix of worry, anger, and general confusion, the other two continuing to search for their lost leader.

“…chk…?”

“Hm…? What now…?”

Silk managed to grab Glass’s fleeting attention, pointing them towards something.

“I… believe the spider found something.”

“Eh?”

“Chkchk!!”

The tiny arachnid tugged at the three of them at once, a fourth limb pointing past them all at what they’d found.

“Ugh, I don’t speak spider like she does… what is it, what’d you find?”

“Chk!! Chkchk chk!!!”

Their tugging only grew more intense, gesturing more intently down the hallway, their legs all tapping impatiently against the glass floor.

“That’s… no, that’s ahead of where we are, see? We’d have seen if she just got too far ahead of us all, she’d have to be behind us, or-

“Chkchkchk chk!!!”

“Calm down, already! Look, I’m telling you, she couldn’t just… be right… there…”

Finally looking up at where Silk was insistently pointing towards, the halfling’s words slowly trailed off, staring down the hall in disbelief.

“…ah.”

“D-Did you find-”

She answered their Vanguard’s question the same way Silk had answered her, by simply pointing down the hall in front of them, currently lacking the capability to respond to her verbally, Glass catching the idea and following along to where they were all staring.

“…e-eh…?”

“That’s… new.”

Straight down the hall in front of them, they found Monica, seemingly perfectly fine and wholly unperturbed, despite having just vanished.

The object of the rest of Primonilise’s surprise, however, was less the kitsune herself , and more so her… orientation.

Currently, she was continuing to walk forward without a care whatsoever…

Upside-down.

A perfect reflection of Monica continued onwards, feet treading upon glass above her, continuing to explore the mirrored hallway from the other side.

To add to the string of inexplicable developments, Mirror Monica was still joined by the rest of the guild following not far behind, the four of them only noticing now that their own reflections had also seemingly continued on without them, mirrored versions of all of them moving of their own volition, all of them headed directly towards the unaware fox girl in front of them. Muddied and unfocused copies moved freely across every wall and column of the glass hall, each one of them chasing silently behind the singular perfect reflection before them, dozens of copies of themselves reflected across every surface as they took on their free will.

It took a long while for them to process everything happening around them, blinking slowly as their brains processed.

And then all at once, they charged forwards, toward the other side of the floor Monica was reflected in, banging against it and calling out as loudly as they could, trying all they could to get her attention as an army of copies amassed behind her, the oblivious girl not showing even the slightest indication she could hear any of them at all.

“Dammit, she’s dense-”

“…P-Prim?”

“-maybe if we messaged her, she’d hear the notification sound there, but-”

“P-Prim.”

“-no she’d hear this if that was the case, so maybe-”

“Prim!”

“-gah, what is it?!”

“I, um, think we might have our own problems first.”

Elise was no longer looking at their reflected Gloom Mage, instead having turned their attention back behind them, gulping loudly as she slowly readied her massive shields, Silk having mounted themselves upon her shoulder as they braced.

Prim’s head jerked towards the other end of the hall as she stood up herself, Glass having already placed themselves in front of her as his expression hardened.

The four of them had already accepted the Monica they saw mirrored in the floor below their feet was the real one, the stark difference in how clear they appeared in comparison to the other swarming reflections making that perfectly clear.

However, they had been a bit late in reaching the obvious conclusion to that.

Clack, clack, clack, clack.

A sound unmistakably different than the rhythm of leather or metal or carapace tapping against glass.

Instead, the sound of glass tapping against itself.

Webbing laid with thin layers of glass draped over a dark, shiny surface that looked like polished black quartz, roughly approximating the shape of a robe, a matching staff that seemed to be completely fused to the end of one of the limbs. Two identical long, red features wrapped around from behind them, stiff and crystalline but still doing their best to mimic the swaying of tails. At the top sat more of the webbing and black glass, stretched wide across them, obscuring a featureless face as a pair of eyes glistened coldly from the shadows.

“Oh. Lovely. Don’t suppose you’d just like to talk things out peacefully, then?”

Either unable or unwilling to answer her, Monica’s inhuman reflection responded by charging towards them.

----------------------------------------

Slow, tapping footsteps stretched on and on incessantly, the only sound accompanying them being the kitsune’s own sighs

“Really, you’d think they’d have put something in here, right? Like they put in all the effort to hid it in the first place.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“I guess it could’ve been hidden because there was nothing here… a bit lazy to just hide unfinished assets like that though.”

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“At this point it feels like the devs enjoy finding ways to waste my time, y’know?”

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Can’t say I blame them though, I guess I’ve kinda made myself a bit infamous… can’t imagine they like me all that much, ehe…”

Taptaptap. Taptaptaptaptap. Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

“But then again I’m just using all the toys they just let me have, so it’s really their fault if I’m some kind of problem, yeah?”

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap-

“What I do know though is that Prim has never let me just ramble on like this before, and I really don’t think today is the day she’s gonna start.”

