Jerod really liked accounting. In fact, he really liked accounting. Some people, friends and family included, like to joke about what a boring job accounting was, and Jerod understood that, understood why they felt that way. The image of a guy (or gal) sitting at a computer all day in a stuffy office, double checking numbers that nobody really cared about until tax season came, was an image that did sound dreadfully boring.
And in many ways, Jerod’s job was a lot like that, he sat in an office all day and most of his job was spent on solo activities. It was just plain boring, essential office work. A job like George’s where you actually designed and created stuff had a much larger appeal. Many of Jerod’s friends had gone into the TAI engineering field in some form or another, there was a large demand and larger salaries for quality TAI engineers inside Red Stern City. Fields like accounting were left to those boring people who preferred dealing with numbers.
But Jerod did not see it that way, although he had to admit he fit the stereotype a little bit too much. To Jerod, accounting wasn’t about numbers as much as it was about organization. Everything had a place to go, every transaction had the proper identification. Jerod liked the simplicity of it, although describing accounting as simple was rage inducing for any business major stuck in basic accounting. Accounting was complicated, with many different rules and exceptions and generally accepted accounting principles one must understand, but on the other hand, it all made sense, logical sense.
Every problem had a solution, every error had the ability to get fixed, and every quandary was solvable with a little problem solving. Jerod liked that, and sure, there were other fields of study that had similarities, but Jerod had found accounting first and he stuck to it.
Relationships and people though, those were entirely different. In Jerod’s experience, human problems were generally insolvable. People had issues and you either learned to deal with it or bypass it. Jerod’s mother had taken her husband’s death poorly when he passed away nine years ago and she hadn’t been the same since. Jerod had tried to help her, but all his efforts fell short to actually help her return to the happy carefree person she used to be. Jerod eventually concluded that people just couldn’t be solved or fixed in the same way a particular issue in bookkeeping could.
The same was true for his past relationships with women. In the two instances where he had gotten relatively serious, issues arose that Jerod simply could not find a fix for. Jerod told people that the relationships simply “hadn’t worked out” and it was true, but Jerod couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was really broken about them to have been able to fix them anyway. The relationship’s were an enigma.
And lastly, there was his sister Rylie, the reason Jerod was back out here in the plains beyond the city walls. Rylie had never gotten along particularly well with their mother even before their dad had passed, but since then the two were like oil and water. And no matter how many times Jerod talked and counseled her, explained their mother’s behavior, or otherwise tried to help her, nothing Jerod did lasted.
The problem was unfixable. And now Rylie was gone, unable to tolerate their mother’s or their family’s apparent evil deeds, pushed away by some mysterious force that only existed in her head.
The problems vexed Jerod greatly, understanding there was an issue, but being unable to do anything to fix it. The issue was vague and cloudy in itself, and all his actions were ineffective, not like accounting at all. Jerod was helpless.
Jerod thought, as he dallied around outside the city wall, waiting for a monster to appear, that that was, perhaps, one of the major reasons he was out here. Rather than just his rageful aggression, Jerod was trying to find a problem he could solve and monsters were a clear problem, an evil, and it had a clear solution as well. Destroying that which was evil with sword and shield.
Not that Jerod actually had a shield with him at the moment. After returning to the lobby and donning the armor just as he had the night before, Jerod found his boots again, cleaned and returned to their proper resting place. He visited the armory just to double check, but confirmed that none of the weapons there had any active enchantments. Stuck without a weapon, Jerod had returned to the lobby and checked out the sword that came with the Beording Dragon Set and saw that it was actually fully active and ready to slay monsters. He was wary of actually using the weapon, images of himself accidentally slicing off his own hand flashed through his mind. It was much too long to start off with and probably impossibly sharp. Jerod took it anyway just in case and resolved to just take the dispersal shot as his main weapon tonight.
Then Jerod marched outside and prepared to fight to the death yet again against the monsters that plagued humanity.
Jerod had waited and waited though, pacing a little, back and forth a hundred lengths from the wall, but no spirit wolf or other beast showed themselves.
Jerod hadn’t bought a watch with him, but after what felt like a half an hour, Jerod grudgingly stepped further away from the wall and the lights from the city. Critically, Jerod realized he ought to have brought a flashlight, or some other sort of light with him. As he walked forward, he scanned the plains with squinting eyes, keeping a lookout for any movement, but all was still.
