Chapter 23: Planning with Max, Clerk Extraordinaire

"So!" Max clapped her hands together. "Let's get planning, shall we?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Sev said. "How long have you been — what? Why are you level 81? What kind of class is [Adventuring Clerk]? How did you even get — Okay, I know I shouldn't ask that question, but also I have so many questions."

Max cracked up. "Oh, I love revealing that to people. The reactions are priceless every time," she said, grinning wide. "It's a little complicated, but I got that class after I started working as a clerk here for a while."

"Do all of the Guild's clerks have this class?" Sev groaned. "Have I been surrounded by Platinum ranked clerks the entire time?"

"Is that a bad thing?" Max asked, still amused. "Ignore the conspicuous way in which I am not answering your question in an attempt to make the Guild look either more or less powerful than it is."

"No!" Sev threw his hands up in aggravation. "But yes? I don't know! I've just had a lot of shocking things happen today! I don't know how to begin to parse the second part of your statement!"

"Today has been a day," Misa agreed with a small laugh, her mood slowly recovering now that the immediate danger had left, and no permanent harm had been done. "So, [Adventuring Clerk], huh? And this lets you help us fight?"

"I mean, kind of," Max said with a shrug. "It's a mix between a combat class and a utility class. Pretty neat, actually. You wanna lay out what you — waaaait. No. Hang on. Hang on." Max paused like she'd just remembered something, then grabbed Derivan's box out of the air and stared at it again. "What the hell is going on with your status? What the fuck?"

Sev paused. "Were you so eager to tell us about your class that you didn't... process the fact that his status was broken?"

"I thought he had some weird skill! I didn't look at it closely!" Max complained. She waved the box around in Sev's face, though with it being visible only to her, it mostly looked like she was flapping her arms at Sev. "What is this? What happened? You didn't tell us about this!"

"Uh..." That was a good point. Sev glanced at the others. The Guildmaster already knew that Derivan was, technically, initially a 'monster'... but they'd sort of forgotten about the broken status part. It was safe to tell Max about it, surely?

Yeah. It was safe to tell Max. She was apparently a high-level Guild operative, and he'd known her for a while.

So they told her about it.

There was a long silence after the whole situation was explained. Max paused, then looked at Misa. "You have a skill that blocks anything?" she asked, as if she needed it to be confirmed.

Misa nodded.

"That's a Rare skill? Not Elite?" Max asked. "Or Unique?"

"I mean... It has disadvantages," Misa said with a grin. "But yes. It's pretty badass. I don't really know how the system decides rarity, but I'm not going to complain. I'm hoping it and my class will be upgraded when we hit Gold."

"When, not if, huh?" Max said with a small grin. "That's some confidence. And you!" She whirled to Vex. "You have a class that can analyze any magic?"

"Kind of?" Vex offered, looking a touch uncomfortable; Max instantly adjusted, lowering her intensity just a bit.

"That's fuckin' cool," she offered. She glanced at Sev, who seemed like he was waiting for her to have an outburst about his special bullshit, but she just stuck her tongue out at him. "Sev, I'm not even going to touch on your bullshit healing. Your healing is already bullshit. I've always known your healing is bullshit."

"I think I love this girl," Misa stage-whispered to Vex.

"But you!" Max pointed at Derivan, almost dramatically. "You're just living armor? That's so cool! I always wanted to meet one, but they don't actually spawn in dungeons very often. Can I climb inside you? Is that a thing you can do?"

Derivan paused.

"Um," Vex said, glancing to Derivan, and then to Max, and then to Derivan again.

Misa cracked up laughing. Sev grinned.

"I have not tried," Derivan said, considering the idea. "I am not certain it would be a good idea? Many of the enchantments within me are inscribed across armor plates; if they were to separate, the animating magic may fail. I suppose it is likely to reactivate when those enchantments are realigned, but I do not know if my personality would be maintained."

"I feel like there's something you can do with that," Max said with a grin. She turned a little bit more serious. "But I'll leave you guys to figure that out. Let's talk about a plan of action for Jerome, first."

"Can we split them up?" Misa asked immediately. "Fighting all four of them at once seems like a bad idea."

"That's a good call," Max said with a nod. "You might be able to. They're all pretty high level; Jerome is 72, and the other three I believe are in the low 60s. Still Gold, but not as far into it as Jerome. Jerome is a paladin of Aurum, if you didn't guess that already."

"Do you know the specific class?" Sev asked, and Max laughed.

"I shouldn't, but I do, because he boasted about it when he was joining. It's [Gilded Paladin]. It's an Elite tier class that comes with suppression and binding abilities, as you've seen." Max paused for a moment. "He's got some offensive abilities, but they're mostly things like projectiles that try to turn what they hit into gold. It's a progressive status effect, basically."

"What's with the turning people into gold thing?" Sev muttered.

"That's what I said," Max grinned. "It's pretty fuckin' weird. But it seems like it's the core of his class."

"Do we have a way to counter that?" Misa frowned. "I mean, besides me blocking him, obviously. If he shoots a lot of those I won't be able to stop him."

"Yes," Derivan said. "Me."

Max glanced at Derivan and nodded. "Yeah. Gold is actually pretty amenable to magic overall — magic-neutral, you could say. The enchantments that make you alive shouldn't be affected by a transition from whatever metal you're made of into gold. It's kind of ironic, really; gold is one of the few materials that would have almost no effect on you. And that's if his spells work on you at all; the interaction might be strange without the health buffer, or you might absorb it into your status like you did his geas. It's hard to say."

