Even though it wanted to test out how these mana-cells interacted with itself, it couldn’t feel too much of a difference yet, just a vague sense of phantom awareness of more mana in its body that let it know that its changes were still happening. And it wasn’t going to wait however long its full changes took to show, before moving on.
Additionally, as fun and relaxing as it was to just sit and observe the surroundings, a couple hours of doing so had made the whole thing lose some of its charm by sheer volume of time, so the wolf had simply waited until its injuries were well and truly healed, from the broken bones in its abdomen to the flesh on its hands, and forced itself out of its relaxed fugue, back into action.
The stairs looping around the walled lift platform were almost decoration at this point, unfortunately, but after barking for a ‘haste’ boost from the human, it managed to feel out its surroundings fairly well.
Most of the bridges extending out of the staircase led to rooms overlooking the rail system that wound around the inside of the walls, likely for the humans to have easy repair access, while a few led to small batches of machinery covered in levers and buttons, connecting to complex mechanical systems that it didn’t bother paying attention to.
The general trend however, was that most of the machinery and pipework within and around the walls, seemed to converge on that colossal room that the thumping came from, just about a hundred feet up.
It wasn’t quite as large as the room below the platform shaft, but it was a cubic grid of about four hundred feet across, with six machines within, only one of which was operational, and next to it, was a jagged hole in the stone walls that led out into a square-shaped tunnel half full of water, around and within which, little four-legged creatures scurried about. Rodents, most likely.
Hopefully.
There was another exit where the cylindrical room opened up into another wide corridor, about two hundred and fifty feet up, but it couldn’t feel where that corridor led to, so it took the more obvious option.
The way up was a long one, not due to distance, but because the wolf had to meticulously tap along the rusting metal and feel where the most stable parts were so it could move forward.
The bridge that led to the staircase was easy, but the metal stairs themselves? Not so much. It had to punch the central pillar constantly to know where to put its feet, occasionally using its slime to shuffle across some spots where the stairs had been so rotted through that even mild vibrations made the iron flake apart.
The threat of falling into water was a good motivator for exercising caution, considering the wolf didn’t know how to swim, and the human would likely drown if it detached her.
After a mentally exhausting hour of slowly making its way up, it finally climbed the last couple steps, and turned to the bridge at its left.
The odd thing about this particular bridge was that it was seemingly made to be detached at the press of a button, and was in a strangely good condition. Inert latches with stray wires at the four connection ports sat idle, waiting for a twitch of electricity to send the entire bridge plummeting.
Why the humans would make something like this, it wasn’t sure.
It was thankfully much thicker and more stable than all the other bridges dotted throughout the cylindrical room, with only a little bit of surface rust, so the wolf began to quickly trot across the near-hundred-feet long bridge, leading straight into another pair of doors.
Up here, the moss was a lot less dense, and combined with the large distances, the light was, at best, just barely enough to see vague outlines from where tiny bits of it clung to the railing. The reflections of light in the misty sewage water as it cascaded were pretty, but not helpful.
So the wolf simply closed its eyes to focus on vibrations more as it walked up to the doors.
Thankfully, the constant banging was so intense that it didn’t even need to do anything to get a detailed image of everything within a hundred feet. The metal audibly vibrated with every thundering boom, and it quickly concluded that this pair of doors was the same as the ones below, if a bit smaller.
And rather... damaged. All across the metal doors was an absolute mess of thin, shallow cuts, as if a human had picked up a sharp rod and just started hitting the doors for a few hours. Some were equally spaced, like claw marks, while others were solitary and random, coupled with a couple tiny dents.
It was odd, but it didn’t care much. There wasn’t anything beyond the door, nor around them, so it didn’t consider it a threat.
It set the human down, and began scratching.
Its ‘hands’ palms were once again covered in scratches and metal bits by the time it felt the doors become a little less rigid. It calmly dropped down, swept the metal shavings to the side, and prepared itself for a test push.
It braced its shoulder against the door, dug its claws into the metal, and pushed.
Nothing. The doors barely moved half an inch.
So it got back to scratching, fully intending to just burrow through the metal if that’s what it took to get out of here.
Not even ten seconds into its renewed efforts, a sudden rush of mana swept around and past the wolf, all of it moving out the air and being sucked into the door.
