I found it difficult to decide on the right set of priorities after that conference call with Herman, and not only because Herman's presence was significantly more traumatizing than I had expected, even over what amounted to a complicated magical video conference. I suppose I'd thought it was just psychological, confusion maybe, but now with the experience somewhat muted by the layers in between, I realized that there really just was something about that powerful little Fairy that was difficult if not impossible to resist.

Harry informed me, when he was done scribbling notes, that pretty much everyone that meets a vastly higher-level Fairy or other dungeon entity faints like that, at least the first time, and told me that I was only out after meeting Herman the first time for about fifteen minutes, by his estimate. Although I really wanted advice, he rather forcibly told me to make up my own damn mind about what to do next, and said he'd pull down official documents about Bo, the Lost Soul Dungeoneer, as well as do some looking for solo divers and other overpowered individuals in the thirty-to-eighty range that might help.

I'd honestly never expected to be putting together a team, A-Team style, but thinking about it sure made me excited. What kind of crazy people with crazy abilities would I discover in the course of it? It made me have kind of a cracked smile on my face as I thought about it. As far as I was concerned, more than anyone I'd ever met, those were likely to be "my people." It would be good to meet some of those, since I never had, as far as I knew.

Anyway, priorities. Right.

So in the end I decided the big A-number-1 priority I had was to unlock that fairy, which would take more than a day of solid work--thirty hours in which my concentration on the ability dared not slip for a second. Before, I would have termed it impossible, but I had a couple factors working in my favor, and one of them was being in a Dungeon Town, which gave me access to the Meditation Room, a building designed for exactly these kind of long-term skill usages. It would dampen hunger, thirst, the need to sleep, and the need to... use the bathroom, and you could seal out unwanted external interruptions. That didn't make one immune to any of those, but... it helped, which made staying up for thirty hours straight plausible, at least.

Two was Soulforged Savant, which was one of the freebies loaded into the Devil's Garbage-Ass Trash Sword along with the NDA. Although the boost it gave was minimal, it did reduce the timer by a couple hours, which was all I could really ask of it. It did make me wonder if perhaps the Beanpole Administrator had also foreseen this particular need of mine, but... well, probably not, right?

Third and possibly the most important, was that the Administrator had just given me a BJ.

Smokin' Hot, in addition to being an adorable little phoenix with a terrible item name, had a suite of abilities that were all designed to buff or debuff people, skills, and abilities. She was a DJ, a remixer, as opposed to a performer like the Harpies; she wasn't really intended to be a solo act, and her abilities reflected that:

[ BJ Smokin' Hot - Lv 55 ] [ Pet ] [ CHA +20 ] [ PERFORM: DANCE - Lv 25 ] [ PERFORM: MUSIC (SYNTH) - Lv 25 ] [ TRANCE DANCE - Lv 15 ] [ DISTRACTION DANCE - Lv 15 ] [ AMPLIFY SKILL - Lv 15 ] [ COUNTER SKILL - Lv 15 ] [ MANA SURGE - Lv 15 ] [ MANA SLUDGE - Lv 15 ] [ STAMINA BOOST - Lv 15 ] [ STAMINA STUNT - Lv 15 ]

A foot-tall phoenix disk jockey whose performance never fails to light up a room. Guards [ Spontaneous Musical Number ] while this pet is active and in physical contact with its owner.

[ TRANCE DANCE ] This pet may perform a dance for up to 3 chosen allies. Those allies receive improved focus and concentration. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. On one [ Mental ] skill per target, add attribute [ Focus Assist ]. [ DISTRACTION DANCE ] This pet may perform a dance affecting up to two chosen targets. Those targets may lose focus. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. On one active [ Mental ] skill per target, may inflict [ Minor ] [ Skill Deboost ]. [ AMPLIFY SKILL ] This pet may perform music that improves one skill or ongoing ability known by its owner or activated by a musical or dancing effect. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. [ Trivial ] skill boost to chosen skill to all listeners whose skill is below or equal to the owner's. [ COUNTER SKILL ] This pet may perform music that may degrade a skill or ability known by its owner. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. May inflict [ Trivial ] [ Skill Deboost ] to chosen skill on all listeners. [ MANA SURGE ] This pet may perform music that improves mana flow in up to 3 chosen allies. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. One skill tagged [ Magic ] per target receives attribute [ Maximum Mana Use Up ]. [ MANA SLUDGE ] This pet may perform music that may reduce mana flow in up to two chosen targets. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. May inflict [ Mana Regen Down ]. On one skill tagged [ Magic ] per target, may inflict [ Trivial ] [ Skill Deboost ]. [ STAMINA BOOST ] This pet may perform music that increases stamina regeneration for up to 3 chosen allies. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. One skill tagged [ Physical ] per target receives attribute [ Minimum Stamina Required Down ]. [ STAMINA STUNT ] This pet may perform music that may decrease stamina regeneration in up to two chosen targets. Maximum performance time scales with [ Charisma ]. On one skill tagged [ Physical ] per target, may inflict [ Minor ] [ Skill Deboost ].

