Each town in the dungeon matched the biome you were going to enter, not the one you were leaving. That was fortunate, because I was not eager to see any more undead pig themed bullshit, and the spatial warping at the end of the first biome was starting to get to me. Granted, I'd get used to it, and I really should have stayed and gotten at least a second set of knuckles, but there was a life (sort of) hanging in the balance.

I mean, honestly, not really. Once the item was picked up, unless I died carrying it, they'd be fine whether they stayed there for a day or a month. They did age in an inventory, slowly, but the couple of hours I might have spent in the dungeon meant nothing to the mage's survival. But, it would mean something to the surviving party members.

So I came out in a village built in the clouds, except without the clouds--it just seemed to be a bunch of buildings suspended on nothing at all in a night sky, with stars overhead. It really had a look like it was supposed to be on clouds, but... it wasn't. It was a clear sky, with nothing obvious beneath except a couple pinpricks that flickered like campfires far below.

I looked in the Disco as I went past. Nothing but a DJ, her head bobbing to the music, bass blasting. I couldn't help thinking about the [ Spontaneous Musical Number ] viral debuff, and resolved to learn to dance at some point.

Predictably, I found the rest of the party at the Church. Apparently, the mage was not the only casualty--Brock was in the process of being raised (a process that would take a while longer), and Louise sat exhausted on a chair, looking like she'd been on her last point of mana for the last half hour. Hopefully, she hadn't needed to burn experience to make up for low mana... but that was a thing Priestesses could do if they felt the need.

Which, you know, might be better than a total party wipe, what with the death and all.

The halberdier was the first to catch sight of me, and I brought up a simple item transfer window as soon as she was close enough. The look of relief on her face made me feel a lot better about the last couple hours.

"Thank you," she said as she accepted the transfer. "Jenna was... I had to watch..."

"Yeah, I get it," I said. "Death is a hard thing to deal with."

She nodded, and then gave me a strange look, and I knew what question was hiding behind that look.

"I am a murderer," I admitted, quietly. "I repented, went to jail. I would turn back time if I could, but I can't. That's just the way things go."

She gestured for us to walk away, and once we were out of easy hearing range of the others, asked, "Why did you do it?"

I just shook my head. What excuse could I possibly give? "I didn't give a damn about my own life," I said, with more than just a little bit of bitterness. "Making people part with theirs was pretty easy after that."

"But why..."

"Why forever?" I snarled a little bit at nothing in particular. "That's... that was a trap by the administrator. A chance to trade lives for power. I shouldn't have... but I did."

"And that's why you could solo the dungeon?"

"No--well, yes. That was halfway through Pearland, and I'd been solo the whole time." I sighed. "But... and unfortunately I can't talk about some of this... the deal I made saved me from... a couple things that would have killed me."

"You can't talk about it?"

"Administrator-enforced NDA." That was only plausibly true, since it was a completely different embarrassment for the Administrator, and probably not covered, but it also helped dodge the question.

The woman gave me an incredulous look. "Get out. What the hell for?"

"If I could tell you--"

"Right, I know, never mind." She sighed. "What did you... get from it?"

"It's the kind of ability that I don't want people knowing I have." I grit my teeth. "Not just because of the NDA. It's evil and would probably be illegal to use."

"Some kind of mind control?"

"I'm not going to give you hints about what it is," I returned, having practiced that response a few times since then.

"Fair enough." As we drew abreast of the Disco, I noticed her glancing at it. It was hard not to notice it every time you went by. "I didn't get your name."

"Jerry Applebee."

"Melinda Sugarsnap." She offered a hand, and I shook it. "I think your friends are going back. If we can get Jenna back without a problem, we'll be continuing. What about you?"

"I have half a mind to go back and solo the boss again, but..." I shrugged. "They'd have to let me back in, and they'll probably be mad if I try to pull that."

"How did you even--"

"I have a high telekinesis skill and intelligence above 50," I replied, as though that was solid proof of anything.

"So you dodged all the attacks?"

"I got lucky on the first one, but after that, the pattern was fairly easy to read."

"Oh." Her voice fell, as though that brag was kind of a slap against her. Then again, she was a good ten levels higher than my newly minted 32, and they'd lost two people to that fight.

"To be fair..." I was only just kind of realizing how condescending I must sound to people who legitimately had to party up to survive a dungeon, and I didn't want to be a dick like that, but at the same time, yes, right? "...I spent almost three months in the dungeon my first time out, solo, doing a lot of skill leveling. It was real do-or-die stuff. Yeah, I'm a little proud that I got through it, but if I didn't... there was no net, no safety, no nothing. At best someone might have found my corpse on a boss monster in time to get me revived, but if I was killed in an ambush in some out of the way corner of a dungeon where I'd been resting, poof," I made a fanciful gesture with my hands. "Gone for good."

