A Difficult Mission

No sooner had Zhang Tie left the tent than everyone inside turned their strange gazes on Jerome.

"Jerome, I never expected you to have a student like that. What a surprise! Why have we never heard you mention him before?" the burly man asked.

"Zodan, it's not that I didn't tell you—it's that I never imagined he would be here!" Jerome spread his hands helplessly. "You all heard what he said just now. When I left Black Flame City, he had gone to Karur. Until just a few minutes ago, I'd always thought he should still be with the Iron Horn Legion of the Norman Empire. How could I have imagined meeting him here?"

"That boy is no weakling." Professor Simon, thin and withered, narrowed his eyes slightly. "I smelled a great many scents of death on him."

"This suit of heavy chain plate armor is even better. Tsk, tsk, tsk... This is Huaiyuan Hall's finest heavy armor from the Jin-Yun Kingdom. Apart from its weight being a slight drawback, it is practically the most perfect non-rune equipment of this era, combining defense and flexibility. The War Axe Mercenary Corps once copied a batch of this heavy chain plate armor for its middle and upper ranks, but they could never match Huaiyuan Hall's originals. Nor could they bring down the manufacturing costs. Those knockoffs cost almost as much as the genuine articles, so the whole matter eventually fizzled out..."

As he spoke, the brown-haired man ran his fingers over the elegant, seamless layers of linked movable metal plating on Zhang Tie's armor with almost infatuated fascination, his eyes gleaming. "Jerome, your student must be doing quite well at Huaiyuan Hall. Otherwise, there's no way he could get equipment worth over a hundred gold coins apiece. With his help, our mission