Chapter 41: Familiar Feeling

Jaxir was expecting some big drop off, or some notification about how he had lost his title. But when he checked, Mage was still there.

"Oh... so that’s what’s going on." Jaxir nodded.

The Mage Title wasn’t about his Root Abilities versus his L1 Abilities. It was about the relationship between his Root Abilities and his actual Level.

Meaning, he couldn’t reach Level 11 without first getting his Root Abilities to Level 40 if he wanted to keep his title.

Jaxir laughed at himself and shook his head. He must have been too focused on the battle or too tired and read the description wrong.

’No more mistakes like that.’ Jaxir thought to himself, shaking his head.

These days, as his body became more well-fed, his mind was becoming sharper and more nimble. He refused to make a mistake like that again.

Every detail mattered in this game.

No. Every detail mattered in his life.

"Let’s go."

Jaxir surged ahead, speeding up. Now that he found what he was looking for, leveling up his L1 Abilities became easier. And once they got to Level 20, he would unlock his L2 Abilities.

They would certainly cost way more MP to cast. But...

"I still want them." Jaxir grinned.

...

The grind began. After changing the way he thought about improving his abilities, his progress was steady.

While he didn’t have any major leaps forward like he had had with Fracture, he was consistently making a gain in level every 10 to 20 minutes.

His comprehension slowly stacked atop one another, and by the time he had made it to the edge of the mesh point between villages, he had managed to bring Wither to Level 18 and Bind to Level 19.

The real surprise was that he had managed to bring Attune to Level 33.

Attune was his passive Root Ability, allowing him to spend less mana on his spells. It made sense that it would increase as he started to learn to control his stronger abilities better.

"Getting close." Jaxir mumbled to himself.

He took a look at his map and saw the overlap. This was both the place to grind for the last of the Feather Set and the place where the secrets of the three villages should be.

But it was also a place of great danger.

Jaxir had run into his first Level 10 creature not long ago. The waters here were a lot deeper. He smiled. He was also a lot stronger too.

"This should be fun."

There was a faint mist hanging in the air, not quite enough to blind him, but enough that seeing more than five or so meters ahead was difficult.

Luckily that didn’t matter with his new senses.

What Jaxir didn’t expect was for a dot to suddenly appear three meters to his right. It definitely wasn’t there before, he would have noticed it.

He frowned and looked over but didn’t see anything but a tree.

’They’re behind the tree.’ Jaxir thought.

He raised his staff and fired off a cast without hesitation.

It curved in a wide arc and then suddenly blitzed around a corner, slamming toward whatever was hiding behind the tree.

A figure shot out, sliding to a stop across the moist grass. The dull echo of the magic bullet hitting against the tree bark filled the air.

Hints of surprise colored his face as though he hadn’t expected Jaxir to point him out like that.

"Hey, hey," he held up his hands in surrender. There was a dagger in each hand, but he unfolded his fingers so that a single thumb pinned both to his palms. "My bad, I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you or anything, I just didn’t want to run into people if I didn’t have to. Players can be assholes."

Jaxir pursed his lips and nodded. That checked out. Players could, indeed, be assholes.

"Hey, wait, are you Jaxir Chance?"

Jaxir’s lip twitched. When had he become so famous?

Also, this guy really wasn’t off to a good start. First he snuck up on him. Second, he looked like a speed melee type just like Marti had been. Now he was asking the very same question Marti had.

Was he going to stab him in the back, too?

"I saw your bounty," the man hurriedly explained, "I have a bounty hunting profession that gives me bonuses, so I look at the list a lot."

"Oh," Jaxir nodded. He half expected his parents to be mentioned again. "No problem, then. No harm done."

With another nod, Jaxir made a move to start his search. But he was stopped once again.

"Hey, why don’t we team up?" the man still had his hands up, but there was a grin on his face.

Jaxir chuckled. "I have bad luck with all that."

"Same. But I have a feeling our goal here is the same?"

"Yeah? And what goal is that?" Jaxir said, not taking the bait.

"Well, there are only two reasons people come here. Well, three. The first is that they’re kind of stupid and don’t know their limits."

"How do you know that’s not me?" Jaxir asked with a smile.

"Are you kidding me? You probably don’t know how big of a commotion you caused, right? Half the outside of the village was a dead grey zone. You came out fine, but the Golden Fleece Guild hasn’t logged back in yet. Doesn’t take a genius to guess what might have happened."

Jaxir blinked. Oh, right. He forgot that happened.

"Then what are the other two reasons?"

"Grinding for the sets and trying to unearth the secret of the three villages. Doesn’t really matter which one you’re here for, I want to do both."

The man, with his hands still raised, pointed a finger down at his shoes. Jaxir couldn’t help but notice they were kind of sparkly. Not in a bedazzled kind of way, but in a trailing starlight kind of way.

"That’s one part of the Glamor Set. Don’t judge me."

Jaxir chuckled. "I’m wearing feathers. Who am I to judge you?"

The man grinned. "The name’s Nick."

"Jaxir. But you already knew that."

"So? How about it, Jaxir?"

"That depends," Jaxir said. "You know I’m someone who 1v30’d a whole guild. What you get out of working with me is obvious. But what do I get out of working with you?"

Nick’s grin widened. "I like that spunk. No one has video of what actually happened back then. I’m guessing the Golden Fleece Guild spent a lot to buy it off whoever had anything. Buying off a bunch of rookies is too easy."

"What I’m hearing is that you don’t actually believe I killed them all by myself." Jaxir said with his own grin.

"Maybe not. I didn’t see it myself. But what I do believe is that you’re at least pretty strong. And your Cast is probably at least Level 20 if you can curve it like that, so you have a decent Title on you too."

"And none of that explains why I should work with you."

"Well, I did say I’m not bad myself."

Given how confidently he was talking to Jaxir despite laying out those presumed abilities, Nick probably was pretty decent. He was wrong about how strong Jaxir was, but he definitely was still decent.

That said...

"And I’m supposed to believe that because...?"

"You don’t have to," Nick said with a laugh, "because I have something better. I’m 99% sure the answer to the quest is in a dungeon I found a while back."

Jaxir raised an eyebrow. This sounded promising. But... there had to be a catch if Nick was revealing this information so freely.