Merry talked, a little bit at a time, as I moved to the exit of 23, and from there to the boss floor, and through that fight. After everything else, I suppose you could forgive me for expecting my rehash of the Voodoo woman fight to be different. Maybe... maybe if it were, it would have messed something up with the quest, maybe. Maybe that's all it was, but the fight... the fight was the same.

She was there. She gave me that same hateful look. I hit her just below half health. She said, "The devil knows your sins," and the boss appeared. I finished him off and got a skull. I suppose I could have gone again, but... well, I was preoccupied.

Look, Jay, I know that I'm no expert in any of this, uh, not yet anyway. Merry gave me the mental impression--not intentionally, I don't think--that she retreated to her private spaces and came back with a bunch of notes. I was looking through the stuff about the skill, the uh, Devil Contract thing, and it uses a bunch of terms that are blocked. Like... like it was when H-man was arguing with the dragon god, yeah? The notes are there, but the document itself stops me from reading some parts like that. It's weird.

But the thing with all this stuff, right, is they don't let you find out from them. Like the gods not answering unless you know something, yeah? And when the fairy knight tore that one dude to shreds, I saw things. And... uh, things started to make sense a little more when I did.

That... I didn't really understand the connection between those two parts, or maybe I just hoped I didn't. So they were censoring, what?

I dunno how to say it. Resources. Pieces of spirit and magic that come from... uh, souls, I think.

I'd stopped walking for a little while to let that soak in. I mean... I was still kind of fighting cannibals at the time, a little, but I could just put up a barrier and let myself try to think things through. The gods use us as resources?

Merry shrugged. The skill can. I think the words are similar to what K-man said back then. The skill says its a contract, but I'm pretty sure the actual contract part of it is absolute bullshit. It says something about you taking possession over that which is either taken or freely given, and then it says a whole lot more that I don't understand. But when the, uh, the hag used it, she took, and then she just... chose to do something else with what she had.

That really kind of creeped me out, which... like, it was one in a whole line-up of things that were creeping me out right now, obviously, but it was a pretty big one. Just taking people and... choosing that they would no longer be people? I mean, even if the cannibals she sacrificed were only dungeon creatures...

Right, and all of that sucks, but it's honestly... kind of... uh... Merry paused, shyly. It's... it feels like fairy stuff, but not quite, right? Like, when Mr. H just took these things off his arm, and Merry mentally sent me an image of her new fishnet arm accessories, I know it looked natural, but those things had been a part of him, and he just ...kind of chose that they weren't, anymore. And when the knight tore up the ... the stuff, there were magic bits and pieces in there that she took, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't as easy as it looked, either.

I... considered that for a while, and was distracted for a little while longer, and tried to pick up the pieces after a brief fight. You think the skill is based on fairy magic? Even though the name doesn't sound like that at all?

Oh... no, I don't think so. It's more like, the fairies steal, and the skill steals. But, like... judging from what we've seen, fairies are like, mad good at stealing, yeah? Suddenly, Merry started to sound exciting. I think that what the Hag was trying to say--

A wave of disgust poured out of me. I don't care what the hell the hag was trying to say. She wants me to sacrifice people for power.

I got sidetracked for a little while, and ended up fighting the Voodoo Woman around this time, and well, you know how that turned out: unsatisfying. It certainly didn't really completely distract me from the idea that the whole fucking thing about sacrificing people was actually supposed to somehow... not be...? No, it was still evil. But I guess, it was supposed to help people get ahead in spite of all that?

Sorry, said Merry when my thoughts got back around to the topic. But also... you understand the Hag was just a mouthpiece for the Administrator, right? You seem okay with him.

I was, mostly, but ...I didn't really want to think about that. Because I could kind of understand the Administrator just... setting a trap. And if I walked into that trap my own dumbass self, then that was my fault. And yet the things, that only looked human, that were a part of that trap... I guess I somehow expected them to be able to make their own choices, as silly as that was.

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It... made sense on an emotional level, I guess.

I found myself wandering aimlessly forward, at that point. I could have stopped and thought it all out, but... I felt dirty just being a part of the conversation. I'd killed people to get a skill that stole, what, souls? And even if Merry was discovering just what that entailed, technically, the existence of the skill itself was still a horrible thought.

