Dungeon 42

Decompression

Chp 79

After the mind control was revealed and I had some time to stew, I ran out of steam. I realized the gross heaviness and tingle I was feeling was old-fashioned fatigue. It was an unpleasant novelty. I wasn't in pain, and my body had its usual horror show level of elasticity, but it felt like it had been washed on the wrong cycle. Instead of floating like smoke, it slithered lethargically.

I would have liked to stay positive, but couldn't help but wonder at the cause. It was probably related to why I wasn't floating properly and could kind of feel things. I couldn't be sure, though. I didn't know why any of that was happening either.

This was the perfect moment to phone a friend. So I wasn't particularly surprised when I found the system saw fit to screw me over yet again. When I opened my contacts, Steve and Agony were grayed out. They were still listed, but I couldn't start new messages or add to old ones. Calls didn't work either.

"Oh fuck," I muttered. I'd been relieved when I saw my interface wasn't full of gibberish runes when I got back. I'd looked through it to be sure, but I couldn't say I'd tested all the features.

"Wh-whats wrong?" Henry asked.

"Not sure. I mean, nothing yet, just doing a system check," I replied distractedly. Everything seemed to be working normally until I got to my store. Again, nothing looked different. Not until I picked something to purchase and found the option grayed out. I could look, but I couldn't buy.

"I can't buy new items for the dungeon," I said bleakly, once I was sure.

"Oh," Henry said softly. Looking at him out of the corner of my orb, he seemed worried, but not scared at least. For now, anyway. It was nice to have him with me. I honestly wasn't doing so hot.

"I can still edit things like usual. So it's not as bad as it could be," I added. I wasn't sure for whose benefit, though. If things went back to normal, this would be an inconvenience. If they didn't, I would have to do some drastic restructuring to accommodate my fixed number of tiles and items. That wasn't good, but it wasn't a worst-case scenario, not by a long shot.

"Good," Henry said, putting a hand comfortingly on my shoulder. That reminded me of him taking mine not too long ago. He'd held it for a bit after the kiss but let go, and we hadn't talked about it. Instead, he'd just stayed put, sitting close enough for our shoulders to brush.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Henry asked. I couldn't help chuckling at that. Short of reaching through reality and punching the asshole who'd messed up my system in the throat, I couldn't think of anything.

"Would you like a hug?" Henry asked wryly. He was a good sport despite how I'd laughed rather than answered his first question.

"Sure," I replied. I usually was the one giving out awkward gestures of affection. It felt kind of nice to be on the receiving end, particularly after everything. I was expecting a shoulder hug. Instead, I found myself pulled over and enveloped. My head tucked under his chin, his arms around me, it felt protective. Like he thought something might happen again and was determined not to let it.

I was surprised and stiffened for a brief moment before relaxing. That was when things got a little weird. The enormity of my acid trip near-death experience finally sunk in. I didn't melt so much as ooze into the hug, letting myself curl around Henry inhumanly. He didn't balk or protest as I coiled around him like a snake instead of simply hugging back.

I wasn't okay. Without tears, I didn't have a means of really expressing it. So I just sat coiled around Henry while he rubbed little circles into my back and hummed.

"Do you feel like talking about what happened?" Henry asked. I took a very long moment to make my mind up on that point.

"No, but I want to tell you anyway," I said before sighing. There were things I should have been doing or figuring out how to do. Instead, I was trying to stitch what I could remember into something intelligible. Not an easy task.

"Some of it was like acid trip visions- That's a strong hallucinogenic drug where I'm from. Parts won't make any logical sense, but it's what I experienced, okay?" I asked. It was best to set the bar of Henry's expectations as low as possible before we started. He only nodded in reply, which I only knew because I felt his cheek rub against my hair.

Despite my misgivings, I took a steadying breath, a neat new thing to do, and tried to describe what happened. I wasn't sure if I could call what tumbled out of my mouth a success, but it happened.

"And then I woke up. For everyone here, only a couple minutes had passed," I finished after a while. Henry didn't say anything, still doing his best to soothe me, and a few minutes passed like that.

"Before that, when I found you last night, your orbs changed colors a few times. They turned crimson… I felt like I was looking at someone else when that happened. As if you'd become a stranger," Henry said softly.

"That was 24 trying to take over," I said, then sighed.

"You wouldn't have liked her much," I said, laughing bleakly. I couldn't hate her, not after getting to know her a little. She'd seemed like she'd been stunted mentally somehow rather than purely malicious. That didn't change the flare of protective rage thinking about her touching my dungeon caused. I could be forgiving because she hadn't managed to do it any harm.

