Chapter 84: Stamina

Jaxir raced through the forest toward Twinkle Village with the Natural Race lingering in the back of his mind. He had hoped Rovan might decide Marti’s group was responsible for whatever had happened and change targets, but after listening to Kaina and Sejan, that sounded far too convenient.

Apparently, attacking a Natural Race warrior wasn’t enough to make one of them hunt you. You had to disturb this so-called natural balance first, whatever the hell that meant, and killing the Twinkle Twinkle Bear King seemed to have qualified Jaxir for special attention.

He sighed as he cleared another fallen tree without slowing. "Of course it did."

At least something useful had come out of the encounter.

Jaxir had heard Marti losing his mind when his marker disappeared from whatever tracking method he’d been using, which meant the sphere worked against more than the bear. That was worth remembering, especially when Jaxir had spent half his time in Divinity dealing with people who always seemed to know exactly where he was.

What bothered him more was how quickly Marti had replaced the function of the Sparkling Third Eye Set.

Jaxir had taken the Epic piece directly from him, yet Marti had somehow found another way to scout and track targets only a short while later. If Rovan hadn’t been trying to put a hole through Jaxir’s chest at the time, he would have liked to see what Marti dropped when he died again.

Maybe next time.

Jaxir landed from the branches and continued along the forest floor, letting the Weightless Boots carry most of the burden while he settled into a pace he could maintain. Twinkle and Glimmer Villages were far enough apart that the trip still took hours, but the difference between how he moved now and how he had traveled earlier in the game was ridiculous.

The problem was that his body eventually reminded him that faster didn’t mean endless.

Divinity didn’t have a stamina bar floating somewhere beside his HP and MP, but Jaxir could feel fatigue accumulating anyway. His legs grew heavier, his breathing deepened, and after pushing hard enough for long enough, something stranger started happening to his mana.

His MP began dropping faster.

The sphere around him already required a constant flow to maintain, but even simple Casts became slightly more expensive whenever he used them while running. Jaxir paid closer attention and realized his body itself had begun pulling on his mana, supplementing whatever his weak Body Stat could no longer comfortably sustain.

"That’s annoying."

It also meant his regeneration problem was becoming harder to ignore.

A Wisk of Mana still restored 20 MP every minute, which had felt excellent when Jaxir first bought it, but his maximum MP had exploded since then. Twenty per minute didn’t feel nearly as impressive when his pool had reached several thousand and he was maintaining techniques that could chew through mana for hours.

Maybe there were mana potions.

Jaxir’s eyes shifted downward toward the golden rope around his waist as another possibility occurred to him, and for a few seconds the idea was almost tempting. He could spend 100 MP moving the Halo of Light from his Weightless Boots to A Wisk of Mana and turn the belt into an Epic Level 10 item instead.

Whatever improvement that gave its regeneration would probably solve his current problem immediately.

Then Jaxir imagined running the rest of the way with five Body and dismissed the thought.

The Weightless Boots would still help even without the Halo, but losing the 90% weight reduction and the other improvements right now would cripple his travel speed. With how pathetic his natural Body had become compared to everything else, the trip to Twinkle Village could turn from hours into days, and Jaxir had no interest in discovering exactly how many.

Instead, he kept the Halo where it was and used the remaining distance as practice.

The sphere stayed wrapped around him while he ran, and Jaxir continuously adjusted how much mana flowed through each section. Sometimes he tightened it close to his skin, other times he widened it several meters, and whenever the forest disturbed the flow he corrected the warped channels without letting the entire structure collapse.

―

[Attune has reached Level 41]

―

Jaxir smiled when the notification appeared.

That made sense. Cast and Channel were both involved in shaping and maintaining the technique, but Attune seemed almost perfectly suited for it since the entire thing depended on keeping dozens of small mana movements efficient at the same time.

He kept experimenting.

Jaxir tried allowing leaves to pass through without disturbing the sphere, then changed the flow so that mana brushing against it bent around his position instead. The second version cost noticeably more MP, but the exercise forced him to understand exactly which parts of the structure were actually necessary and which ones were wasting energy.

―

[Attune has reached Level 42]

―

His MP continued falling.

Jaxir slowed his pace slightly, but that only bought him more time to experiment, and soon he was changing the sphere almost without thinking. Cast became easier to spread through the entire structure while Channel helped him maintain the pressure evenly, but Attune continued doing most of the heavy lifting whenever he tried to shave away unnecessary mana.

―

[Attune has reached Level 43]

―

By then, Jaxir was close enough to Twinkle Village that the surrounding forest had begun looking familiar.

Unfortunately, his MP was also getting close enough to empty that continuing the experiment started feeling stupid. He wanted enough left to fight if somebody was waiting near the village, especially when Golden Fleece, Gravity’s bounty hunters and one very angry Natural Race warrior were all somewhere behind him.

Jaxir maintained the sphere for a little longer anyway.

He narrowed it until it barely extended beyond his robes, reduced the flow through the sections that weren’t actively doing anything, and tried to hold the entire thing together with as little mana as possible. The strain on Attune sharpened again before another notification finally appeared.

―

[Attune has reached Level 44]

―

"Good enough."

Jaxir let the sphere dissolve and immediately felt the drain on his MP ease.

He had to hope several hours and an entire forest were enough to make Rovan lose him for now. More importantly, entering Twinkle Village nearly empty would be idiotic when he still didn’t know exactly how well Reflection of the Light would handle Gravity’s ban.

The last stretch passed without trouble.

By the time the village walls came into view, Jaxir’s MP had recovered enough that he stopped worrying about it and focused instead on the guards standing near the entrance. He kept walking at the same pace, waiting for one of them to react to his face, name or Divine Standing.

Neither did.

One guard looked over briefly before losing interest, while the other barely glanced at Jaxir at all. Reflection of the Light’s shroud held without any visible strain, and Jaxir allowed himself a small smile as he passed beneath the gate.

"Convenient."

He didn’t waste time wandering through the village afterward.

Luxy Lux’s Exchange was exactly where he remembered it, and Jaxir pushed through the door with the unfinished Secrets of the Trifecta quest sitting at the front of his mind. He had learned the truth behind the three villages, met the Goddess of Light herself and awakened the set tied to her inheritance, which felt like more than enough to finally hand the thing in.

The small elderly woman looked up from behind the counter.

Her eyes widened.

Before Jaxir could say a word, Luxy vaulted over the counter with surprising speed and dropped onto both knees directly in front of him. Her forehead slammed against the floor once, then again.

Jaxir could only stare.