Chapter 59: Questions

Rin counted them before they had even finished stepping out of the light, and the number settled heavily in her mind.

Two.

She had sent three people into that dungeon, and there had been two enemies that went in with them, and yet only two men had come back out, neither of them Tayo. Her expression didn’t change since some part of her had expected this outcome from the beginning, but something behind her eyes still went cold and quiet as she began taking stock of what stood in front of her.

The shorter man with the daggers was impossible to read, with his level, class and name all hidden behind a soft blur that seemed to slide away from her attention whenever she tried to focus on it. Rin’s eyes narrowed slightly as she recognized the effect for what it was.

’A shroud... and a good one.’

The taller man hadn’t bothered hiding himself, or maybe he simply didn’t have the means to do so, but either way it was already too late for him. She knew exactly who he was.

Jaxir noticed the strange distortion surrounding Nick at roughly the same time, his outline softened at the edges while every indicator that should have hovered around him had simply disappeared. He looked at Nick, then at his own perfectly readable information, before putting a great deal of effort into a glare that Nick answered with a bright, sunny smile full of entirely fake innocence.

Rin didn’t attack, mostly since doing so right now wouldn’t gain her much. Only two participants had entered the dungeon in the first place, which meant one inheritance gate should still remain, and starting a fight she couldn’t guarantee she’d win would only risk throwing away whatever opportunity was left.

But she couldn’t simply let the matter go either.

"Who are you with?" Rin asked, studying the two of them as carefully as she could.

Neither man answered.

"You’re not Spark Faction, I’d know your faces, so either you’re independent, which would be incredibly stupid at your level considering the strength of my faction, or someone is standing behind you and hasn’t decided to admit it yet." Her gaze shifted toward Nick as she continued. "Who paid for the shroud?"

Nick gave her nothing, and Jaxir didn’t move either.

Rin hadn’t really expected answers, she was watching for reactions instead, since people often flinched when the right question was asked or shifted their gaze when a guess came too close to something they wanted hidden. Neither of them gave her anything obvious, though Nick’s shroud made him difficult to read in the first place, and she wasn’t willing to violate her own level restriction just to pierce through it.

So she stopped fishing there and turned to the easier target.

"You, though... I’ve had two hours out here with nothing to do but ask questions about you." Rin’s eyes stayed fixed on Jaxir while her voice slowed slightly. "It’s remarkable what a name gets you when it’s a real one."

Jaxir’s expression remained unchanged, which only made her continue.

"Jaxir Chance, apparently a newbie, though nobody who’s watched you fight seems to believe that anymore. A Bad Alignment straight out of a tutorial village, a guild writ from the Golden Fleece, and what I’m told is the largest bounty ever posted in this region against someone beneath Level 10."

Rin tilted her head.

"Thirty players, they say. That’s the number players you PK’d on your own. I assumed it had to be an exaggeration, since someone beneath Level 10 shouldn’t have the mana reserves or range of abilities needed to kill that many people."

Jaxir still said nothing.

"But then I remembered the name." A faint smile appeared on Rin’s face. "Chance Corporation."

Nick’s gaze shifted almost imperceptibly.

"Your corporation built half of what makes Divinity work, didn’t it? The Vestigem system, the cards, all of it." Rin’s smile sharpened as she found what she thought was the right thread. "It would make quite a bit of sense for a corporation like that to have secret methods, unique metas, maybe even ways to cheat the systems everyone else has to follow."

Nick turned his head slightly toward Jaxir, and Rin caught it immediately.

She misunderstood it completely.

"So which is it? Are you here on behalf of the corporation, or are you doing this on your own?" Her smile widened by another fraction. "I wonder what the rest of the world would think about a member of the Chance Corporation using inside knowledge to steal opportunities from normal players."

The fog shifted between them, but Jaxir still didn’t answer.

That silence was what made Nick take a step backward, since the humor that usually sat somewhere behind Jaxir’s eyes had disappeared so completely it was hard to tell whether it had ever been there at all. His expression flattened, every trace of amusement blowing away until only a cold, empty stare remained fixed directly on Rin.

Her smile faltered.

’Wrong question.’

The realization came too late.

Jaxir attacked without a chant, warning, or any attempt to posture first, his staff rising as the space between them instantly filled with mana. A chain of magic bullets cracked through the air in rapid succession, each one being pulled from the atmosphere far more forcefully than before.

Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa.

Rin’s bracelets chimed as Twinkle Mana folded around her in a spiraling shell, bending the first few bullets away from her body while the rest curved from different angles. Two slipped through before she could redirect them all, forcing her to skid backward as damage numbers appeared.

