It was a lot stranger being out of prison than being in it. Maybe that was the depression talking--prison made sense, for all its cruelties, because you understood the point. It wasn't supposed to be good in there; good was supposed to exist outside of the walls, and inside was supposed to be hell.

There wasn't a lot good on the outside, though.

As a dungeoneer, I still had a bit of money that hadn't been eaten up in legal fees and penalties, and three years in prison had actually given me a little bit of interest on that money. When I checked my financial reality and looked around the world for a bit, I quickly found myself a small one-man apartment where I could be lonely and miserable in peace for a little while. I practiced my telekinesis, first on my own, and then I found a dungeoneers' gym where people with similar skills could work together, and after proving I had some proficiency (beyond what the skill boosters gave me, I mean; I had spent months in the dungeon using telekinesis quite a bit) they actually paid me to teach a few beginners' classes. The money wasn't much--not to pay for even a modest apartment on my own--but I had enough cash that reducing the bleeding until I could dungeoneer again was a plausible way to live.

I ended up teaching three things there: telekinesis, stealth, and what was euphemistically called "critical bladework" because "assassination" was not a term looked fondly upon by normal people. I saw a lot of crossover between parts two and three, but not a lot of people from the telekinesis class joined the other two, nor vice versa.

As much as I'd like to take credit for the hints and tricks that I offered, a lot of it was mostly guided practice, with me standing by and pointing out mistakes that were less obvious for the one actually doing the exercise. That did require a critical eye and some experience, but it didn't leave me feeling like I was a master in any sense; I just helped people work through their troubles one day at a time, rather than unlocking secrets of the universe or delivering unto them the guidance of an overpowered solo diver. Mostly, I could see as I watched people go through the motions just who might have, and who definitely would not have, been able to make it through various parts of the dungeon that I'd been through. To say nothing of the unfair parts I barely managed to sneak through--fighting the Devil was not supposed to be survivable, and I basically cheated--some of these people, despite being dungeoneers, would never have made it past the first boss.

A lot of the people doing critical bladework seemed to think that the Skill itself would do all the work. I should have lectured them more, but they also seemed... skeevy. The kind of people I'm not sure I wanted to succeed. Critical bladework was all about the aim, and I tried to beat that into them repeatedly, but some didn't want to hear it. You have to get yourself and your weapon to the weak point, and then get out of danger. They just... wanted to stab.

The stealth folks tended to have a problem with attention, or possibly several problems with attention. I was fortunate enough that my run through the dungeon felt like death was around every corner, or I might have done the same, but watching them constantly hesitating and vacillating made me feel like they'd get killed entirely too soon if they tried to go in on their own.

Telekinesis, on the other hand, was a very different crowd. A lot of people picked up that skill just for its practical uses, and in fact I could imagine that some people I taught only went into the dungeon to get telekinesis (and/or possibly some other dungeon skills). Some of those were women too obviously domesticated--bubbly, with press-on nails, lipstick, and I thought I could tell from the way they walked that they were used to heels, and were slightly perplexed whenever they were walking in sneakers. Still, even those people had darkness around the edges, and it made me smirk to know that these pampered pretties could slit someone's throat and leave no trace.

There were also roleplayers and wannabe wizards who just wanted to fly, as well as some mechanics and technicians who had come to realize just how useful a third hand would be, especially one that didn't need to remain connected to your shoulder and could squeeze through very thin cracks. And along with the rest, sometimes overlapping with my other classes, were people you kind of suspected were burglars, the kind who didn't like others getting close and side-eyed everyone, including me. I am sure I caught one practicing threading and unthreading his shoelaces just to practice detail-oriented work, and he'd gotten good at it, moving the laces through their paces like an ace...s. Sigh.

Anyway, this diverse crowd was only possible because there were tourist packages for the dungeon to help you get certain skills, but most people preferred to actually train those skills in a less deadly environment. So, weird guys that side-eyed everyone were lined up next to housewives and their big shiny plastic nails and tubby italian guys with tattoos of wrenches on their arms and pasty white nerds with big doofy glasses who had all the physique and stamina of a foam pool noodle.

It was a fun class to teach.

I shouldn't suggest that only obvious stereotypes took my classes--they stood out, but there were lots of people, especially younger people, where you couldn't just read their history like a book. Some of the younger ones were naive wide-eyed idealists, some spoiled brats, some serious-faced kids hoping to be professional dungeoneers, and a couple jocks who seemed to think they could cheat at sports with magic and nobody would catch them. Which, maybe, I dunno, but I would suspect they'd get caught pretty fast. But one way or another, you never knew quite for sure where they would end up, while the housewives and the mechanics and the skeeves and the nerds you just got a certain impression from.

In the end, part of my teaching method for telekinesis was similar to some basic martial arts instruction I'd had, which also bled over into my critical bladework: no extra movements, put force into things when you mean to do them, pay attention to position and motion, stretch all your (metaphorical) muscles, and practice, practice, practice. Much of that seemed to go over the heads (ha, telekinesis humor) of my students, but each person had different blind spots. Few of the mechanics, for example, seemed to give a rat's ass about economy of motion, and you could see they would keep their skills active when they didn't need them, and they'd wiggle and jiggle and waste energy every which way. A lot of the skeeves, on the other hand, were hesitant to put real force or intent into their actions--at least here and now. Maybe they'd do differently when they were doing it "for real", whatever "it" and "real" meant for them.