"Sounds rough," she agreed, although she didn't sound like she understood.

"Kind of, but the point is, you spent your time learning team attacks and formations and a lot of other things that I'll never be good at. When it comes to working with a party, all my instincts are ass." I know my face must have looked ugly; I was pissed, at myself and fate and nothing at all. "What you guys do is safer and slower, and you don't run the risk of dying from virtually every creature you come across. We all... for lack of a better term, evolve differently based on what we've been through. And yeah, I'm kind of a badass," who is also super humble, I added sarcastically to myself, "but whenever I come back to the real world I'm a nobody, a weirdo with a bunch of money and nothing else to show for myself. If I'd had friends, if I were good at making friends, I wouldn't have ended up a solo diver, and I wouldn't have ended up a murderer."

"So yeah, I repented for killing. It's a direct result of my failures." I really wanted to use my sword to hit something at random, even just the ground, but it didn't feel like a good idea to do that in a floating sky village. "Admitting that is easy. Changing myself is a hell of a lot harder. Does that make sense?"

"Oh, sure," she said, and when I looked at her, she seemed like... like she was really surprised and needed some time to process what I said, I guess. "It's just... an odd perspective."

"I hope so," I said with a laugh. "If it's ever a common perspective, the world will be fucked."

She gave me an unimpressed look and we turned back towards the Church.

As it turns out, Jenna's revival wasn't tough. With her corpse still at the [ Intact ] stage, she lost half the experience progress towards her next level, and also, according to her, her bust size shrank by, like, a millimeter, which was both a really weird fact in the first place and also a really weird thing for her to be supper annoyed about. I guess the system must have told her that, because there was no way she could tell the difference, not least because her breasts were not huge to start with.

I mean... no, you know what? Never mind. She can have whatever opinion she wants about the dungeon screwing around with her bust size. Not my business.

Everyone, me included, got a nice rest at the inn. I got up early and went to the message center, to discover that the mysterious soulforged #2 had apparently replied on my introduction thread but not sent me a direct message. It was... not a terribly old message, maybe 12 hours, so definitely written while I was in the dungeon.

"Your progression is all screwed up," he said. "I'm making a variant instead of following you. Any idea what the best stats are to focus on?"

So I went over in brief my fighting style and the what I'd seen in terms of stat synergy. "The keys to my fighting style are intelligence, wit, aura, perception, agility, and dexterity," I replied. "Intelligence determines the number of item prototypes you can store, and especially your quickbar; perception influences how well you copy items. If it's too low, you won't get all the item's abilities and the stats will be lower. Wit influences how fast you manifest items, and Aura ups your MP pool so you can keep them out longer. Agility and dexterity are just standard combat stats. You won't need as much Strength and Constitution since you won't be carrying as many actual items; manifested items have no weight, which means there is absolutely no strength requirement on a copy of a large sword--believe me, I have a big ol' sword that I could by no means use normally. Without that strength, my damage is a lot lower, but I count on criticals and sneak attacks and do alright."

"Also," I added, realizing how little I knew about the guy, "be sure to get the Soulbound Enhancement Migration Class Feature as soon as you can. I skimped on getting stat points to pick it up crazy early, but you'll want to save for it. It lets you move enhancements from your items to one another, and it's mad OP. You don't even realize how you're held back by items until you can just pile everything into one or two."

I considered leaving a spiel about using experience to refine stat improvements, but frankly, it was a complicated topic that I neither understood nor was really sure I was correct on. Instead, I left this as a last word: "Lastly, keep an eye out for items that give a skill booster (ability text 'Acts as') for any skill you normally need a skill book or trainer to learn. Once you have a skill booster, you can attempt, and therefore practice the skill until you get your first level. Much cheaper than books."

That done, I sought out the others. Everyone had gotten some rest, and even Brock seemed like he had calmed down a bit. Mostly, that means it took him a good thirty seconds of staring at me before he remembered that he was supposed to be mad at me. It wasn't, I could tell, an instinct; he had to work up some willpower to be offended, which in my mind tracked with the fact that he felt like he had to invent lies in order to make me look bad.

Even by the standards of our banter, that early morning conversation was trite.

"You!" he said, when he finally worked up the nerve. "Keep away from Louise!"

"You should worry more about yourself," I said, not bothering to put any theatricality into my jab.

"I'm not--I'm not scared of you," he said, a little bit of a whiny tone in his voice. "I can beat you any day."

