“Not exactly, but hitchhiking on the monsters’ senses is a lot cheaper than controlling them and they can see in this.”

"You get a sense of the monsters' positions?"

“Not, like, directly, but it’s not hard to map the space by bouncing between them.”

"Huh, I would've expected that to be really difficult, did you practice that with bugs at all - I'm wary of telling scuba guys where to go on indirect information that isn't proven to add up, it'll probably work if it seems like it to you but only probably."

“Yeah, uh, the cockroaches were—educational. Had to get them out of some restaurants. Without starting any panics.”

"...oh noooo is that where they came from. Okay."

“Yes it is! I, uh, hope the owners of the first one I tried don’t put that incident together with my powers, if and when they hear of me.”

"They probably won't, but..."

“More embarrassing than the shirt incident, for sure.”

"Anyway, let me walk you though reporting on the urgency level -" There's a little form to fill out with anything a senor learns about a dungeon, in this case what the monsters are and how badly the victims are keeping.

Oh! Excellent! Forms! She fills them out in detail.

And then they can exit the dungeon so the data can propagate if she's done in there for now.

Yep.

“I have to say, I like dungeons better as an esper.”

"It's an equally adversarial but less overwhelmingly one-sided relationship."

“Yeah. Hey, maybe you should interview me for your blog, there can’t be many people who have experienced a dungeon from both sides. …I am definitely not just biased by how cool your blog is.”

"I will absolutely interview you for my blog but maybe after you have a few more cool work anecdotes? Followup interviews are less popular than the original ones almost always so you want to frontload the good stuff."

“Oh, that’s a good thought. I’m going to take so many notes about this particular cool work anecdote, though. I’m sure I’ll encounter something even bigger than that sometime, but the sense of scale was still really something. And combined with the quiet darkness of the cold water…”

"How big are they?"

“Like, eight orcas. All glommed together into, like, a huge crocodile.”

"Wow, that's pretty big even for a monster."

“A huge crocodile with six legs. That breathes water. And sees in the dark. I guess I don’t know normal crocodiles don’t do that.”

"I dunno if they see in the dark but I'm pretty sure they don't breathe water!"

“Yeah, I meant just the seeing in the dark.”

"Gotcha."

“Why is it that you have stunningly correct research opinions and a good sense of humor? There’s no reason for those to be correlated!”