Chapter 78: Drool

"Stop drooling and tell me what it does already." Jaxir turned the crystal between his fingers while they continued through the trees, and Nick actually swallowed before dragging his eyes away from it.

"The list is too fucking long." Nick shook his head as though deciding where to even begin. "There are too many benefits, but the short version is that thing could take one of the worst players you know and turn them into a decent top ranker."

Jaxir raised an eyebrow.

That sounded exaggerated. He might not know much about Divinity compared to Nick, but he’d played enough by now to understand that being good at this game required more than numbers on a status screen.

Combat had to be treated like a science. You couldn’t memorize a few combinations, learn when to dodge and call it a day when every Ability could be changed by comprehension. Mana behaved differently depending on how you understood it, and even something as simple as Cast could become dozens of completely different attacks.

That was what made Divinity so much fun in the first place. So how could one item take someone who was bad at all of that and suddenly make them good?

Unless the item changed the rules enough that being bad stopped mattering as much. For some reason, Jaxir didn’t like that possibility very much.

Nick looked over and seemed to realize from his expression that he still wasn’t impressed. "Alright, forget all the mysterious bullshit. Your mana would flow through your body faster, Abilities connected to that mana type would advance faster, and you’d be able to display strength above what their Levels normally suggest."

That got Jaxir’s attention.

"And for someone like you, who’s probably a glass cannon without all the bullshit you’re wearing, it’ll help shore up your Body too." Nick pointed at him as they ran. "Magic Classes don’t get additional Body points from leveling. Your natural Body basically sits there unless something else changes it."

Jaxir glanced down at himself.

That explained why his Body had barely moved while his Mind continued climbing. Equipment had hidden the problem for most of his time in Divinity, especially the Feather Touch Set, but now that those 52 bonus points were gone, his 50 HP suddenly looked a lot less amusing.

"The first time most Magic Classes get any real choice is Level 10, when Free Points come into play," Nick continued. "And even then, almost every mage dumps them into Mind anyway because that’s what their Class is built around."

"Makes sense."

"Yeah, until somebody hits you." Nick grinned. "But that’s not even the best part. If you ever want to become a Dual Class, you basically need something like this."

Jaxir frowned. "Dual Class?"

"There isn’t any real way to get a second Class, at least none I’ve ever heard of." Nick ducked beneath a low branch and kept moving without losing pace. "Dual Class is just what people call players who manage to balance Mind and Body enough that they can fight both ways."

"So magic swordsmen."

"Basically." Nick nodded. "You can fake it with equipment, temporary stat items or one-use treasures, but the problem is that the second you lose those things, you’re back to being whatever your Class says you are."

Jaxir looked toward the crystal again.

"This is different," Nick continued. "It changes your body itself, so if you find the right mana training method afterward, you can start improving Body independently instead of being completely restrained by what your Class naturally gives you."

’Mana training method?’ Jaxir’s gaze flickered.

Jaxir had already spent most of his time doing things his Class probably wasn’t supposed to do, and the idea of removing another restriction was far more interesting than simply gaining some HP. If he could actually build his Body alongside his Mind, then the biggest weakness on his status screen wouldn’t have to remain a weakness forever.

"There is a catch, though." Nick glanced toward the crystal. "The higher your Level, the less useful it becomes."

Jaxir’s expression changed.

"Something about rebuilding the foundation while there’s less of it to rebuild. I don’t know the exact mechanics." Nick shrugged. "But someone at Level 20 using that same Blessing would have already wasted most of its potential."

"So earlier is better."

"Much better." Nick gave him a pointed look. "There are people who would reset their characters just to use something like that early enough."

Jaxir looked down at the crystal for a few seconds.

"Alright. That’s pretty good."

Nick scoffed. "Pretty good."

"The problem is still the three days." Jaxir rolled the Gravity Blessing between two fingers before looking ahead again. "I don’t exactly have the luxury of lying unconscious somewhere while everyone in the province hunts me."

"You do if you stop making everything difficult." Nick waved one hand. "Book a private room."

Jaxir looked over.

"There are private rooms even in Tutorial Villages. People use them for idle quests, training, crafting, anything where they don’t want some idiot walking in and stabbing them while they’re busy." Nick shrugged. "With how much money you have, you could rent one for months and not care."

That changed things.

Jaxir slowed a little as the thought settled in, though the Weightless Boots still carried him forward with barely any effort. According to Nick, before Level 10 was the ideal time to use the Blessing, but Jaxir was already Level 7 after one Region Boss and still had two Village Heads sitting on his new Divinity Quest.

Would he even get another three-day window before Level 10? Would things somehow become calmer afterward?

Jaxir almost laughed.

This might actually be the calmest his life was going to get.

The only part he didn’t like was trusting the Goddess of Light’s shroud for three straight days. Gravity boy had already proven himself petty enough to ban Jaxir from an entire province, place a bounty on his head, empower a Region Boss and generally make every inconvenience in his life worse. Could he really sit unconscious inside one of Gravity’s villages and trust that nobody would find him?

Jaxir took a breath and slowly let it out.

He kept telling himself this was just a game, but somewhere along the way that had stopped being true.

The memories in his head already made Divinity something more than entertainment, but even those weren’t the real reason. His parents had left him this game after they died, out of all the things they could have chosen, and had tied it directly to Integration Phase III.

That wasn’t an accident. Jaxir was certain of it.

Whatever had happened to his parents, whatever they had discovered before their deaths, some piece of the truth was buried inside Divinity. He just needed to survive long enough to reach Phase III and find it.

Which meant this game might as well have been part of his life now. But that thought brought him back to something he had been avoiding.

No matter how powerful he became inside Divinity, his real body was still outside the pod. His uncle didn’t need to defeat Jaxir here.

The old bastard could attack his money, his house, his name, his parents’ company or Jaxir himself, and Jaxir had spent most of the last several days running from one disaster inside the game to another while doing almost nothing about it.

Maybe three days away from Divinity wasn’t a loss. Maybe it was exactly what he needed.

Jaxir’s gaze hardened for a moment before the expression disappeared, and his fingers closed around the crystal.

"I’ll use it."

Nick looked over, then smiled. "Finally, something intelligent."

"Don’t ruin it."

Jaxir stored the Gravity Blessing back inside his Enhanced Inventory before Nick could answer. The decision was made, which meant there was no point turning it over another hundred times.

He still had one Region Boss reward left. Jaxir reached into his inventory and pulled it out.