The cabin that housed Netari’s laboratory was fairly unassuming from the outside—with no real special features besides a comically large padlock that secured a door comprised of solid stone. Upon stepping inside, however, Midday felt as though he had been transported into a different world. There were still the same standard wooden walls and low ceiling you could find in every cabin, but there were a few key differences that struck him as important—the first, and probably less impressive in the grand scheme of things was the fact that the floor was built from stone tiles instead of dirt and that, like the other cabin, it was completely devoid of bugs—but the second thing he noticed, which by the most bizarre, was the presence of innumerous glass tubes and beakers filled with even more odd fluids of various colors and consistencies littered about several different tables along with various anatomy charts and things along those lines hanging from the walls. There was an enormous bookshelf too, bigger than any bookshelf Midday had ever seen, and it was filled to the brim with various volumes and tomes he imagined probably had to do with medical stuff in one way or another.

“Welcome to the lab! This is where I design new treatments and procedures.” Netari took a seat on a chair that Midday decided was notable for the fact that it had wheels and could spin around if Netari wanted it to. “You ought to consider yourself lucky. Most of my patients never get to see this place.”

“Maybe so, but I reckon most of your patients don’t have to worry about parasites infesting their tongues.”

Netari scoffed. “Tongue Jellies are NOT parasitic. Why does everyone keep saying that?” She grabbed a tube filled with a black, tarlike fluid off her desk and twirled it in her fingers. “Parasites are creatures that greedily live off their hosts while offering nothing in return, but Tongue Jellies aren’t like that. They offer a ridiculously wide range of benefits in exchange for their host allowing them to live inside their body. Honestly! The more I research them, the more impressed I become. Those little suckers can do everything!” Netari extended her hand toward Midday, holding up the vial in which the tarlike fluid resided. “Anyways, this is the specimen that would be replacing your tongue should you choose to go through with the procedure. This little guy can do a lot more for you than make it possible to eat Devil Peppercorn, you know. Have you ever seen how lizards use their tongues to navigate and whatnot? You would be able to do that too should you let this guy into your mouth. Have you ever seen how frogs can catch flies with their tongues? You would be able to do that too. You know how some cats have prickly tongues that they can use to peel back flesh? Well, you get the idea by now. One of my wolves has already gotten to the point where he can sharpshoot birds out of the sky only using its spit.”

Midday staggered backward upon considering. “You’ve got to be joking! I don’t care how amazing it is. I still don’t want some sort of weird, alien, ‘thing’ squirming around in my mouth all the time!”

“Oh, relax, will you? The Tongue Jelly hooks into your nervous system in exactly the same way that your regular tongue would, so you would be able to control it just like you can control your boring regular tongue. The only downside is that you would have to eat ever so slightly more food to support the enhanced functionality of your tongue.”

“And… just how much more are we talking?”

“Like 10 percent.”

Midday thought in silence for a moment. Presuming that everything Netari was saying was true, it really did seem like the benefits far outweighed the costs. If the only downside was the fact that he would have to eat a little bit more, that didn’t seem quite so bad. It certainly beat the suffering through the hell that was eating Devil Peppercorn twice per day. Even so, Midday knew he had to exercise caution and so he finally mentioned the beetle on his shoulder.

“Tell you what: if you perform your surgery on this beetle and let me watch you throughout every step of the process, explaining everything you do during the operation, and I find it all to be agreeable, I will consider allowing you to carry out your procedure on me: a human test subject. Additionally, because of the experimental and therefore risky nature of this surgery, I would expect compensation in the form of you helping me get my foot in the door regarding the black market and the world of smuggling. To further sweeten the deal on your end, I would also allow you to call me into this building once per week for a 30-minute checkup should such a thing interest you. How does all that sound?”

“Hah. I bet you had thought of all that a while ago and were waiting to say that, weren’t you?” Netari chuckled. “Alright. I accept your terms as they are.”

“That easily?”

“Well, yeah. All that sounds fine to me.”

