With Louise as a (mostly unwilling) intermediary we agreed to go as a group the following weekend. Just to be on the safe side, I went shopping at the Dungeoneer's Bazaar for consumable items that could be used on others from a distance--not so much worried for my own sake, as worried that either Louise would get hurt or I'd grow a conscience somewhere in the middle of completely wrecking Brock's soul.

Splash potions of healing were not expensive; splash vials of protective juju kind of were, and splash vials of status restore were a lot more expensive than splash vials to actually cause negative status. Specifically poison and paralysis were apparently common in that item type, where poison and paralysis restore were not.

Or possibly people just bought a whole lot more of those than they sold.

While I was on a status-ailment kick I started reading up on some of the things my new auras provided. Specifically, the [ Strife ] team debuff was rare and scary and poorly understood, while some people refused to believe (in spite of it literally being a well documented dungeon status) that [ Hesitation ] did anything, to people or monsters. I guess the effect of Hesitation was so small that it didn't make a difference? The name of it suggests that it would only give you a second or so to take advantage, which was a big deal for, say, someone studying Critical Bladework, but not such a big deal for your average frontline fighter. If it gave me an extra second to line up a knife to the eyeball, that was a good thing--and if defending against it (with the aura in defense mode) got me out of a jam one second faster, that was huge.

Assuming that's what it did. Maybe it did nothing. But why would an Administrator weigh Hesitation so highly on an end-of-dungeon rare drop if it did nothing? It had to be too small for fakers to notice, I decided.

Meanwhile, there was one reddit thread--just one--that I found that made any reference to a system-specific [ Toothache ] debuff. Most people wrote it off as a joke, and called the photos faked, which was entirely plausible, and yet it was on the Aura of Suffering. The guy said he got hit by a high-level Toothache and was nearly incapacitated as a result. I... I could totally feel the guy, really, but with only a low-level toothache effect on the Aura, I figured the result couldn't possibly be that good.

In contrast, there were numerous, numerous threads about the horror that was [ Spontanous Musical Number ]. It spread. If you got too close to someone who was hit by it, you might start dancing--friend, foe, even some corpses. Each person who got infected had their own timer, so if you caught the boogie, you'd be dancing for the duration, and if you weren't careful, a person who stopped dancing could get sucked back into it. Defenses against it were insanely rare, and in some biomes, enemies would spawn infected with the debuff. For parties that had to face the grim specter of literally dying forever, no fooling, due to dancing... it was terrifying.

That said, just like in the End Towns, you could still act while dancing. You could move on your own, attack, defend, whatever. People started suggesting that the omnipresent Discos and forever-dancing End Towns were there to hint that you should train to dance-fight. The Discos, also, if you could get to them while afflicted, would instantly cure the condition.

The administrators, I realized again as I finally stopped browsing Reddit threads at 1AM, were absolutely mad with power. This was a joke to them. Every dungeon town in existence had a Disco in it just because they had a dancing status effect. What the fuck.

The next day in a slow period between classes I looked up what happens when an item gives multiple different status effects. As you'd expect, it was mostly random, although some people "swore" that sometimes a weapon would give them the status they asked for, if they really really wanted it. Most likely confirmation bias, but also, I really really wanted to give Brock [ Impotence ] or [ Incontinence ] or both. Unfortunately, the possibility of giving him and Louise and me and everyone else dancing fever was equally likely.

So with very, very heavy regret I put the Aura of Suffering on a defensive item, giving me resistance to an absurd number of extremely niche effects that I wouldn't likely actually be the target of. I reserved a spot on a throwing dagger in case I had to swap it in for a spot of offense, but really, I wasn't about to roll the dice on trivial matters.

It was late on Friday, before we were supposed to go diving, when Harry knocked on my door once more. He had... been drinking. A lot. His wizard robes, normally very frumpled, seemed soggy to look at, for reasons that were not obvious. Was he actually wet? Did they respond somehow to him being drunk? Was it just my imagination?

