As Bartholomew had predicted, I found myself in what I recognized as a desperado club office. I wanted time to process what had happened during the show, especially that last minute, but I had to focus on the task at hand. This was something I had very specifically prepared for and I needed to properly execute the plan. I appreciated the advance warning from Bartholomew, and it helped to stave off any disorientation I would have felt. They had not brought Cascadia with me, I was alone. Well, me and the liaison, who was sitting at his desk clicking furiously at a handheld tablet. He didn’t look up.

  “Oh, you’ve arrived? Finally finished your show appearance? Good for you. I’ll be with you in a moment.” The liaison was an elf. A dream elf, if I was recalling my elf subspecieses correctly. He was very pale with a head of long, golden hair tied back into a pony tail. He appeared to be playing a video game. I sat quietly, collecting my thoughts. A sound effect came from the device and the liaison set it down with a sigh.

  “I can never get past floor fourteen.” He pushed his chair back and kicked his legs up. “Normally I would give you an introduction, who I am and how this works, but I suppose you already know what’s going on, don’t you?”

  I made no reply. A script for this first engagement had been provided and I intended to follow it. The silence hung for entirely too long and I could barely keep still. I did not do well in this type of situation.

  “Very well. I shall do the talking. My name is Valerian, and as you know I am a syndicate liaison. You are currently under investigation for prohibited activity, chiefly the possession and use of material tha-“

  “Section 217 subsection 35 of the 15th addendum to the exceptional circumstances affecting crawler rights definition statues clearly state that only the unsanctioned production and distribution of relevant materials is illegal. Furthermore, the formal syndicate court decisions during determined that it was-“

  Valerian laughed and waved for me to stop.

  “Ok ok ok. I too am familiar with the relevant laws and regulations. Will you be waiving your right to legal counsel and representing yourself for these negotiations?”

  “No.”

  “Good good. Hopefully we can keep this one quick and simple. Just one note before I bring your attorney in.”

  He leaned in close to me and spoke conspiratorially.

  “Don’t push too hard. The fact that you are still here means you’ve already gotten a good deal. You have some legal standing but don’t imagine that you know everything. The forces at work here are vaster than you will ever be able to comprehend and you don’t want push to come to shove.”

  He leaned back smiling. I tried to appear calm but my heart was pounding in my chest. He picked his handheld tablet back up and started tapping away at his game again.

  “You know, someone actually filed a class action suit this season that covers your circumstances.”

  He paused and looked up at me, eyebrows raised. I said nothing.

  “Yes, attempts to distribute early information about the crawl are not uncommon but they are rarely successful. It seems there was a concentrated effort made this season to both distribute information and protect the affected crawlers. You are, so far, the only named participant.”

  I fidgeted in my seat. I knew the best thing for me to do was to just listen and do nothing until my lawyer arrived.

  “Fortunately for you, this means your lawyer is familiar with your case and will need no briefing. Unfortunately for you, your lawyer is a disgusting, sloven, mess of a camel and it is to my greatest displeasure that I have the misfortune of being assigned the issue. And unfortunately for me, because this suite was filed early he has had time to travel to the system. Oh look, here he is.”

  My lawyer materialized in the office next to me. He was an enormous bactrian. I had seen these creatures as mobs and on shows, so I wasn’t taken completely off guard, but he was huge. Huge and smelly and completely unkempt. He wore a rumpled toga type outfit and his hair was mangy to the point of being unhygienic.

  “Hello, Havie,” Valerian said sullenly. Havie looked at Valerian and started laughing. It was a loud, guffawing laugh that continued unabated for a full fifteen seconds. He stopped to look at me and Valerian and then started laughing again. Spittle flew everywhere. He finally stopped laughing and pulled himself up a chair, sitting heavily in it.

  “I did not know I would have the pleasure, Valerian. I thought you would have quit after the last Valtay season. I look forward to kicking your ass again,” Havie said messily.

  “Let’s just get on with it. You know the particulars, we need to negotiate the specific terms of the deal.”

  “First off,” Havie said, holding up a hand. “I am announcing my intentions to file a complaint and request for punitive action for your flagrant breach of regulation in attempting to manipulate my client in my absence.”

  “I did no such-“

  Havie continued, bowling over Valerian’s objections.

  “Second, I will now discuss, , the specifics of the situation with my client. Form a localized privacy bubble immediately.”

  Valerian looked like he might object, but waved his hand and a pair of bubbles formed around us.

  “All right Gel, I need to tell you, you must be the stupidest person I have ever met. That you would willingly enter the dungeon after seeing what happens to people down here is a sign of a truly rare level of idiocy. I don’t know how many other humans got their hands on the same material that you did, and they are keeping me as much in the dark as possible, but you seem to be the only one stupid enough to actually come here. Fortunately for you, I like stupid. Many people consider me stupid. The fact that I voluntarily took this case pretty much proves them right.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “So here’s the deal. Some previous legislation and this ongoing lawsuit will protect you from direct action. Viewing the materials that you did is explicitly not against the rules. However it is also widely perceived to be unfair, which matters to the degenerates involved in the crawl. And while are protected from overt action, no one else is. Are you alone?”

  “…No. I came in with my sister. And we are partied with one other person that we met.”

  “Fuuuuuck. Do they know about your pre-knowledge?”

  “I haven’t told them. But they aren’t stupid. And I’m not a very good actor. Obviously.”

