Chapter 64: Hey There

Jaxir found himself laughing as he raced through the streets of Glimmer Village, the enormous bell continuing to ring from somewhere ahead while armored footsteps began answering it from several directions.

His amusement only grew when another notification appeared in front of him while he rounded the corner of a narrow stone building.

[Quest Received]

Quest: The Clownish Criminal Rebooted

Description: A friend of yours has been imprisoned within Glimmer Village. Whatever crimes he may or may not have committed are irrelevant to you, but the village authorities seem to disagree. Break him free before his situation worsens.

Objective: Free your imprisoned friend.

Jaxir almost missed his next turn when he started laughing harder, his Weightless Boots carrying him several steps farther than intended before he corrected himself. He had spent the better part of forty minutes wondering whether Nick had robbed him, betrayed him, gotten distracted, or somehow found the world’s slowest merchant, and apparently the answer had been much simpler.

Nick had gotten arrested.

"Of course you did."

The conversation he’d overheard outside the village suddenly made considerably more sense, and Jaxir’s amusement faded enough for him to think through what had happened. He’d raised an eyebrow when those players mentioned merchants questioning anyone trying to purchase Uncommon equipment, but he’d assumed the village authorities were only casting a broad net.

Apparently Gravity Boy had put a little more thought into things than Jaxir gave him credit for.

The Reflection of the Light needed the completed ancestral inheritances of all three sisters before it could awaken, which meant the Minor God of Gravity had every reason to make those pieces difficult to gather. Jaxir already possessed both ends of the Feather inheritance, but Nick had walked into Glimmer Village looking for its missing Uncommon piece alongside the Common and Uncommon pieces of both Glimmer and Twinkle.

Five specific items connected to the three women who had betrayed the Goddess of Light.

’Yeah, I suppose that looks a little suspicious.’

Gravity couldn’t necessarily know Jaxir already possessed the Epic pieces, but he didn’t need to. Anyone gathering that particular combination shortly after someone inherited the Goddess of Light’s Fractured Divinity was worth stopping first and asking questions later.

Jaxir clicked his tongue as he cut between two buildings. "This game is way too realistic."

In any normal game, he’d have expected the villains to patiently wait while he collected every conveniently scattered piece required to defeat them, perhaps sending increasingly incompetent minions to slow him down along the way. Divinity had apparently decided its antagonists were allowed to possess functional brains, which felt like a deeply unfair design choice.

Unfortunately, Gravity Boy being clever wasn’t even the worst part.

Marek Voss had been Level 15 despite standing guard over what amounted to a beginner village, while Jaxir himself was trapped below Level 11 if he wanted to remain inside the surrounding tutorial region. If an ordinary gate guard was Level 15, then the Village Head and anyone important enough to protect him could easily be Level 20 or higher.

Jaxir had fought people stronger than himself before, but five or ten Levels stopped being a small difference once the people involved actually knew what they were doing. He genuinely had no idea whether he could defeat a Level 20 NPC, especially while half the village was already waking up to the fact that the banned lunatic had walked through the front gate anyway.

A soft ping interrupted the thought.

Jaxir’s eyes shifted toward the map floating at the edge of his vision, where a new marker had appeared inside Glimmer Village. The quest had synchronized with it almost immediately, placing a clear indicator over Nick’s location while the surrounding streets and alleys sharpened into view around it.

His grin returned.

"I really should thank that kid again."

Marti had stabbed him in the back, which was rather rude, but the Sparkling Third Eye Set Jaxir stole from him afterward had continued paying dividends. The Epic item had unlocked the map halo far earlier than it should have been available, and now that Jaxir had entered Glimmer Village, the settlement unfolded across his vision rather than forcing him to run through unfamiliar streets blind.

Red dots had begun moving across that map as well.

Jaxir’s gaze jumped through the pathways while he ran, tracing routes between buildings the same way he would study possible solutions to a maze. One red dot was approaching quickly from the street ahead, so he turned through a narrow side passage before it reached the intersection, crossed behind a row of shops, then cut back toward Nick’s marker without ever seeing whoever had been hunting him.

Another route closed as two more dots moved into it.

Jaxir changed direction before they could intersect, the grin remaining on his face as the gap between himself and Nick shrank much faster than the guards managed to close around him. Whatever else Gravity Boy had prepared, at least he hadn’t expected his newest criminal to walk into the village carrying a miniature surveillance system.

Then Jaxir noticed something strange about Nick’s location.

The marker sat beneath one of the larger structures near the center of Glimmer Village, close enough to the bell that every strike rolled through the streets with enough force to vibrate through the buildings. When Jaxir focused on the map, however, he realized there were two distinct routes leading underground toward the same dungeon.

The first was exactly where he would have expected it.

One entrance ran directly through the Village Head’s mansion, an imposing building near the village center with the warning bell mounted above it. Jaxir supposed the logic was reasonable enough. If you were going to imprison criminals inside a tutorial settlement, putting the main dungeon entrance beneath the home of the strongest authority figure was probably about as secure as things could get.

The second entrance made considerably less sense.

Jaxir followed the route with his eyes, then changed direction and raced toward the edge of the commercial district.

He skidded around another corner with his staff extended slightly for balance, stopping before a narrow building that looked as though the village had forgotten to demolish it. The wood around the windows had started rotting, dust covered what little glass remained, and a faded sign hanging over the entrance.

"Subtle."

Jaxir rushed forward and drove Cast through the end of his staff.

BANG.

The doors blasted inward hard enough to tear one hinge free, and Jaxir stepped through the cloud of dust with his staff already raised. Shelves lined the walls with enough old weapons, leather scraps and miscellaneous junk to technically qualify as merchandise, but thick cobwebs stretched between half of them while the man sitting behind the counter stared at Jaxir in shock.

That wasn’t suspicious at all. The warning bell had been ringing long enough for half the village to react, yet this man hadn’t gone outside to investigate, hidden beneath his counter, or shown any concern about the commotion happening only a few streets away. He had remained planted exactly where he was, inside a nearly abandoned shop sitting directly over the dungeon’s hidden second entrance.

Jaxir smiled.

"Hey there."

His gaze swept across the man as another partial screen appeared.

―

Name: Orlan Dey

Level: 18

Class: Tank

―

The level bothered Jaxir considerably less than it should have.

Orlan surged upright behind the counter, one hand already reaching beneath it, while Jaxir’s lips continued forming the final words of the chant he’d begun before entering the building. He had spent the entire last stretch of his run gathering the spell, pouring as much mana into its structure as Bind would tolerate while keeping his attention fixed on the map.

Jaxir’s grin widened as the final syllable settled into place.

"Don’t blink."

Bind erupted.