Gabe
Stun, Sleep, and Silence from my own ring. Assuming the same trigger words for Maribel's locket, perhaps other conditions added.
The most concerning one, given everything else, is Sleep. With Stun activated, I should be unable to move or act in any way, but should still be able to check my status screen and watch stuff go by. Silence I should be Immune to already. And being able to check my status would be nice for determining if there are other important curses being cast from Maribel's locket.
The Sleep screen in Dungeon Quest is interesting. Sleep in Dungeon Quest is sleep in real life, but there's also the chance (as is happening now) of being forced to sleep. It would be pretty frustrating for debuff and rogue classes if their targets were immediately notified of being affected by unnatural sleep - that's sort of exactly what they're trying to avoid - and Dungeon Quest tries to fix that issue while not allowing it to overly affect the real world. Letting someone sleep forever in the real world? Not good PR.
To get around that, Dungeon Quest has an inbuilt kick timer to provide the game a way to kick people out who are AFK, unresponsive, or asleep for too long. Without customizing their settings, players are immediately ejected from the game after either 10 hours of sleep, 10 minutes of unresponsiveness (apparently some people are really good at deep state meditation and have to make this one longer), 10 seconds of not breathing, or 10 milliseconds without scannable brain activity. It's possible to permanently change the settings for meditation; otherwise, sleep settings reset each time you wake up and start at a minimum of 30 minutes. The other ones don't have a button to modify them. Guessing they're there for legal reasons, among others.
Sleep triggers the sleep timer, which means that if someone casts Sleep on you, they have at least 30 minutes to work with before you can get out of the game or interact with other people - more if you haven't reset your sleep timer. If someone tries to wake you up from the outside / etc, that still overrides - so I guess someone could set a sentry in the real world as much as they could set one in the game world. Professional squads of players might have that capability somehow.
Either way, I actually fall asleep from Hector's Sleep curse, unable to tell that anything is happening other than some random dreams. Numbers, sleep timers, a woman in a blue dress. Many more images than I would expect in such a short period of time.
Half an hour later I get kicked from Dungeon Quest.
I pull off the helmet and send a quick message to Koji and Fred, letting them know I'm alright. I explain the context - working with Maribel on some cursed artifacts - and ask if they've heard anything about removing curses, since Maribel's locket will probably need to be cleansed or shielded somehow.
Then I pull up my laptop and try to work on writing.
I spend a few hours working, and look at the clock. 20 minutes have passed. I force myself to try for another hour and 40 minutes in real time before I close the laptop and rest my head on top of it.
Man, I'm awful at this. In the course of a few hours I can write pages and pages of journal entries, or a handful of pages of made up stories. But an important nonfiction writing project? A couple hours feels like a lifetime, I've gotten less than 500 words out, and I don't think any of them are worth keeping.
Time to get some inspiration. Or work out. Or anything to give me a break.
Pushups.
50 pushups later I feel a little better. My phone rings. It's probably a telemarketer - I almost never get anyone who's actually interested in talking to me on a normal day - but I answer anyway. It's worth saying hello to someone, even if I know I'm going to say no to whatever they offer, right?
Most of the people in my life would tell me not to answer. Answering telemarketing calls confirms that I actually answer the phone number, which means that they'll sell my data to the next person down the line, and make me subject to even more random telemarketing calls. The safe thing to do would be to never answer at all, ideally even removing my voicemail message so that it just sounds like a number without a mailbox.
Yeah, that's too much work.
And I find myself feeling bad for the poor people working telemarketing jobs. I'm sure they didn't actually choose that life. I mean, maybe they did, but who would voluntarily choose to cold call random strangers to offer to give them business loans or "improve their Google listing" or help them in various different ways?
I know I wouldn't.
Machantilly and I have a short conversation. I hope she isn't paid by the phone call, because I ask her how her day is and talk mostly about stuff that has no bearing on anything at all. I'm not going to give her my name, the name of my business, or confirm anything she asks. I may be naive, but I'm not that naive. She's a stranger, calling me about my business from a local phone number, but obviously not from anywhere near my hometown. I shouldn't give her any good reason to pass along my information other than the fact that I'm a great conversationalist. i use her name to wish her a blessed day before telling her that I'm not interested, and to please remove me from their lists and not sell my information with anyone else
50 more pushups.
Not sure if asking to be removed and not sent on actually does anything. At the very least, it soothes my inner soul as I try to think I'm going about it the way a logical, rational human being would. My number's on the do-not-call list but I'm the owner of a business. My business doesn't have a phone or a phone number. We have an email address. But legally my phone number is attached to the registration or something, and you can download the entire list from the local government website for a couple bucks. Business phone numbers are public, and there isn't a law preventing people from cold-calling a business to sell stuff. Hence my conversation with Machantilly.
Though it's also possible my phone number could be out there from a previous business. Who knows.
I browse social media for a few seconds before feeling antsy again.
