Chapter 9: Sharpness

Despite his laughter, Jaxir knew he was in danger. There was a split moment between his eyes meeting what felt like a countless number of twinkle twinkle foxes before they were already moving.

Jaxir’s eyes brightened and for a moment, there was a hint of the sharpness he once had.

His mind dusted off its cobwebs, and his smile became brighter.

He immediately dismissed the idea of running. His gaze locked onto the ledge just three to four meters beneath him. Then, without another moment of hesitation, he leapt forward.

The foxes dashed nimbly up the side of the valley, jumping from ledge to ledge, but some of them slipped and fell, only to recover, dig their claws into the grass and soil, and lunge again.

Jaxir grunted as he landed.

[-27]

He grimaced a bit. That did not feel nice. He knew he would likely suffer some fall damage, but he had lost more than half of his HP in that one move.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to linger on it. One of the twinkle twinkle foxes had already made it to the ledge that had been about six meters away from him before. It was free of the fox he had only just killed.

It landed with a deft agility, its little knees bending, the blackness of its paws reflecting in the sunlight as it accumulated power and lunged.

Pa.

Jaxir’s gaze glowed. He followed the trajectory of the fox and clipped its back foot the instant it was about to leave the ground completely.

Its lunge was completely thrown off. It hit the face of the valley to his right hard, lost its footing and then tumbled down.

It tried to regain its balance, but Jaxir hit it again just as it was about to succeed. It let out a little yelp and spiraled off.

Jaxir didn’t even watch it fall toward the ground far below. He wasn’t trying to be cool, he just didn’t have the luxury. Another twinkle twinkle fox had already closed the distance. There was no time to crack jokes or even smile.

His eyes kept darting around, assessing threats, making swift, quick decisions.

Not a single one of his attacks was charged, and not a single one was aimed at trying to land a one-shot.

He only had one goal.

Knock every fox that came at him down the valley.

Their little yelps filled the air, but there were only so many footholds in the valley and one way of attacking him.

Jaxir’s back was now to the valley, and there were only three other ledges close enough to use as a jump off point. One was to his left, the other to his right, and one was right below.

However, Jaxir realized that with the number of foxes, he would be overwhelmed if he just focused on the ledges themselves, but he also couldn’t attack from very far away with a quick use of Cast.

His limit on a quick Cast was just about six meters. But at that range not only was the damage poor, but he couldn’t change the trajectory of the small foxes.

Five meters was his limit.

The ledges were only about two meters or so away from him, the one right beneath him being a little less. He realized he wouldn’t be maximizing his ability like this.

Even if he caught the foxes off guard at first, there were dozens of them, and eventually they would overwhelm him with a three pronged attack.

So he had to cut them off at the legs before they could even build up that momentum.

Jaxir switched between three tactics swiftly.

The first was a single target shot, prioritizing higher level twinkle twinkle foxes with the best agility. They got his undivided attention.

Once they were sent flying, the second priority were what he labeled as secondary ledges. These were the ledges that were jump off points toward the ones closest to him.

He targeted foxes just as they landed on them, throwing off their balance and cutting their legs down just as they got close.

The last tactic was the most direct of them all.

He realized he could split his stream of Cast into two paths―what they had called dual casting. He saved one Charged Cast for emergencies and left the other for rapid firing.

Jaxir lost himself in the continuous battle, not even paying a lick of attention to the stream of notifications he was getting.

He could feel his blood boiling, his Cast becoming faster and sharper.

Every attack seemed to come with another realization, and for the first time in a while, he lost his thoughts in his actual mind.

’If I rotate the Cast before I send it out, it can fly further even if I don’t charge it... I can add a little momentum to the Cast if I actually move my staff, maybe I could even use it like a slingshot... no, that doesn’t work well. The Cast isn’t thick enough, doesn’t have enough density. But that means that if I use it on a Charged Cast instead...’

Jaxir lost count of the number of times he adjusted and then readjusted. If it wasn’t for the fact the staff allowed him to throw out Casts at the cost of just two or three MP, he would have run out long ago.

But not only did it cost so little, but he also replenished one MP every few seconds.

Still, as fast as he was throwing them out, he was burning through his MP at an astonishing rate, especially with the Charged Casts he had to throw out from time to time when he was just about to be overwhelmed.

"Hm?"

Jaxir suddenly came to a stop, blinking for a moment.

He watched as the last three twinkle twinkle foxes fell from the ledge, hitting the ground far below with a final yelp. They vanished into motes of light that dissipated into the air.

"Oh. Well, that was fun." Jaxir laughed to himself and then let his back hit the wall, taking deep breaths.

He was tired. It wasn’t just a physical fatigue, but a mental one. He hadn’t used his mind so hard in a long time.

It probably wasn’t all that good of an idea to enter such a realistic game like this one given the state of his real body, but who cared at this point?

He took deep breaths and checked his status screen for the first time in a while.

―

Name: Jaxir Chance

Class: Magic

Level: 2

Alignment: Bad

Experience: 31/400

Coins: 543

==

Marks: Jester

Titles: N/A

==

HP: 70/70

MP: 177/200

==

Core Stats

Body: 6 (+2)

Mind: 20

Free Points: 0

==

Abilities

Body: N/A

Mind: Cast (Lv17); Channel (Lv13); Attune (Lv18); Wither (Lv1); Bind (Lv1); Fracture (Lv1)

==

Divine Abilities: Encore; Luck of the Draw

Divinity Points: 0

―

"Oh, wow."

Jaxir had been too focused on the battle to pay attention to the notifications popping up out the corner of his eye. One slip up and he would have been overwhelmed by the foxes.

But when he thought about it, making it to Level 2 shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. There had been dozens of foxes, and apparently causing someone to die from fall damage also counted toward your Experience.

"I’ll take it." Jaxir said with a chuckle. It wasn’t just his advance to Level 2 that he was happy about, but also the fact Cast and Attune had leveled up so much.

Channel was lagging further behind, but that made sense considering he couldn’t use it much in this battle. He’d have to find a way to balance that.

Jaxir felt that he could be considered to have fought two real battles now. The one on one battles against the twinkle twinkle foxes were too easy to be considered as such in his opinion. Either way, he was gaining real experience. Just enough to be able to tell that these three foundational abilities had to become his bread and butter.

Channel had more potential that he hadn’t quite come to understand yet.

He exhaled one more breath and then peeked down toward the cave he had noticed earlier. Honestly, his body wasn’t feeling too good right now. It probably wasn’t because of his in-game character, but his real body.

He hadn’t exerted this much mental effort in a long while, and he knew from the time his parents spent on the game that the devs recommended decent physical fitness for those that entered.

If Jaxir had to be medically cleared to join the game, he would fail that test 100%.

But right now, he didn’t care. This was the most fun he had had in years.

"Let’s go down."

Now that the foxes were gone, Jaxir could slide down so long as he positioned his feet beneath the ledges. That should weaken the fall damage by a lot as well.

Soon, Jaxir had made it to the bottom of the valley by sliding down from ledge to ledge. He had no idea how he was going to go back up, but that was a problem for future Jaxir.

Present Jaxir only cared about the twinkling cave up ahead.

He grinned and made his way forward.