"Hii-ey," he said, clearly not sure which version of 'hello' he wanted to go with. "You wanted. To sell something, right? We're good. I'll keep... I'll keep your jewels safe, brother. Safe in my hands. Your jewels..." he started laughing, and I admit to being pretty creeped out by the overt homosexual implications of that.

But he'd also been a friend, so far.

"Damn, man," I said as I helped him stand up. "You're wasted. What's wrong with you?"

"Ah, I've, been keeping a track on you. Of you. A track." He gestured like he wanted to drink, but there was nothing in his hand. He squeezed his hand in midair ineffectually, looking at it for a moment. "And then I remembered that you had a thing to sell. What was it? I'll buy it. You're a good friend. We're friends, right?"

I dragged him in and let him have my couch. His level had gone up, so he was probably in a dungeon since we last talked. Of course, the level I first met him was still high enough over my current level that he could one-shot the current me at will, a sobering fact that put a lot of the 'Dungeoneers get away with anything' shit into perspective. I stepped back and looked at him, but I figured he wasn't actually clear headed enough to talk. "Yeah. We're friends, Harry."

"Did you ever know I was in love with you? I mean before." He blinked at me, bleary-eyed, as though I was going to answer a pressing, deeply meaningful question for him.

And what the fuck do you say to that question when asked by a fucking Death Wizard?

"I didn't think about it at the time," I said. "I guess it makes sense when I look back on it."

"You got a... a fucking nice face, Jerry," said Harry, as he deliberately toppled over to fall on his side on the couch. "And just an adorable ass."

My hand itched to manifest a weapon, if only to drive the thought out of his head that that was acceptable behavior--it made me feel, I figured, entirely too much like Louise had to feel when Brock was being a complete hedonistic prick around her. "You gotta think about something else, man. Don't dwell on the past. Hey--" I was about to offer to show him the item, only to realize that it, being a tail, would once again put the focus on asses. "--do you know anything about Fairy Dungeons?"

The pause that followed was really weird. I only knew that he wasn't asleep because I was looking at his face. He went from a pouty face to a confused face, to a serious face, to a serious but drunk and confused face, which slowly went back towards serious. "The fuck," he said slowly, and force himself sit up. "Where the fuck did you hear about that."

"Administrator bullshit. The thing that gave me the NDA also gave me some carrots to go along with the stick, and one of them was this." I popped up the Fairy Pass Class Feature and spun it to face Harry:

[ FAIRY PASS ] - Entrances to the Fairy Dungeon will become visible.

Harry stared at the Interface window for a long time. Too long. I started to wonder if maybe I had revealed some kind of real, end-of-the-world bullshit again.

And then I heard him gently snoring, and felt incredibly relieved.

I was on eggshells all night after that, but nothing happened before about 10AM, with me scheduled to meet Louise and Brock at about 11. I was in the kitchen writing some shit down to explain it to him when he woke, so I could just go, when he got up. I don't know exactly what magical bullshit he was doing in the living room, but in the couple of moments between when I heard him first move and when I got to the door, he had somehow showered, changed, and sobered up. I guess that was just a thing wizards could do, or else it was an item or something.

"Hi," he said, sounding a little pained. "I hope I wasn't too forward last night."

"I was a little worried," I admitted.

Harry just shook his head. "I'm not a rapist, Jerry. I'm not ever going to be. I'm just..." he seemed to be searching for something to say that would make me feel more at ease, but all he could come up with was "lonely." And that still kind of didn't do it for me.

I just put on a kind of fake smile and didn't comment.

"So there were two things," I said to change the subject. "but I kind of have an appointment--"

"Yeah, your dungeon pals, I know," said Harry, seemingly confirming that he was seriously stalking me, but then he spoke up again. "The Association gets queries whenever you go into a dungeon, and your Priestess friend filed the paperwork for it ahead of time. So... she's... your type, huh?"