“Oh, umm alright.” Midday shrugged. “Well, here’s my beetle. His name is Mister Potatoes.”

“Well met, Mister Potatoes.” Netari grinned. “I guess it’s time to get this show on the road?”

“Do what you will.” He handed Mister Potatoes off to Netari, who set him down on her table.

What followed was a two-hour-long surgery, during most of which Netari was explaining the various aspects of the procedure in highly technical detail. Midday understood very little of it, but he understood that the basic idea behind the operation was simple: the reason Tongue Jellies were normally unable to infect anything larger than a squirrel was because their mechanism of attachment required them to penetrate into the core of the tongue where the nerve endings and veins resided—which was something they were unable to accomplish in larger creatures. As such, Netari’s method involved cutting an artificial ‘tunnel’ of sorts into the base of the tongue and then allowing the Jelly to insert itself into that tunnel before stitching the incision shut using her Ability. It was a fairly simple process, thought Midday, and Netari promised him that she had to go extra slow during the demonstration because she was performing the surgery on a beetle, which was something she had never done before, and she assured him that the actual procedure, when performed on him, would take less than an hour—possibly less than 30 minutes.

After everything was said and done, and the paralysis-inducing drug she had used to keep the beetle still throughout the procedure had run its course, Mister Potatoes got up and started walking around as though nothing had happened.

“Amazing…” Midday stared at the beetle, who really did seem perfectly fine. “So how will we know it worked?”

“Well, I guess the first test I’d do if I were you would be with Devil Peppercorn. That’s your main area of concern, right?”

“You’re right. I guess I’ll do that when I get back to my cabin. It’s getting awfully late, but I have a canister of beads there, so I should be able to do a quick test.”

“Alright. Well, is there anything else you need from me before you go?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Then hurry up and leave. I’m going to bed now.” She got up from her swivel chair and ushered Midday out of the cabin before closing the door behind them and locking it shut. “Damn… I really just spent 2 hours doing surgery on a beetle… Fucking hell… Well, good night, I guess. Bye.” Netari walked away before disappearing into one of the cabins—this one notable for the fact that it was 2 stories tall.

I guess that takes care of that. Midday sighed before walking back to Slave Quarter #344 with a quick stride. At about the halfway mark, he stopped after noticing some ants crawling along the road. Might as well give it a quick test. He took a Devil Peppercorn bead out of his pocket and crushed it up a rock he found on the ground. With that done, he squashed one of the ants under his thumb and rolled its body around in the powder, which disappeared as it vanished into the corpse. Now that he had a Devil Peppercorn-infused ant, he brought it up to Mister Potatoes, who ate it without a second thought and seemed perfectly fine afterward. It worked THAT fast? What the fuck? Midday drew a deep breath. Looks like I seriously ought to start thinking about getting that procedure. He sighed again at the thought of the operation before continuing the rest of the way back to the cabin.

It was dark inside the cabin when he arrived, with the fireplace probably having been extinguished a while ago by then. Gork and Glauster were sleeping already, and Romulo was nowhere to be seen—presumably because he was out grinding XP in the forest. Midday wasted no time in setting his beetle down on the ceiling and going to bed, though he found it difficult to sleep that night now that all the pieces were finally coming together.

Using the power of the ring, he could give himself essentially limitless food with the blackberry bush while also giving himself essentially limitless Devil Peppercorn that he could sprinkle onto said food. Moreover, the Tongue Jelly, disgusting as it was, had finally given him the solution for the main issue associated with the peppercorn, that being the bad taste. If figuring how to make effective use of Devil Peppercorn had been a puzzle, Midday was confident in saying that he had finally managed to solve it—and that he would soon be much, much better off as the result. His initial intent had been to wait a while to see how Mister Potatoes reacted to the surgery but, after seeing how effective the procedure had already proven itself to be, Midday decided to have the surgery as soon as he possibly could.

He fell asleep with a smile on his face, impatiently waiting for the next day.