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were the peak of my heyday
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"On it," he says, eyes going unfocused. "...not very clear. Can you form more firm intentions...? Ah. That would have mixed success... that would work better... that would not work well at all."

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"They can't directly perceive that they're being perceived as a primitive action but they're very atuned to people's actions and reactions, is my guess. —letting all of you see them, only seeing them myself," sort of, "and letting the support team see them. If—"

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"Oh that would be a disaster," he interrupts.

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"That was me deciding to actively rile them up."

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"It always amazes me how good you are at flipping between intentions, Kang Jaeha-shi."

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Is that genuine, or is he subtly insulting Jaeha? Won Seonwoo makes him really uncomfortable but at least before he had a handle on the man. His best guess is that it's genuine but there's something in Won Seonwoo's voice...

"Team leader-nim, what should we do?"

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"Seonwoo, do you think you can cover the three of you if you go into the dungeon?"

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He closes his eyes, this time, and furrows his eyebrows in concentration for a few seconds, then opens his eyes again. "...yes. At least for a while."

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Jaeha knows it's costlier and less reliable for Won Seonwoo to look into dungeons from the outside and vice-versa, but that's useful nonetheless. "Thank you, Won Seonwoo-shi."

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On to the briefing, then.

"The dungeon is believed to have appeared three days ago, but it was only located yesterday. It's believed to be new, as the mass hallucinations and nightmares it's caused are much more overt than more experienced dungeons tend to be. Three sensors have gone in, including Goh Su-ah with Won Seonwoo, but they've had little success mapping it. The commonalities in experience," because of course with psychic dungeons you can't even trust that the things you see when you walk in are real, "are an overt lack of monsters and an overall structure resembling a pocket of air in an underwater cave, but the exact details of the layout differed.

"Technological means of sensing had more consistent success, but some feature of the terrain prevented them from penetrating farther than a few dozen feet out in any direction.

"Hallucinations started within five minutes of entering and did not seem targeted, but contents differed as well, with the main commonality of experience being that they culminated in the person experiencing them perceiving that their ally had died, left, or turned against them. The hallucinations fooled two out of the three sensors' powers, with Goh Su-ah's being the one that did not get fooled, but all espers followed protocol and there were no injuries nor lasting psychic damage." Though they'll want Jaeha to go through everyone who's been touched by the dungeon to definitely wipe them clean of anything that might've been missed.

"The four of us are to go in, Kang Jaeha-shi protecting our minds and Won Seonwoo shielding us while Goh Su-ah tries to generate a more thorough map and I fight off any threats. Given the existence of monsters, we will need to come back out and request backup once we have a better idea of what we're dealing with. In the unlikely scenario where the four of us are sufficient, I will make that call once we're outside, though the specifics will depend on whether we find out anything about kidnapped victims.

"Are there any questions?"

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There aren't.

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Then they can go inside, Won Seonwoo first followed by Jaeha, then Choi Hyun-min, and finally Goh Su-ah.

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He turns his passive power on and immediately shields the other three and wipes all psychic influences from all of them. Now it's time to not pay attention to his own senses and instead try to piece together what they must be seeing from theirs and from the actually quite numerous monsters inside, what the hell.

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The minds of the monsters are located some twelve feet above the ground, on average, and there are seven of them in immediate range. Four of them are moving towards the espers with purpose, one per esper, and the joint impressions that the other three have aren't hard for Jaeha to interpret: jellyfish-like creatures.

What's more concerning, though, is that it seems like the room they're in is substantally smaller than Jaeha's hallucinations would have him believe; the other three are all getting mental impressions of a more claustrophobic place, still damp and cavelike but more solid and less... psychedelic... than what Jaeha is experiencing. And "psychedelic" is actually a pretty good word for it, with the lighting in his surroundings shifting in unpredictable ways and the "sea" in the distance not deciding what colours it should be. Plus, his companions all look like they're starting to melt.

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But even Jaeha's hallucionations are short-lived as Won Seonwoo immediately summons an ethereal bubble around himself which expands to encompass the four of them and pushes the jellyfish away. "They're going to get violent," he warns.

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"Oh that's what was wrong," mutters Goh Su-ah. Tendrils of energy are spreading out from under her feet along the ground in all directions, but they're biased towards the entrances to the cave.

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"Should I attempt to reflect their hallucinations?" Jaeha wonders.

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"No," Won Seonwoo replies vehemently. "That's going to go really badly."

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"Temperature check on my thing?"

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"...works for a bit, but something goes wrong."

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"So we probably should get some backup."

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"You'll forgive me for not checking."

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The enormous jellyfish-like creatures have been curiously prodding at the barrier Won Seonwoo put up, but the first of them tries slamming one of its drab grey tentacles against it to see what happens.

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He flinches is what happens. "Oh, this is going to suck."

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Another tentacle slamming against the bubble.

Then another.

Then another.

Then another.

The four jellyfish are doing it at the same time, now.

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