Meanwhile, many of the housewives didn't like the idea of stretching their muscles--of doing things just for the purposes of flexibility, when it didn't serve their current, specific uses. I figured out quickly that many of them would do it if I forced them, but they seemed to have a big wall of hesitation when it came to trying new things. And the nerds... well, somehow they didn't like to practice. Maybe they thought that it would come naturally, since they were brainiacs and it was a brainiac skill, but everything takes practice.

Anyway, the work kept my head above water, but it was no profession for a dungeoneer. I itched to go back in, but I also wasn't sure that I dared trust myself going solo, not again. The long years in prison had helped me soak in the lesson that I'd survived as much due to chance and administrator shenanigans as anything, and while I had been suicidal going into my first dive, I wasn't... that bad right now.

But still, life was empty, and I needed a dungeon to fill it. I just had to hope that I could find a group to dive with that was going to be some mix of letting me go play on my own and having my back when I was outmatched. It was difficult to know exactly how that would turn out, but... I began putting out feelers, at least.

You know, all the normal places. Craigslist, Facebook, Reddit. I did stop by the local guild but I didn't like the group that seemed to be there. Maybe that was just me being shy, but there was something about them I didn't like. Not surprisingly, the inquiries I found online were not much better. They were off in different ways, but... they were.

Finally, after a good four months of standard normal work, I decided on a reckless course of action--one weekend after doing all my normal things, I went back into the same dungeon I'd dived before. As a zero-to-thirty dungeon, my dungeoneer level of 21 was well within the admission limits, and I figured there couldn't be any new surprises.

And there weren't many.

The first twenty floors had zero crises. Fighting the floor 4 boss was nostalgic, but with my equipment I could crush him in two shots, especially since I could make those shots as a direct strike to the giant skeleton warrior's head. The solo drop was the same, a long hand-and-a-half flambard, but I just stuck it into my inventory without considering it any further. I didn't need another.

The floor 9 boss didn't mean as much to me. Dual-wielding spectral flambards on my first trip through, I had cleared it quickly, so it didn't stick out in my memory. Fourteen was some kind of flame lion that I had originally had to kite pretty hard in order to stay alive, but it turns out he has the same kind of reaction that most creatures do to sword blows to the head. Nineteen was a spectral undead boss, but the Soulforged weapons counted as magic and hit it just fine, so there was never any danger against him.

Floors twenty one to twenty three, though, were the cannibal levels.

My first trip through, I'd been a player killer, a "blooded" diver, and that meant I didn't ever pull aggro from cannibals; they left me alone, and didn't even seem interested in setting any traps for me, which they did for anyone naive enough to trust them. Before I'd left, though, I'd betrayed them, as I started getting the conscience back that I should always have had. I got the impression they might remember that ever after three years.

I was right.

My presence didn't just pull aggro on me--every cannibal on each of the floors let out a war cry from the moment I entered, and if I didn't make a beeline for the nearest exit, I would have been wading through corpses by the end of it. I probably would have survived--at least for a while--but I'm not invincible, and they have bows and arrows, blowguns, and witch bolts.

On floor twenty three, I could swear that I saw the Hag watching me from afar, but I didn't stick around to find out.

The boss of floor twenty four was an old friend--an attractive looking black-skinned woman unassumingly titled "Voodoo woman". Innocent players and blooded ones could choose to walk past her without fighting, if they didn't fight any of the cannibals. Normal dungeoneers that fought them would have a normal fight.

Betrayers got a special fight.

Fighting her again brought back memories, and not good ones. The first half of the fight was dangerous, with curses and well-aimed magic bolts. I took my time with it, knowing that the second half was totally skippable, but I had no reason to try.

At half health, she threw up a barrier, and gave me the evil eye.

"The devil knows your sins," she said, and her attractive visage started to melt. "You believe you can turn your back on him, but he has already taken your soul. You are his, and there is nothing you can do to prevent that."

With that, I was once more facing the end boss of the dungeon--while only halfway through it, and leveled down to 35. The administrator had clearly changed this fight, slightly, but it was not different enough to threaten me. With a cloak giving me a death defense aura, I rode out the devil's death waves, death aura blasts, and death breath (ugh) without worrying too much about the details.

The drop was different, this time. Rather, there was no drop the first time through, which was a problem, one the Administrator had to step in to fix. This time, there was a brand new item--the Devil's Skull, a powerful token that, according to the item description, could be "traded for redemption".

I studied the large thing, easily balancing it in one hand despite it being three times the size of my own skull, then nodded quietly to myself. Rather than jumping down the hole to the next floor, I sat down against the wall and waited.

An hour later, the Voodoo Lady reappeared. Slightly more than an hour later, she did again. With three skulls in my possession, I finally went on to level 25.