50 more pushups.
There it is. The sweet, sweet euphoria, just starting to trickle in from a good pump. It's the early phases - a mild soreness in my arms and shoulders, a touch of stretch across my chest, breathing that just barely crosses the threshold of normal - but I'll take it.
My best friend doesn't get workout highs. He's got a rare condition that makes exercise, among other things, really really painful. Also dangerous. He always though that people were hallucinating the fact that exercise can make you feel good. He actually felt that way for a long time - people must be either making it up that exercise makes you feel good, or absolutely crazy.
I'll tend slightly towards crazy.
50 more pushups, and then, if I still can't log into Dungeon Quest, I'm going for a walk. I'm so antsy that I can't focus on anything at all.
I wonder if Fred gets a high from working out in Dungeon Quest. I'll have to ask him.
I get up and walk outside. It's sunny, but the forecast says clouds and rain later. I just start walking.
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Gabe
A couple hours later, I'm slightly sunburned and a couple miles from home. The clouds have rolled in, and there was a moment when I thought maybe I'd get soaked, but the rain only lasted a few minutes total. I grab a seat on a park bench, lay down, and look up at the sky. The lower clouds are moving fast, while the ones further away seem to be stationary in the sky. The sun's hidden, but I can feel it still there on the burns on my neck. Either that or I'm burned worse than I thought I was. Maybe I should spend more time outside. Or less.
I take a nap.
Well, I try to take a nap. It's hard to really let myself relax when I have so many important projects to work on.
I get that I'm just procrastinating my writing project. It's just that I'm also realizing how bad I am at it. Some other things in life come easily for me. But this... this is just so hard.
Man. I sound like a whining kid.
But that doesn't make it any easier to spend hours and have nothing to show for it.
50 pushups.
Ok. Done with pushups for at least the next little while. Those were a lot harder for some reason.
Let's face it, Gabe.
You're so bad at this that you procrastinate it as much as possible. When you do finally sit down and force yourself to do it, you're able to get almost nothing done. You don't enjoy it. You do almost everything better.
If you didn't feel obligated to do it, you'd toss it in an instant.
The feeling of obligation probably isn't going away.
So... change it up? Figure out a way to leverage your skills better? Change the end goal? Find someone who can help?
A number of potential solutions run through my mind. Maybe one of them will work. I don't kid myself that I'll ask someone else for help - my batting average on things like that has been abysmal in the past. No good reason not to believe it's not gonna stay 0 for the foreseeable future, so let's not give it more fuel.
Right now, I'll relax at this park I've never been to. Feel the wind, walk around, appreciate the sounds and the sights and eventually go back to life. And to a video game, to see if I've bricked my character in Dungeon Quest.
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Gabe
The walk back home is quiet. Uphill, downhill, along the side of the road where no one is walking or driving except for the occasional delivery driver. So much of the world today is virtual. It's raining? I went on rain walks when I was a kid. In today's world, I feel like the norm is to stay home, order food, watch a movie.
I didn't stay at the park long. I realized while I was out that I should probably be watching my login screen - I'm not just sleeping in a safe zone. I'm actively trying to break a handful of potentially lethal curses, and I have two people there making sure my avatar stays alive.
And one is probably being paid by the hour.
I can log back in to Dungeon Quest, and the login screen clears to allow me to open my eyes. At the very least, I'm immune to Sleep.
Well, either that or something broke. I wouldn't put it past a perfect charm to break if there's any chance of that happening.
I pull up my status screen and check my notifications. I notice in passing that I'm able to blink, so Stun is also gone.
An absolute wall of text awaits me. I end up skipping much of it.
[You are under the buff The Sun Shines Brighter!*]
[You are stunned! You may not take any actions while you are stunned.]
[You have blood poisoning! Healing is ineffective, and you continuously lose HP while the condition remains.]
[You are sleepless! Rest is ineffective, and you continuously lose stamina while the condition remains.]
[You are mana drained! You cannot regain mana, and continuously lose mana while the condition remains.]
[Congratulations! Your continued exploitation of the system, due to your ridiculous luck, has born fruit and you have gained the passive skill Curse of Sleep* Immunity. Incoming major nerf to the Curse Resistance skill, though I'll have to claim that it's "balancing". It'll only nerf people who can level the skill though (which is extremely rare based on a hidden progress multiplier); for everyone else it'll be a mild buff.]
[*This skill grants permanent immunity to Curse of Sleep as cast through any material with mana conductivity of {mithril} (99.95%) or lower, directly cast by or via any mana channel of {perfect} (100%) quality or lower, by the ShadowChant or Legendary Enchanter profession.]
[Notice! An update has taken effect! The skill Curse Resistance has been modified to improve player experience. As you currently have this skill, you can see details of changes below.]
[Curse Resistance is not triggered when the skill holder also holds a corresponding Immunity.]
[Curse Resistance increases the strength of any held corresponding Immunity.]
