Chapter 57: Glimmer

Jaxir spent the walk back lost in his thoughts, mostly wondering what sacrificing three complete sets with an Epic item at the core of each would actually get him. The bare minimum he was hoping for was a new set formed from three Epic items, and if it wasn’t at least that much, he planned on giving the Goddess of Light a very stern talking to.

Of course, he’d still eventually kick the Minor God of Gravity’s ass, but that sounded like a problem for much farther down the road. First, he had to figure out how he was supposed to get his hands on three entire ancestral sets while being banned from most of the places where they would reasonably exist.

Jaxir rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

"One thing at a time."

He stepped back out into the temple hall, then stopped before he had taken more than a few steps.

The three portals still hung beneath the statues as slow discs of pale-gold light, except one of them had disappeared entirely. Beneath the crown of feathers, there was only a faint scorch of gold left across the stone where the portal had been.

Jaxir stared at it for a moment.

’...Huh. Nick went through that one?’

That didn’t track.

Nick had a piece of the Glamor Set on his feet and had made a joke about it within thirty seconds of meeting him, which made his choice seem pretty obvious. A man grinding for a set should walk into the door connected to that set, yet instead Nick had chosen the inheritance of the feathered sister.

’Either he’s not actually chasing Glamor, or he wanted something else in there.’

Jaxir suddenly paused.

’Could it be...?’

The obvious question came so quickly afterward that his head tilted.

’Can I enter another one?’

Jaxir had no particular reason to think he could, especially when every rule the dungeon had shown him so far seemed built around one participant, one gate and one reward. Three winners every season, three Demi-Goddesses, three inheritance rooms, all very neat.

Then again, he’d also just walked through a fourth door Nick couldn’t even see.

Jaxir’s eyes lit up.

"Well, worst case it tells me no."

He stepped into the portal beneath the plain crown.

The light accepted him like a curtain.

**

What Jaxir didn’t know was that this had never happened before.

The rules he thought might restrain him were very real, and the churches had built entire seasonal rotations around them. One participant entered one gate, inherited one reward and left, with no exceptions worth recording.

The fourth gate wasn’t part of those normal rules, however.

It was a rare mutation that only appeared after all three Demi-Goddesses manifested in the flesh, and even that wasn’t enough on its own. They had to be killed, while the final blow against all three could only come from a single participant.

In all the years since Divinity’s inception, nobody had managed it.

Jaxir was the first.

That rarity existed for a reason, as only one person could ever inherit the mantle left behind by the Goddess of Light. No one had lived through the requirements before, so no one had ever discovered the second half of the rule.

If someone inherited the Goddess of Light’s Divinity...

They could still go on to claim the inheritance of one of her sisters.

**

There was no hallway this time.

Jaxir stepped into a vast open chamber with no ceiling he could find, and the first thing his eyes settled on was another woman standing over a pond.

For half a second he thought it was the Goddess of Light again, but the similarity disappeared the longer he looked. The face was close enough to make the blood relation obvious, yet this sister carried a different sort of beauty, standing proudly with her chin raised while she stared into the open sky with a soft, almost loving expression.

There were no tears here.

Jaxir walked to the edge of the pond and crouched, his attention shifting almost immediately from the statue to the water beneath her. It didn’t reflect the woman above it, nor did it show Jaxir’s own face when he leaned over, instead holding light in slow horizontal bands that slid across the surface and gathered near the edges.

The mana coming from it made the hair on his arms rise.

’That’s... close to Twinkle Mana, but not quite.’

Jaxir reached out with his senses and followed one of the drifting threads, only for it to scatter before he could understand where it was going. Twinkle Mana always pulled or pushed, always leaned toward some clear direction, while this felt like it was forcing everything nearby to become slightly more erratic without ever completely releasing it.

It was scattering and trapping at the same time.

Every time Jaxir thought he had found the path a strand was taking, it had already shifted somewhere else, leaving him following something that wasn’t there anymore. He spent another moment trying to understand the pattern before the reward finally appeared.

―

[Trial Complete]

―

Name: Glimmer Blessing

Grade: Rare

Level: N/A

[Grant mana Glimmer characteristic]

Recommended Paths: Speed, Assassin, Illusion, Evasion

―

Jaxir’s mouth twisted.

A Blessing wasn’t exactly what he needed right now, especially when his own mana was already in the middle of becoming something he didn’t fully understand. Then again, his Twinkle Mana had somehow survived inside the Light Mana rather than being erased, which meant there was at least a chance Glimmer could do the same.

’Hm...’

Jaxir thought about it for a while before deciding against the idea.

He’d wait until the Goddess of Light’s set was complete, since that would probably tell him far more about what was happening between the two mana types already inside him. Right now, he could barely resolve where Light ended and Twinkle began, and if he made that problem worse, his strength might fall at exactly the wrong time.

He had far too many enemies for that.

Besides, a Rare Mana Blessing had to be worth a fortune.

Probably more than an Epic item, and possibly even more than a complete Epic Set, especially when there was no Level restriction attached to it. Equipment increased stats and gave abilities, but a Mana Blessing fundamentally changed the way someone fought.

If Jaxir really was banned from every city under the Minor God of Gravity, money was probably going to matter a lot more than it had until now.

What he didn’t expect was a second reward.

―

Name: Glimmer Fits Set (3/3)

Grade: Epic

Level: 10

Abilities: Momentum does not decay. Speed accumulates continuously while the wearer remains in motion, to a maximum of +100%. Accumulated momentum may be carried through a change of direction with compatible mana type.

+50 Mind Stats

―

A pair of boots slowly turned above the pond, low-cut and soft-soled with starlight trailing from their heels in a thin, lazy ribbon. Jaxir recognized that exact sparkle immediately.

Nick’s shoes.

More specifically, the same style Nick had pointed toward while telling Jaxir not to judge him for wearing them.

Jaxir reached up and snatched the boots out of the air so quickly he almost looked like a thief trying to grab something before the owner returned. Then his eyes dropped to the item again, and a laugh began slipping out of him.

Maybe his luck wasn’t so bad after all.

’The third piece. The Epic.’

Jaxir turned the boots over in his hands, his grin widening until there was no hiding it.

He still needed the other two pieces of Glimmer, and there were plenty of problems standing between him and the completed Reflection of the Light. But the hardest item from one of the three sets had just dropped directly into his hands without him even needing to farm for it.

In fact, this meant he had all three of the hardest pieces to get your hands on now. The others were just a matter of money. He would just need someone to go and get them for him and he had the perfect idea as to who.

Jaxir grinned ear to ear. He almost couldn’t stop himself from laughing like a complete madman. This game liked to screw him over a lot, but damn did it feel good when he pulled one over on it.

Deep inside, he seemed to love finding loopholes in rules. What a Jester if not a Magician?

"Just you wait, Gravity boy." Jaxir tucked the boots away, still grinning. "Can’t ban me if you’re dead."