Chapter 25: Plans, Plans

Chapter 25: Plans, Plans

Sev was surprised the plan was going as well as it was.

Always plan for things to go wrong that was his motto, though he couldn't remember when he'd decided on it, or why. He preferred his plans to have backups on backups, and for the longest time his final backup had simply been [Divine Communion]. That wasn't an option for him anymore, and so he'd called for them to be very, very sure the plan would work. They hadn't faced a team of intelligent opponents this powerful before, and it seemed stupid to go in blind, even with Max on their side.

Fortunately, everything went... somehow far better than they could possibly have anticipated. The original plan had actually called for their team to ambush Jerome and his team during the delve, when Jerome was no longer in his armor and could have the geas safely removed. It hadn't accounted for the possibility that Jerome would just strip off his armor in front of them, effectively negating the need for the entire second phase of their plan.

Because why would he do that!

Their incredulity played well into their deception, though, and Misa had helped cover for any obvious flaws in their acting with her banter.

And then Jerome called Vex over to remove the residual magic, which was an insane decision that disregarded any danger the mage might pose to him. He let Vex bring Derivan over to help. The fact that Jerome apparently didn't even pause to consider that they might be a threat was something Sev would have found offensive if it wasn't also incredibly useful.

Derivan, obviously, used the opportunity to try to take the geas out of Jerome.

They were expecting combat to happen. They'd planned for it, even; in the off chance that Derivan somehow had the opportunity to remove the geas from Jerome while they were in this meeting, it was decided that he would. They assumed a fight would happen as a result, and they would have to defend themselves while giving Derivan the time to fully extract the geas, and even that went pretty much exactly as they'd expected.

Mostly, anyway.

Misa blocked both of the arrows fired by the archers, having readied herself to block even as Derivan was approaching Jerome. Histre, too, was an element that they'd accounted for; when Max had returned, she'd talked about what she thought Histre was, and how the Guildmaster might have been compromised. The prevailing suspicion was that Histre was some sort of demon they were creatures outside the context of the system, and could often copy and twist skills for their own use. It would explain how the Guildmaster herself hadn't noticed all of this, if her own skills were stolen and used against her. It would explain how Jerome and Max had a geas on them, too.

It didn't quite explain why there were multiple other instances of the geas that Derivan could sense far away. The other Platinum members of the Guild had been cleared and then dispatched to deal with that, across all their various branches; if there were powerful, compromised individuals around, they would find them, and break the compulsions on them.

And so the plan was that Max would deal with Histre, here. Demons were incredibly rare, and so there was little in the way of contingency plans for them. They didn't interact with the system in any real sense, and had no health or level values to speak of. They were particularly difficult to kill or get rid of because of that.

Fortunately, there were divine weapons Max could borrow from the Guild vault to deal with exactly this problem and when they asked how she'd get to Histre without being suspicious, she'd grinned at them, like she'd been waiting for someone to ask. "You're not the only ones that can do broken shit," she'd said.

To be fair, she had a reason to be smug.

[Right Place, Right Time] [Active Skill] [Maxed]

Cost: Time, Opportunity

Like the best adventuring clerks, you find yourself in just the right place, at just the right time.

Sev's reaction of "What the fuck does that mean" was all he could get out before Max used the skill and disappeared.

Now she appeared again right as Derivan tried to draw the geas out of Jerome, right as Histre appeared out of the air and grabbed for the paladin almost possessively, and right as Misa blocked both of the arrows that would have hit Derivan and Vex.

And then too many things happened all at once.

A large spatial interior shrank. Both archers, situated in the corners of the house, were immediately shoved forward with almost backbreaking force as the walls abruptly closed in on them; they stumbled forward, trying to recover, but the new interior space was small enough that the cloud Vex was exhaling enveloped them.

They struggled against the oncoming sleep or at least they tried. They didn't succeed.

Jerome was another story.

The sleeping mist had reached him, but the paladin seemed to be in some sort of berserker rage. Derivan was fending him off, small, well-placed barriers deflecting most strikes of his sword; where he failed to completely block a strike, his armor seemed more than capable of handling it. The problem was that this seemed to be making Jerome more and more angry, and Derivan couldn't get a hold of him for long enough to rip that geas out of him.

"Dammit, Jerome!" Misa yelled, and she gritted her teeth. "Derivan, I'll take him! You grab the geas out!"

She tried. Misa blocked one of Jerome's attacks, interposing herself between the angry paladin and Derivan; the living armor stumbled backwards at the suddenness of it, but tried to correct himself immediately, darting around Misa to grab on to Jerome's arm. But the paladin was a Gold ranker, even if he was in some sort of berserker rage. He couldn't fight as effectively, but he could certainly throw off two adventurers, one of which didn't even have any Strength.

Third contingency, then, Sev thought, preparing a heal; this was the most dangerous strategy they'd thought up. "Derivan!"

"I will try!" the living armor called back, and he reached out to Jerome and pulled.

Derivan couldn't remove the geas from a distance. He needed physical contact to be able to do that. But he could do something else at a distance, using a combination of his mana manipulation skill and the runic pathways Vex had identified from dissecting a small piece of that very same magic. He could activate it.

Jerome claimed he could do it at a distance, but that was a lie; one that they'd known. Derivan, on the other hand...

But it was delicate. They didn't actually want to kill Jerome; they needed to shift him only enough to restrain him, so the geas could be properly

"No," an angry voice hissed, the sound reverberating through the house. It sounded like the grinding of gears. Like the ticking of a watch. Sev's eyes automatically went for the source of the noise, and he found Histre standing unsteadily, staggering forward towards Jerome. Max, behind them, was frantically trying to tug back the divine gauntlet she was using but it seemed almost stuck, fused to the cloak that Histre was wearing. "No. No. No. You will not take him. You cannot. He is mine. He is ours."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Max yelled, kicking at the cloak. She finally pulled her hand out of the gauntlet, though the gauntlet itself stayed stuck to Histre; she stared at the blisters that were left on her hand, her eyes wide. Sev shot a heal in her direction without thinking about it, but his mind was on something else.

Divine magic. They thought Histre was a demon. Why did they think Histre was a demon? Jerome was a paladin. They'd assumed in the back of their minds that Jerome's magic wasn't strong enough compared to the artifact, perhaps, but...

No. They'd been wrong. They'd been very wrong.

"It was you. You are coming for him," Histre hissed. "You are coming for all of them. You cannot touch them. We will not let you."

The cloak around Histre fell only it wasn't a cloak at all. They were wings, masquerading as rough fabric and dirty linen, wrapped around a frame that wasn't remotely human. Golden cylinders hung in the air, twisted together in a haphazard shape that only guessed at reality.

There was a long pause. Even Jerome was frozen, staring in confusion at the figure in their midst.

"Guys," Max said. "I don't think that's a demon."

"Gee," Sev said, a touch of sarcasm in his voice. "I couldn't tell."