It felt the latches of the bridge snapping open a split millisecond before it heard the clicks, and activated [Bloodrush]. As the bridge dropped out from underneath its feet, it hooked its left hand’s claws into the door, and as [Pack Hunter] immediately activated, it wildly swung its right hand towards the human’s, clasping her wrist in an iron vice.
Its ears were filled with the human’s scream of terror as her weight swung down, yanking the wolf’s form down with a sudden jerk.
For a brief moment, it felt like its claws were going to be ripped out of its fingertips by their combined weight, the tendons straining like frayed rope to keep its fingers in that pinched position, trembling with desperate effort, then her momentum slowed, cut short by her body slamming into the iron wall with a dull metallic thud and a wheeze.
It hurriedly extended its slime over the human’s forearm, red throbbing veins flooding over its fur in all four limbs, faster than it had ever done before. As the human’s wheezing coughs faded out into panting breaths of terror, the scent of it choking the air, it snarled in effort, struggling to focus on how to thicken the slime while also very aware of the possibility that they could both die if its fingers gave out. It just didn’t have enough strength for this.
It mentally prepared itself to drop the human the moment its confidence in staying alive wavered.
Thankfully, in a mere three seconds, it managed to stick all three of its available limbs to the wall and door, feeling adrenaline pumping through its veins as its heart raced.
It opened its eyes, and looked down, past the human’s hanging form, as the giant platform raced down the glowing depths, crushing metal and snapping bridges like toothpicks, the deafening clamor vibrating around the room and through its bones to combine with the constant banging of the machine just beyond the door.
For a few, short moments, it just stood there in shock, drinking in the sight, all the way down, until the bridge slammed into the waters below, almost parting them in two as a huge splash jumped up several stories.
It was, unsurprisingly, very nice to look at, even from this far away.
Something very large suddenly moved in the waters, angrily swirling around the rapidly descending bridge, until eventually, both faded out of its effective eyesight, turning into vague blurs of black in a lake of glowing yellow-green.
The wolf was more thankful than ever that it didn’t go near the glowing water, nor try to catch any of the things swimming around in it. It mentally added another moment where caution had saved its life.
It quickly turned its head around, scrutinizing its position with both sensation and sight, its antennae writhing incessantly.
In truth, nothing had changed but how comfortable this would be.
Putting the human on its back again was at most, an annoyance, as it had to awkwardly swing her around, hook her elbow around its right shoulder, and put her back-to-back on the expanding veins in a bit of an awkward diagonal position, but it managed fairly easily.
Cutting through the door was a lot more frustrating, once that was done. It only had one arm to work with without the risk of falling off, so its speed was halved, and without the proper leverage to actually push the doors open, it had to come up with another solution.
And without any other options, it did exactly that.
It didn’t think it was possible, but at some point, it had gotten so used to seeing sparks that it actually grew a little sick of them.
By the time it finally saw a flash of light blue light filter through the hundred thousand cuts and scratches on the door, its right hand was dripping blood down to its forearm, and it was forced to change to its left.
It also had to flatten its ears, as the banging grew so loud that it was actually starting to hurt its ears a little. Another hour passed, and then another, and finally, it had a hole right in the middle of the doors where it could put an entire arm through. Judging by the hinges, these doors thankfully only opened inwards.
And so it awkwardly stuck three of its limbs on the right door, and put its left forearm through the hole in the doors, bracing its hand on the inside by hooking its claws into the left door in a very awkward angle that made its shoulder ache.
Then it began pulling back with its left arm and shoulder, simultaneously pushing with its three other limbs on the door it was hanging off.
Even though it could feel its muscles burning and the snarl in its throat raking against its vocal cords as it pushed and pulled with all of its strength, progress was slow, the right door opening one inch at a time.
The hinges weren’t even sticky or rusty.
It simply wasn’t strong enough.
The moment a gap wide enough for its hand to go through appeared, it paused and slowly, carefully, stuck its right hand in there, hooking its claws into the left door again, and then tilted its body almost sideways, using its arms to pull and its legs to push.
Exhaustion quickly filled its muscles, the straining burn turning into a numb weakness.
It waited until it felt like it could no longer continue, then activated [Bloodrush], and redoubled its efforts.
At some point, the human started using her weird mana push technique to help it, and after a couple more minutes of struggling, the doors finally widened enough for the wolf to squeeze through.
