Chapter 88: Log In

Jaxir walked out of Luxy Lux’s Exchange with a grin still spread across his face, the warning she’d given him barely registering as a downside. Becoming an enemy of the Naturals might have sounded threatening if Rovan hadn’t already spent the better part of an afternoon chasing him through the forest with a spear, but as far as Jaxir was concerned, that particular bridge had already been burned.

The method Luxy had traded him was probably better than the Gravity Blessing anyway, though it demanded far more from the person using it. Gravity’s tempering would have produced roughly the same result no matter who activated it, while the Natural method depended entirely on how well Jaxir understood what he was doing and how precisely he could control his Mana through his own body.

That might have worried him a few weeks ago, but Jaxir found himself smiling wider instead. If the method became stronger based on his own understanding, then he only needed to understand it better.

The basic principle was simple enough on paper. Rather than use an outside source of Mana to break his body apart and reconstruct it, Jaxir had to circulate his own Mana through every part of himself, following the exact contours of muscle, bone, organs and everything else until he could carve a complete pathway through his physical vessel.

The more he thought about it, the more it reminded him of tracing the circuits inside a Vestigem Card. Of course, his body was dozens of times larger, three-dimensional, constantly shifting every time he breathed or moved, and unlike a Vestigem Card there weren’t any convenient circuits already carved into it for him to follow.

Jaxir pursed his lips as he walked.

Simple enough.

At least Luxy had given him something useful to practice with. Before leaving, Jaxir had bought two copies of every Uncommon Glimmer and Sparkle Vestigem Card she carried, giving him 10 completely new types of Cards to study while he worked toward understanding the Natural method.

According to Luxy, the three stolen paths still carried pieces of the Natural Race’s original principles, which meant learning their Vestigem Cards should help him understand how those beings moved Mana through their bodies. Jaxir didn’t know how much that would matter yet, but he had already learned far more from Twinkle Step, Twinkle Pulse and the others than their descriptions had ever suggested.

There was another advantage too.

Jaxir seemed to learn best when someone was actively attempting to kill him.

He had sat around studying techniques before and made progress, but most of his biggest breakthroughs came when he needed something to work immediately or suffered the consequences. Since the Twinkle Village Head happened to be the first person in Divinity who had gone out of his way to piss Jaxir off, there was really no reason to travel somewhere else looking for a training partner.

He was already here.

Jaxir wasn’t stupid enough to try tempering his body in the middle of a fight, but testing 10 new Vestigem Cards sounded much more reasonable. The Village Head needed to die eventually anyway.

Jaxir turned around the corner of a narrow street with that thought still running through his head, only for his steps to stop when he saw someone waiting ahead. Nick leaned against a stone wall with his arms crossed and one foot planted behind him, and unlike the last time he’d tried this, he’d clearly been waiting long enough to get the pose right.

Jaxir rolled his eyes as he walked closer. "Nice of you to finally show up. You might as well leave again, though, because I’m about to assassinate another Village Head."

Nick’s posture disappeared instantly as he pushed himself off the wall. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, how about we relax for five minutes and try something crazy like preparing first?"

Jaxir raised an eyebrow and continued walking past him. "I wasn’t prepared for the first one."

"Yeah, but that’s not license to continue being a madman. The situation isn’t the same anymore." Nick hurried after him, glancing around the street before lowering his voice. "The block is hot right now. Really fucking hot. I’m talking Imana Rosai levels of hot."

Jaxir looked sideways at him. He had heard of the celebrity before, so he immediately understood the reference. That was indeed, quite hot.

"Do you have any idea how insane the forums are right now?" Nick spread both hands as he walked. "You just solo killed a named region boss, of course they’re going crazy. There are people already waiting for the bigger commentators to do an analysis of the battle, and more people than that are trying to understand if you have a special quest or something."

Jaxir shrugged. "Sounds perfect to me. If we’re going to kill the rest anyway, they’ll be most off guard if we do two on the same day."

Nick stared at him for several steps before his lip twitched. "Nobody expects that because nobody is stupid enough to try it."

"Then they’ll definitely be surprised." Jaxir looked forward again, and his grin returned as they moved deeper into the village.

The Twinkle Village Head had been responsible for Jaxir’s first bounty before he’d even properly learned how the game worked, and he’d spent a ridiculous amount of time dealing with the consequences since. It could be said that every headache he had now was rooted in that one instance.

Now that Jaxir was finally standing inside the man’s village with enough strength to do something about it, putting the matter off didn’t sound nearly as appealing as Nick seemed to think it should.

**

Marti slammed his fist into the desk hard enough to make the surface shake, then stood there breathing through his nose while the anger from Divinity followed him into the real world. Dying again had already been enough to ruin his mood, but Kaina removing him from the squad afterward had turned that anger to fury.

His bedroom was large enough that it barely felt like one. A king-sized bed sat along one wall while his Divinity unit occupied the other, its flat jelly-like surface resting above a familiar thin layer of green fluid, and the window beside his desk stretched almost from floor to ceiling over a view very few could hope to dream to afford.

Marti didn’t care about any of it.

He had died to Jaxir again, and instead of supporting him after the fact, the others had treated him like he was the problem. Kaina had actually kicked him from the squad just because he’d ignored her order to retreat, even though abandoning Jaxir when they’d finally caught him made absolutely no sense.

At least, that was how Marti saw it.

There was no chance Jaxir was progressing normally anyway. Nobody learned techniques that quickly, disappeared from tracking methods he shouldn’t understand, and walked around with equipment far beyond what someone at his Level should reasonably possess unless something else was going on behind the scenes.

Jaxir was connected to the Chance Corporation somehow, and Marti had stopped caring whether he could prove the corporation was feeding him advantages. If he couldn’t prove it, then he would make enough noise that the distinction stopped mattering.

He should tell his father.

Marti paced away from his desk before turning back, already imagining what he could post and who he could contact. By the time he was finished, people wouldn’t hear the name Jaxir Chance without thinking of cheating, exploits and whatever else he could attach to him.

A vibration suddenly ran through his wrist and interrupted the thought.

Marti frowned as he looked down at his Kinext, the newest model currently on the market. He’d modified it enough that it could receive limited information from his Divinity character while he was logged out, something the game normally prevented because outside access like that technically counted as a game-breaking advantage.

The game was supremely realistic. It treated the time you spent logged out as sleep for your character.

Getting around the restriction had required jailbreaking several pieces of the interface.

Marti had never really considered that cheating. This was different. Definitely different.

Another vibration ran through his wrist, and a message appeared across his vision.

—

[Log in and you will receive an opportunity.]

—

Marti’s frown deepened as he tried opening the message details, but there was no sender, account information or system label attached to it. The notification existed completely on its own, and every attempt to inspect where it had come from returned nothing.

"What the hell is this?"

His gaze shifted toward the Divinity bed on the other side of the room.

More importantly, how did whoever sent it know he wasn’t logged in? He had only logged out a few minutes ago.