While I'm processing the new information, Iris asks, "What has happened to Ephran, Geoffrey and Marca? I haven't seen them since the event."

Therese sounds even unhappier, "You had to ask... Marca didn't come back with you from the dungeon, and since time resumed that leaves only one conclusion: she is dead. Though one monster with her appearance assaulted our fortifications, we're not sure what that means, most believe it to be just a coincidence. But, well, Geoffrey was there and did not take well to it. He has been sulking in his room ever since he personally killed that monster. Ephran... was just Ephran. A lot of effort had to be spared to separate him from Chloe and get him to do his work. The less said about that matter the better."

So that really was Marca back then? A pity, we didn't really have a chance to get to know each other.

I want to take this opportunity to finally ask about Elly but my gut tells me to wait. She may be a dear friend but in comparison to the thousands of casualties... I don't want to jinx it but she should be safe, being a spirit and everything.

Darius gets up, "Sorry, but if you're just recapping what I already know then I'll take my leave. I've still got enough other work to do, and it's certainly not getting less. We can continue the rest later."

Therese rolls her eyes, "Fine, it was obvious that listening is not your strong suit. I'll fetch you tomorrow at the usual time."

Darius throws her a stern look, "Therese, please."

She smiles, "Yeah, I'll drop you a summary later."

And with that, Darius leaves the house.

"So back to the topic of the Hybrid class and the connection to... me. If your presumption that it all flows back to me was correct, why is Lucia the one suffering from imminent existence failure while I am fine? Shouldn't the familiars also be connected to her in the same way, so both of us suffer the same way? That I don't understand. Nor why the familiars with the Hybrid class are healthier than the others."

Ms. static noise says something, "T̸h̶a̶t̵'̶s̸ ̷w̷h̴a̸t̵ ̶I̸ ̸w̶a̷n̴t̵ ̷t̷o̴ ̷k̴n̶o̸w̸ ̷a̷s̴ ̷w̴e̶l̵l̶.̷"

It pains me to hear her like that.

Karen explains, "Right, I was getting to that before we got sidetracked. From my current understanding. this is partially Lucia's fault. Officially some of the familiars would belong to her, the rest to you. But I theorize that her subconscious believes that all the familiars belong to you. To make a long story short, through instinctive use of DP and your bond established by the [Unholy Matrimony] skill, she had given ownership over all of her familiars to you. By now, this is an automatic process that she could only stop by using more DP, but, well, she has none left and it is unlikely she will ever again gain some, at least not enough to use it. So no matter what happens, everything will go to you."

I'm puzzled, "How do you even know of DP? By my talk with a certain someone, I understood it to be a well-kept secret. And what's the business with never gaining any ever again?"

At least that is what I understood from that damned lich. There is supposedly a lot of secret stuff to divine classes and DP and whatnot.

Karen answers, "Why, Lucia told me. We ran a few tests and... look. You already know that they are called divine classes, right? They are derived from some kind of divine order. And glitches are... distilled chaos? You can think of them as polar opposites. They are drawn to each other and wipe one another out. Even if people would send their prayers and belief to Lucia now, they would just get deleted from the infected atmosphere before they can reach her. And the infection in her body would eat the rest."

That's too much technobabble for my taste, not that I understood half of it, "Uh, sure, but why am I fine then? Shouldn't I be infected like nobody's business? I only have some mild coughing but I'm not at death's door. Given what you've told me, the result is the opposite of what I'd expect."

She discourages me, "You... haven't looked at yourself or your status recently, have you?"

I'm not sure what she could mean. My exterior is defined by the [Disguise], there should be nothing out of the ordinary to see. And my status - I checked it after waking up, it was a bit messed up, but not more than it always was.

Filled with curiosity and dread, I open my menu. Where previously the whole window was as flat as you expect it to be, now - not so much. Some of the buttons are pulsating back and forth, others are jumping around.

Can't you sit still you dumb buttons!?

One of the menu tabs freezes as if in shock and then falls out of the window, shattering on the ground, "What the-"

I touch the shards it left behind, they are real!? What the hell!?

I hold a fragment up, "Does anyone else see this?"

Iris replies, "Yes, what is that?"

"My... menu?", I ask, unsure what I just witnessed. Dadaism got nothing on this.

As if they felt my frustration, the buttons stop running around but still shake. Some of the menu buttons slightly lean into each other as if they were discussing some secret plans, then trade places. Even after reaching what they think are their original positions, they annoyingly won't stop trembling.

Hey, Skills and Settings, you're the wrong way around!!

