"That was really a lot of emotional extremes in quick succession," Lucien remarks later.

"Yeah. It's, uh, historically been less that way for me because I don't sleep with June and usually don't take breaks in the middle with her either, just quit when I need to quit, but it was something, all right."

"Yeah I think I'll need to get used to keeping myself focused even with the whiplash, which should be doable. Definitely better than not having any guiding in the middle."

"Agreed. I was able to be so much more calm about the victims who didn't want to talk to me, which is going to be important in the nasty dungeons."

"I should definitely wear a blindfold for those - I was fully convinced the dungeon was my fault by the end."

"Ouch. Do you get delusions about how that could be or just the conviction that it somehow is?"

"Uh, sometimes I thought it was because I was pulling people through bad areas, but I could feel myself scrambling for an explanation because of the conviction and wasn't very attached to that one."

"Probably better that way, you won't be as likely to wind up with strange beliefs about how to try to solve the problem."

"I was successfully able to follow through on my promise to defer to my support staff even when it felt like they were wrong, which is a relief."

"That's really good, if that holds firm you'll be safe to operate under more conditions."

"What sort of conditions?"

"More stressed-out dungeon victims who might not cooperatively avoid contributing to your guilt complex, cutting it closer on the backlash if I get held up somehow..."

"Yeah those both sound like things I could manage."

"It's not always super fun. Somebody's gotta do it though."

Nod.

"Yeah."

"Personally I find it very satisfying to be one of the people doing it and retain that satisfaction at all safe levels of backlash but you might have a more up and down experience."

"I think I always saw myself as the sort of person who was a good fit for managing an organization and leveraging influence to encourage improvements in various big picture ways, and rescuing people from dungeons is a very different way to help people."

"That's true, power use is often not really compatible with a managerial role - in the moment, anyway, you can do hiring and policy-setting when you're not backlashed."

"Yeah but I won't exactly have a large amount of leverage to do that with."

"You'll have money. You could start your own agency, if you wanted. Or try a guild structure like they do in Asia."

"I'll have enough money to do that?"

"I mean, you might want to do advanced financing of some kind I haven't looked into, but you've got an incredibly good power for the worst and highest priority dungeons if you can stand it, you'll get the big bounties. We need to check if you're spoofed by things that aren't people - you worked fine on Cricket, but a dungeon monster from a living dungeon. If you can it's good for live capture but if you don't register those taps, you and me together could clear out half of fucking Nightmare by ourselves."

"Can we not do that if I do register those taps?"

"Nightmare doesn't have conventional monsters, it just has whatever's in its victims' worst nightmare, and that's pretty often humans."

"... That's horrible. What would happen if I brought those out?"