Chapter 96: Glider

Jaxir kept moving until his stamina started blinking red again, and by then the valley was far enough behind him that continuing to run would accomplish little beyond exhausting himself. He didn’t have much MP left at all, there was no way he was going to be able to go very far in the first place.

He slowed beneath a thick stretch of trees, spent a moment catching his breath, and then remembered the enormous pair of wings sitting in his Inventory.

"Who knows. Maybe you’ll save me some walking."

The sapphire and emerald wings unfolded beside him, each feather catching the light despite looking like it had been carved from polished stone. Their size alone had made Jaxir assume they were valuable, so the Grade and Level didn’t surprise him nearly as much as the name that appeared in front of him.

―

Name: Sapphire-Emerald Glider Wings

Grade: Epic

Level: 10

Abilities:

[Glider]

Convert activation height into forward travel.

Minimum Activation Height: 20 meters

20 meters:

Maximum Glide Distance: 200 meters

Maximum Glide Speed: 100 km/h

Every doubling of activation height multiplies maximum glide distance by 4 and doubles maximum glide speed, up to an activation height of 160 meters.

Maximum Glide Speed: 800 km/h

Above 160 meters, glide speed will no longer increase. Every additional 20 meters of activation height increases maximum glide distance by 5 kilometers.

―

Jaxir’s excitement dipped the moment he saw the word Glider. He’d been hoping the ridiculous pair of wings would let him fly, and apparently Divinity had given him a big ’ol disappointment again.

Then he actually read the numbers, and his disappointment started to fade.

At the minimum height of 20 meters, the wings would carry him 200 meters at around 100 kilometers an hour. If he used them for repeated jumps, he’d be able to bound his way across distances pretty fast, especially when his Twinkle Mana made reaching rooftops, cliffs and tall trees far easier than it would be for most players. The only problem was that this clearly wasn’t designed for battle since he couldn’t control the distance.

Still, he used them that way, he could probably cut several hours from the trip to Sparkle Village while avoiding most of the terrain that normally slowed him down. That was good, but it wasn’t enough to make him assume he suddenly had the fastest movement method in the region. Marti and his group had already proven that much.

They had been around Twinkle Village when the trouble in Glimmer Village started, yet they’d still managed to reach the Village Head fight before it ended.

Grimm had taken Jaxir far longer to kill than Auren, mostly because Jaxir had intentionally dragged the battle out while grinding his Magic abilities until he finally crossed the threshold into Archmage, but even then the timing mattered.

The Grimm fight itself had lasted more than 1.5 hours, while the entire chain of events had started well before that when Jaxir broke Nick out of prison. If he counted from that point, Marti’s group had probably covered the distance between Twinkle Village and Glimmer Village in something closer to 3 hours.

They hadn’t done that by jogging. Whatever method they’d used, it meant Jaxir couldn’t assume cutting his own travel time in half would be enough to catch anyone off guard. At 100 kilometers an hour, he was still looking at more than 3 hours of travel to reach Sparkle Village, and that was assuming he could somehow maintain that speed without interruptions the entire way.

Jaxir looked back at the screen and finally paid proper attention to the scaling.

At 40 meters, the glide distance jumped from 200 meters to 800 meters, while the speed climbed to 200 kilometers an hour. At 80 meters, the distance became 3.2 kilometers and the speed rose again to 400 kilometers an hour.

Then came 160 meters. ℴ

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed as he ran the numbers.

The wings would carry him 12.8 kilometers at 800 kilometers an hour, and that meant each full glide would take just under 1 minute. If the trip was at least 300 kilometers at the bare minimum, he would need roughly 24 glides from 160 meters to cover the distance.

That put the actual time in the air at only around 23 minutes.

The real problem was getting back to 160 meters after every landing, but even if each ascent took him a couple of minutes, the difference was still absurd. A trip that would’ve taken him more than 3 hours even while moving at 100 kilometers an hour could suddenly drop to somewhere around 1 hour depending on how quickly he managed each launch.

Jaxir stared at the wings for a long moment.

It was nearing the time he’d planned to log out for the night, and a few minutes ago he’d been wondering where he could hide until morning. Now there was a very real chance he could reach Sparkle Village before anyone expecting him there had enough time to react.

News of Auren’s death had only just started spreading, and anybody tracking Jaxir would naturally assume he still had hours of travel ahead of him. Golden Fleece, the Gravity Church, the Village Head’s people, random bounty hunters, none of them had any reason to expect him to cross that much distance anywhere near this quickly.

If Jaxir arrived before they even finished deciding what to do next, then whatever plans they were making would already be behind him.

His mouth started to curl. The only real problem was getting to 160 meters in the first place.

Before the fight with Auren, that would’ve killed the idea immediately. Even with his boots, double jump and Twinkle Mana, 160 meters was far beyond anything he could reach through normal movement without finding a massive cliff or some other convenient piece of terrain.

Now, though, he understood his Mana differently. The valley had shown him that Sparkle Mana could sense the tiny gravitational influences surrounding him, while Alignment and Route had given him enough structure to bring those forces together. Holding himself stationary had nearly emptied his Mana pool, but this time he didn’t need to hover for an extended period of time. He just needed to get there and then let the glider do the rest.

Jaxir could reduce his effective weight further with his boots and Twinkle Mana, align the surrounding gravitational influences long enough to accelerate himself upward not continuously, but more like a single slingshot. Then he could let the Glider Wings take over the instant he crossed 160 meters, or even higher to save on how many times he’d need to do it. He wouldn’t need to maintain the technique for more than a split second at a time, which was a very different problem from keeping himself suspended above the valley.

Every additional 20 meters above 160 added another 5 kilometers of glide distance without increasing the speed past 800 kilometers an hour.

If he could reach 180 meters, the distance became 17.8 kilometers per glide, cutting a 300-kilometer trip to roughly 17 jumps. At 200 meters, the distance became 22.8 kilometers, which dropped the total to around 14.

The higher he pushed beyond that, the fewer times he would need to land and rebuild his altitude.

Jaxir stopped looking at the wings and tilted his head toward the sky instead.

A wild grin spread across Jaxir’s face as the real advantage finally settled in. If he could cut a trip of more than 3 hours down to less than 30 minutes...

He would arrive before anyone was ready for him.

"Well," Jaxir muttered, still staring upward, "this should ruin someone’s night."