I tried very hard not to say or do anything incriminating.

"Whatever. Your life is your own. I'm not trying to interfere." Harry looked away, and I saw him blinking a few times, as though considering something. "There was something last night and I don't remember it, but it seemed bad. What was that?"

I showed the Fairy Pass thing again, and he stared at it and sighed. He rubbed his head, in an 'I'm too hung over to deal with this' kind of gesture, and said in an exasperated tone, "Okay, well, short version is, if you see a fairy dungeon entrance: don't go in. Fairy dungeons are dangerous, have strange rules and mechanics, and they aren't run by humans, so some of the concepts there are very foreign. Death rates are high for people who enter the first time, no matter what level they are."

"So, wait," I interrupted. "The dungeon Administrators... are humans?"

"Kind of. Don't think too much about it." Harry made a face. "Suffice it to say, they have at least studied humans. Fairies don't. You saw Herman; he seems to genuinely believe his equipment is normal for humans. His magic could unmake worlds, or at least, say, about half the moon, but he doesn't understand anything about humans. After having met him twice and had to listen to his bullshit I'm mostly convinced he invents those nightmare office stories in an attempt to sound like a human. Imagine Herman trying to invent a human office dungeon level."

I don't think I will ever get that mental image out of my head, and it took me a good ten minutes to get it under control. In that time, Harry helped himself to a bagel in my kitchen, as though he understood the level of horror he had just unleashed and knew he'd have a few minutes to himself.

When I stopped imagining being eaten by--no, I said when I stopped imagining that, ugh--Harry was standing there, holding out a hand. "Whatever you want to sell," he said through bites of bagel. "I'll sell it for you and return the proceeds. I doubt anyone will connect it to you."

So I pulled the Devil's Tail out of my inventory and handed it over. I watched the look on Harry's face go from 'This is a good bagel' to 'This is it?' to 'What.' to 'What the fuck?'. I was half expecting it to go all the way to 'What the FUCK?' but it seemed the item only went that far up the scale.

"The fuck did you get this?" he asked, in all seriousness, his eyes not leaving the item (or more likely, an Interface window that only he could see).

"The full clear quest was one possible way I could avoid the fight with the end boss, once I had the token I got earlier," I replied. "If I fought him instead, he was boosted and gave better loot. Fighting him multiple times gave different loot each time. I... don't want that one."

Harry stared at the tail for a long time, then looked at me.

"And you had to kill someone to get this."

"Special boss fight on level 24 that's only unlocked if you sacrifice a human corpse to an NPC, and then kill the NPC. I didn't get the bodies back, so yes."

"Shit." He twisted the tail around, watching it flop like a weird rope snake. "If people knew you could get this shit in a zero-to-thirty, there would be a lot of sacrifices."

"That's why I don't want anyone knowing where it came from."

Harry looked up, finally, and measured my eyes. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that he could easily also be evil, like the high-level Association folk he'd so freely admitted were. Was he to be trusted? Were any of them?

"Yeah," he said. "Because as soon as people know there's tasty loot, people's lives would be sacrificed. And also, I guess, because that leads directly to the Full Clear Quest, and we don't want that."

"Right."

"Okay." Harry disappeared the item. "I honestly expect to get at least half a billion just from the level and rarity alone. Fucking scary that an item like that would show up in such a low-level dungeon. We honestly thought the level caps were because they couldn't do more powerful shit, but I guess maybe they can."

"Also," I interrupted suddenly, "You know not to try it on, right? Like you saw the warning that says--"

"Becomes permanent, yeah. I got it." Harry checked his phone, the first I'd seem him actually have one. "You're gonna be late for your Dungeon Group."

"Would you mind--"

"I'm not going to teleport you."

"Okay." I didn't honestly want to be indebted to him anyway. "Thank you for the help, Harry."

The death wizard just shook his head and vanished.