After my mental outcry, the two tab buttons jump up startled and trade positions but keep shaking as if afraid of me.

Goddamn, this system really needs to finally reach the beta stage. Well, thinking of it as an alpha state might even be too generous, this is barely past a tech demo and would squarely fit in with other early-access products.

Wait, does this mess even have testers in the first place? You look at something funny, it breaks. Gravity is barely a suggestion. You fail a dungeon puzzle and your whole planet suddenly imitates safari town.

What. A. Godforsaken. Mess.

Anyway, what does my status show?

No, I don't see it. Everything is as it was before.

"Uh, aside from the menu being a bit more active than it should be, I don't see any new problems. Admittedly there are a few anomalies but they've been there for a long time already."

Karen just nods, "Exactly."

I wait a moment but it seems that's already everything our harebrain wanted to say, "No, I don't get it. Please explain what you're getting at."

Therese gestures impatiently, "You know he wasn't there when you explained it to us the last seven times, Karen."

She sighs, "Well, you see, Jared, Karen hypothesized that there is a relation between how many glitched skills someone has and how vulnerable, or rather resistant, they are to further infection. Even if you don't see it, it is quite obvious that a lot of your skills and classes are just flat-out wrong. For example, your [Familiar] skill is-"

Karen interjects, "Hey, that is my part! I'm the scientist here!"

Therese fights back, "Then explain it better, or at all!"

These two are giving me such a headache...

"Okay, you two stop arguing. Karen, then explain please, properly this time."

She finally does as told, "Yeah, so, uh, by my understanding you got several skills from dubious sources, or they were infected after you obtained them. Even if they look like real skills, they are not. It is more than likely they are disguised glitches. They still function like their regular skill counterparts but, well... Behind the scenes they might do typical glitch stuff, or just lie dormant. We don't understand why the descriptions are one-hundred-percent correct, but they are. If the effect changes quite a lot from its original function, the description reflects this for some reason. Look, we're still researching those phenomena, okay? All I got for now is that...", she hesitates for a moment, "we're slowly losing our humanity and turning into glitch-like beings."

There, finally! Was that so hard!!

...say what?

"I think I misheard you. Did you just say we're turning into glitches?"

Eclaire jumps in, "That's exactly what she surmises. Every infection of a skill, class or whatever brings you a step closer. Whatever sabotaged skills you have, already make you part glitch. It makes it easier to process the infection in the air, but overall it only delays the inevitable. As for our dear Lucia... it is likely most of her skills already are undermined. She's..."

My sick wife adds her two incomprehensible cents, "H̸e̶y̵,̵ ̷d̴o̵n̵'̵t̷ ̶w̷r̷i̶t̵e̸ ̶m̴e̴ ̵o̴f̸f̴ ̴l̶i̶k̶e̷ ̷t̵h̵a̷t̶!̸ ̶I̷'̵m̵ ̸s̴t̸i̸l̷l̸ ̸h̸e̸r̸e̶!̸ ̸I̴'̶m̷ ̸s̷t̷i̷l̶l̶ ̷m̴e̷!̸"

I facepalm at the obvious, "So that's why it's called a Hybrid... It all makes sense now."

Therese demands to know in her usual unpleasant tone, "This time you need to explain. You seem to know what this word means, what is it?"

"In general, a hybrid is just a cross between two different things or creatures. You know, like for example a 'half-elf', a mix of human and elf. In this case... it seems to be a cross between a humanoid and a glitch-lifeform."

Karen scratches her rabbit ears, "Interesting. This is not too far off from my theory. I theorized that as a special creation of a pure glitch skill, it would be a much more intense gathering of those glitches, to such an extent that it would stave off further infection nearly indefinitely. Or at least long enough that we can find a way out of this... dungeon."

And once again, they've lost me, "So, what was that about my [Familiar] skill, Therese?"

The grumpy lady replies, "Have you no awareness about how your skills should work? The description clearly states that you can have at most twenty servants, but how many do you have now? Thousands."

I check the skill description again to verify what she just said.

"I thought that was just because everyone now has the same skill through inheritance."

Therese shakes her head, "No, that's not it. It is quite clear that the System doesn't allow familiars to have familiars of their own, I got a message about that when I used the skill on Darius. It said that I'm not allowed to keep him and therefore 'my' familiar would be transferred to my 'master', that would be you - no matter how much I want to deny it - and it would have to quite explicitly take some measure since your familiar limit was exhausted. The required measure would be 'none'. Skills aren't allowed to just ignore these problems and yet, here we are."

"So skills now have a mind of their own?! That's a terrifying thought."

