Chapter 24: Jerome

Chapter 24: Jerome

Jerome grumbled. To think they had the gall to tell him they wanted to meet him alone.

He'd already been kind! He'd offered them a thousandgold in exchange for some information on a dungeon! Dungeon scouts didn't even get paid that much. He wouldn't have considered paying that much for it at all, but it was some very important information, according to Aurum. It would help them delve the dungeon.

Jerome didn't know why they needed to delve the dungeon, but he knew it was important, and the thought of delving it consumed his waking mind.

It consumed his sleeping mind, too. His dreams were images of twisted corridors and broken walls, of strange, broken machinery scattered around. Sometimes there would be a shadow, or a monster that he couldn't slay, and he'd wake up with the panicked, scattered thought of maybe he shouldn't go near the dungeon; but just as quickly that thought would vanish, replaced by an iron determination.

He wouldn't fail Aurum. How could he?

The god was just a child.

If the fucking Guildmaster hadn't gotten in his way, he wouldn't have had to lie. Wouldn't have had to get Histre to place that geas on Max, the damnable clerk that seemed to know everything he was doing. Even with that geas, her eyes followed him around, even though she wasn't quite aware of it. It made him shudder.

But he was getting sidetracked.

[No,] he answered over the System, eyebrow twitching in irritation as he read Sev's message again. Really, asking to meet him alone. [My full team will be there to back me up. Don't fucking try to trick me. I can activate the geas from here if I want to.]

He could not, in fact, do that. But what did some Bronze adventurers know about what he could do?

Jerome grabbed his hammer. The System pinged him with a response; some whimpering nonsense that was agreeing with him, no doubt. He didn't bother reading it in detail; he just scanned it for a time and location, marked it for deletion, and called on his team.

Time to learn what was so important about this damn dungeon.

"Hello?" Jerome called out, annoyed that he'd been brought to this dilapidated looking house at the opposite side of the town. It made sense, he supposed doing anything inside the Guild would likely bring the Guildmaster down on his head, and he was damned lucky that she hadn't already figured out what he could do. He kicked open the door, feeling vaguely pleased at the fact the wood splintered under his heel.

It was nice to live in a world where he could just put numbers into a stat sheet and get stronger.

The first thing he noticed was that the inside of the house was spatially expanded in some way. Jerome frowned. That was strange; spatial expansion enchantments like these weren't necessarily expensive, but they weren't necessarily cheap, either. The cleric was seated at the table, next to his massive armored friend and the two others he didn't really care about. His eyes zeroed in immediately on Derivan's movements it was subtle, but every time the big man shifted, his fingers weren't quite moving properly...

It meant he'd tried resisting the geas, and been punished for it. Good. He'd be worried if they hadn't tested the geas at all.

"Ready to tell me everything you know, yet?" Jerome said with a cocky smirk he didn't really feel. He gestured for his team to take up positions Eleisse and Syra both took up spots in the corner of the room, far enough away that they wouldn't be in range of anything stupid these adventurers tried to pull. Histre did... whatever Histre did when they were told to get ready. Jerome didn't know and didn't care.

The cleric glared at him like he'd personally offended him, though. "Not like you gave us a choice, did you?" he said sarcastically.

"I gave you a choice of a thousand gold," Jerome said with a shrug. "Not my fault you chose the hard way."

The cleric just grunted at that, like he was annoyed that Jerome was right. "There was a message that popped up about a bonus room"

"No," Jerome interrupted, frowning at Sev. "I don't want you to tell me. I want him to tell me." He pointed at the massive, armored man. What species was he, anyway? He looked too tall to be human. An orc? In armor like that?

"We have names, you know," the cleric scowled at him, and Jerome snorted. Why should he care?

"Fine," he said impatiently. "Derivan. Tell me what you know about the dungeon."

Jerome studiously ignored the back-and-forth within the other adventuring party. He was still wearing plenty of clothes underneath his armor.

"I'm done," he said impatiently once he'd kicked off all the pieces of his armor. "Strip me."

Vex stared at him.

"Of the enchantments," he added.

"Right, right, of course," the lizardkin said, his tone somewhat strangled. "Uh. Turn around?"

"Why would I have to turn around?" Jerome frowned at him.

"Because you're intimidating and I don't really want to have you staring at me while I work?" Vex tried.

"Nice try," Jerome said. "But no."

The wizard sighed, stepping forward to approach him, albeit a little nervously. "Okay," Vex said. "This might tingle a little bit."

Vex reached forward and placed a cold, scaled hand on his chest. Jerome saw his party members tense, and rolled his eyes internally. What could this party do to him, even if they wanted to? Vex himself wasn't even Silver. He was still Bronze. It didn't matter how rare his class was; a Bronze had no chance of touching a Gold. He himself had only gotten the powerful skills he used now when he'd reached upper Silver.

The old ones weren't worth thinking about. They weren't as rare; ergo, they weren't as powerful.

"Are you done?" Jerome asked impatiently.

"Wait," Vex said, tense. "This is... harder than you think it is. Whatever enchantments you had are powerful. Derivan, can I get some help?"

Jerome rolled his eyes. Of course the Bronze ranker needed help. He waited impatiently as the armored man walked over to him honestly, he wouldn't have assumed that someone built like that could do any magic at all, but he'd seen stranger things and placed a hand on him.

Then, all at once, everything went wrong.

Jerome doubled over as a wave of sickness washed over him, dizzying him and making him stagger. Part of him wanted to shout in anger, to scream something vile about being betrayed but Derivan was pulling his hand back, and why was his stomach glowing

A long, long string of gold began to unravel. It pooled in his stomach, and the armored man glowered at him how had he not realized how large Derivan was? The other man towered over him, and yet he'd failed to realize this when he'd placed the geas on him

The world snapped back together. Histre's hand was on his back, and they were breathing heavily. They were... trembling? Frightened?

Derivan seemed to narrow his eyes, and Vex was gritting his teeth, an enormous amount of mana suddenly flaring out from within him No. An impossible amount of mana for that level.

Two arrows flew out from the corners of the room, cutting unerringly towards the pair in front of him. Jerome knew the skills Eleisse and Syra were using; they should have been unblockable for anyone not in Gold. They were fast, and could cut through anything. But the half-orc girl was suddenly there midair, a strange-looking baton striking one arrow and then the other with enough force to completely alter the course of the arrows, leaving deep gouges in the ground.

[Divine Suppression], he thought, but he knew before he even tried to use the skill that it wouldn't work. Threads of foreign divine energy filled the air, having flooded into it almost as soon as he'd been disoriented, and Sev was staring at him with a look of angry determination.

Jerome was angry. Angrier than he'd ever been. But he didn't know why. He couldn't comprehend anything that was happening.

Histre screamed behind him, an agonized, foreign sound, like the endless ticking of a broken clock.

"Got you, you little shit," Max said.