Lord Yodbino sat in his opulent throne upon a multilayered dais. His beautiful robes and jewelry changed and polished every day by his closest servants who had been with him since the beginning. But while his servants didn't physically age, the same enchantments were not able to help him. The undead skeleton sighed. He had long since gotten bored of carnal desire and pleasures of the gullet before his body had wasted away. He hadn't moved from his throne in centuries. Only watching as he sent out his invites across time and space, for others to find and challenge his dungeon for the kingdoms' worth of wealth and power he now possessed but now granted him no satisfaction. All that remained now was the pleasure of seeing those who accepted his challenge run through his dungeons layers, and attempting to reach him and claim it all as their own.
Jacob was right that all the monsters and creatures in his dungeon had once been human, many had been in their current forms far longer than they had ever been human. But to call them murderers was not quite correct. As long as his magic remained, all those transformed by his magic would simply respawn at their designated location.
This included Caroline who would simply respawn on the first floor in the welcome hall. The tea had been Lord Yodbino's way of telling those who entered here not to trust anything they came across, and for the most part it seemed to work. Far too many greedy peasants had stormed the dungeon in the early days thinking they could march in and dispose of him and take his wealth, only to be added to his art collection, horde of guardians or staff of servants.
Speaking of Caroline, she continued to send all that she saw and heard directly to her master Lord Yodbino, like all his monsters. He also had the invisible eye-bats for it, but what was the point of setting up his massive dungeon if he couldn't even watch those who challenged it?
Ordering Caroline to support her former friends had been a whim on Lord Yodbino's part. It had gotten to where Lord Yodbino wondered if ANYONE would ever reach the bottom floor. He would have her turn on them just before they reached the end of the dungeon, turning them into new additions. Until then, she was to protect her former friends with her life and support them logistically when able. She wasn't to provide hints or clues on where the traps or effects were beyond what she could logically know herself. Her sisters were sad to have orders to let her leave, but, orders were orders, and they knew they'd get her back sooner or later, hopefully. This also meant that the guardians and traps would target her as much as the others until that time, it was only fair after all, if she ended up a cat girl statue, that was how the dice rolled.
"Think these four are gonna be the ones?" Asked Gingersnap, a red dragoness the size of a house (not an exaggeration), and the last line of defense between the maze runners and Lord Yodbino. Gingersnap thousands of years ago, she'd had a different name, and had not been a dragon. She'd been a dancer who tried to pick Yodbino's pocket. But Gingersnap for her part didn't care, in fact, she wished that Yodbino would get out of this suicidal funk already. But Gingersnap was if anything, loyal, and had accepted that she'd serve devoted whoever defeated her Yodbino. She lazily looked up from where she was laying and nearly encircling his throne.
"I don't know, isn't that the exciting part?" The lich said.
Meanwhile, Jacob and his friends saw a man in a odd space suit, screaming at the top of his lungs. "This is all a hologram! This is all a hologram! End program!" He had run into a chamber fulled with water with a narrow bridge, he had slipped and fallen in. His space suit dissolved, and his brown hair turned green, and she arose out of the water as a busty mermaid with a beautiful tail. Her sisters singing welcomes to their new sister.