Karen explains, "No, only the infected ones, and even then, most are just dormant and work like the originals, or at least pretend to. Please look how the real [Familiar] skill should look like, and then compare it to yours."

I read and read, but don't see a difference. I have no clue what she's getting at, "The words are the same. Is that possibly a translation issue?"

She continues, "The words are identical, yes. But look carefully at the target condition, 'willing' is in quotes in your version of the skill. As you can read, the real [Familiar] skill should be quite picky with which target it can apply to. The target needs to be explicitly willing to enter the pact, even if coerced or under mind-altering effects. But yours is different, and not in a good way. Your [Familiar] skill and all copies linked to it are exceptionally greedy, they no longer require that the target has even a cursory understanding of what it gets into. Just a vague form of general acceptance seems to be all it asks for, not even for the pact itself, but a broad agreement to something related to the field of pacts or relationships."

"That isn't how it was with Chloe."

She shrugs, "It might not have been back then but it is now. Who knows if it was just growing all this time or... waiting for something."

Waiting? For what? My approval?

"And since I was already so glitch-infected that [Familiar] got a life of its own, you concluded that the Hybrid classes created by me - even if indirectly - carry a similar infection?"

She hesitates to answer, "Honestly, yes. We couldn't even see where those classes would come from if you are truly the cause, so one of my ideas was that your [Familiar] skill reached a new stage and caused the Hybrid classes. But since you said earlier that you manually gave Iris such a class, that is obviously not the case. Considering what we're currently going through, that option might be worth some exploration. At least it is obvious that the non-Hybrids are suffering currently."

"So what now?", Therese gestures at me dismissively, "Do we just accept the inevitable and put our fate into his hands, again? Do we blindly believe that distributing the Hybrid classes even further is even remotely safe? I have a lot of doubts about that."

"Of course not! Nothing that deals with glitches is ever safe!"

Why does saying that feel hypocritical? Admittedly I've given in to their temptation in the past. Way too easily. The sixth-item exploits, the false Class Core that gave me Blood Mage, the glitched title that appeared as Ruler of Familiars to me, everything. I want to claim that I've learned my lesson by now, I really do. Don't force me to repeat that!

Suddenly, Lucia grabs my hand, just the mere touch gives a clear impression that something, everything, is wrong with her, "P̸l̴e̸a̸s̷e̶ ̸t̶r̶y̸ ̷i̷t̷ ̷o̴n̵ ̵m̸e̴,̸ ̴J̴a̷r̴e̵d̵.̸ ̷I̸'̷v̵e̵ ̸n̵o̸t̷h̷i̴n̶g̴ ̷l̵e̵f̶t̴ ̸t̸o̶ ̴l̸o̴s̶e̸.̶"

I still don't understand her words, but her plea is clear. She doesn't want to die. And this... this is her only chance.

What choice do I really have? None.

If I just leave her to her fate, she's dead or even worse off. If I give her a Hybrid class... we don't really know what it does, it involves too many suspicious glitches, but she'll be in company at least. And most importantly, she'll have a chance to live longer.

Yeah, it easily beats losing her completely.

I nod, "Alright, I understand, Lucia. We'll do it."

Therese slams the table, "You can't be serious, Jared!"

I hesitate for a moment, but as wrong as this method is, I can't even imagine leaving my wife to her current glitch-infested fate, "I am. We'll continue this meeting tomorrow. Dismissed."

She tries to protest one final time, "But-"

Iris cuts her off, "This is enough, Therese. He knows what is the right thing to do in this situation."

Contrary to Iris, Therese clearly is not on board with this. Dejected and defeated, she gets up and leaves, "I know when my opinion is unwanted. Well, see 'you' tomorrow then", but not without muttering under her breath, "Hopefully..."

Karen also bids farewell, "Ugh, fine, that was a prime opportunity for research but see you tomorrow then."

And finally, Iris gets ready to bow out as well, "Don't worry, Jared. I know you're doing the right thing. It obviously was for me."

"I hope so, too, Iris. I hope so."

So that leaves only me, Lucia and one other, "So don't you want to leave, Eclaire?"

In response to that, Lucia just facepalms and sighs.

The blond Lucia responds mockingly, "What? So you can cheat on me with myself? Fat chance!"

"What... are you talking about, Eclaire?"

She glares at me, "Did you really already forget about your wife!? We only got together this morning!! Well, second wife... Or is it, the good half of your wife? Ugh, I knew this would be a complicated relationship..."

Ugh, right... that. I heard third time's the charm. Maybe it also applies to asking for my informed consent in marriages.