How to Bypass Security, Haruma Style

I squeezed my eyes shut and braced for the worst, but… nothing happened.

“Huh.” I tapped on my ring and turned to my team. “Hey, guys? I don’t think it’s helping much aside from sealing my powers. I can’t do anything with it on—”

A faint cracking sound interrupted me.

“Huh?” I peered closer at the ring, where I could barely make out a tiny fissure on its smooth, green surface, emitting familiar cyan and magenta static.

The next crack made me flinch. “Eh…?”

The third one successfully snapped the ring off my finger, releasing a flow of glitchy static into the air, growing and spreading until it engulfed me in seconds.

“Uwaaah?! What’s happening?!” I screamed, covering my face.

“Haruma?!” Dahlian and Sloane got up and hurriedly rushed over, only to be pushed back by an invisible force.

I found myself glitching out again, teleporting and screaming around the altar as expected, but unlike my previous incidents, I didn’t get a chance to even flail around.

The glitches kept teleporting me so fast, my vision became a blur as I crashed into the chandeliers, the windows, the pillars, the pews, and pretty much the whole place. I’d even managed to crash onto the organ loft resting right above the main window, playing a distorted melody through the nave.

“I—can’t—make—it—sto—o—o—op!” I screamed. “He—e—e—e—lp!”

“By the gods,” Dahlian whispered, dropping his jaw. “Haruma, did you power up somehow?”

“The Ring of Gluttony gave him a boost!” said Sloane. “Once the ring absorbs enough magic, it breaks apart and returns the owner's magic, temporarily strengthening them!”

“Clearly! Look! He’s making everything float now!”

Like he said, all the pieces of furniture I’d crashed into started floating around in the air, as if my glitches somehow removed the concept of gravity from them. The whole nave gradually turned upside down the more I teleported around, almost quite literally too. I sure would've loved to admire the view with those two down there, but I had bigger problems right now.

“Hurk—oh—god—I—think—I’m—gon—na—puke!” I croaked, retching.

“Damn it, uh, what do we do?!” Dahlian whispered, grasping his head. “I can’t use my powers here. What about you? You’re an elf, so you can use magic, right?”

“Magic…?” Sloane chewed his lip and gripped his wrist. “I… I-I…”

Dahlian snatched Sloane’s shoulders and shook him. “If you’re having some traumatic flashback or whatever, snap the hell out of it for a goddamn second! Can you use magic or not?!”

“But I… I-I swore to never use magic again…!”

“Are you kidding me?! Forget that stupid oath and just do it! This is an emergency!”

Sloane gritted his teeth and balled his fist, channeling green streaks of light throughout his body. With a trembling voice, he stammered, “I… I-I s-summon thee, Ci… C-Ci…”

But his lips quivered, his shoulders slumped, and his green light gradually faded away. “No, I… I-I can’t. I can’t do this…”

Dahlian swore under his breath and frantically looked around until his gaze caught a broken organ pipe floating nearby. He made a leap for it, snatched it, and approached the center of the calamity, carefully observing me around with a firm grip on the pipe.

When I finally teleported close to him enough, Dahlian swiftly swung the pipe and batted me away, launching me straight through the intended window.

With that, I’d finally phased through that particular window and stopped the glitch.

I tumbled on the ground, rolled for a bit, and bumped against a stone wall. I wearily groaned and clutched my stomach, dry heaving and trembling all over.

“Hey, look!” said Dahlian, pointing at the mosaic glass snapping off its frames and floating away. “Hahaha! It worked! The barrier’s flying away too! You did it, Haruma!”

“Haruma!” Sloane stepped into the tunnel first. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. Erm… a-are you okay—”

He stiffened up.

“Hey, wait for me!” said Dahlian, entering next. “Geez, it’s kind of dark in… here…” He blinked at Sloane’s alert expression before turning to me.

“Uuuughhh…” I clutched my stomach before ever so slowly raising my head. “That was way too close. I thought I was gonna throw up for a second there…”

But rather than facing my team, I met face-to-face with a robed old man, his glasses reflecting my flabbergasted face.

That sudden surge of panic flooding inside me unfortunately became the final tipping point, and I proceeded to hunch over.

“Bleeeeuuurgh!”

…Aaaaand there went my lunch. What a great day today.

