Chapter 162: Question

The room fell quiet after Jaxir’s answer, and the looks he received ranged from disbelief to open exasperation. Nick covered his face with one hand while Malik leaned back and stared at the ceiling, but Jaxir’s attention settled on Elara instead. Normally, she would’ve been the first person lining up to tell him how stupid he was being, yet she hadn’t said a word through the entire conversation.

That was strange enough for Jaxir to notice, though he didn’t bother asking about it now. Whatever had changed with Elara could wait, especially when Gavin was still looking at him as though he expected Jaxir to eventually admit he’d been joking. Jaxir simply leaned back in his chair and made no move to reconsider.

The page was too valuable.

That wasn’t only because the Grand Mana Potions restored five hundred MP at a time, though that alone had already changed the way Jaxir fought. He could burn through hundreds of mana without worrying about leaving himself empty, then drink another potion and keep going without any meaningful cooldown getting in his way. The fight with Maelis had made the advantage painfully obvious.

What mattered even more was that the five hundred MP didn’t change as the potion increased in Tier. A Tier 2 version would still only restore five hundred MP, but a Tier 2 individual could actually drink it and receive that full amount safely, while the same principle would continue as the potion rose higher. The ingredients weren’t improving the amount of mana restored, they were allowing the potion itself to function properly for people whose bodies and mana had already moved beyond the lower Tiers.

That meant there was no obvious point in Jaxir’s progression where the formula simply became useless. Even if his MP eventually reached tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or somehow millions, there could still come a moment where another five hundred MP was the difference between being able to cast something and being completely empty. As long as he could make a version appropriate for his Tier, that flat five hundred remained five hundred mana he hadn’t possessed a moment earlier.

The restriction also made the formula more valuable rather than less. Someone without enough mana control couldn’t simply drink a higher-Tier version and benefit from it, because forcing mana of that quality into a body incapable of controlling it could overload them badly enough to make them explode.

Every Tier therefore needed its own properly made version, and Jaxir owned the formula that could keep producing that same useful five-hundred-MP recovery as the quality of the ingredients rose.

Jaxir hadn’t been inside Divinity for long enough to pretend he understood everything about the game, but opportunity wasn’t particularly complicated to understand. He had stumbled into a repeatable source of instant mana recovery that could remain relevant across multiple Tiers, and giving that away because the people who lost it were angry sounded ridiculous.

The String Quintet didn’t even know how to count to six, and somehow they expected him to trust their judgment on what he should own.

More importantly, they hadn’t exactly lost the page while doing charity work.

They had deliberately left the original inside an auction house while pretending buyers were purchasing copies, then watched to see who discovered what it really was. From everything Nick had explained, the entire setup existed to lure out people who already possessed pieces of the Mage Alchemic God’s Tome so the String Quintet could hunt them afterward. Jaxir couldn’t find much sympathy for people complaining that their murder bait had been stolen.

His attention returned to the room when Gavin spoke again.

"I’ll have to report this to my superiors." Gavin’s irritation had settled into something more controlled, though the tension in his jaw hadn’t gone anywhere. "No decision has been made yet, but I can tell you right now that this is far beyond the amount of additional risk they expected when we brought you into the operation."

Jaxir gave a small nod and waited.

"If you insist on keeping the page and the String Quintet decides to involve itself in the guild challenge, there’s a very good chance we’re ordered to separate from you." Gavin held his gaze without softening the warning. "We need the guild quest too badly to let a personal dispute turn an already difficult operation into something impossible."

Jaxir smiled faintly, which only seemed to make Gavin more frustrated.

If Gavin knew how much Jaxir actually needed the government, that reaction probably would’ve been considerably worse. Jaxir had already worked through what the Chance Corporation could do to him in the real world, and without someone capable of matching its money, lawyers and influence, he had very little chance of surviving a serious conflict with his uncle on equal footing. Government backing was easily his best path out of that problem.

That didn’t mean Jaxir planned on bending over backward to keep it.

If their support disappeared the moment his interests became inconvenient, then it wasn’t the kind of support he could rely on against the Chance Corporation anyway. He would find another path if he had to, or make himself valuable enough that the government eventually came looking for him again. Either sounded better than training himself to hand over anything someone stronger demanded.

Gavin studied him for several seconds before pushing his chair back.

"I’ll speak to them and let you know what they decide." Malik and Mina stood with him, gathering the few things they’d brought back from training while the remaining screens disappeared from above the table. Elara rose last.

Niri was sitting near Nick with her legs swinging beneath her chair, and Elara hesitated before looking toward her.

"Come on, Niri." She held out a hand and managed a small smile. "We’re heading back."

Niri looked at the hand, then shook her head and scooted farther back into her chair.

"I’m staying here."

Elara opened her mouth, clearly tempted to bargain the way she normally did, but something stopped her before the first offer came out. Her eyes flickered toward Jaxir for the briefest moment, then she lowered her hand and followed the others toward the door without arguing. Jaxir watched her leave, even more certain now that something had changed.

The door closed behind the four of them, leaving the house much quieter than it had been a minute earlier.

Nick remained slumped in his chair for several seconds before sinking even farther down and releasing a long sigh. "What are we really going to do now? I should’ve known they’d react quickly. That page is way too valuable for the String Quintet to just sit around and hope you eventually feel generous."

Jaxir didn’t answer immediately.

His thoughts had already moved past Gavin’s warning and back toward the strange encounter he’d had before returning to town, along with the oversized coin now sitting inside his Inventory. There was something else he wanted Nick’s opinion on before they decided what came next.

Jaxir turned toward him. "Have you ever heard of the Gasini?"

Nick’s entire expression changed.

The exhaustion disappeared from his face so quickly that Jaxir almost wondered whether he’d imagined it, and Nick sat upright with a sharpness Jaxir had never seen from him before. For the first time since they’d met, merely mentioning a name seemed to have frightened him.

But compared to Nick, little Niri looked like she had lost her soul.