"Alrighty." Glow in the dark spraypaint to mark paths, every ten steps or as needed whichever is more frequent. In they go.

The spray paint... doesn't stick. Something about the wet surfaces, or the way the vines keep rubbing against each other, the paint doesn't last more than minutes.

Well that's fucking annoying. Labyrinth style paracord, then?

That works!

Jaeha... doesn't have much to do, yet. He's keeping his attention out but he's stopped keeping the attention of the apparently strictly cosmetic bugs off them so as not to accumulate more backlash than necessary.

Once the paracord is secured they can get underway. Thataway looks like a fine first direction to go looking for people to rescue.

They have a 3D map with the approximate locations of kidnap victims, fed by sensors earlier. The monsters don't move very much once they've trapped someone, but they do move any, and most importantly the vines are doing their best to make the paths change. There are also reportedly dryads hidden in the dark crevices blending into the surroundings that move surprisingly quickly.

Like this one.

Hmm. Jaeha doesn't think so, actually. He thinks that dryad is really mistaken about where they are, and is most importantly very mistaken about what actions it can take and how it can move.

His reaction time and precision are both sufficient to catch it off-guard, and these dryads seem to have independent wills from the dungeon, which means that once this one is finding its body moving in ways it doesn't expect to it doesn't get overridden by the dungeon itself puppeteering its body, and starts thrashing in confusion.

That dryad doesn't have a victim with it so it's fine to shoot it, right? Right. Die, evil dryad. Haru will mourn the inoffensive de-dungeoned dryad you could have been in his downtime.

That all happens so fast their defense escort barely has time to raise a shield to protect them. She supposes it was silly of her to expect she was going to be of any use when Kang Jaeha is on the team.

Jaeha isn't listening—is quite explicitly excluding her from his sonar-like pinging of everything he sees for whether it contains a mind. He can have this much self-control, at least.

Onwards.

Haru swings his whole head around to cast the headlamp into all the corners and crevices and is relying on Jaeha to "watch" their backs.

Jaeha can't directly detect minds as they come "within range"; rather, he has to pick something in his awareness and then check whether it has a mind, constantly. Usually, that's "a person" or "a monster", so it's reasonably simple to lock and go. In this case, where the monsters camouflage and blend into the background, he has to be constantly pointing his powers at things and going, "is that a mind? is that a mind? is that a mind? is that a mind?", in all directions. He's used enough to it that it's almost automatic, and it's how he catches every single dryad that tries to ambush them before their defense escort can, but it's a constant passive backlash generator. Then, whenever he locks on, he psychically shreds the monster, locking it in its own illusory cages for long enough for it to be disposed of elsewise (though he actually suspects that if he used his illusions to make the dryad believe it had been killed it would in fact also die, that sounds like the kind of psychic these monsters are).

Compared to that, freeing victims feels like almost nothing. He can release them from the dryads just like that, leaving absolutely no trace of them behind, and no way for them to do any damage on their way out. It's an almost careless flick of his metaphorical wrist, while simultaneously faking the feedback to the dryads' minds themselves to make them not realise they've lost their targets.

So his backlash steadily grows, tick by tick, and he slowly starts to forget why he's doing any of this in the first place, at least in his heart of hearts.

The victims of this one are not very talkative; by the time they start ferrying people back, Haru's talking to Jaeha. "It's weird for the bugs to be cosmetic, I kind of expect them to swoop down and try to murder us at some provocation, maybe bringing people out."

...okay, he still remembers a little bit of the reason why he's doing this, and it's because of his adorable gorgeous perfect BOYFRIEND. 

He can't mention his receptive powers, though. Not in front of the other esper. "I suppose we'll have to keep an eye out. I'm ready to distract them if need be."

"I'd kind of like to catch one of the fireflies. Though maybe if it shrank like Cricket it'd just be a normal firefly and then it would be less interesting."

"Hmm. If it has enough of a mind to illusion it might be possible for me to lead it after us..."

"We'd need something to keep it in, like a net or a jar or whatever, even if you coaxed it there that way."

"The support team outside probably has something."

"Yeah, maybe, I guess they don't know the bugs aren't valuable so they'd have stuff just in case. My money'd be on the kind of mossy stuff on the branches, though, wouldn't surprise me if that wants to be the next industrial lubricant or something the way it slips."

"Hmmm..."

Ping. Lock on. An alluring scent, whatever that means for that bug. Something it wants to follow...

It follows, slowly drawn towards the place Jaeha's leading it to. Their defense escort puts up a barrier—

"Ah, apologies. That was just me."

"Oh." Well she's still kind of nervous but... it's probably fine?