In all, Smokin' was one hell of a pet, but she was also very clearly created with an eye towards making it more likely that I'd successfully maintain focus for a day and a half straight, without messing up for a single second. Because yeah, okay, she would be useful for a variety of people in a variety of circumstances, but assuming I hit a rough patch in the middle somewhere, Trance Dance seemed likely to help me get my shit together, assuming I could have her out long enough or draw her out fast enough to help me. I'd not done a lot of research on how the system treated Pet items like her and the Pianist, but my understanding was that it was basically a form of limited summoning, meaning she would also take up some of my concentration, but not a large part of it.

Fortunately, I had at least one person who could--and almost certainly would offer to, or even demand to--stay with me the entire time, and she got along with Smokin' Hot just fine.

When Louise finally woke, and I discussed my plans with her, although she seemed as confused and upset by Herman as I'd been, she accepted my plan without any sign of disagreement. As for Smokin' Hot, since she was a pet, I had to manually transfer her with an inventory window; there was no way to manifest her as an "item", just as you couldn't with a human corpse "item." When I used her, she was still technically in my inventory.

Louise immediately summoned Smokin', who immediately squawked with protest and marched over to me, kind of punching me in the arm with her little clawed fist, as though to tell me, 'How dare you treat me like an item!'

I leaned down to talk with her, and after a moment of thinking, brought up my [ Speak with Animals ] skill boosting ability that I'd received from... I guess one of the things Harry gave me when I was in jail, and apologized quietly.

"Sorry, hot stuff," I said. "I'll take you back when we're done, as long as you still want me, but I have to really focus on something, for a long time, and I'd like your help. That means having Louise handle you. You like her, don't you?"

A thin voice, more felt than heard, was relayed by the Skill as the phoenix squawked in reply. Betrayer! Only you!

I reached down with a finger and nuzzled her beak. "I promise, I don't want to leave you behind, either. In spite of the Administrator's name--"

Scraa! Not name! No name. Only type. Name me!

I paused. "You want me to name you?"

"You can hear her?" Louise's voice had a spark of wonder in it.

I tapped on the broach I'd summoned and nodded, vaguely. "Kind of."

Name me! Pet, friend! Love! Need!

"Alright, alright." I reached down and offered my forearm for Smokin' Hot, who hopped onto it eagerly. "Do you want a human-like name, or something more...?"

Pet, friend! Care, be cared for. No care, no care.

Those thoughts were a little hard to parse, but I thought there was an implicit "and" that made them into a if-then pair of conditions. If I cared for my phoenix, she would care for me? If I didn't, she wouldn't? That was kind of a sad thing to think about. She would be just aware and alive either way, but she was... also fully prepared to be treated like an object? I suppose for a creature that was, objectively, an object, that was kind of a required trait, but... it seemed lonely.

"How about... Cassandra." The little bird looked up at me, studying my face. I'd always had a thing for the concept of a wise and intelligent woman that was overlooked by others, and the ancient Greek myth fit that bill. Really, as a person generally ignored, I just liked the idea of being the one who wouldn't do that. Granted, Cassandra of Troy was cursed by the gods, so it's not like I would have had a choice in the matter, but I still liked the story. "I can shorten it if you like--"

"Oh!" Louise blinked. "The item changed. I guess that means she likes it."

"Alright then." I grinned at her. "Cassandra, Cassie, Cass, High-C, or just Hot Stuff."

Cassandra the foot-tall Phoenix squawked at me, but it sounded friendly. Funny Boss.