So I just glared at him and moved on. It just wasn't even interesting.

I found Louise, to my surprise, at the entrance to the disco, just sitting there staring at either the room or the DJ, who as always, was just nodding her head to the beat. I reminded me only a little of the night club where we'd met, but it was hard to get a reading on what her thinking was as she stood there.

"Hey," I offered, with all of the social graces of a serial introvert.

She whirled her head to face me, as though I'd snuck up on her, and didn't meet my gaze. "Oh... hi," she said, as though embarrassed that I had caught her at... something.

We stood there for a moment in awkward silence before I forced the conversation forward.

"What are you going to do, now?" I tried hard not to fidget, and failed. I tried grasping my hands together in front of me, but that seemed awkward, so I switched to grasping my hands behind me. That... was probably also awkward.

"I'm not sure," she replied, slowly, and instead of looking at me or the disco, kind of split the difference, looking at the bland outside of the building. And it was bland; it was badly done wood planks, with large enough gaps that you should have been able to see through them, except it was really clearly just a skin on the outside of a solid structure, with something else actually bounding the room beneath it. "I was on a quest from Muratama... and I'm not sure what to do about it, now."

"That quest was the thing about redemption?"

Louise nodded, still not looking at me. "You said you didn't have anything to talk about, before... so I thought maybe it was him. But, he doesn't seem to want to listen."

"And what does redemption mean to you, or to your God?"

Louise turned to look at me, and for a minute, I would swear I could see deeper, past a thin pretty-woman facade that otherwise seemed as impenetrable as the false plank wall of the building. Inside, I thought, was a shrewd woman, but as soon as she looked away, it was hard to convince myself that what I'd seen was real. "What do you know about priestesses?"

"Not a whole lot." I shuffled my feet, uncomfortably. "The gods make you young and beautiful and you can tell when people lie. Powerful light and healing magic. There's supposed to be a structure in towns that only Priestesses can access, I think."

"Only if your God is the God of that dungeon, or an ally. My god isn't a dungeon God, and he's... not close to anyone here." Louise pressed her mouth into a line. "Priestesses can level up normally, but we only get new class abilities from quests or from the Tower of our God. And we can't take a new quest without finishing the last one."

"Ah," I said, with a realization sweeping in like a sudden headache. "So if you don't redeem either me or Brock, whichever of us the quest was about, you're screwed."

"Well, no..." I realized that Louise was clasping her hands very tightly. "I'm not... I'm not really trying to... become a powerful priestess or anything. But there are other things we can only do with our God's permission. I could... I mean, I guess I could go forever without completing this quest and be okay with it, but..."

"But there's something you want that you can't get." She confirmed that just by staying silent and pensively staring at nothing. It took me a moment, but then I frowned and continued, "you didn't answer my question about redemption."

"I wasn't told exactly what it means, except that someone at the club that night would need my help. And Brock... definitely needs help." I could see something in her face, an intensity that she didn't normally show, but she still refused to look at me.

"That's one way of putting it." My voice caught in my throat by the end of the sentence. I wanted to say that he didn't deserve redemption, but wasn't that just a self-serving way of thinking, and a fucking awful thing to say? He was a prick, yeah, but he had also tried to save Louise. Was I sure--sure--that I deserved redemption more than he did?

"But you're also here," she said suddenly, and turned to meet my eyes, with a directness that made me avert my eyes. "I don't think it's coincidence that we met again. You talk about having killed, but you choose not to. I know you hate Brock. I feel that you could really hurt him, but so far, you haven't even tried. It's not because you don't want to, or can't, and it's not because I'm here." She frowned, and I thought she was searching my eyes. "Or not just because I'm here."

"No," I admitted, still looking away.

"But you're still tempted to do bad things."

That was one way of putting it. "Yeah."

"I want to go with you, whatever you're doing next." Louise kept staring at me, and I kept avoiding looking right back at her. "I have spent enough time with Brock that I know he's not trying to redeem himself. I want to see if you are."

In the quiet that followed, my instincts were to just say "yes" to whatever she wanted. I tried--I really tried--to think through the consequences, but my brain just kept locking up. Was it because I was so attracted to her, or for another reason? Why couldn't I look her in the eyes?

"Okay," I said, finally. "I'm still... planning on going a little deeper. I'm not going to party with Brock, though, and probably not with the others."

"Whatever you're doing, I'm going with you," said Louise, quite firmly.

Somehow, although I could have overpowered her in a dozen ways, I knew there was no changing her mind on this, and I had no reason to try--or, well, only the one obvious reason that keeping her safe was going to be a challenge. But... it also felt awful, and I couldn't quite put into words why that was, either.