The party of three made it to floor forty-seven before the Glacial Sentinel crushed them.
I felt it happen. The tank's health dropping to zero in a single devastating blow, followed quickly by the other two as the golem's area freeze caught them mid-retreat. Then, that strange sensation of their presences simply... vanishing. Respawning somewhere far away, I assumed.
I should have felt relieved. Instead, I felt hollow.
That night, or what passed for night in my timeless prison, I made a decision.
I would let the next ones win.
The thought crystallized in my mind with perfect clarity. Why was I fighting this? Why was I playing along with this cursed role? I didn't want to be Glaciana. I didn't want to kill adventurers for eternity. If dying was the only way out, then I'd make it easy. I'd open the doors, dismiss the guardians, and let the next halfway-competent party waltz right up to my throne room.
Then they'd kill me, and hopefully I'd wake up back in my apartment with my laptop still warm and my coffee only slightly cold.
The relief that flooded through me at having a plan was almost intoxicating. I stood from my throne, feeling energized for the first time in days.
"All right," I said aloud, my voice echoing off the ice walls. "Let's do this."
I reached out with my will, the same way I'd learned to sense the tower's state, and tried to command the ice golems on floor fifteen to stand down. To return to their alcoves and stay there.
Nothing happened.
I frowned and tried again, pushing harder with my intention. The golems should have obeyed—Glaciana's memories told me they would obey. They were extensions of my power, puppets dancing on strings of magic that I controlled.
But the strings wouldn't move.
A flicker of unease ran through me. I expanded my awareness, reaching for the frost elementals on floor eight. Simple creatures, barely sentient. Surely I could dismiss them.
[Command rejected,] something whispered in my mind. Not words exactly, but a concept that translated itself into understanding. [Dungeon integrity protocols active. Guardian dismissal unauthorized.]
"What?" I said aloud. "Unauthorized? I'm the dungeon boss. I'm Glaciana. How can it be unauthorized?"
I tried again, this time attempting something simpler, opening all the locked doors that adventurers needed keys to access. Shortcuts that would let them skip entire floors.
[Command rejected. Dungeon progression parameters must be maintained.]
My hands clenched into fists, frost crackling across my knuckles. "Override," I said firmly, the way I'd speak to a voice assistant. "Authorization Glaciana. Override dungeon parameters."
[Override denied. Core rules cannot be superseded by dungeon entities.]
"I'm not a dungeon entity, I'm a person!" My voice rose, bouncing off the walls. "I'm trapped here! Let me change the settings!"
Silence. The kind of absolute silence that made it clear the system wasn't listening anymore. Or maybe it was listening but didn't care.
I spent the next hour trying everything I could think of. I attempted to reduce the levels of my guardians, to make them weaker.
[Rejected.]
I tried to increase the treasure drops, to make it more worthwhile for adventurers to push harder.
[Rejected.]
I even tried to damage the tower myself, blasting ice walls with magic that came instinctively to my fingertips.
The ice reformed instantly, and I felt a sharp pain lance through my skull like a warning.
[Self-harm protocols activated. Cease hostile action against dungeon infrastructure.]
"This is insane," I gasped, pressing my hands to my temples. The pain faded slowly. "This is absolutely insane."
I collapsed back onto my throne, and that's when I felt it... something I'd been too distracted to notice before. A weight. A presence. Not physical, but layered over my consciousness like a filter over a photograph.
I closed my eyes and focused inward, following the sensation to its source.
There, woven through Glaciana's memories and instincts, were chains. Metaphorical chains, but no less real for being made of code or magic or whatever sustained this world. Rules. Restrictions. Hard-coded limitations that defined what I could and couldn't do.
[S-Class Dungeon Boss: Glaciana, the Eternal Frost Queen]
[Level: 95]
[Role: Final Guardian of the Frozen Spire]
[Restrictions Active:
- Cannot leave designated dungeon area
- Cannot dismiss or weaken dungeon guardians
- Cannot alter dungeon difficulty parameters
- Cannot refuse combat engagement with eligible challengers
- Cannot intentionally lose combat encounters
- Cannot provide information or assistance to challengers]
That last one hit me like a physical blow. Cannot intentionally lose combat encounters.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
I pulled up the restriction and examined it more closely, the same way I might inspect an item in my inventory back when I was a player. Details unfolded in my mind:
[RESTRICTION: AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT PROTOCOL]
[Dungeon bosses must engage all challengers with full capabilities. Intentional underperformance, purposeful positioning errors, delayed reaction times, or any other form of deliberate combat sabotage will trigger corrective measures.]
[Corrective measures include:
- Temporary paralysis
- Override of voluntary control systems
- Forced execution of optimal combat patterns
- In severe cases: personality matrix reset]
That last one made my blood run cold, or colder than it already was. Personality matrix reset. That sounded an awful lot like erasing Sarah and leaving only Glaciana.
"So you're telling me," I said slowly, talking to the invisible system that governed this nightmare, "that I have to actually try to kill anyone who comes up here. I can't throw the fight. I can't make it easy. I have to fight with everything I have."
The system didn't answer, but I didn't need it to. The restriction was clear enough.
I stood and walked to the edge of my chamber, looking down through the transparent ice floor at the levels below. Somewhere down there, future adventurers would come. They'd fight their way up, floor by floor, dying and respawning and trying again until they were strong enough to reach me.
And when they did, I'd have to kill them. Really kill them, or at least fight as if I was trying to. Every ability, every spell, every trick in Glaciana's considerable arsenal. Because if I didn't, the system would take control and do it for me anyway. Or worse, it would delete Sarah entirely and leave only the monster.
"This isn't a game anymore," I said quietly. "If it ever was. This is a prison designed to keep me exactly where I am, doing exactly what I'm supposed to do."
A new party entered the tower below. Five of them this time, levels ranging from forty-eight to fifty-three.
They'd die around floor thirty-five, probably to the frost wyvern ambush. They weren't ready for me yet.
But someday, someone would be. And I'd have to face them with my full power, forced to be the monster, unable to choose mercy or surrender.
Unless I found another way out.
I returned to my throne and sat down heavily, my mind already working. The system had rules. Everything had rules. And rules, in Sarah's experience, always had loopholes. They had to. That's how speedrunners broke games, how hackers found exploits, how lawyers found precedents.
I just had to find mine.
"All right," I said to the empty throne room, frost swirling around my fingers as I thought. "If I can't refuse to fight, then I need to find a way to make someone strong enough to actually beat me. Someone who can legitimately win."
It wasn't much of a plan. But it was better than sitting here waiting for my personality to be erased.
I would be Glaciana. I would play the role I'd been trapped in.
But I would also be Sarah, looking for any c rack in the system, any exploit that could set me free.
The game had just changed. And this time, I was playing for my life.