“Go ahead and sit on the bed,” Gouge says. She walks past Jojo—apparently unconcerned about the possibility of her running away—and starts rummaging around on shelves, looking for something. As if in an afterthought, she adds “Oh, how much HP do you have?”

  “Um… 260?” Jojo frowns deeply as she sits gingerly on the messy bed. It creaks precariously under her. “Is that going to be important?”

  “If you want to survive these tests, it’s very important,” Gouge tells her. She grabs a bottle hidden away near the back of a bottom shelf, then heads over to her workstation. She pulls out an empty vial and one of the potions bubbling over a fire, and starts carefully measuring out drops of it. “See,” she says, talking as she works, “I don’t want to be here all day, and the fastest way to raise someone’s resistance is via poisons that simply damage the victim.”

  “Oh…”

  “Don’t complain. You came here for this. Be happy I’m doing it for free.” Gouge finishes her measurements and walks over to Jojo holding two poisons. One of them, the one she had pre-made on a shelf, is a noxious-looking grey goop in a heavy bottle. The other is a tiny amount of violent, see-through red liquid in a small vial. She holds the grey one out to Jojo. “You probably wouldn’t be able to afford these, anyway. Drink.”

  Jojo takes the bottle and swirls it around as she peers at it. “Is this going to hurt?”

  “Not this one. Drink.”

  Jojo frowns. “There’s no other way to get you to keep my secret?”

  “Not unless you’re very rich.”

  “Ugh… I can’t believe I do these things to myself.” Jojo shakes her head, then plugs her nose and downs the poison as fast as she can. It’s completely tasteless, but swallowing it is a laborious process that feels like drinking a slug. She has trouble getting it down completely, and goes into a coughing fit the second her airways are free.

  Gouge nods. “I suppose I should explain a bit. What you just drank was a high-grade poison known as an evolution suppressor. It prevents skills from evolving, and lasts for a week after ingestion.”

  Jojo’s eyes go wide. She coughs a few more times, then glares up at Gouge. “A week!?”

  “Calm down. It will not last that long for you.”

  Before Jojo can ask what that means, Gouge’s arm jolts forward in a flash and splashes the red liquid onto her face.

  “Gah!” Jojo clutches her face as pain sears through her. The liquid evaporates as soon as it touches skin, but anywhere it hit feels like it’s on fire, and it’s all Jojo can do to fall back onto the bed and hold back further screams.

  “Ah, I forgot to mention,” Gouge says in her still monotone voice, “your resistance goes up even faster if you’re attacked rather than ingesting the poison yourself.”

  And then, just as suddenly as it came, the pain vanishes. Only the ghost of it remains, and even that disappears as the seconds pass.

  Jojo, panting, still clutching her face as though her arm hasn’t yet processed that the pain is gone, stares up at the ceiling. “What… What did you…”

  “And that’s step one complete,” Gouge says. She crosses her arms and looms over Jojo as she explains. “Everybody who is ever put in a position to use an evolution suppressor is told one thing: Do not, under any circumstances, let the victim evolve their poison resistance while under its effects. I’d like to know why. So, tell me, Traveler: What did it evolve into? Because I would be willing to bet it wasn’t poison immunity.”

  “Immunity?” Jojo shakes her head. “No, it says it’s called Poison Reversal.”

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  “Reversal? Hm…” Gouge thinks for a minute, nodding along to whatever conclusions she must be drawing in her head. “Interesting. Very interesting. Here’s an idea: Can you lie? You should still be under the effects of the truth poison.”

  Jojo shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, try. What level are you?”

  “Um, 30?”

  Gouge’s eyes go wide, and she nearly falls over. Her gaze flicks up above Jojo’s head, then she shuts her eyes tight and puts a palm to her forehead, her other arm out as if to keep her balance.

  “I… Wow. Okay,” Gouge says as she recovers. “Alright, that’s… Dangerous.”

  “It’s dangerous that I can lie?” Jojo asks.

  “No, no, not the lie. I… I believed you,” Gouge says. “I knew you were going to lie, I can see your level, and I still believed you.” She shakes her head. “That’s a very dangerous level of compulsion. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have even told you about it. You…” She trails off, lost in thought.

  Jojo frowns. “That does sound dangerous. I, um… If it helps, I don’t think I’m the kind of person who would abuse something like that.”

