Chapter 179: Roar

The Black Gem Ancestral Spirit watched Jaxir from behind the beam gathering in its maw. The satisfaction in its eyes was so obvious that Jaxir couldn’t help but chuckle.

Entropy was gone, and his Aegis was nearly empty. The Sovereign had finally caught him close enough that there was no reasonable way to avoid what came next.

Jaxir looked straight into those smug black eyes and grinned.

"You’re not the only one who can act, you piece of shit."

BOOM!

The beam fired.

However, at the same moment, something inside the ancestral spirit broke, and the black light buckled before it could finish condensing.

What should have been a solid lance came apart into a violent burst. It still caught Jaxir across the chest and sent him tumbling through the cavern, but most of its power had already gone somewhere else.

He hit the crystal floor, bounced once, and kept rolling until his shoulder slammed into a jagged rise.

Pain flared through his ribs as his HP dropped deep enough into the red that a warning pulsed at the edge of his vision.

Jaxir barely noticed. He was already twisting around, and he found the ancestral spirit standing rigid beside the pillar, black light tearing through its spectral body from within.

Its expression had finally changed.

Jaxir laughed through the blood in his mouth.

His first plan really had been Entropy. If the Sovereign had let it go off, Jaxir would’ve happily let every Hex he’d layered into its body collapse at once, then seen what was left afterward.

When the ancestral spirit suddenly started using shields, he knew this fight was going to be a problem. If the ancestral spirit could reveal an ability it never bothered using until Jaxir forced it into a bad enough position once, assuming Entropy would land cleanly had felt far too optimistic. A Sovereign was bound to be able to do more than just fire beams and make shields anyway.

So, Jaxir had prepared for the worst case scenario, a secondary plan brewing in his mind.

He’d noticed the weakness in the ancestral spirit’s black light almost from the start of the fight, even before he understood how useful it might be. The Black Gem Alpha was incomparably weaker than its ancestor. Yet, its gemstone body could catch beams that should have torn straight through it, over and over, and force the energy down different paths.

Whether the black light could be redirected was never the question. The real question was who controlled the direction.

At first, the ancestral spirit had used the junior wolf’s own body against it. It seized those natural pathways and folded the incoming attack back through them, until the beam hit harder than it should have.

Then, the Black Gem Alpha remembered how it controlled the crystal hallway. That advantage then disappeared, and the same structure started working against the ancestor instead.

Jaxir had spent the rest of the battle watching the two of them fight over those pathways.

That had left one very obvious question. Why couldn’t he do the same thing?

Jaxir didn’t understand Black Gem mana the way either wolf did. Trying to seize control of a Sovereign’s internal flow through raw comprehension alone would’ve been suicide.

However, Unmaking had removed the need for that understanding when it painted the ancestral spirit’s body with weaknesses. Fracture had then spent the next three minutes digging those openings deeper and deeper.

Why would he need to understand the whole structure, when an L3 Ability had already shown him exactly where to break it?

The fight against the possessed Demi-Goddesses had taught him the rest.

Back then, Fracture had shown Jaxir that immense power could become its own weakness, if the vessel carrying it couldn’t handle the strain. He had forced open the faults created by divine energy, and let that same energy do most of the work for him.

The ancestral spirit was different in almost every way. Even so, the principle was beautifully familiar.

Its power also needed somewhere to go.

When Jaxir spoke Entropy, he hadn’t tried to turn every crimson fault line against the Sovereign. That would’ve taken more control than he had left. It probably would’ve tipped off the ancestral spirit before its beam was fully committed, too.

Instead, he only seized the specific fractures running between its maw, its chest, and the dense channels feeding power into the attack. Then, he waited.

The ancestral spirit had believed Entropy was the threat. So, it cancelled the Ability and immediately poured everything it had prepared into finishing Jaxir before he could try anything else.

For one brief instant, nearly all of that gathered power had been moving toward a single destination.

All Fracture had to do was change where the road ended and the result of that was tearing through the Sovereign now.

Black light burst from the crimson cracks across its chest and neck, as the beam it had meant for Jaxir collapsed backward through its own body. More fractures opened beneath the 3 shields, and they flickered and vanished. The spectral wolf was left frozen beside the pillar, its form stretching around energy it could no longer contain.

Its eyes moved to Jaxir.

Jaxir grinned up at it from the ground. "Should’ve just let Entropy kill you. Would have been easier, and probably less painful."

The ancestral spirit’s body split apart.

A howl shook the black crystal cavern as the redirected beam erupted out of its back, swallowing the pillar and most of the Sovereign in a flood of black light.

For another second, the enormous wolf was still visible as a broken outline. Then, whatever was holding it together finally gave out. Darkness burst outward and dissolved into countless fragments.

[You have defeated Black Gem Ancestral Spirit (Sovereign) Lv12]

Jaxir stared at the notification, his breath coming in ragged pulls, then let his head drop back against the crystal floor.

His mana was nearly gone, and the Aegis had been stripped down to scraps of what he’d stored inside it. Even with the fight finally over, his HP warning kept flashing red.

Before he could decide whether lying there for the next several hours counted as a victory celebration, another notification unfolded.

―

[You have slain a Sovereign while beneath the Sovereign standard.]

[Special Achievement recognized.]

[You have been awarded the Title "Sovereign Slayer"]

―

Title: Sovereign Slayer

Type: Achievement

Description: Sovereignty is the authority to force those beneath you to submit. You have defied that authority and slain one who stood beyond the limits of your existence, earning the right to resist the weight of those who would stand above you.

[Your Mana Suppression has been elevated to the Sovereign standard. Strength remains proportional to your Level.]

[Become immune to Mana Suppression at or below the Sovereign standard.]

―

Jaxir read the final line once.

Then again.

A laugh slipped out before he could stop it.

It was weak at first, since every breath still made his chest hurt. Then, it grew louder as the absurdity of what he’d just done finally sank in.

He had walked into this cave expecting to kill one Mage around his own Level. Somehow, that had turned into 3 Elites, a forgotten Mage God, a suicidal crystal wolf, and a Sovereign trying to take his head off his shoulders.

Jaxir laughed even harder.

The sound echoed through the black crystal cavern as he lay sprawled flat on his back, too drained to sit up and far too pleased with himself to care.

Something hot and wild surged through his chest, until laughing wasn’t enough to let it out anymore.

Jaxir threw his head back and roared.