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 thousand gold 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."

"...Very well," Derivan said. The man sat up in the chair, though not without difficulty; Jerome wondered how hard he'd fought the geas before they'd given in. It had only been a couple of hours, and would only progress this quickly if they tried to remove it... But of course they'd try to remove it. It only made sense. "When the dungeon formed, we received several messages through the system. One of them was about a bonus room that had been seeded from one of us — me in particular."

"Stop," Jerome interrupted, sneering. "I want to know why this damn dungeon is so important, first. I said everything you know. Why are the gods so interested in the damn thing?"

Derivan looked at him, surprised. "...I do not know," he said eventually. "There were no system messages about this."

"Useless," Jerome grunted. "Fine. Tell me what that message said."

"I wear enchanted armor, you see, but it is cursed enchanted armor. I cannot take it off. I suppose the dungeon found a twisted sort of irony in that, because the message I received implied that any form of enchanted armor is not allowed into the bonus room; in fact, if even a hint of residual enchantment is left on your body, the room will not manifest." Derivan sounded frustrated, and rightfully so; Jerome couldn't imagine being locked out of a bonus room like that.

But Jerome himself was just pleased. An entry condition like that meant he'd have less competition. He wasn't really worried about losing the protection of his armor — he didn't need it, but Aurum seemed to prefer that he wear it, and so he did.

"There you go," Jerome said. "Was that so hard?"

If it was a requirement that he give up his armor for the dungeon, and that there were no magical traces left on his body... none of his party members could directly manipulate magic. But this other party had a wizard.

"You," he said impatiently to Vex, and rolled his eyes impatiently when Sev scowled at him. "Vex. Wizard. I need you to cleanse the enchantment residue off of me."

"Uh," Vex said. He blinked at him. He'd been thrown off, like he hadn't anticipated that. "Okay? Do you mean... now?"

Jerome paused.

"Well, yes," he said, annoyed. "Of course I do."

Was he going to take off his armor in the middle of a room full of enemies that very much didn't like him? He was confident enough that he could take them all on, especially with his party members ready to ambush them if they tried anything. And he wasn't going to get a magic-cleansing service in the Guild, especially not when the Guild's members could be set against him.

It was only really safe for him when he had something to hold over other people's heads. And he did have something on their heads; the geas on Derivan was still active until he chose to remove it. It would go inactive for now, unless the man discovered something new about the dungeon, and then it would activate again; but he could offer to remove it in exchange for Vex removing the residue... And the party thought he could activate the geas at any time, so he still had that threat dangling over their heads.

Yes, he decided. That would work.

He started stripping off his armor.

"Um," Vex said, staring at him.

"Sh," Misa said. "Don't stop him. I wasn't expecting a show today but I'll take one where I can get."

"You do realize he threatened our lives," Sev said mildly.

"My life, if we are to be accurate," Derivan commented.

"Bah," Misa said. "You guys have no appreciation for the finer things in life."

"Like Jerome?" Sev asked, a little incredulously.

"Obviously not," Misa said, rolling her eyes. "Don't tell me I have to explain this to you."

"I'd rather you didn't."

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.