Chapter 79: Scent

Nick started cursing before Jaxir could even see what he had pulled out. How he managed to recognize everything by what seemed like sight alone was beyond Jaxir.

The light around it was bright enough to wash out everything in his hand, but after several seconds it finally faded and left a clear Vestigem Card resting between his fingers.

There was nothing written across the surface and no image suspended inside it like the Cards Jaxir was used to seeing. Thin circuits ran through the transparent material from edge to edge, but when he focused on it, the system was somehow even less useful.

―

Name: ?????

Grade: ?????

Level: ?????

Description: ?????

―

Jaxir blinked at the question marks before turning toward Nick without saying anything. Considering the man had already started swearing before the light faded, he clearly knew what it was.

"Oh, fuck you. I’m not telling." Nick looked away and picked up his pace, though less than five seconds passed before his eyes slid back toward the Card.

Jaxir continued holding it where Nick could see.

Nick looked away again, made it another few steps, then peeked back for a second time before finally giving up. "It’s a Vestigem Card Template. You permanently fuse a Card into it, and after that you can replicate the Card."

"Indefinitely?" Jaxir turned the Template over, watching the circuits inside shift with the angle of the light.

"No." Nick sounded irritated. "It has a Durability charge, there’s a limit on the grade of Card it can accept, and every copy you make costs twice the normal mana when you activate it, but you should still get around 20 uses before the Template burns out."

Jaxir nodded, but Nick hadn’t finished staring at it.

"I’ve never even seen a Template that high-grade." Nick swallowed before looking away again. "That thing can probably replicate an Epic Level 10 Card. Fuck, why are you so rich?"

Jaxir chuckled and balanced the clear Card on one finger, giving it a slow spin while they continued through the forest. Nick visibly cringed every time the edge dipped, as though Jaxir was one careless movement away from throwing several fortunes into the dirt.

A question occurred to Jaxir as he caught it again. "Who actually makes Vestigem Cards in this place? Are there blacksmiths for them or something?"

"Vestigem Smiths." Nick gave him a strange look before shaking his head. "They’re probably the rarest profession in Divinity, at least among players. A whole province might only have three to five that are actually worth talking about."

There were far more NPC Vestigem Smiths, but according to Nick, getting the profession as a player was incredibly difficult. The few who managed it were almost always pulled into the largest guilds, where they spent most of their time experimenting with stronger Cards and producing effects that couldn’t be bought reliably anywhere else.

"Once you start dealing with the highest dungeons and Region Bosses, you need broken Cards," Nick continued. "You can try buying them, but strong Cards have a high failure rate during creation, so unless your guild has someone producing them directly, the cost starts getting stupid."

Jaxir looked down at the blank Template again, and its value made considerably more sense now. One successful Card could be fused into this thing and used around 20 times afterward, which meant the Template could turn something painfully expensive to produce into something they could actually build a strategy around.

"You should save that for the Nightmare Dungeon." Nick pointed toward the Card as though worried Jaxir might decide to fuse the first thing he found. "If we’re going after that hidden instance, this can make the whole thing much easier. We just need to find a Vestigem Card worth wasting it on first."

"Sounds easy enough."

"It’s going to be its own fucking nightmare." Nick corrected.

Jaxir was about to answer when Nick’s expression changed, the annoyance disappearing as his eyes shifted toward the forest ahead. He slowed without stopping and lowered his voice enough that Jaxir had to listen over the brush beneath their feet.

"Someone cut us off."

Jaxir immediately checked the map floating at the edge of his vision, but nothing appeared anywhere ahead of them. He widened his attention around the area and still found nothing, yet after everything Nick had pulled out of nowhere over the last few hours, Jaxir wasn’t particularly interested in betting his life on the map being right.

The guy had a lot of secrets.

"Split up?" Nick glanced toward him.

Jaxir scoffed as he put the Template back into his Enhanced Inventory. "Is this just because you know they’ll come after me first?"

Nick smiled a little too sheepishly for the answer to be anything else. "I’ll watch your back from the shadows."

His body flickered before Jaxir could reply, then vanished so cleanly that even the sounds of his footsteps disappeared with him. Jaxir looked toward the empty patch of forest where Nick had been and shook his head, but he couldn’t complain too much when the man had already dragged him out of Glimmer once today.

Besides, his MP had completely recovered after leveling, and he was planning to spend three days incapable of playing Divinity soon enough. If somebody had gone through the trouble of cutting him off in the middle of a forest, Jaxir could at least be polite enough to see what they wanted.

And maybe blow off some steam at the same time.

A grin spread across his face as he flipped the Staff of the Light in one hand and tapped a foot against the ground. Mana wrapped around his limbs and Jaxir shot forward, his Weightless Boots carrying him over the uneven terrain with so little effort that his first few steps became long bounds between the trees.

He planted one foot against a trunk and ran several steps upward before launching himself toward the higher branches. Halfway through the jump, Double Jump kicked beneath him and sent him higher, letting Jaxir grab a branch overhead, swing around it and land on another that should have snapped under his weight but barely dipped beneath the boots’ effect.

From here he could see farther through the forest, but there were still no voices and no obvious players moving to surround him. Jaxir shifted his staff forward and listened instead, expecting the snap of a branch or the rush of footsteps.

A roar answered him instead.

One of the trees farther ahead swayed hard enough that its upper branches slapped into the one beside it, then something large forced its way through the undergrowth. Jaxir’s lip twitched as dense black fur appeared beneath the leaves, followed by the wide head and thick shoulders of a creature he recognized immediately.

’A twinkle twinkle bear?’

That alone would have been strange enough this close to the Glimmer Village, but someone was sitting on its back. The man wore rough leather and strips of hide that left most of his upper body exposed, thick red tattoos painted across his chest and arms while a long wooden-shafted spear rested in one hand.

Jaxir narrowed his eyes and focused on him, expecting a name or Level to appear, but nothing did.

The bear slowed beneath Jaxir’s tree and lifted its head, its nose working through the air several times before its entire body shifted in his direction. Its rider followed the movement without hesitation and looked straight up through the branches until his eyes found Jaxir.

Jaxir’s grip tightened around the staff.

The map still showed nothing, which meant this wasn’t just some random NPC wandering through the forest. The bear sniffed again and settled its gaze on him with even more certainty, leaving little doubt about what it had been doing.

It was tracking him by scent.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed as the rider slowly raised his spear, and the question that had been bothering him since the tree first moved became considerably more important. He had no idea why, but this man definitely wasn’t a player, and he also had no idea why an NPC was hunting him out here.