“H-Haruma…” Sloane scrunched his face, looked away, and retched. “Hurk…”

“Right on his shoes! That’s Haruma for ya!” said Dahlian, whistling and throwing a thumbs-up. “I’m impressed! And also grossed out!”

The robed stranger didn’t flinch, though. He simply kept staring down at me with his dull, glossy eyes.

“Ugh…” I hoarsely coughed it all out, tears of shame stinging my eyes. When my stomach finally calmed down, I wiped my face with my sleeves, stood back up, and awkwardly stumbled away from the stranger. “Erm, ah-ahem. Sorry for ruining your shoes, sir…”

Oddly enough, the stranger still didn’t move an inch. The most he did was let out a raspy wheeze as if he’d been struggling to breathe for a while.

“What’s with this guy?” I whispered.

Dahlian shrugged, and Sloane squinted. “Is he… under a trance?” he asked.

“Huh, so is he one of the victims?” Dahlian curiously approached the stranger. “Hey, old geezer, you doing alright?”

The stranger ever so slowly turned to him, still wearing that blank, soulless expression. He let out another dry, weak croak under his breath.

Dahlian scratched his head. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then. So, what’s wrong with him?”

Sloane narrowed his gaze. “I can think of two possibilities,” he said. “One: he’s lost his soul and is a walking husk, or two: he’s under a curse and is actively trying to resist it.”

“Resist? Really?”

The elf nodded. “I can sense two conflicting spells inside him, so it’s possible that he’s the latter.”

“Woah, what a fighter,” said Dahlian, scratching his head. “Can we help him somehow?”

Sloane lowered his head and reluctantly muttered, “No, there’s nothing we can do for him. Just leave him be.”

I traded glances with Dahlian as he walked past us and went on ahead, his back hunched and his shoulders drooping. We both gave knowing looks and let out a quiet sigh before following behind him.

“…Should’ve…”

The three of us jolted and whipped back around, facing the robed stranger who started twitching around, groaning in pain.

“We should’ve… listened,” he croaked. “Forgive us… O Laughing… Pestilence…”

“Laughing what?” asked Dahlian.

“That’s Entrophys’s title,” I whispered.

“Oh.”

“But what’s that ambassador got to do with this?” asked Sloane.

The robed old man groaned and stumbled around. He stepped up to the wall and slammed his head.

“Woah! Hey! What are you doing?!” I asked.

“Forgive us! We’ve been deceived!" he shrieked, repeatedly slamming himself. “Ahh, Lady Florathea… She’s here… She’s here! She’s been watching us all along! We were wrong to dismiss your warnings, O Laughing Pestilence!”

He let out an agonized scream and slammed harder on the wall.

“Hey, stop that!” shouted Dahlian.

Sloane swiftly rushed over and knocked him out from the back of his neck, letting him crumble on the spot. He carefully stepped away from him, and after confirming the old man truly fell unconscious, he regrouped with us.

“Entrophys had warned the church about Florathea?” asked Sloane. “Did you know about this, Haruma?”

“Not at all,” I answered, scratching my head. “We keep straying so far away from my visions that even I’m starting to learn more new things.”

“Is that a good or bad thing?” asked Dahlian.

“I… don’t know.”

“Try and remember what should’ve happened at this point in time,” said Sloane. “Was there anything important going on?”

I rubbed my chin and paced around. “On my second day here, I wasn’t as close to you guys as we are now, so I’d just be running around and doing a bunch of side que—er, lots of errands.” And leveling up, upgrading my skills, and all that gameplay stuff. “Just random things like helping some guy deliver messages to the church and beating up some street thugs.”

“Wow, that’s a lot in one day,” said Dahlian.

“Y-yeah…” That’s because the game’s stuck in the daytime until I've completed those quests.

Sloane raised a brow. “Someone wanted you to deliver messages?” he asked. “Who?”

“Uh, I don’t remember.” The NPC was so generic I couldn’t be bothered to remember him. “He just looked like some normal guy, brown hair and blue eyes and all that.”

“Odd…” He nodded and walked away. “I suppose we’ll ponder more later. I still want to get this over with first.”

“Right…”

With a sigh, Dahlian and I followed alongside him, and the three of us headed deeper into the dungeon.