As he waited, his thoughts inevitably returned toward his confrontation with Rylie, re-imagining the scenarios, wondering what he could have done or said differently to change her mind. A heartfelt plea? A logical argument? A hard guilt trip?
But none of those hypothetical scenarios worked in Jerod’s mind, because Rylie must have made this decision a long time ago and he had already missed his chance.
Jerod found himself hating his family, hating their mother, and hating Rylie for doing this to him, and to each other. It was all so messed up, it was impossible to fix.
Getting impatient and hungry, Jerod shook his weapon and called out to the darkness. “COME ON OUT, YOU MONSTERS!” Jerod roared, his voice was loud and strained, burning his throat a little. He did not yell often. “COME AND FACE ME!”
At first there was no response, like Jerod expected there to be. He had been as quiet as possible up to this point, afraid of perhaps drawing too many monsters at once. He wasn’t sure if that was even a thing though, but wasn't certain, so after he had yelled he had promptly pulled up the dispersal shot and kept an eye out for an incoming horde of monsters. The horde did not appear, but out of the darkness a new beast had come instead, appearing fifty paces away as if out of thin air.
Jerod could not make out what the monster was this time, hence he had not pulled the trigger on it immediately. It was definitely not a spirit wolf though, this one was much too big. This creature was round and large, and had low rumbly grunts as it snorted and puffed in its aggression. Its red eyes gleamed in the darkness, illuminating nothing but the monster’s own malice. It walked on four legs and Jerod could feel the ground tremor slightly with each pair of foot falls.
Jerod felt a spike of fear at seeing the beast’s more leisurely approach, the unfamiliarity of the shadowy outline causing him to have wild imaginations of the danger. Jerod still had not fired, even when the beast got within forty paces of him and started picking up speed. At that point its maw came open and it roared a bellowing challenge.
At the roar, it suddenly clicked in Jerod’s mind what he was dealing with, it was a shadow bear. These monsters were known to only appear at night, unlike the spirit wolves who had no such limitation. While the monsters themselves did not possess more magical power than a spirit wolf and thus was generally categorized in the same threat class as the wolf, it was accepted that the bear was the far more dangerous monster, its size and mass allowing it to bowl over unwary travelers and their carts and wagons on the road, if not caught before the attack.
Jerod did not want to get rammed by the incredibly massive spirit beast, no matter how theoretically powerful his armor was. Fortunately, he knew that disposal shot rounds destroyed the mass of the monsters when they hit, eliminating the threat of the charge as long as the shot was accurate.
This knowledge was the only reason he hadn’t panicked already, his decades old training telling him to stand his ground and carefully line up his shot. With the powerful dispersal shot in his hands, as long as he hit the beast before it got him, he would be perfectly fine. And so he did, and even remembered to exhale before he pulled the trigger, the shadow bear only ten paces away at this point, its massive angry maw set to tear him to pieces. It would be nearly impossible to miss at this point.
Jerod pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled the trigger, again, managing to get three additional frantic attempts in before the bear reached him.
The next thing Jerod saw was the world spinning around him, the city, the stars, the ground, and even the shadow bear racing by in the world’s most punishing theme park ride. Then he felt himself get slammed into the ground, the sharp crack of sound from the collision startling him and making his ears ring. In an odd mirror of yesterday’s events, he found himself trying to catch his breath, thoroughly stunned and out of sorts, looking at the starlit sky with wide unblinking eyes. Again, he did not feel particularly hurt anywhere.
And just like the day before, the monster pounced upon Jerod’s prone form, its massive jaws enveloping Jerod’s entire head as it tried to twist and rent that appendage from his body. At the same time the bear’s front claws raked against Jerod’s chest, trying to find purchase in order to tear open his torso and feast upon his innards. The bear’s back and and entire sat upon Jerod’s legs keeping the prey from making any funny moves.
Jerod screamed bloody murder, uselessly trying to bat away the much larger creatures paws and claws. His head was being twisted up at an awkward angle as the bear tried to tear his head off, but Jerod armor held true and both sides struggled in futility for several long moments.
As the bear gained no success for its efforts, its anger seemed to grow and it became louder and more ferocious with its attacks. As for Jerod there was little he could do. The initial blind panic had faded away now that he appeared to be perfectly fine, if in an awkward spot. Pinned as he was, he couldn’t move or really do anything to help himself though, he found himself praying fervently to his ancestors for his armor to hold out until somebody on the walls noticed his predicament.
