Chapter 74: Depressing

The Rulebreaker title had barely finished settling into the corner of Jaxir’s vision before another notification shoved it out of his attention.

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[+20,000 Experience]

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Jaxir stared at the number long enough that the ruined street around him stopped mattering. He had spent what felt like forever crawling from Level 4 to Level 5, grinding creatures until the sight of another twinkle twinkle badger almost made him want to commit crimes against humanity, and Grimm had just dumped enough Experience into him to make all of that look like a warm-up.

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[Level Up!]

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The familiar rush rolled through his body, but it had barely finished before another followed close behind it.

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[Level Up!]

―

Jaxir’s mouth opened, then closed again as he looked between the notifications and the place where Grimm had disappeared. Golden motes were already gathering above the broken street and beginning to condense into treasures, yet for once the sight of boss loot wasn’t quite enough to pull his attention away.

"Twenty fucking thousand."

He had known leveling in Divinity was ridiculous from the moment a Level 2 fox had given him two Experience, but seeing this much arrive at once drove the point home in a different way. All that Experience and he only went up by two levels?

Where was the justice, where was the humanity, where was the report button so he could give the devs a piece of his mind?

If he was trying to get from Level 55 to 57, he’d understand. But you had to basically solo kill a region boss to not even hit double digits?

Jaxir rubbed his jaw while another glowing shape began forming among the rewards, then finally pulled open his status screen. It had been long enough since he properly checked the entire thing that he almost expected to find a stranger’s information staring back at him.

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Name: Jaxir Chance

Class: Magic

Level: 7

Alignment: Bad

Experience: 302/20,000

Coins: 849,766

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Marks: Jester

Titles: Archmage; Rulebreaker

==

HP: 50/50

MP: 3,300/3,300

==

Core Stats

Body: 5

Mind: 330 (+300)

Free Points: 0

==

Abilities

Body: N/A

Mind: Cast (Lv40); Channel (Lv40); Attune (Lv40); Wither (Lv38); Bind (Lv35); Fracture (Lv37); Entropy (Lv5); Unravel (Lv5); Drain (Lv5); Haunt (Lv8)

==

Divine Abilities: Encore; Luck of the Draw; Roll of the Dice; Sleight of Hand

Divinity Points: 0

―

Jaxir read the screen once, frowned, then started again from the top more slowly. The Level and Experience were the obvious changes, but the moment his eyes reached his HP, his eyebrows climbed.

"Well, that’s fucking depressing."

His Body had been sitting at 57 the last time he checked, but almost all of that had come from the Feather Touch pieces he eventually fed into Reflection of the Light. The Common piece had supplied +2 Body and the Epic one another +50, so sacrificing both had stripped away all 52 bonus points and left the five natural Body he actually possessed standing there naked and embarrassed.

At least his Weightless Boots made that number feel far less pathetic in practice, especially now that their Halo-enhanced version reduced his effective weight by 90%. Plus, when he used his mana to enhance his body during the battle, it hadn’t felt like he lost much at all. The real problem was the lack of HP. He would definitely have to do something about that, or just get even better at not getting hit.

Jaxir had just spent several minutes moving fast enough to make a speed-focused player nauseous, so the number mattered a lot less than it looked like it should. But he couldn’t have been more of a glass canon even if he tried.

His Mind had gone in the opposite direction.

The old Mage title had been replaced by Archmage, increasing its contribution from +25 Mind to +50, while Reflection of the Light added another +250 so long as the Halo remained outside the completed set. His natural Mind had climbed to 30 after the two level-ups, leaving him with 330 total and a mana pool that made his old 510 MP pathetic by comparison.

"Okay, that’s less depressing."

A pulse of gold interrupted whatever else Jaxir might have found to complain about, and he dismissed the screen as the light gathering over Grimm’s death point suddenly contracted. Three separate masses formed inside it, each one gaining shape as the reward light thickened around them, but something closer to the ground caught Jaxir’s attention first.

Grimm might have disappeared, but his equipment hadn’t.

The spear lay across the shattered road exactly where it had fallen, while the armor the Village Head had worn remained beside it in a loose heap. Jaxir stared at both for half a second, then looked back toward the three forming treasures as a thought occurred to him.

"Surely."

He moved before someone else came to the same conclusion, grabbing the spear first and sending it into his Enhanced Inventory before doing the same with the armor. Neither fought against the transfer, and the fact both vanished cleanly into separate spaces made Jaxir’s eyebrows rise.

"Well, I’m not asking questions."

