"Oh. Usually we just arrange to be in dungeons at the same time and then guide off the backlash from that, but I could probably do dungeons more often if I had a secondary. Still, we should probably talk about that when you are done awakening."

"It was only an idea."

"I know, I'm not mad, I'm reminding myself more than you that this is not a good time to make plans."

"You had an air of being mad.  According to me."

"Well, I apologize for whatever actual contribution I made to that impression." Sigh.

"I'm sorry for... - the opposite."

"I get it. I'm not going to hold your backlash against you."

"Nobody who knows how espers work will. - I mean, if you make bad tradeoffs once you've got powers to trade off with then people will judge you about that, but you're awakening now, it's not much under your control."

"I think... that I am mostly happy for this.  But that there are some things I want to be held against me if they happen.  If only before I'm finished in awakening.  And there are other things...... It's good that you're nice, but - I can still choose some things.  When that is true, I want to choose not to be annoying.  Unless that means choosing being stupid.  I thought maybe not saying that could be for me to choose being stupid.  Dangerous.  In the future."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"When I'm afraid of everything, I want to - perform.  To be a person who isn't afraid of everything.  And I think that's wrong.  It's maybe dangerous, to let myself perform as a person who isn't afraid of things, because it's part..... of - the wallpaper, of being afraid of everything.  So I want to tell you when I'm afraid.  Or... I think it's stupid not to, although I don't want to.  Although it's annoying and normally it would't bother me that I was afraid of it.  It would be my problem."

"Huh. It doesn't bother me if you want to report on the things that are scaring you, if you think it's wise."

"Thank you."

"No problem. - I can probably check email and stuff nowabouts if you want to go get set up back to back on the couch."

"Okay."  Seating shuffle.  He'll scroll through Haru's blog looking for posts that seem relevant.

Photography posts! Dungeon case studies! Sex Themed Dungeons: What The Fuck (that's the literal title). Public-information compatibility map of every esper partnership every esper with available data has ever had in their entire careers (this one's a link, Haru didn't do it all himself). Book review of a history of the early reception of espers and dungeons. Interview with Columba. Interview with Sparkler. Interview with the founder of the Maple agency. Interview with a mundane dungeon squad leader. Interview with an author who's got a book on tour about recovering from being kidnapped by dungeons.

Normally he might comment on the title of the sex dungeon one being funny but under the circumstances he absolutely will not.  Compatibility map?

It's a big sprawling flowchart with lines between all espers who have ever partnered, or checked for compatibility and found it but not partnered. The default sort of line means that there is public information to the effect that these espers are usefully compatible; these different lines are used when there is positive data to the effect that it's asymmetrical, or very weak, or strong enough to detect at greater than touch range, but any of these things could also be true when the default line is present. No line means no public data, it does not mean incompatible. The graph is not planar and it's got thousands of espers on it. Traceless's link finds him on the graph, between June Yamanaka (strong-compatibility line) and Sparkler (normal line).

Woah.  He could click around on this for A While.

But he won't.  He should be catching up on all the important things he doesn't know.  Mundane dungeon squad interview?

They go in someplace - someplace that a sensor has cased, so they know if they need gas masks, lights, special ammo, or any other nonstandard gear. They go in and they kill monsters and throw those and anything not nailed down out the portal as convenient. They find victims and cover their retreat out the portal. This guy got to kill a boss monster dragon one time, sitting on the dungeon core which was concealed under a pile of gold coins and gigantic jewels, and he says it was incredible and compares it favorably to the births of his children. They got some of the treasure out before they killed the dungeon but not that much of it because the monsters were torturing people and they really didn't want the dungeon to get anyone else, so they just got what was easy to tote out of the hoard before they found the core and got it to the entrance for the final sweep.

Did the gold and jewels turn out to be made of actually-that-stuff or were they weird somehow?

A footnote clarifies: They were actually made out of that stuff. It affected the gold market. But it was less remunerative than novel dungeon materials, just really cool.

He would be sad for the people who cared about gold being valuable if gold were less useful, and he thinks people mmmostly care less about jewels being valuable.  Except diamonds maybe but diamonds are also useful.

Was killing the boss monster incredible in just like an accomplishment way or like as a rush or as something more magical?

Guy just seems really jazzed about having LITERALLY killed a REAL dragon that was ACTUALLY on a HOARD OF TREASURE.