Chapter 67: Understand

Nick had heard enough fighting through the stone to know somebody was tearing through the dungeon, but even so, the look on his face went blank when Jaxir stopped in front of the cage. He pushed himself off the back wall and came toward the bars with disbelief written all over him, like Jaxir showing up in person somehow offended his sense of what a sane person should do.

"You are an actual fucking madman." Nick gripped the bars and looked him up and down, then glanced toward the corridor behind him as though expecting an army to appear at any second.

Jaxir rested his staff across one shoulder and grinned. "I can leave if you’d prefer."

"Fuck that, get me out of here." Nick immediately leaned closer to the bars, irritation overtaking surprise as he lowered his voice. "Usually when people get imprisoned in games, there’s a timer or a fine or something so you can have something to work toward to get out, but there’s nothing here at all. It’s like they planned to keep me in this fucking hole forever."

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed as the pieces fit together, and he reached into his inventory while thinking about how much influence Gravity Boy had already shown over the province. If Nick had merely been caught stealing, there should have been some normal punishment attached, but if the village authorities understood what he had been collecting, then ordinary rules clearly stopped applying.

"That sounds like our boy." Jaxir pulled out the ring of keys he had taken from one of the guards and tried them one after another until the third slid into the lock.

The door opened with a heavy click, and Nick stumbled out before looking both ways down the corridor with a twisted expression. "We are so fucked."

Jaxir started walking and glanced back at him. "Got a notification, huh?"

Nick followed with a groan and dragged a hand down his face. "If I knew agreeing to help you would end with me breaking out of prison while the entire village hunted us, I would’ve told you to buy your own shit. This is all bullshit. This game is way too realistic."

Jaxir couldn’t even disagree with that.

"I didn’t expect this either, but hey, if we survive, the rewards will probably be pretty damn good, eh?" Jaxir grinned and turned toward the corridor ahead. "Let’s go."

Nick gave him a look, but he followed anyway. Jaxir checked the map while they moved and immediately noticed a large cluster of red dots gathering around the secondary entrance he had used to break in.

That was exactly what he had expected.

Everyone now knew how he had entered, so every guard with half a brain would assume he planned to leave the same way. The primary dungeon entrance beneath the Village Head’s mansion had far fewer dots around it.

Jaxir changed direction toward that route and had barely gone a few steps before Nick stopped behind him. "Wait."

Jaxir turned and raised an eyebrow. "What’s up?"

Nick’s expression had shifted into a grin, the kind Jaxir was beginning to recognize as a warning sign. "You don’t want the items anymore?"

Jaxir blinked and then stared at him properly, momentarily forgetting the guards moving across the map. "You got them?"

Nick’s grin became smug.

"They let you have them?" Jaxir pressed.

Nick cleared his throat and looked away. "I noticed something was wrong before I ever went into the store."

Jaxir said nothing, which apparently made the silence uncomfortable enough that Nick continued. "People were watching the merchants, asking questions, checking what everyone was buying, so I figured walking in and requesting the exact five pieces you wanted would probably be the fastest way to get arrested."

"So instead?" Jaxir asked, though the look on Nick’s face had already given him a fairly good idea.

"I waited for an opportunity and stole them." Nick lifted both hands before Jaxir could interrupt, as though the gesture somehow made the decision more reasonable. "It would’ve worked too, except when I was almost at the gate, the fucking Village Head got to me first."

Jaxir’s amusement faded just enough for the important part of that sentence to settle in. "The Village Head himself?"

"Yeah, and that’s the problem." Nick’s grin disappeared as he looked back toward the dungeon behind them. "It was like they were expecting me to do exactly that, not just expecting somebody to buy the pieces, but expecting somebody to try another way after realizing the stores were watched."

Jaxir studied him for several seconds before his eyes drifted toward the shroud that still concealed most of Nick’s information. The expensive identity-hiding item, the fact that Nick had already managed to get on the wrong side of Gravity’s people before meeting him, and the complete lack of hesitation when suspicious merchants pushed him toward theft all started fitting together far too neatly.

Clearly, this wasn’t Nick’s first rodeo.

His expression settled somewhere between surprise and amusement. "Oh."

Nick immediately squinted. "What?"

"I think I understand you better now." Jaxir’s grin widened as Nick’s expression soured.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Nick pointed at him. "Don’t look at me like that, and whatever you’re thinking, stop thinking it."

Jaxir laughed under his breath as they continued walking, since it was no longer difficult to imagine how Nick had ended up needing a shroud capable of hiding his identity from powerful people. Apparently Jaxir wasn’t the only one who treated authority as more of a general suggestion.

Nick dug into his inventory while glaring at him. "That set better be worth it, otherwise we really are fucked."

The first item appeared in his hand, followed by the rest until the five missing pieces Jaxir had sent him after were finally transferred over. The lone Uncommon Feather piece joined the Common and Uncommon Glimmer pieces and the Common and Uncommon Twinkle pieces, filling every remaining hole across the three ancestral inheritances.

Jaxir looked down at the completed collection, then back up at Nick. "You actually pulled it off."

Nick folded his arms. "You’re welcome."

Jaxir started laughing, and this time the sound carried far enough through the dungeon that Nick immediately checked both sides of the corridor again.

"I hope it’s worth it too." Jaxir opened his inventory and pulled out the dormant Reflection of the Light, bringing the plain crown, robes and staff into the air before him.

Around them came the nine pieces from the three ancestral inheritances, each Common, Uncommon and Epic component finally gathered in one place. For a brief moment nothing happened, and then the first thread of gold appeared between the items.

The reaction spread instantly.

Light poured out of the nine ancestral pieces and wrapped around the dormant crown, robes and staff, twisting into thick streams that brightened until Nick raised an arm over his face. The entire corridor trembled beneath them as the gathered inheritances began dissolving into that glow, their forms breaking apart and flooding into the Reflection of the Light.

Jaxir could barely see through the brilliance by the time the last piece vanished.

Then the light erupted upward.

A pillar of gold tore through the dungeon, ripped through the Village Head’s mansion above them, and pierced the sky.