That could come later, preferably somewhere without several hundred players watching him like he was a dough eyed virgin. Jaxir straightened and finally paid attention to the people around the ruined battlefield, only to realize that the crowd had gotten much denser while he was busy murdering Grimm.

There were eyes everywhere.

Some players stood on rooftops that hadn’t collapsed, others crowded the mouths of streets or watched from behind broken walls, and not nearly enough of them were pretending they weren’t staring directly at him. Jaxir could practically feel the calculation happening behind every pair of eyes as they looked from him to the forming boss drops and then back again.

"Wonderful."

He glanced around for Nick and found exactly what he should have expected.

Nothing.

Jaxir clicked his tongue as he searched the nearby streets one more time, but the short bastard had disappeared so thoroughly that there wasn’t even a starlight trail left behind. Nick always seemed remarkably brave right up until the exact moment saving his own skin became the smarter option, and apparently fighting a Region Boss counted as the absolute limit of their friendship for the day.

"Little coward."

The three reward lights finished condensing before Jaxir could complain any further, and he didn’t waste time inspecting them. One looked like a dark metallic object wrapped in gold, another resembled a small crystal or stone, while the last remained buried inside so much light that Jaxir couldn’t tell what it was before he swept all three straight into his inventory.

Whatever Grimm had dropped, he could drool over it after he wasn’t surrounded by a million and one hungry wolves.

Jaxir started toward the nearest route out of Glimmer Village, keeping the Staff of the Light loose in one hand while his senses spread ahead of him. The crowd parted rather than challenge him directly, which suited him just fine, though the whispers following in his wake made it clear that nobody had suddenly developed a healthy respect for personal property.

He made it almost all the way to the edge of the village before the street ahead opened into a broad clearing near the gates.

Two parties were waiting for him.

Jaxir slowed as his eyes moved across the first group, then stopped entirely when one familiar face appeared between the others. The boy looked a little different without Jaxir’s stolen equipment hanging off him, but it was hard to forget someone after they had stabbed you in the back.

"Well, would you look at that."

Marti’s expression hardened the moment their eyes met, while the four people around him spread just enough to allow them the room to maneuver, and yet close enough that there were no gaps to take advantage of.

One of them was a burly man who probably thought the sleeveless look made him pretty badass, another was a smaller man wearing goggles, and none of them seemed particularly interested in letting Jaxir walk through the gate.

The second party stood across from them with enough distance to make it obvious they weren’t together.

Jaxir didn’t recognize a single face.

That group concerned him more for exactly that reason, since Marti at least came with a history Jaxir understood. These people had arrived at exactly the right time, positioned themselves directly between him and freedom, and looked strong enough that the Golden Fleece group hadn’t tried chasing them away.

Jaxir groaned and rolled one shoulder.

"If I’d known this was going to happen, I would’ve kept the Feather Set."

His eyes flicked toward the numbers hovering over several of them before he immediately dismissed the thought. If he still had the Feather Set, Reflection of the Light would never have awakened, and if Reflection hadn’t awakened, Grimm would have turned him into decorative paste somewhere around the third gravity pillar.

"So, never mind. Good trade."

The real problem wasn’t that Jaxir thought either party could beat him cleanly. He had more mana than he knew what to do with, his abilities had grown absurdly beyond his actual Level, and after Grimm, none of the people in front of him inspired anything close to fear.

The problem was that there were simply too many bodies.

Fighting one strong opponent let Jaxir control the rhythm, find weaknesses and avoid the attacks that mattered, but a crowd changed the math when his maximum HP was sitting at a pathetic 50. One stray arrow, one ability he didn’t see, one idiot swinging from outside his vision, and he’d be a shattered glass canon instead of a newly minted shiny one.

Drain could patch the problem once he started landing it, but that required targets, casts and enough time for the stolen health to matter. Jaxir didn’t have a convenient potion supply sitting in his pocket, nor did he have the luxury of assuming everyone waiting here would politely attack one at a time.

At least the Level Ups had topped his MP back to full. That was the only silver lining.

Jaxir adjusted his grip around the staff as pale light began gathering along its length, and several people ahead reacted immediately. Weapons rose throughout both parties while Marti shifted his feet, clearly remembering enough about their last encounter to know waiting for Jaxir to make the first move was usually a terrible idea.

’Fuck it, I guess we’re—’

Darkness swallowed the world before Jaxir could finish the thought.

There was no warning flash and no sound of an ability firing, only a sudden blackness that covered the street, the players and even the ground beneath his feet. Jaxir’s mana surged on instinct, but a violent whirlpool of force caught him from below before he could release anything.

His stomach lurched as the street vanished under him.

Then something yanked Jaxir straight down through the earth.