Apart from feeling a bit hungover, things are back to normal.

If you can call the fact normal how Deep Dive can simulate the effects of insanity with such accuracy.

"Well, it's not like I'm an expert on going crazy, so who knows if it was accurate."

It did feel real at least, and messed up this poor brain quite a lot.

The last half hour feels like a distant dream, the memories are slow to return.

There are still some gaps here and there, as coming this far should have only taken five minutes or less.

The minimap and floorplan are working, so it's easy to check.

What happened in the rest?

Did I pass out, or go in circles?

The logs say there was a fight against Death Rats, getting injured exactly once.

Were they nerfed since the last encounter, or is it because of the dungeon?

The armor is tougher than the avatar had that time, and the Gladius is a well-balanced weapon too.

Still, does the character fight better while being bat-shit crazy?

It wouldn't be surprising if it means he spends less on thinking and more on action.

And if the Guardian could mess up my brain, it could have done the same to the other mobs too.

Okay, so what happened?

That ball of lightning wanted me to unlock that steel door to the lower levels.

He could have revealed the code but urged to search for it instead.

Then he turned hostile right around here, so this room must be important.

Is it a good idea to do what he wanted though?

There must be a reason why they sealed off the lower levels. What is this place?

This room has a thin corridor with rusted-away railings to run around a pit with weird appliances.

They have gas tanks, valves, and complicated dashboards in various states of disrepair.

And where did all the water come from?

The Poltergeist wanted the avatar to get down there and search for something.

A desk floats in the middle of the pit with some papers scattered around.

They look important when even the room's lighting focuses on the old and yellow pages.

It's still impossible to read what's on them from here. Don't tell me the avatar has to go down into that mess.

Isn't there a valve that will drain that water somewhere?

Or something long to fish the papers out, could the great axe reach them? Ah, no good.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

If it knocks them into the water, they'll dissolve with all the info they had.

"Sigh, there's no other choice."

The water is warm and this makes it even worse for some reason.

A staircase leads down from the opposite end of the room from the entrance.

Right where the character landed after the Poltergeist's attack, how convenient.

The Brigandine is already heavy, and the water soaking in almost doubles its weight.

Why didn't I take it off before stepping into this mess? It would have been too logical.

It's either overthinking everything or not thinking at all. At least the backpack remains dry.

"Stupid game mechanics."

All kinds of nasty things float in this pond from dead rats to broken crates. Since when does the game render out corpses?

Everything turned into pixels until now, it was quite amusing while on its rampage too.

Okay, focus on the important parts, and ignore the rest. The papers are full of Cyrillic so that's a bummer.

Flipping through the pages, some parts are in English though, as if the game wanted me to read only those parts.

It's all over the place, mentioning recent scientific breakthroughs and personal messages.

[Congratulations on your promotion, Mayor Degtyarev.]

Couldn't they give the character the ability to read these vodka runes? It's so weird that they translated only parts of it.

Everything feels out of context. Although there are so many pages, if the players started to read through all they'd spend hours here.

[With your new anomaly detector, we can move on to the next phase. Using the lower levels of the lab, we'll recreate those phenomena without risks. These things chew through the batteries in minutes though, is there no way to optimize them? Please look into it in Lab C.]

Okay, got it, you want me to find this Lab C next?

[Also I heard your colleagues complain that you keep a copy of the code in your locker. Mayor, with your intellect, it's hard to believe you can't memorize eight numbers. We restricted access to the lower levels for a reason. Please destroy those copies before someone finds them.]

Wait, didn't the ball of lightning say I won't find the pass in that locker?

And here they suggest without any subtlety that it's right there.

That fucker was playing games with the avatar, too bad it died, so I can't kill him again.

So find this Lab C thing and this Degtyarev guy's locker.

Very mysterious, such puzzles, wow.

Even the Kid could figure this out and he's only eight.

Oh well, the game's emphasis is on the fighting, and not the brains.

So the next problem is to get rid of this putrid smell and the water from the Brigandine.

The character is over-encumbered by this stupid armor alone.

It's debatable if the armor is the stupid one, or someone who didn't take it off before diving into a pool of water.

It must be the Poltergeist's fault and that status effect messing with the brain.

And there are three more of those guys? On this level?

Killing it wasn't a big deal according to the logs. Attempting to make the kill was where the trick was.

It hung around for half an hour without it ever occurring to me to shoot it.

At the same time, I attacked everything else without fear.

Is this what DragonSlayer meant by easier to conquer solo than with a low-level team?

If that status effect turns players on each other as it did with the insane adventurer mobs, it makes sense.

They don't call this place the 'Laboratory of Madness' for nothing.

Okay, whatever, do something with the Brigandine, it's unusable like this.

Could lighting a fire and drying it work?

There are plenty of wooden crates around, except nothing to light them.

Why wasn't a lighter of some kind on the shopping list?! How long would it take to dry it without a fire?

Who would have thought it would become such a big issue?

Taking it off is the only choice.

I bet a wizard could dry it with a single spell, and they say they're useless.

Wringing it dry doesn't do much, the metal plates inside won't budge from the default strength.

It's difficult enough to try and lift it to shake it out, but it helps a little.

Whatever. There were some other elements in the inventory I still forgot to check.

How do these Exp booster artifacts look while equipped?

Do their looks change depending on what else you are wearing with them?

Or even on the fact that they're on, or only in the hand?

Let's try to feel them out with the armor off, then put it back on and...

Are you kidding? It's already dry, and no longer smells.