  Gouge sighs and nods. “That does help, it—” She cuts herself off and holds a hand out to preemptively shush Jojo. “No. Quiet. It just happened again.”

  “Oh…”

  “No more statements out of you until that poison is out of your system,” Gouge says. “I’d give it three hours. Until then, be very, very careful about what you say.”

  Jojo nods. “Okay, I—” She starts, then cuts herself off, puts a hand over her mouth, and just nods again.

  Gouge sighs deeply. “Anyway. It seems like your new skill will actively reverse the effects of any poison used on you. Definitely a very powerful effect, and I can see why it’s kept so secret. If any nobles found out about this… Well, that would be disastrous.”

  “Um…” Gouge glares at Jojo as she speaks up, and Jojo puts her hands up placatingly. “I-I was just wondering… If the new skill worked backwards on the truth thing, do you think it’ll also effect the evolution thingy?”

  “That’s… Hm.” Gouge puts a hand to her chin. “That’s a good question. I’ll tell you what: We’re about done for today anyway, and like I said, the evolution suppressor sits in your system for about a week. Why don’t you try to evolve something in that time, and then come and tell me what it turned into?”

  “I have to come back?” Jojo asks.

  Gouge glares at her. “Of course you do. You and I are going to have a healthy business relationship from now on, after all. I mean… I wouldn’t want to have to go asking my other friends if they’ve seen the Traveler that showed up in town recently, would I?”

  “I…” Jojo huffs and crosses her arms. “That’s mean.”

  “I’m a mean person.”

  “Ugh. Fine.” Jojo glares back at Gouge, then gets up out of the bed and marches over to the door. “You better give me good prices when I buy things, though!”

  With that, she leaves. She almost slams the door shut on her way out, but she doesn’t quite trust the door or the building itself to hold up to that, so she refrains.

  On her way back to the guild, she runs into a familiar sight:

  A dark alley. Shadows all around. No witnesses. And a vaguely menacing, scraggly man with a crooked knife.

  She laughs to herself. “Identify.”

  The man smiles wickedly and takes a few steps closer. “Hello, girlie. You sure it’s safe for you around here?” He laughs dryly. “Friend of mine just got his lights knocked out earlier today.”

  “O-Oh, did he? That’s… I’m sorry to hear that,” Jojo says. She tries to back away, but the man just advances further.

  “I’m sure you are. If you’re really sorry, though, I’m uh…” He casually flicks his knife through the air. “I’m taking donations for his wellbeing.”

  “Well, I would, but uh—” Jojo starts, but then she gets an idea. “A-Actually, um, you… You know you’re not supposed to be doing this routine with me, right?”

  A confused look passes over the man’s face, and he takes a step back. “I… What?”

  “Yeah, remember? Your, um, your boss said I was off limits,” Jojo improvises.

  The man seems to think for a moment, then lets out a gasp of realization. “Oh, you’re right! He did say that! What am I doing!?”

  “No, it’s fine.” Jojo tries to smile kindly at him. “Actually, he, um… He said I’m supposed to hold on to all of the money you’ve made today!”

  “Yeah? Usually Joey takes it, but… Huh.” The man shrugs. “If the boss says so.” He grabs a heavy-looking pouch from his waist and hands it out to Jojo.

  She takes it and looks inside. It’s full to the brim with copper and silver coins, and she thinks she sees one or two gold coins in there, too. “Wow, is this the kind of take you get every day?”

  “Yeah, more or less,” he says. “I was just about done for the day, just figured I’d stay out a little late for… Some reason. Can’t really remember.” He shrugs. “Anyway, make sure the boss gets that, yeah? Last time he thought a guy was stealing from him… Well, you know how he gets.”

  The man waves and starts to walk away. Jojo frowns, uncomfortable at that last comment. “W-Wait,” she calls out, and he turns back to her. “I, um… I actually just remembered, I was only supposed to check how much you were getting. Make sure everything is square, you know? You can…” She takes one more look down at the money, then hands the pouch back out to the man. “Take it to the usual place, alright?”

  The man gives her a funny look, but he takes it without arguing and heads off.

  Jojo waits a bit, then heads out herself. “That’s… A problem for a different day,” she tells herself. “Yeah. I’ll figure it out.”