[Congratulations! You have gained the passive skill Curse of Stun* Immunity.]
[*This skill grants permanent immunity to Curse of Stun as cast through any material with mana conductivity of {mithril} (99.95%) or lower, directly cast by or via any mana channel of {perfect} (100%) quality or lower, by the ShadowChant or Legendary Enchanter profession.]
[Congratulations! You have gained the passive skill Curse of Sleepless* Immunity.]
[*This skill grants permanent immunity to Curse of Sleepless as cast through any material with mana conductivity of {?mithril?} (99.97%) or lower, directly cast by or via any mana channel of {perfect} (100%) quality or lower, by the ShadowChant or Legendary Enchanter profession.]
[Congratulations! You have gained the passive skill Curse of Mana Drain* Immunity.]
[*This skill grants permanent immunity to Curse of Mana Drain as cast through any material with mana conductivity of {?mithril?} (99.97%) or lower, directly cast by or via any mana channel of {perfect} (100%) quality or lower, by the ShadowChant or Legendary Enchanter profession.]
[Congratulations! You have gained the passive skill Curse of Blood Poisoning* Immunity.]
[*This skill grants permanent immunity to Curse of Blood Poisoning* as cast through any material with mana conductivity of {?mithril?} (99.97%) or lower, directly cast by or via any mana channel of {perfect} (100%) quality or lower, by the ShadowChant or Legendary Enchanter profession.]
[Congratulations! You have gained the passive skill Curse of Cursed* Immunity.]
[*This skill grants permanent immunity to Curse of Cursed as cast through any material with mana conductivity of {?mithril?} (99.97%) or lower, directly cast by or via any mana channel of {perfect} (100%) quality or lower, by the ShadowChant or Legendary Enchanter profession.]
[Critical Success! You gain additional knowledge of the skill Curse Resistance!] x 83
I confirm that there seems to be nothing else wrong with me. I'm slightly confused though. Mana drain and Sleepless seem bad (I'm pretty sure you can die from full stamina drain in Dungeon Quest; I don't think that full mana drain does that), but Blood Poisoning? Healing is ineffective and it drains life over time? I'm struggling to understand how I survived, and I click the buff icon.
[Buff: The Sun Shines Brighter!]
[Healing-over-time aura, affected only by proximity. Requires direct sunlight. When applied to a single target, counters anti-healing status effects.]
The lantern must be specially enchanted to give off sunlight. Maybe it makes it, but I'm guessing that the specificity of the skill means that the sunlight has to be captured and stored, rather than artificially made. "Direct sunlight" means light directly from the sun.
That or it creates a space channel to a spot in space where sunlight can pour through. Anything is possible.
It looks like the sleeping healer likely kept me alive. If nothing else, I guess he earned his dues. Blood Poisoning was the last curse to break, which means I probably would have died before solving the rest of them.
That said.
Really, Hector?!? An extra four curses on Maribel's locket, all of them designed to drain the target of any chance to fight back, and at least one that is completely lethal?
I sit up. Maribel is sitting in the chair next to me, her hands folded in place.
"So... it looks like %&@ASF$%"
Really.
"I'm immune to... 7 different curses."
Maribel's eyes widen briefly, then she shakes her head softly.
"I assumed as such. When you immediately lost consciousness and started bleeding, I was concerned. Thankfully we brought a dedicated healer."
"I... I'm not totally sure that all the curses are removed. All the ones in my status screen are gone, but it's possible that there could be something hidden. There was at least one hidden curse - the Curse of Cursed."
Maribel looks startled, then yet again shakes her head.
"That's to be expected. Cursed is a status ailment that makes it harder to resist or remove other curses. It's uncommon in general, but absolutely necessary for a class that's based around applying curses. It's the easiest curse to apply, and is essentially a direct counter to Curse Resistance. At high enough levels, it can even counteract Immunity. And because of how it works, it empowers every other curse and can only be targeted by skills when every other curse is gone."
I check my status screen and the messages again. Yep.
"Well, I'm immune to Curse of Cursed, which means that we found all the curses, right?"
Maribel ponders for a moment.
"I... think that's actually right."
"I was honestly expecting to need to wear the amulet for a few days or something to make sure that we caught everything. But being able to get it done in an afternoon is great!"
Maribel puts her hand over mine and speaks softly
"It's been over a day, Gabe."
Oh. Yeah. Time dilation and stuff. I was gone for a while at the park, walking, and doing pushups.
"Oh man! We need to finish up then!"
If this healer charges by the hour, the most important thing is to get him and his chaperone on their way!
I say the trigger words to turn off the curses, then grab the locket to pull it up over my head.
"Red Camellias in half bloom."
My hand stops before it passes the height of my chin.
[Notice! This item is cursed* and cannot be removed!]
[*This curse affects the item and is not affected by your Curse Resistance. :)]
"Maribel? I think we have a problem."