  “Ok. Assuming you care about them, this weakens your position considerably. Still, we can make this work for you. They are going to want to make a deal. They will want you to keep quiet about everything. Sounds like you’ve at least put some effort into that so far, which is a point in your favor. They will push for a contract prohibiting any mention of your foreknowledge, both verbally or in chats. I recommend against that. Compliance is too difficult and breaking contracts comes with serious consequences. Instead you should only agree to not speak out loud, and that you will limit your communication to a select number of crawlers in your party, through chat only. Note that any crawlers who leave your party with knowledge of the matter will probably be killed, so take care.

  “Now, since you are accepting restrictions that you are not legally required to, you will also have leverage to ask for something in return. Do you have anything in mind?”

  The instructions left for me had suggested that this might happen and I did have a few things in mind.

  “Assuming a celestial quality cybernetic durability enhancement is out of reach, in order of priority; a flying vehicle, a legendary tier shield module, a level fifteen regeneration skill, and all reward rooms marked on my map. ”

  “Well, I can’t fault you for reaching for the stars, but we need to make it easy enough for them to swallow that they don’t feel like they should just accept the headache of what happens if they eliminate you. I’ll see what I can do. I’m going to drop this bubble and start negotiations, we need to get you back into the dungeon as quickly as possible. If we let them, they will try to keep you here as long as possible as a petty form of retaliation."

  Valerian was playing his game and Havie threw a wadded up piece of paper at him to get his attention. The bubbles dropped and Havie immediately launched into a proposal.

  “My client is willing to offer a complete moratorium on any verbal communication that directly reveals his exposure to previous crawl related materials. He can also agree to a prohibition on written or message system communications with exceptions for up to five crawlers, who must be partied with him at the time of communication and who will be subject to the same restrictions. What are you willing to offer in exchange?”

  Valerian shook his head.

  “Havie, you are as idiotic as you are malodorous. While we do care about the image and perception of the crawl, we are most concerned with the of the crawl. You continuously underestimate us in this regard. Your client has access to information that is not only completely unfair, but could also potentially destroy the entire crawl this season. We do desire restrictions on communication about your past exposure to information, but we require more than that. We have reviewed all of the material that you gained access to and analyzed your watch patterns. In order for us to come to an acceptable arrangement, you will have to agree to never enter a desperado club. That restriction must also apply to anyone that you have extended contact with.”

  I groaned. The desperado club was a huge part of my plans. I had spent months memorizing secret passageways, hidden vendors, exploits, and more. My despair was plain to see and my lawyer gave me a sideways look before requesting a privacy bubble.

  “How important is this to you?”

  “More than literally anything else. The desperado club was my key to victory. I could have nearly guaranteed a lower floor exit if we had gotten to even just the third floor to access the club. I spent months memorizing details about that place.”

  “Is it worth your current party? They aren’t likely to budge on this. The desperado club is a dangerous place, not just for crawlers. It is balanced around its secrecy. You have to agree to this, but they will try to strong arm you into it. They will kill everyone around you and make your experience as miserable as they can. The Valtay have a special talent for misery.”

  I sighed. I should have known this would happen; it was true that the desperado club had absolutely game breaking potential.

  “No, it’s not worth it. I want to come to an agreement and not have to worry about this anymore.”

  ‘Ok, then let's negotiate. Desperado access is very significant, so we should be able to get more out of this than just your immediate survival. Let me handle this.”

  He motioned for the bubble to be dropped.

  “The Desperado club has some of the most exclusive gear and training opportunities in the entire dungeon. Sacrificing it is no small matter. My client requires immediate delivery of a legendary tier, flight capable, vehicle. This offset what he is losing.”

  “You know we can’t agree to that. The way the dungeon is designed, flight is game breaking until the later floors. We can’t allow it.”

  “Very well, then you can instead mark the location of reward rooms on his map. We can settle for this.”

  “You ask for too much Bactrian.”

  “It’s less than we are giving up.”

  “It’s more than he should have had to begin with.”

  “Not from a legal perspective it isn’t.”

  In the end I got reward rooms partially marked on my map for the second floor only. The nearest reward room of each type would be marked on my mini-map, but further rooms of a type would not appear after I had accessed one already. I was also guaranteed easy access to club vanquisher through a quest, although that benefit would not extend to my party members. Havie had also negotiated a benefit I had not considered but which he insisted was necessary; I gained access to a shielded message pad, through which I could send messages that were inaccessible to anyone but the system AI. Unfortunately it had only two designated recipients, Cascadia and my lawyer.

  There were several conditions I had agreed to. The most important was to never speak about the issue out loud and never message more than a total of four crawlers, including Cascadia, about the circumstances. The Desperado ban remained in place and I had also received a new item, a “limited access crawler facing codex,” that I needed to use every day for thirty minutes. This was actually somewhat useful, though much of the information in it was redundant for me. It would, however, make people less skeptical of my dungeon knowledge.

  The final point was not a condition, but they said that they would consider it an act of good will if I selected a race or class that had the manager benefit. Considering our game guide, I wasn’t hopeful that the manager benefit would be worth the opportunity cost during class selection, but they gave a non-binding promise to reward me with something that would make it worthwhile if I did choose the benefit.

  There were some implications of the deal I still needed to process and the loss of the Desperado club was devastating, but I left the liaison office feeling better than when I had entered. We would get through this.