Chapter 139: Three Days

Jaxir woke the next morning with the Chance Corporation already sitting at the back of his mind. He washed up, changed into clothes he didn’t mind ruining, then went outside and spent another stretch working through the lawn before his body reminded him that he still wasn’t back at his peak.

By the time he went back inside, sweat clung to his shirt and the lawn had been completely dethatched. Tomorrow he’d aerate and hopefully seed and soil. Then soon he’d have a beautiful lush lawn.

The yard was starting to look less like someone had abandoned the property years ago. Jaxir stood near the door for a moment and looked back over it with a small smile, already picturing where he wanted to reseed once the cleanup was finished.

He showered, took the nutrition pack Dr. Obrey had laid out for him, then sat at the kitchen counter while it settled into his system. Sinha had given him one week, and by Jaxir’s count there were roughly three days left before the Chance Corporation expected an answer.

Still, he was more surprised that nothing had happened yet than relieved by it.

Of course, Jaxir had no idea that they had already moved. Somewhere between their decision and him, a teenage Melee speedster simply hadn’t managed to reach him quickly enough. From Jaxir’s perspective, his uncle had gone strangely quiet.

That didn’t make him stupid enough to think the silence meant anything good, though. Over the last several days, Jaxir had gone through every obvious way his uncle could come after him and found irritatingly few clean answers.

If the bastard actually started hiring people to hurt him in the real world, Jaxir could probably ask the government for protection now and get it without too much trouble.

Guards, cameras and a secure house were problems money and government connections could solve, but... the law gave his uncle a much more lethal weapon. Jaxir stared down at the empty nutrition pack and felt his mouth tighten.

Chance Corporation could sue him.

Not just one neat lawsuit either. They could challenge his use of the Chance name, drag his parents’ old agreements into discovery, dispute whatever rights he claimed over their work and bury him beneath emergency motions until his calendar belonged more to lawyers than to him.

Jaxir didn’t need a law degree to understand that fighting a corporation with enough money to employ entire buildings full of attorneys was different from telling Sinha to fuck off at his front door.

He would probably need to sit in a courtroom every hour of every day for it to work. Depositions, discovery requests, hearings, examinations and the constant preparation around all of them could cut his available time apart piece by piece, which was already worse when his health already limited how much he could do in a day. He could force himself through both for a while, but Dr. Obrey would probably strangle him before the Chance Corporation got the opportunity.

Then there was the money. Jaxir was rich enough that most people would never have to worry about work again with what he had, but there was rich and then there was Chance Corporation rich. One of those could buy a nice life, while the other was counted in probably more than 12 zeroes. The gap was impossible to manage.

Jaxir rubbed a thumb along the edge of the counter. If his uncle wanted to grind him down instead of crushing him outright, the path was obvious: force him to spend money defending one thing, then another, keep him busy, keep him tired and make every day outside Divinity more expensive than the last.

Eventually, the unemployed twenty-one-year-old with no degree, no career and a half-dead body would run out of something before the corporation did.

He could make money through Divinity now, which should have made the situation less ugly. But that answer only worked while he had enough time to play, and litigation was very good at consuming exactly that.

Even worse, if the corporation convinced a court that his continued use of the Chance identity inside Divinity caused ongoing commercial harm, an interim order could restrict what he was allowed to do there while the case continued.

A judge probably couldn’t justify simply declaring that Jaxir Chance was forbidden from playing a video game. But they wouldn’t need to if the order barred him from using the Chance name in commercial activity, joining factions or signing agreements under that identity while ownership and trademark questions were litigated.

Divinity tied so much to a player’s identity that something written narrowly enough on paper could still function like a hand around his throat.

"Annoying." Jaxir tossed the empty pack away and stood. He could imagine plenty of uglier strategies too, but litigation felt like his uncle’s style, slow enough to look respectable and brutal enough to leave Jaxir with nothing by the time it ended.

There wasn’t much Jaxir could do about it alone in three days. Hiring his own legal team would help, yet even excellent lawyers still needed someone to pay them, and he doubted his uncle would be kind enough to choose a fight Jaxir could settle cheaply. What Jaxir needed was someone who could look at Chance Corporation’s money and not blink.

The government could do that. Of course, they wouldn’t spend serious political or legal capital protecting a random player who had signed on yesterday, but they might protect an asset valuable enough to matter to whatever they were building inside Divinity. Jaxir knew exactly how to make himself harder to discard.

Power.

He headed downstairs and climbed into the pod without wasting another minute. The connection took hold, his real body disappeared beneath the familiar transition, and Jaxir opened his eyes inside the bedroom of the house he had bought in Divinity.

Today belonged entirely to him.

Nick had already disappeared to work on his own Root Abilities, while Niri was nowhere in sight. Jaxir suspected Elara had found another collection of shiny objects, sweets or clothes with which to purchase the little traitor’s loyalty. Fine by him.

Jaxir equipped his gear, checked the potions sitting inside his inventory and headed for the door. Channel had crossed Level 50, Attune had joined it, and Cast was the only Root Ability standing between him and what should be Grand Archmage. He didn’t care how long the last few Levels wanted to take.

"I’m getting it today." Jaxir stepped into the street and let the door lock behind him. There were too many things outside his control right now, so he would deal with the one thing that was well within it.

He crossed the city without stopping and passed through the gates into the surrounding territory. His map opened in one corner of his vision while he searched through the danger zones he had marked from the government’s information, weighing distance against enemy density and average Level. He had barely made his choice when something about the map bothered him.

Jaxir slowed without stopping. A marker behind him shifted, disappeared beneath another icon, then appeared again after he changed direction. His gaze lingered on it for another few seconds.

So he hadn’t imagined it.

Someone really was following him.