Which it did with great relief, fixing its grip on the left door and hopping off the right door, planting its back paws firmly against stone with a mental sag of relief.
Its shoulders, and the human’s awkward position, made squeezing through the gap in the doors a bit of a painful process for both of them, especially considering its bleeding paws, but with a final awkward twist to not bang the human’s legs onto the metal, it stumbled into the room, finally.
The tide of blue that filled the room with each bang seemed to come from a machine on the back left corner of the massive room, but rather than rushing there, it took a moment to appreciate both the feeling and the sight of the room.
Even if it hated the absolutely deafening explosions.
Five gutted machines, each a hundred feet tall and wide, with bits and pieces of them, plates and pipes and tools, scattered across the floor, flanking it on either side like gigantic metal skeletons. The ceiling above was barely taller than the machines, and with the flashes of blue constantly highlighting that sight, it made it feel a lot more claustrophobic than a massive room like this should ever feel, so the wolf quickly trotted across the empty space between the machines.
Comparing the broken machines to the functional one, made the difference even more apparent.
They seemed to be missing pretty much everything that made them functional, from the dozen smaller engines within, to the finer details of valves and pipes.
The strange thing was that all the removed parts weren’t just missing. With every bang, it felt and saw the mess of haphazardly made machinery sitting next to the working machine, the hundreds of tools seemingly pooled together in a twenty foot area.
The air stank of sewage, fuel and rot.
Then it felt something strange to its right, and paused, backtracking a few feet and peeking around the corner of one of the machines, staring into the empty space between it and the one previous to it.
Another deafening explosion filled the room with blue, and the vibrations confirmed its curious find.
Three human skeletons, picked clean and old enough to likely crumble to dust at the first touch, arranged in a small pile, their skulls placed on the floor side by side to face the wall in a way that felt distinctly purposeful.
Odd.
It turned around and resumed its walk, not paying much mind to what it had seen, already filtering it out of having any importance in its mind.
The closer it got to the machine that made the explosions however, the more it hesitated, flinching with each explosion.
It was just so loud. Its antennae were giving it a great look of the tunnel system beyond, and all the creatures in them, but it was three hundred feet away from the thing and it could feel its ears starting to ring already. It felt like it couldn’t even hear its own thoughts.
It would probably burst its eardrums to walk past it, and it doubted any boost would make it fast enough to speed away in time to not pop the membrane.
Maybe it should have put a bit more thought into how it was going to go about leaving this place.
It lifted a hand to press its ears flat against its head, pressing down with bruising force.
It helped, actually.
It sat down, racking its brains for what it was going to do. It probably couldn’t rest with these rhythmic, deafening explosions constantly playing in the back, and thus, not heal. It also couldn’t just rush past the machine and fight however many dozens of rodents were just beyond it in the tunnels, and it-
It stiffened, its hand lifting off its head as it struggled to comprehend what it was feeling.
It didn’t have the time to.
In the span of a couple seconds, everything on the tunnel just beyond had done some sort of… erratic movement, and stopped moving, falling limp to the floor. It blinked rapidly, the fur under the slime struggling to raise in a bristle.
It didn’t know why, but its instincts were screaming of danger.
No, not danger. Death.
In the span of a second, the screaming turned into a deafening screech.
It felt like it was about to die, the mortal fear of certain death clutching at its mind in a steely vice that froze it in place.
The miasma of terror that came out of the human made it aware that she somehow felt it too.
It was about to activate [Echoes of Oblivion] and try to snap itself into action, find some corner or nook in one of the machines to burrow into and hide, when the object of its fear blurred into sight from around the blue-flashing machine, sliding sideways on a single humanoid foot, its other curled into its chest, its upper body leaning almost parallel to the floor.
Its momentum halted after a few feet, fluidly transitioning its body into a loose crouch, head forward and arms limp at its sides.
It wasn’t sure if it was from shock, but it didn’t even bother using its antennae, simply staring at the distant figure, frozen.
The flash of blue faded, and darkness fell.
The silence felt suffocating.
A whisper of air moving, the shuffle of cloth, the lightest of vibrations echoing through the floor into its retracted antennae, before they all suddenly cut off.