"I assure you, I did not," Henry said as he pulled me tighter against him. I laughed sincerely at that, relieved he'd noticed and disapproved. The attempt to replace me had failed, but I was still shaken by how close it had been. She'd been in my body, or at least in my place, for a few moments.

"Do you think I should tell the others anything? About what happened, I mean," I asked.

"You were visibly afflicted… Something should be said, but I'm not sure what," Henry offered after a few moments of consideration. I sighed, already dreading the task of sorting that mess out.

Hey guys,

Sorry about giving you a scare! Some god thing tried to delete me, and I couldn't do anything about it. Lucky for you, it didn't work because the alternative DM would have reduced you to murder drones trapped in your own minds. Again!

Haha, life is an arbitrary nightmare none of us are free from even in death!

Lots of love,

42

I wouldn't send anything even remotely like that, but it was what everything boiled down to. I wasn't in the right headspace for trying to write something more diplomatic that wasn't just a pile of lies.

"Would you mind helping me figure out what to say?" I asked.

"Not at all," Henry said without hesitation. Instead of getting up or moving away, I took advantage of my lack of bones and twisted in place. I'd barely moved, but now my back was resting against Henry so he could see the interface when I switched it to share mode.

[Hello,

Earlier, when I was behaving oddly, there was a system issue. I believe it has been sorted out by those in power and will let you know if I hear anything back about it.

I apologize for the scare,

42]

That was the final winner eight drafts later. It was a lie by virtue of omission and gross oversimplification, but it was the best I could do. Explaining everything wasn't something I could do, knowing so little as I did and making everyone worried wouldn't help under the circumstances.

"Would you have preferred not knowing? If I'd just told you something like this?" I asked Henry as I hesitated to send it.

"No… But I think anyone who isn't content will ask about it. So let them, rather than worrying over possibilities," Henry replied. I nodded, not precisely agreeing but sending the message. He had a point, and I wasn't really up to the task of explaining it in full to everyone at the moment.

"I'm going to try and figure out how to be productive and a useless lump at the same time. I'll let you up," I said and sighed. I still had things I could do, so I should be doing them. I was going to do them while laying on the couch, though. Resting didn't seem to affect how tired I felt. That or I was just exhausted to the point where it wasn't something that could be remedied in a few hours. A fun thought that.

I uncoiled my tail, but Henry didn't let go of me. Not that he was holding me in place, I hadn't tried to sit up yet. Instead, I looked up at him questioningly.

"I'm content with remaining if you don't object," Henry said mildly.

"Okay," I conceded without even token resistance. I snuggled in, content to enjoy Henry's grounding presence. We needed to talk about this, but it could wait for a bit. At least until I felt a little less fragile and could endure the required uncertainty of asking what exactly was happening between us.

Forcing myself to focus, I turned my mind to work. Despite not being able to buy things, there was still plenty I could do. The first thing to do was place some food in the safe zone the survivors from the hero party were in.

I went with the upgraded rations I'd made. Elim had mentioned liking them. I couldn't buy them from the store even though they were free, but I had enough for a couple of meals in my inventory.

So with that done, I started putting the party's magic items in my dismantle tab. I wanted Aaron to look at them later and hopefully develop a countermeasure or way of detecting them.

In the future, I didn't want to be caught off guard by someone being mind-controlled. That was foul play of the lowest order. It wasn't going to happen in my dungeon if I could help it.

With the major tasks out of the way, I shuffled my inventory to queue up things I'd be dismantling.

Since I'd first developed an interest in potions, I'd bought one or two novel ones every day. Despite that, I'd only dismantled the low mana cost ones since it wasn't a necessity to do so. So, while I didn't have a better use for my mana, I might as well indulge my hobby.

Two hours passed while I rearranged my to-do list according to my current limitations. After that came some basic housekeeping tasks I usually jammed in between other things or forgot about. Thankfully it wasn't hard to get caught up with those.

Thinking about housekeeping eventually brought my thoughts back to the farm. Mira and Hetcha should have left in the morning, and it was nearly nightfall. It was probably time to do some light housekeeping. That or send one of the skeletons who wanted to be a caretaker over.

It could wait, but I was curious about the state of the farm. So I decided to split the difference and take a look at my security feed. I found it in a reasonably orderly condition. Everything was adequately clean and put away aside from a few dishes and a bed that would need to be made. Once I removed the pair of women sleeping in it anyway.

"AARON EUSTICE ULNA!" I shouted, a call auto-opening to reveal a startled-looking skeleton at a chalkboard. My panicked high-speed scroll through the security footage showed the girls at the farm hadn't woken up since the previous night. Aaron had some splaining to do.