It took me a little while before I could phrase that cleanly in my head, though. It was... mostly emotional. I hate the hag. I hate the cannibals, and what they stand for. I hate their place in my life and my history. I hate what I became because of them. I don't want to understand the skill, not really; all I really wanted to know was whether or not I could use the skill to save Bo, mostly in order to redeem myself--in my own eyes, if not anyone else's. That's why I'd asked, not because I wanted to understand the mechanical underpinnings of it.

...Right, Jay, you and I are on the same page, bro. Merry gave me a mental hug in a free moment, when I wasn't fighting a dungeon monster. The thing is, the skill is still a contract, and that seems weird, right? Only, I think it's not weird. I think it matters.

I frowned, because again, a so-called contract had turned monsters into a knife. How is it not weird?

Okay, bro, check my logic on this, 'cos I think I'm on to something. Merry wasn't in the way, mentally, but I turned some of my attention to her, and found that she was kind of eagerly rocking back and forth, idly. Stealing stuff is clearly a thing, right? Fairies do it, the skill does it, and the dungeon maybe does it to people who die, I guess? But they don't want to just hand that power out to people, as that's mega dangerous.

I mean, arguably, the skill itself was mega dangerous. You could kill people and make an army...

Right, but, it's either out of people willing to give up their souls, or people weaker than you that you beat, and you lose something, ya? It's not free. If you could actually straight-up steal souls, that would be way different.

I frowned, realizing as I did that it was technically possible for there to be such a skill--they just didn't make a skill like that, or...

...or they did, and they just hid it. Like your telekinesis now is better than the skill you originally had. Look at your stealth skill--it has an ability, and you activate it and the effect happens. Your TK is not anything like that anymore. You actually do all the stuff you're doing. This evil skill has an ability, and it's restricted.

Stop. This conversation had already given me enough to think about, and I needed to decompress before I got it in my head to do something stupid. Let me...

Merry gave me a mental thumbs-up. I know, bro. I'm just letting you know what I think I understand. Because if there is a way to steal whats-his-name from the evil fairy queen or whatever, we're going to need to break this skill wide open.

She hesitated, and I knew what she wasn't saying, because no doubt she knew just how much I needed her not to say it: it would take a hell of a lot of practice to get the skill to that point.

The dungeon proceeded before me, giving me ample things to distract myself with--but I hardly noticed, even with more monsters than usual throwing themselves in my way.

After the Cannibal biome came the... well, I don't know what you call it. Noble Ruins? It was something like a large mansion or small castle that was broken, overgrown with plant life, and full of random creatures and the occasional bandit, growing more common as you got to the end. The boss monster was a silly little fake-out; there were a pair of bandits guarding a door, but instead of the boss being a bandit, the bandit leader was dead and some kind of big slime thing had eaten him, which you then killed.

After the ruins was a mountain path that really struck me at the time as just kind of... athematic? It wasn't really built up at all, it didn't seem to be designed; instead, it was just another piece of wilderness like the savanna. I didn't care much about the savanna, but this came after a couple obvious set pieces, so it felt weird. The boss was a big mountain cat that could climb trees and would try to repeatedly escape and ambush you, which I'd originally foiled with my own stealth.

I went through the motions, bittersweet feelings filling me again one little bit after the next, but as I got further from the places where my life had been most seriously in jeopardy, when I got furthest from the places where I had spent sleepless night after sleepless night fearing that my death was around each corner, it just meant less and less. Because sure, the monster levels went up... but I had already passed my real trial, and gotten a damn fine sword for the trouble.

After the mountains was the deserted isle, then the snowfields, and only then did we finally get to the final biome--a hellish castle filled with imps, with the Devil's throne room at the end.

It now all felt so trite.

There he was, on a bone throne in front of a lavafall, and the inventory window popped up as I entered, showing my new and only Devil's Skull item. I watched him, seeing an inkling of recognition pass over his face, but that's all it was. He didn't taunt, or rise from his throne.

I wasn't sure how it was supposed to work, now. He'd stood up and said that he remembered me, but then I'd... well, I'd treated him pretty badly, and also, the Administrator had tweaked his stats. Perhaps things had changed.

So when he said nothing, I just kind of shrugged, letting my still-overwhelmed emotions guide me forward until I stood before him. When that didn't provoke a response, I offered a fake smile, and asked, "Remember me?"

He sighed heavily, his sword coming to his hand, as he stood up from the bone throne.