We took some time after that to talk to Mel about what was coming next. They were restless and didn't want to sit around and wait here, and instead suggested they would clear the next set of floors while I was busy, and they'd wait to hear from me, by Communications Center message if nothing else. Mel confirmed that "The Docks" was the common name for the town on Floor 25, and they would bail out at 20 just to be safe if they didn't hear from me. Before they left, I also wrote down most of the high points of what I knew, to be delivered to the people outside if somehow something really bad happened and the Fairy Gem ate me or something.

I... wasn't really expecting anything like that to happen, but with lives at stake, why not take a few extra safety steps? Just in case. Just... you know, overlook the whole thing where I challenged a secret boss to get here for the adrenaline rush of it. That turned out well, and Sm--I mean Cassie was only going to help my chances in the long run.

Anyway, I had kind of a light meal and emptied myself, and then we settled into a Meditation Room.

The building itself was called The Meditation Room, but it wasn't just a single room inside, or rather, it could be, but when you closed the door to the room, another one would appear if someone tried to get in. People outside would know you were there, but... well, it was complicated. A lot of work apparently went into making the Towns make sense, and for the Meditation Room, there had to be a mix of letting you focus to your utmost, while also ensuring that if there was a real need to interrupt you, people could. Things like knocks on the door and messages would appear, but be muted, so you could ignore them.

Or so I'd read on Wikipedia, the one true repository of all knowledge... kind of. I'd never been interrupted or had to interrupt someone else so far in my career. I trusted it, but you never knew when or about what it would be wrong, right? Whatever.

It was actually a really nice little room, and you could switch it to a variety of different relaxing scenes from a panel by the door. I ended up picking one where a little stream had a tiny little waterfall, not more than two feet, surrounded by thick grass in a forest where thick beams of sunlight filtered through the gaps in the foliage, through a fine mist or fog, one just thick enough to show those beams of light without really impeding your ability to see anything at all. There was some gentle generic background insect noise and a little bit of wind whistling through the trees, mixing with the gentle babbling of water from the stream. All of the noises were muted, and there were no other sounds to be heard.

Which... honestly, the dungeons were always quiet unless there was something in particular to make noise, but the point is that it was peaceful, and that helped quite a bit.

The final estimate, once I had a small item--the earring--with the Soulforged Savant and nothing else on it, was 29 3/4 hours, give or take. I felt as rested as I could hope to be, and in a good mood, so...

...so I just did it. I pulled out the Fairy Gem, and nervously, started it going. As an object with a truly long absorb timer, I knew the first long stretch would have no sign that I was succeeding at all--probably the first hour or so, given my previous experiments.

Louise settled on the other side of the stream from me, looking at the sunlight beams with a rapt look on her face. "It's such a pretty place."

"It is." The other meditation rooms had been varied, but a simple nature scene? It brought me back to when I was young. More than that, it was perfect in so many ways, like a scene created as a Hollywood special effect, but tangible. "I used the Meditation Rooms a few times when I was staying in the Dungeon long-term, just to feel like I wasn't constantly in danger of death. This one, the urban rooftop scene, and the mountaintop are my favorites."

"When we're done I want to see that big waterfall that was on the list," admitted Louise. "It sounds like an experience."

"I think that one probably doesn't measure up to the real thing," I offered, "but it's nice. There's also one where you're constantly in freefall. It's hard to imagine meditating like that, though."

"What, like skydiving?" Louise shifted her weight to a classic cross-legged sitting stance and faced me. "That could be fun, as long as you can go in and out of it safely."

"Oh, yeah. It's more like a wind tunnel; there's air blowing up from the floor and out through the ceiling, but you stay physically within the same space. There's a platform around the edges to get on and off."

We talked more about meditation rooms, and adventures, and animals, and then moved on to food, and various other things we found to talk about. I was worried Louise would ask about my past, but she didn't, and I didn't ask about hers. Honestly, after she admitted that she'd been older before the Priestess thing came about, I figured that if she wasn't willing to start that conversation, I shouldn't ask, at least not anytime soon.

An hour passed, then two. Conversation drifted off, and Louise spent some time playing with Cassandra, and also playing her Harpy Harp. Instead of just using the abilities, though, she seemed interested in just... playing music. She asked the phoenix for advice, and Cassie was happy to offer her sample melodies to try to play, patiently replaying the same few chords over and over until Louise could consistently get the the melody.