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"Good," Derivan said simply.

"But the rest of the team might be a problem," Max said. "None of them are particularly talkative — the elves just talk to Jerome. They say he rescued them or something? No idea. But I don't really know what they do, and I never really saw much even when I spied on them. I think they tend to provide support from the back; we've seen them fight every once in a while, and I know they're archer types, but those are some of the hardest classes to figure out."

"Why's that?" Vex asked curiously.

"I mean, you wizard types are pretty easy, because you have a bunch of spells you can just throw at a problem," Max said. "But it's harder with arrows. Archer classes usually have specific effects they can put on their arrows, and those arrows can otherwise look completely mundane. It's a lot harder to notice from a distance."

Misa paused. "If there aren't too many of them at once, I could block those. As long as Sev keeps me healed up. I'm assuming they don't have any rapidfire or arrow-multiplying skills, or you would've seen them."

"I mean, they might just not have used them. But we can only plan for what we know, so for now you're on arrow duty," Max said. "And Sev is on keep-everyone-alive duty."

"I'm always on keep-everyone-alive duty," Sev said, sighing dramatically.

"Vex, we're going to need you to remove the geas," Max said, ignoring Sev. "I'll get some resources on geas magic brought up to your room so you can look them over. We're going to have to disable whatever protective enchantments Jerome has, too."

"Sure," Vex said automatically.

"Derivan..." Max eyed the armor critically. "We're going to have to figure out what that broken stat of yours does. Don't get me started on it letting you know where Jerome is. I mean, that's kind of creepy, but it's also really useful for this. But..."

Max frowned. "It probably does something more than that," she said eventually. "I don't understand it being a stat. That should describe something about you, right? You're not under a geas, you are the geas. But I don't know what that means. Can you use the skill? Can you take it away?"

"I believe we can test that," Derivan siad.

Max blinked. "What? How?"

Derivan stood up and walked over to Max. "May I?"

"May you what? Do not put a geas on me or I swear to all the gods—" Max started.

Derivan tapped her gently on the forehead, and when he pulled his finger away, a string of gold came with him. It was a small, light thing, and Max stared at it.

"What," she said.

"It was a very light effect," Derivan said. "So I was not sure, and I was trying to understand it while you were speaking. But Jerome got past you in order to talk to the delegates, did he not?"

Max frowned. "...Shit. He did."

"I suspect the skill does more than threaten," Derivan said. He held the thread gently, tempted to crush it — but instead he held it out, knowing Vex could examine it. The wizard was already running analytic spells, slowly turning more pale as he saw what it did.

"That's... that's a broken skill," Vex said eventually, shaking his head in a sort of horrified awe. "It's one part compulsion, one part threat. It looks like at small scales he just needs physical contact, and he can compel people to do certain things, like not notice his movements in specific circumstances... This is dangerous. Did he know you were spying on him?"

"He can't have. And I never touched him. The only person on that team that touched me was—" Max narrowed her eyes. "The fourth one. Shit, I forgot about them. They brushed past me once, on the stairs, and I didn't pay attention to it at the time."

There was a short silence.

"Is [Golden Geas] even... Jerome's skill?" Misa asked.

Max hesitated. "I — maybe. I haven't heard of skills being shared like that, but anything's possible."

"Okay," Sev said, taking over. Max looked like she was trying to figure out how she should feel about having a minor compulsion placed upon her, but she was looking steadily more pissed. She kept well under control, though. "Does that mean Derivan can remove it? Then Vex can focus on breaking Jerome's enchantments instead."

"I want to examine this part of the spell more, too," Vex said. "I should figure out protections against it. Especially if it's not his skill, and other people have it. Derivan, you said you sense other, smaller presences?"

"Yes. Max was one of them, now that I know to recognize it. And there are..." Derivan frowned. "Quite a few more, some quite far away."

"We need to put a stop to this now," Max decided. "If we take it off of him, hopefully he can break the other instances. And even if he can't, or he's unwilling, we can find out more about it now, before it becomes some kind of existential threat."

"Here's the plan. You're going to ask him to meet up with you. Get him to agree to do it alone if possible; make something up about the infolock. Derivan, you need to act like part of you is cast in gold — walk stiffly, or just don't move your fingers on a hand, or something. If you can, tell him that access to a bonus room requires someone to be free of any magical residue or something, so no enchantments. I think it's mostly his armor that's enchanted. I've got a place you can use for the meeting; I'll send you the location."

The other four nodded, looking a bit stunned.

"You have a few hours to get ready," Max said bluntly. "I need to check with the Guildmaster and make sure the rest of us aren't compromised. We have our own ways of breaking this kind of magic, especially since it's the Guildmaster's specialty, but she's been off and distracted and I think I know why. I'll be back soon. Be ready by then."

Max got up and opened the door — then hesitated for a second, right by the frame. "I don't like leaving a room on a downer note," she said, offering them a small smile. "I'm kinda pissed now, not gonna lie. But you four are great, and we wouldn't have caught all this if you didn't handle it this way. So... thanks. The Guild will get through this."

She slipped out. The four of them glanced at one another.

"Okay," Sev said. "Let's get ready."

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