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Another flash of blue illuminated the figure, one long second later, now standing upright just fifty feet away, its metallic head staring at them without eyes, with three horn-like protrusions coming out of the top of its head, and three symbols painted in white where its face should be.
The suffocating sensation of imminent death suddenly faded, as if it was never there, and the wolf gasped out a wheezing breath it hadn’t realized it had been holding, lowering itself into a pose of submission, tail curled under its legs, making sure to keep its eyes away from the man’s metallic head.
Because it saw the moving flesh. It saw the skin, the metal, and it distinctly felt the lack of a heartbeat as vague vibrations bounced around in the human's chest cavity.
A biological impossibility. A dead human, walking and running. It was so unnatural it made its skin crawl.
Even if it tried to run, it felt like the creature could kill it in less than a second, so it simply sat flat on the floor, tense and afraid, hoping for mercy, its tail so far between its legs that it was brushing its neck.
It hated doing this.
“Who are you?” The human male asked, and the wolf sincerely hoped its own human would make her own sounds and negotiate for them.
Which she did, thankfully.
----------------------------------------
Part of her was utterly elated to hear another human again.
Another part of her had emptied its bladder.
“I- uh, Emhreeil. A-Adventurer. Bronze rank.” She squeaked out, barely audible over the echoing sounds of the explosions, her voice so croaky she sounded like a dying frog. She winced, a thousand thoughts in her mind swirling like a tornado. She was too scared to send mana his way, lest it be perceived as a threat. She was utterly blind.
“I- please, we need help. We’ve been stranded down here for- I-I don’t know how long-”
“I don’t care.” He dryly said, and she just fell silent, unsure of what to even say to that or what to think of that. Another bang filled the room, and the man spoke again as soon as the sound had faded enough.
“How did you get here? Answer clearly and honestly.”
She didn’t hesitate, seeing a lifeline.
“We- we were in a trash pit. Something happened, and we fell down the gears- and then it found some pipe down there, and followed it, then u-uhm, just kept following it, then fell into a room, walked through a tunnel, through s-some kind of, factory with a bunch of rotted fuel in it, I-I think, and my -uh, companion here climbed up some kind of… shaft or- or some vent with me on its back, and then we found a bridge that led to this- this staircase outside, and he took us here. I-I’m- my legs are broken, so it’s been carrying me.” She stammered out, her voice cracking, her heart pounding at the sudden interrogation, the chance of rescue.
The man was silent. Another explosion in the background, and he spoke.
“You’re not lying. Which is weird. How did this…” He suddenly trailed off, and she held her breath, every second of silence mounting the tension in her chest.
“It’s a wolf.” He spoke, his tone still oddly dead and uncaring, with just a hint of realization, and she flinched in surprise.
“N-No, i-it’s just- just a mutant I found-” She rushed out, and was cut off by another bang.
She didn’t say anything after the sound faded, and neither did he. Swallowing a lump that had lodged itself in her throat, she wondered what to say and how to salvage this. There was no way he would believe her, not after he said it so confidently, so quickly.
How on Ergos could she possibly convince an adventurer to leave a wolf alive? How the hell did he figure it out so quickly? Was he even an adventurer?
Another bang, and as the sound faded, the man’s footsteps neared, his voice filling the room, carrying perfectly, like a sentence that was somehow whispered but still carried across an entire room.
“I’m curious about something. You are dependent on this creature right now. You know what it is. You’re riding on a monster. One that is essentially the definition of the word, at least culturally. I don’t know how or why it’s being like this, or how you got it to like you, but the fact of the matter stays the same. You are on the back of one of the most dangerous monsters that have ever existed. So I can’t help but wonder.”
Another bang filled the air, and he resumed right after.
“Do you want it dead?” He asked.
“No!” She replied instantly, her lips blurting it out without any forethought, mildly panicked at the thought of her companion getting killed, her fingers tightening on its shoulder.
“Really?” The man asked slowly, somehow making it sound perfectly flat. “What if I put you on my back, and carried you to safety? To some clinic? You wouldn’t be depending on it anymore. Would you want it dead then?”
She didn’t hesitate for a millisecond, despite the fact that to her, it almost sounded like an offer straight to safety in exchange for its life.
“No.”
It was a stupid choice, logically, but she didn’t feel like a logical creature right now. She hadn’t for a while.
Another bang.