Without missing a beat, Monica quickly hopped forward slightly, narrowly dodging a massive hammer being swung down towards her head. It instead struck the floor right below her, leaving a sizable crater as glass shards filled the air above the impact area.

She kept her momentum, bouncing herself between the numerous pillars littering the hallway around her, making as much space between herself and the things on her heel as she could, her boots leaving tiny trails of flame on each surface she leapt off of.

“Really now, if you’re going to try and sneak up on someone, the least you could do is try to be quiet about it! I could barely hear myself think with all that glass jingling around back there, honestly.”

The reflected Prim pulled their hammer free of where they’d missed their target, gemstone eyes staring emptily up at the mage as she came to a halt atop a torch sconce, already rushing forward after them again.

“Bit too simpleminded for the stealth approach then, huh? That’s fine, I don’t think the real deal would enjoy sneaking about that much either, so you’ve got that bit down.”

Hopping down from her perch, she met the impostor directly, staff meeting their midsection before they could readyb their hammer again.

“Blowback.”

A gentle flick of the staff knocked against the glass creature, the spell catapulting them backwards until they struck the fake Elise, the force of the impact shattering them both into piles of unrecognizable debris.

“I expected you to be hardier, huh. Not all that scary are we?”

She smiled, proud of her own quick reflexes having already handled the threat, quick and easy.

“Now then, I’m sure there’s a Glass out there as well, yes? About time to get to take out some frustrations on you again- ah.”

Now fully taking in her situation, her momentary victory felt significantly less rewarding. At least a few dozen copies of each of her comrades were already clambering past the two she’d taken out and were headed straight for her, expressionless crystal faces fixed on her alone.

“…right then! Um, well, I’m sure we’re all even now, yes? So if you don’t mind I’ll go ahead and show myself out this way, thank you! Rising Sun!”

She was already airborne again, a blast of heat bursting from her feet and propelling her away as flames rushed over her assailants, the mage beating a hasty retreat just in time to miss a pair of crystalline Glasses slamming together gauntlets-first, nearly crushing her flat.

More of them poured out of nowhere, clambering out from behind the columns, pulling themselves out of the floor, falling out of the ceiling, each one of them an incredibly simplistic recreation of one of her guildmates, and each one of them sharing a single-minded focus on pursuing and smashing the only non-glass based entity present.

Each time she was forced to land for even half a second, several of them descended upon her instantly, the sound of shattering glass echoing loudly around her as she narrowly avoided becoming a fine paste each time, slowly stacking her speed higher.

“Persistent little bunch, aren’t you? Y’know, I really wish I was less good at attracting crowds recently, it’s getting a bit annoying at this point.”

Each leap carried her farther back away from them all, but each time there were only more of them filling the tight confines of the dungeon around her, the floor becoming too thickly covered to the point that she was forced to resort to landing on the packed in hordes themselves, each launch more than enough to shattered several of them at a time.

“Oh come on now, how many of you all are there?! This is hardly a fair fight if you’re all just gonna keep showing up infinitely- hurgh.”

Her last jump took her the furthest of all of them so far, keeping her back forwards so she can see the flood of bodies pouring in after her, and unfortunately keeping her from seeing the wall ahead of her as she slammed hard against it.

“Guh… okay, that one smarts, gimme a sec here, ow…”

She pushed herself upright again as quickly as she could, shaking her head to clear it, knowing she couldn’t let herself get distracted from the actual threat here.

Checking over her surroundings, she’d finally managed to cover enough ground to reach the end of the impossibly long hallway. Now she found herself in a truly massive circular room, rainbows of mosaic glass composing every wall around her.

Opposite herself was the entrance she’d come in through, and as the horde of glass bodies pushed in after her, the walls closed in around them, dozens of them being crushed completely as the room sealed itself, leaving no trace of there having ever been a door there to begin with.

Unfortunately those that had been sealed away on the other side were already being replaced, new bodies pulling themselves free from the walls again, having to leap away as a Silk and an Elise pull free directly behind her landing spot.

“Oh great, now I’m outnumbered and trapped, lovely! Y’know, I take back what I said about liking the decor here, you all look terrible. Not a single copy of me at all, really? Terrible taste, honestly.”

The closest bodies to her all became ammunition, Blowback after Blowback sending them rocketing through the waves behind them as she did her best to clear the area around herself, forced into the center of the room as she held them all back.

“C’mon then, I don’t need any fancy schmancy boss transformation to handle the lot of you anyways, gods know I’ve dealt with enough hordes of idiots already!”

As she held them back, the colored glass panes around her began slowly shifting colors, flashing brilliantly as lights danced from behind them, accompanied by a single, tiny popup appearing at the top of her UI, hard to make out clearly in the chaos of keeping herself alive.

“Oh, what is it now… oh for the love of- fine then, I’m tired of running from everything all the time anyways, let me finally have a good brawl for once!"

Newly plastered at the top of her UI was a very small note, written atop a background of the same colored mosaic glass surrounding her.

[AMPHITHEATER OF BROKEN GLASS: 23/2,000 REFLECTIONS SHATTERED]