He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why his blasted dispersal shot had not worked, when it worked perfectly fine not two hours ago! It had more than enough charge, he had checked that right before he had headed out.
Eventually, the shadow bear got frustrated and tired with the stupid turtle it was dealing with and got off the human and grabbed him with his jaws and threw Jerod high into the air. Jerod landed a dozen paces away with an ungainly yelp, but managed to keep his wits about him and get up and start running before the bear got to him again. He knew that as long as he got close enough to the city walls the mana sensors would be able to pick up the monster and help would come, but the bear had tossed him away from the wall and stood between him and safety. Jerod attempted to run around the monster, but he had never been a fast runner before and despite whatever upgrades the armor was providing him, he was still far away from outrunning the spirit bear.
In mid-sprint Jerod was bowled over again, this time just knocking him onto the ground on his side and skidding several yards across the dirt. The bear had hit him on an angle and wasn’t able to jump on him immediately like last time, it needed a second to reorient and charge.
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Jerod jumped back up in time to face the bear and unsheathed the sword that he could barely get out of the sheath for its length. Terror and desperation gave Jerod courage he had not expected to have and he charged the bear, holding the sword high above his head like he had seen in the moves and screaming like a banshee.
The bear charged back and Jerod mis-timed his swing, the bear too fast and hitting him before he could strike. Feeling as though he just got run over by a runaway wagon cart, Jerod landed on the unforgiving dirt back first, stars in his vision yet again. By some miracle, he still held onto the sword and hadn’t managed to cut himself with it either.
The bear was on him quickly, gnashing teeth and claws again with no apparent effect. The bear hadn’t seen fit to restrain him this time though, and Jerod was able to bring up his arm from the side and try to stab the monster. The blade slid into the monster’s side with such an ease that Jerod would have thought he had missed the beast entirely if not for the furious and pain-filled roar that erupted out of the bear.
The bear promptly rose from Jerod’s form, and the two parties separated briefly in a moment of surprise, the monster, perhaps, wondering who would dare interrupt his, admittedly, frustrating meal. The bear looked around momentarily before his evil yellow eyes found the bright steel sword in Jerod’s hands. Its eyes narrowed in contempt and outrage.
Jerod took the brief pause to get his bearings and get back on his feet. He felt terribly weak and exhausted, having trouble holding the weapon up straight. He faced the monster squarely, standing two or three paces in front of him. Seeing him up, the bear let out a truly furious roar and charged forward. Jerod gathered his strength, doing the same, this time keeping the sword close with both hands, pointy end pointed straight at the beast.
The two masses collided. Physics ruled that the bear won, and Jerod was promptly driven into the ground yet again. But the bear successfully impaled himself upon the sword and even as the bear tore into Jerod’s armor for the fifth time Jerod was busy screaming and twisting the sword in and around the beast’s insides with the little movements he was able to achieve with his pinned arms. Blood and viscera poured down upon him, the smell of it a new horror.
The bear and the human thrashed and bellowed together, each intent on murdering the other.
In the end, the human won. Mid-swipe from the monster's powerful claws, something vital inside the bear gave way, and the bear collapsed upon Jerod. Jerod struggled and yelled, trying to get out from under it before enough of the bear disintegrated into mana, dispersing back into the mana-sphere,and he could move it. Even the bloods and guts that had drenched Jerod were visibly turning silver and dissolving into the air, leaving no evidence behind.
Jerod pushed the still disintegrating corpse off himself and screamed wildly, “GET WRECKED YOU ROTTEN FLEABAG! SCREW YOU!” He proceeded to use every curse word he knew, even the ones that he knew always sounded wrong when they came out of his mouth, and even gave the monster the double fingers, something he had never done before in his life. Then he just screamed out into the empty plains.
After screaming until his throat couldn’t take it anymore, Jerod just breathed in the cool night air, relishing in the sweet taste of oxygen. Then the high from the fight left him and he almost collapsed on the spot. Carefully sitting down on the dirt with a groan, Jerod vacantly stared at the almost completely gone bear corpse.
He felt too tired to move. He felt too tired to lay down. He felt too tired to even think, so he just sat there until the corpse completely disappeared. And then he sat there some more.