“In the Dungeon, the easiest prey is people. It has killed, and it will do so again. Your choice would have made that happen. Every person this creature will kill in the future, would have been dead because you said ‘no’ to my following question. So, think. If I were to help you out of here, would you want it dead then, knowing this decision might cost ten lives?”
For once, she hesitated.
She’d become far more jaded and cynical ever since she’d come down to the Dungeon. It was impossible not to. But still, the knowledge that her… friend, of sorts, could be the reason a child’s parent would not come home one day, that a parent’s child might never return home one night, that someone’s lover or wife or husband could end up as nothing more than an added arm to her companion, that made her hesitate.
But what were the chances of that? What were the chances it would kill a gangster who terrorized the regular people, some murderer, some rapist, some loan shark, some drug pusher or a slaver or just someone who was already dying from exposure in the Dungeon’s dirty streets? Were they equal, by some stretch of the imagination?
Regardless, he was right. This was a monster, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it from being one. Her mind wandered back to how it tore the golem’s face to jagged ribbons of metal and glass and wires, and she gulped, indecisive.
But she also thought about how it had nosed at her face when she was having one of those episodes down there, how it had every reason to kill her and eat her, but it hadn’t. How it had fed her from its own blood, because it wanted to, how it lugged her useless form around for what felt like months, how it gave her a health potion when she was certain she was going to die from either bleeding, or infection.
She came to a conclusion. A conclusion that scared her, truth be told.
“No.” She breathed out.
Another bang.
The man walked closer, and she felt the wolf tremble underneath her, tensing. Her hand instantly darted to soothingly pet along its neck.
“What about a hundred?”
“I…No.” She repeated, feeling some part of her wither and die inside her as she realized just how easily that admission came.
“What about a thousand? Where do you draw the line?” He paused, and she heard the shuffle of clothes. “Do you draw a line? What is the point where you would look at a monster that you care for, and decide that enough is enough?”
She took in a deep breath, struggling to push aside her confusion and the desire to just say whatever he wanted her to say in the vain hope of assistance, to just scream in frustration and ask him to fucking help her or leave already instead of giving her this sudden interrogation to deal with.
Would she draw a line?
The version of herself that walked into the Dungeon for the first time would have drawn the line at ten people, regardless of how much she owed her companion, how incredibly attached she’d gotten to it.
And that unrecognizable person that existed only in her memories was much less selfish than the person she was now. Much less desensitized, much less desperate, much less bitter and spiteful and without a single loose screw in her mind.
Were she forced to choose between a thousand strangers and her companion, what would she choose now?
The answer came easily, and no matter what absurd number she added to the tally of lives, it never changed. Five thousand, ten, a hundred, she just… couldn’t choose them over her companion. Even when she stopped herself and tried to imagine every number and convert them from a faceless statistic into people with unique memories, experiences, and dreams, nothing changed. It budged, it bent, her heart ached, but the answer stayed the same.
Only adding herself or Katherine to the equation made her pause.
And the fact that that question was so divisive that her mind just refused to attempt choosing one or another, was where she drew the line.
“If… if it goes for me or K-... someone I care about.” She whispered truthfully, taking in a deep, shuddering breath as her ears filled with another rhythmic explosion.
Just uttering those words made her chest tight.
When did she become this way? What would her old self think of her? What did she think of herself, right now?
Did it matter?
The man said nothing, breathing steadily.
“So you do not care about the death toll your decision might cause, so long as it doesn't affect you and that person.” The man stated, and she resisted the urge to cuss him out, gritting her teeth.
“Yes.” She bit out, feeling like she’d just thrown herself down into a hole she’d never crawl out of.
Another explosion.
“What will you do afterwards?” The man questioned, and the question sobered her up immediately, a giant blank forming in her mind for a few seconds.
The answer wasn’t complex. In fact, it was almost offensively vague, but she didn’t want to go into specifics. Not with this man, who could be some fragment of her imagination for all she knew due to how absurd this discussion and his entrance to it had been.
“I… Live. I just- I want to live around people I care about and who care about me. People that are like me, and just enjoy life with them. Enjoy freedom.” She simply stated, unbothered with how awkward it was to talk to someone while laying face up on top of a wolf.
"Freedom..." He almost scoffed. "Freedom is power. And to have power is to be a monster."