And of course, my darling pet phoenix chose Free Bird as the first song she would teach. I couldn't help smiling when I recognized it, but chose not to comment.

By five hours, Louise had worn out either her fingers or her patience, and instead was eyeing the trees. I wasn't a tree guy, so I thought they were all kind of generic, but Louise was obviously drawn to a rather climbable one. The room wasn't that tall, I thought, but she got a good twenty feet up without seeming to have any problem, and sat on a big fat branch and looked down on me with a wide grin.

For my part, I was feeling the difference that the Meditation Room made. I'd spent more than five hours on some items before, and it was usually rough at this point. Still... only a sixth of the way through? If I didn't think the task was so damn important, I would feel like I'd committed a huge sin of hubris. Cassie did her best to cheer me up, though, and spun up a taste of the Trance Dance for me. It turned out to be a kind of highly rhythmic hip shaking dance with a lot of choreographed dance steps, and it did help the distractions fade, for a while. She couldn't keep it up forever, and I never expected her to try, but a little taste of it here and there was nice.

It was around eight hours in that the trouble started. All of a sudden, timed with one of the "ticks"--the moments where I could feel incremental progress in absorbing an item--I felt a crack and got the strange sensation that my mind was flooded by what felt like a thick gooey soup of television static, soup that was chilly and uncomfortable but that seemed to vanish in time. It was more than a little scary, more than a little confusing, and it damn near made me lose concentration.

But that wasn't the worst of it, because while the static went away, that sense of a crack in my mind didn't.

Louise and Cassie rushed over, Cassie immediately setting up a Trance Dance. I could only offer Louise a vague explanation, and instead spent what focus I could on looking in, trying to figure out exactly what the hell was going on.

It was, honestly, uncomfortably familiar, bringing back memories of struggling against "ghosts" that might not have been ghosts, things that might not have been things, trying to beat a problem that for all I knew was me literally going insane. It was nothing like what happened when I got my first level in the Dungeon and became a Dungeoneer; that had been muted, professional, and quick. This felt like an egg hatching, except that my mind was the eggshell.

All my efforts to explain it though, left Louise looking at me, mystified and clearly a little scared. All she could really say in return was, "Do you want to stop?"

And...

And no, I didn't. If the Fairies and the Administrators both agreed this was important, then it was. I just had to hope that my role wasn't a sacrifice to be possessed by an ancient spirit or something. That... wasn't how Herman made it sound, but was he really on my side?

After a while, Cassie's ability wound down, and as a show of appreciation I invited her over and gave her gentle rubs and scratches. She seemed concerned, as did Louise. In the end, I let Cassie rest in my lap for a while. Although it was obvious whenever you touched her, once she was just idly resting on me it was hard not to think about how strange her little phoenix flames were--because they were definitely hot, but a kind of strange happy-friendly-hot that wasn't harmful to me, my clothes, or seemingly anything else. If she got mad at someone, could she use her flames against them, or was it just some kind of illusion magic? It clearly wasn't because she was my item, because Louise had the same protection the night before, and she wasn't in my inventory right now. Well, it was hardly a mystery to be solved right now, that was for sure.

As it turned out, every tick after that first one widened the crack and let through a little more static, and that ended up being about every half hour. It never got any more comfortable, which quickly had me wondering if I was supposed to do something about it. I'd never needed to do more to absorb an item, but there was no question that this was kind of a special case. So... could I? Was that even a thing?

Having heard Harold talk about using Experience to do things directly, I tried feeding the Experience I had free towards the crack, hoping that it would either accelerate the whole process or repair the damage. Instead of obviously doing either, the consequence was even stranger--I felt like I got the attention of something (presumably the fairy) on the other side of the crack. Where before the crack was just a... well, honestly, just a mostly-painless sign of damage to my sanity and to my mind, now there seemed to be a real presence from beyond, and it really was bringing back traumatic memories of nights haunted by nothing.

Only... only not, I suppose. Back then, there had been so much fear that I was completely insane, that none of it was real. And while I was scared that I was doing the wrong thing, here, I knew it was real. The same fear and panic hung out around the edges of my consciousness, wanting to consume me, but it wasn't fake, and I knew it. Whether I was right, wrong, indifferent, or completely powerless, it was real. I wasn't alone in knowing that, and that was a bigger deal than anyone else would ever know.