Eventually his thoughts started returning to him, and he let out a long groan at just what an awful fight he had just been in. the armor, unsurprisingly he supposed, had done more than its fair share of work. He doubted he actually had any real injuries on him besides the soreness and jarring he was feeling now and would especially feel tomorrow morning. Jerod knew he would be dead a dozen times over if not for the ancient armor he wore. He wondered if there would actually be visible damage on the armor this time or not but had trouble finding the energy to really care about that at the moment. A quick inspection found nothing out of place, but he would have to take a closer look at it when he got back.
And even despite the crazy amazing armor, the stupid shadow bear had him outclassed in pretty much everyway. The armor hadn’t given out yet, but monsters were known to be able to attack endlessly for days or weeks even, seemingly having no need for rest, and the bear would have gotten through to him eventually. Had the bear knocked away the sword sooner or something, Jerod could have literally died. Or maybe the city watch would have found him before the suite’s armor wore off.
Jerod tried not to imagine the scandal of him being found by the city guards a day or two from now, still getting batted around like a bouncy ball by the unrelenting monster. The naïve and stupid kid from the family wearing the legendary Dragon Armor and getting played around with by the spirit bear outside the walls, the humiliation for him and the family would be too much to bear, assuming they couldn't hide it from the press.
He shuddered at the thought of his grandfather in a rage. It would be better for him to join Rylie and Carl at that point.
The sword though, the sword though was great. An absolutely fantastic weapon, Jerod’s thoughts on it had done a complete 180. Sure it was large and unwieldy and Jerod swung it around like a toddler with a fishing pole, but it had assuredly saved Jerod’s now tender butt. A much shorter sword or even a dagger would be preferable though, assuming they also cut through the monster flesh like a hot knife through butter. Jerod would have to investigate more.
Which led Jerod’s thoughts back to the dispersal shot, the weapon that had failed him when he needed it most. A spike of anger shot through him just thinking about it, he felt he had been more than prepared for any encounter, but had instead been caught with his metaphorical pants down because the stupid thing malfunctioned again.
Finding a little bit of energy, Jerod got up off the dirt. He inspected the sword and saw no damage on it at all, and he sheathed it with a snort, struggling a little to sheath it properly. He looked out across the grounds, trying to locate the missing dispersal shot, but the evidence from the fight showed that they had been all over the place. The tracks and divots from the battle littered the ground for hundreds of paces around the land.
Jerod eyed the land briefly, before looking over at the city walls and lights. He wanted nothing more than to trudge back inside, eat something to fill his angry and empty stomach, and then go straight to bed and leave the blasted dispersal shot behind. But he couldn't do that, could he? If somebody found it before he could locate it again, it could be traced back to his household and then to him. And then uncomfortable questions would arise, questions like, what was he doing out here with the weapon? What were the circumstances in which the weapon got left behind? What were all these tracks we found nearby all about?
And what would Jerod say? That he had gone out and tried to kill monsters for the fun of it? Somehow, he did not think that would go over well.
And even beyond all that, even if he left now and found the dispersal shot later before somebody else, the caretakers would notice it missing tomorrow. He doubted his relationship with them was good enough that they would ask him before they sent a note to the family, or would keep it a secret for him if he asked. He wasn’t the one paying their salaries, after all.
So with a deep sigh of regret, Jerod trudged tiredly around the plains, trying to trace the battle and find the dispersal shot before any more monsters found him.
That last thought had him pulling his sword out again and getting it ready and in front of him in case another bear decided to show his or her ugly face. Although now that Jerod thought about it, he wasn’t sure if monsters had genders. He didn’t think they reproduced that way. Where did the monsters actually come from, anyway? Did they just appear out of thin air when the conditions were just right?
Jerod’s mind wandered, as his eyes did too, and he resolved to spend a little more time researching monsters in the future.
He had little success for a while, the tracks of the battle leading him on a confusing path, the two times he had been flipped in the air, leaving him puzzled and in awe at how far and how high he must have been thrown and with no apparent damage.
Jerod kept a close eye out for movement and noise as he searched, hoping he wouldn’t run into another monster tonight but his fears proved correct. A light rustling in some of the brambles and bushes nearby alerted him to the presence of the monster to the side, and he whipped his head around to see a spirit wolf and its white gleaming eyes running out.
“Come on!” Jerod shouted, preparing himself for the attack and getting the sword in position. “I’ve had enough of this tonight.”