The man turned silent, until another bang passed. The shuffle of clothes predated a long exhale that sounded almost like a sigh. Something clattered, metal against metal.
“I’ve made up my mind. I dropped a mana compass on the floor. It’s mapped to point you to the safest route possible to the surface. I will give this to you if you answer my questions and do something for me.” He stated, and her heart leapt to her throat, ready to agree to pretty much anything. “First, do you know how to guide someone here?”
“No, I-I have no idea. I have a [Mana Touch] Skill, but I only got it after we’d arrived at this… this place. I was completely blind before then. I’m sure I could… I could do it, if you gave me some instructions or- or another compass?” She hopefully offered.
“I won’t.” He said, confusing her for a moment until she realized that he meant if she could lead someone here if she was captured and forced.
“Second, you have a golem’s core in one of your pockets. You can’t legally sell or use it after you get out of here. I won’t explain why, you’ll see once you’re outside. I know a bishop in the Six-Eyed Crow’s church who will take it off your hands for a good price. Third floor, fourth quadrant, walk down street ninety three, just past the open square. You will go to them, ask for the bishop. Only speak to the bishop. Tell him the password, sell the golem core to him, and give him the compass. The password is the following phrase, I won’t repeat it.” He said, then paused for a couple seconds as she parsed through what she’d just heard, hurriedly committing the location and instructions to memory.
Another bang, and he resumed.
“Tell him this, exactly this. ‘I saw a ghoul on a conveyor belt, and it turned around to smile at me.’ Then give him the compass. He’ll owe you a favor. A small one. Do with that what you will. Do you understand?” He dryly intoned, and she gulped.
“Yes. Yes I do. But- how am I going to find this place? I’m blind…?” She asked, confused.
“Not my problem. Figure it out. Repeat the instructions to me. What are you to do in exchange for my assistance?” He pressed on like a drill sergeant, and she grit her teeth.
“Third floor, fourth quadrant. Down street number ninety three, past a square, speak to the bishop. Tell him that I saw a ghoul on a conveyor belt, and it turned around to smile at me, then give him the compass.”
“Good. I have something I need to take care of. Lead yourselves out, and never come back here again. If you tell anyone about this meeting, or this place, I will make you suffer pain you can't even imagine. I might look for you in the future for some similar, simple errands. Goodbye for now.”
The sound of something light and metallic sliding across the floor was the only thing she heard besides the faint rustle of cloth.
“W-Wait.” She blurted out, and felt a light tingle of that fear enter her mind again, letting her know she had his attention. “Why me? For these- these errands? Im-”
“-A cripple.” He cut her off, and she flinched. “Cripples and the downtrodden are those who are the least likely to draw suspicion going into a church, so you and your horrific appearance are convenient for me. And if you ever return to your adventuring career or fix yourself, I’d have a good contact for information on what’s happening for both the outside world, and the Dungeon. I’ll also pay you for the mentioned information, if I decide to look for you. So keep your ears peeled, and your mouth shut. Oh, and, do not reveal the wolf’s existence to anyone. Monsters exist to be hunted. Goodbye.” He spoke, quickly and monotone, and with another rustle of clothes, silence filled the room, for all about three seconds before another explosion made her flinch.
She cautiously sent a pulse of mana out into the room, finding nothing but machinery and broken bits of metal all around both of them, the wolf below her cautiously raising its head.
She quickly twisted around to the best of her ability, ignoring its grumble of protest, and snatched the compass, clutching it as hard as she could to her chest.
The mental, directional tug in her mind was so comforting that she couldn’t help but let out a strange sob-laugh of relief.
A way out. Finally.
Even as the wolf began detaching her from its back, covering her in yet another fresh layer of slowly crusting slime and depositing her on the cold stone, she just clutched the compass to her chest, taking deep breaths.
She’d have to separate from her new friend soon, but that was fine, even if she never saw it again, even if she never got to feel that high of drinking its blood again, even if she would be responsible for every life it took from here on out.
That entire conversation just baffled her. Few parts of it made sense. She was half convinced she was having some kind of fever dream.
But as the wolf tried to nudge its head under her shoulder with a grumble, holding its ‘hands’ over its ears as it tried to sleep, she thought to herself that this all certainly felt real.
And it felt good, no matter how conflicted she was about what she'd discovered about herself.
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