Aside from Cassie giving me mental boosts whenever she could spare it, Louise also tried healing magic on me, which did about as much as painkillers ever do for a problem like this--it might have, at most, done something vaguely like reducing swelling or something, but realistically, it was nothing more than a cosmetic patch on a possibly very real, possibly very fatal problem.

And the pain and the sense of a problem did continue to get worse, as eight hours slowly became twelve, with nothing that Louise or Cassie could do to . The crack got a little wider, the mental static kept leaking, and my efforts to feed experience to--I guess--the hatchling fairy felt like I was throwing sand blindly into a pit, hoping that when I got to the bottom of it I'd find a diamond.

But at the same time, the fact that it was only after I started feeding experience to it that I could detect the fairy's presence... that seemed like I wasn't doing wrong, right? Or was I waking it up early? There was no way to know for sure.

Sixteen hours in, slightly more than halfway, I was ready for it to be over. If only it was that simple! The two among the many thin cracks in my mind had merged to dislodge a tiny bit of "wall", which seemed to hang on by a thread. On the other side of that wall was a strange sense of intensity, and the wall itself seemed to have razor edges that cut me if I focused on them. That left me in an unpleasant position of voluntarily blinding myself to something that was very real, in the hopes that it would keep me from mental damage.

Strangely, feeding Experience to the broken edges of my mind, in spite of it being a painful thing to even attempt, had tangible stat benefits. According to the (slightly warped) messages I received for the action, it increased my Willpower; in fact, it was insanely efficient, a good ten times more than it should ever have been, even as it did literally nothing for what I was actually going through. Similarly, trying to feed it the damaged piece of the wall that was hanging on seemed to do something useful, although the messages about what it too corrupted to read--yet that solved exactly none of my problems, neither repairing it nor seeming to have any other immediate effect. Feeding it gently through the hole was... well, I couldn't really sense what was happening out there, because it was too close to the edges, but there was obviously something out there, and it was hungry.

That was... that was not entirely promising, although if it ate experience, instead of brains, I suppose I could work with that?

Starting around eighteen hours in, every tick started to genuinely hurt. Louise tried to make some kind of joke about me understanding pregnancy as her healing magic helped me along, but honestly, I only vaguely heard it. She might have told me the secrets of the universe or juggled her naked breasts in front of me and it wouldn't really have registered. Because in my head, I could only hold my concentration and count down. There were something like twenty ticks left, and they were going to hurt more and more.

Twenty one hours was the point at which it started turning around. Two more small pieces of the boundary of my mind had popped inwards, and now there was a gap large enough for a teeny tiny humanoid hand to poke its way through that barrier, flailing around as though trying to find something. I focused on transferring experience to that hand, and instead of just taking the "food", the hand seemed to grab my will itself.

That could have been bad, but it wasn't. The hand squeezed experimentally, adjusted its grip a few times, and then squeezed again, as though it--she?--was searching for, or offering, comfort. And more than anything else--more than anything else that was going on--I knew that from that moment on, I couldn't lose my concentration on the ability. Not that I dared not; the fairy on the other end was taking on part of the burden alongside me, sharing the pain and the fear. She wouldn't let this fail; if I wanted to quit, I'd have to fight her, and I had no intention of doing that.

Twenty one hours became twenty five faster than I dared hope. Although I still couldn't look through the eggshell of my mind and "see" her, and even though I was in some very real sense damaging my mind in the process, she was there, and every time I doubted or was in pain, I felt a sense of support. She didn't try to take any more experience, and she didn't seem impressed when I tried to use it to patch up the eggshell a bit, she also didn't stop me, and I knew she could.

Twenty seven hours in, as though a dam had broken, all of a sudden a small humanoid figure tumbled ass-over-teakettle into my mind. I was surprised, but again, we didn't stop. I looked at her, surprised that she was there, but she kept focusing, and I realized that we weren't done, couldn't be done. The process of absorbing the gem wasn't just about getting her inside of me, inside my soul or spirit or magic or whatever. It probably also wasn't just about patching up the hole she'd made coming in, though that was reason enough to keep going.

No, there was something else, something aside from the personality. If the creature herself was only part of it, then the rest must still be important, maybe even critical. And with only five ticks left to go, I could hope that the worst was behind me--behind us.

Well... not exactly.