The wolf rudely ignored him.
It was nighttime and very dark so Jerod couldn’t really tell, but the wolf looked pretty much the same as the one he had killed last night. Jerod hoped that it wasn’t the same creature coming back to haunt him or maybe a brother wolf vowing vengeance against the human that had taken away his beloved brother, a loving husband who left behind a widow wolf and kid wolves to fend for themselves in an uncaring world. Jerod idly realized that his thoughtz weren't really that focused at the moment. He stupidly tried to take a swing at the wolf before it got to him, but he missed the agile beast as it casually sidestepped the wild swing, before jumping up at his throat.
Jerod did manage to get his left forearm up in time though, the jaws of the wolf latching on to it, threatening to pull him down. Fortunately, Jerod was more prepared than last night and had braced himself appropriately. Even with his flagging strength, he managed to stay upright, although a little wobbly.
The wolf refused to let go and Jerod let himself get pulled down, hunching over so he wasn’t forced to carry the entire weight of the wolf with his left arm. The wolf snarled an awful lot and proceeded to do some kind of farcical game of tug of war with his left… something or other. The armor on his left forearm. He would need to learn what that was called.
The tugging was ineffectual as always and Jeord snarled back at the beast so it didn’t have complete dominance in the sound department. He was able to bring his sword around, stabbing at the relatively stationary target with the pointy end and driving the blade deep inside several times in quick succession.
The wolf didn’t last nearly as long as the bear did and stopped struggling soon enough, releasing its grip on Jerod’s arm suddenly, nearly causing Jerod to fall backward. It lay on the ground for a few moments, still snarling and snapping before that too suddenly ended and the wolf started disappearing into small silver mana spirals and disappearing into the mana-sphere.
Jerod scowled down at the dissolving monster, checking his arm for damage and finding none. “No more monsters tonight!” he demanded angrily at the corpse, as if it could heed his words and pass them onto his brethren.
Jerod did find the traitorous dispersal shot without encountering any more spirit beasts, although it felt like it took half the night, Jerod being jittering and anxious the entire time. Grabbing the device with a furious sigh, he lifted it up and checked its status with a quick once over. The charge in it was still fine and nothing obvious jumped out at him, so he shouldered in and fired a test shot out over the plains.
Nothing happened. He tried a couple more times before giving up with another enormous sigh, feeling strangely vindicated. At least this meant he simply hadn’t messed up with it.
He made his way back to his secret door without incident, beyond a spirit wolf’s lonely howl sounding in the air. After hearing that Jerod double had timed it to the mana sensor line, huffing and puffing, before making the final stretch in a slow, exhausted trudge. He had remembered to lock the door this time before leaving and had tucked the key safely inside his suit, around a lanyard on his neck. It took some frustrating and angry finagling before he was able to extricate it and unlock the dumb door, and make it inside the dumb room, and take off his dumb boots and re-hang the dumb, malfunctioning dispersal shot….
Everything was becoming increasingly unfavorable in Jerod’s eyes.
Despite his impatience, Jerod did carefully take off the dragon armor, feeling incredibly smug at the still pristine condition the armor was in. Really, Jerod could not praise it enough, it was everything and more he could ever want from it. Five star review, would buy again. As befitting a legendary set of armor. The sword appeared to be in perfect condition too. Jerod left his boots in the staging room again, not finding it inside him to care about them. The caretakers would take care of it, as befitting their name.
After re-hanging the dragon armor in the lobby and admiring it for a second or two, Jerod made his way to the kitchen and was shocked to discover it was not even nine in the evening. He was so shocked, he double checked a clock in the hallway, and then triple checked the time on the oven clock.
The whole adventure had only taken a little over an hour. Only an hour and a half since Rylie left his life and the city behind to join some cultists hellbent on stopping the city’s progress.
Jerod let himself be stunned for a few moments before trashing the leftover chicken and carrots he had left on the counter, stepping over the shattered remains of the fire alarm. He re-heated some leftovers from the cooler he had been saving for lunch tomorrow and ate messily at the kitchen table. He left the dishes in the sink when he was done.
Jerod felt his eyes threaten to close on him as he took a quick rinse off in the shower, and then collapsed onto his bed, not bothering to get under the covers. His last thoughts before he drifted to sleep was about how to secure a more user friendly weapon.