[-19]

[-22]

The numbers themselves weren’t a problem, but where they came from absolutely was.

Those were simple Cast Root Abilities.

Rin barely had time to process how someone his level had forced that much damage through her defenses before her mana suddenly stiffened, her eyes dropping just in time to see tendrils rising from her own shadow. The first absurd thought that crossed her mind was that they weren’t dark at all, carrying a pale brightness as they reached her chest far too quickly for her to react.

’When did he cast that?’

The Bind wrapped around her mana before she found an answer.

Jaxir felt the spell behave differently the instant it landed, but instead of resisting the change, he followed it. He’d cast Bind expecting to clog her mana channels the way he always did, walling them off for a few seconds before attacking while they were sealed, but something Nick had said inside the temple had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since.

’Hers suppresses her level.’

The shroud.

Rin had walked out here wearing an item whose entire purpose was to clamp down on her own mana and keep her real strength sealed away, meaning the cage already existed before Jaxir ever touched her. He didn’t need to build a new one from scratch, he only needed to strengthen the one she had willingly wrapped around herself.

Something clicked into place for him. This was what it meant to follow the Hex Path.

It wasn’t just weakening people or throwing around curses for the sake of it, it was finding the flaw already present in an opponent and dragging it outward until that weakness became unbearable. Jaxir didn’t need to invent problems for the people standing in front of him when every person already carried some weakness of their own.

He only needed to make it worse.

―

Bind Lv19 > Bind Lv25

―

[All L1 Hex Branch Abilities have surpassed Level 20]

[L2 Hex Branch Abilities have been unlocked]

―

Jaxir ignored every notification and kept firing.

Rin could still feel her Root Abilities, but every time she reached toward one, it felt like pressing her hand against the other side of glass. The necklace around her throat had become part of Jaxir’s Bind now, and every attempt to force more mana through only seemed to make the suppression tighten around her.

Magic bullets continued hammering into her defenses, two slipping through first, then three more after that until Rin stopped bothering to count. The damage still wasn’t enough to kill her quickly, but she no longer had the luxury of waiting for another solution.

’Dammit...’

Rin tore the necklace open.

More than twenty levels of sealed strength erupted from her body at once, flattening the fog in a fifty-meter circle while the grass beneath her burned black from the pressure. Jaxir barely had time to register the surge before she threw a raw Root Ability across the clearing with none of the refinement she’d shown before.

It caught him directly in the chest and sent him flying.

[-303]

Jaxir broke through two trees before finally stopping against a third, wood splintering around his body as what little air remained in his lungs left with the impact. Rin never got the chance to capitalize on it, though, since the moment her true strength surfaced, the zone reacted.

―

[Level restriction violated]

[This zone is barred to players above Level 10]

[Enforcement initiated]

―

Light closed around Rin like a fist, lifting her feet from the ground while the world itself seemed to reject her presence. She managed to turn her head one last time before the teleportation finished, finding Jaxir already dragging himself upright nearly a hundred meters away with one hand braced against a shattered trunk.

His eyes stayed locked onto hers the entire time. They were cold enough that Rin felt them even as the light swallowed her.

Then she disappeared, leaving the fog to collapse back across the clearing while scorched grass hissed beneath it.

Jaxir took his time standing since his HP had almost fallen straight back into the red and his heart had started that uneven stuttering rhythm he’d grown far too familiar with. He stayed braced against the tree until the world stopped turning, staring at the empty patch of ground where Rin had been with an expression that hadn’t softened at all.

Nick approached carefully, studying him for a moment before deciding to speak. "Hey, she’s gone."

"She’s not dead."

Nick stopped when he heard the way Jaxir said it.

Something about his tone made it obvious he wasn’t talking about Divinity anymore, and Nick suddenly had no idea exactly what line Rin had crossed by mentioning the Chance Corporation. Whatever it was, it clearly touched something much older and uglier than a video game feud.

Even worse, Nick was more than smart enough to tell that with the words Rin had just said, this matter could definitely get blown up very large, very quickly.

Jaxir continued staring at the empty ground, his expression so flat that for one uncomfortable moment Nick thought of the murals they had just walked past.

"She should be dead," Jaxir muttered, seemingly speaking more to himself than anyone else.

Then he straightened, rolled his neck once, and the humor slowly returned to his face as though he was becoming a different person in real time.

"Anyway," Jaxir looked toward Nick. "Shopping list."