Chapter 180: Black Light

Jaxir’s laughter finally ran out of strength before his amusement did, leaving him sprawled across the crystal floor with his chest heaving as he tried to pull enough air back into his lungs.

He rolled onto his side and stayed there for several seconds. Then, he planted both hands against the ground and forced himself upright, even with every part of his body protesting the decision.

It wasn’t until the cavern stopped swaying around him that he remembered something. He hadn’t seen the Black Gem Alpha move since the ancestral spirit’s final attack.

The wolf lay several meters away, cracks running through most of its gemstone coat and black fragments scattered around its body like broken glass.

Jaxir limped over and dropped to one knee beside its head. He stared at its unmoving chest for long enough that the victory still buzzing inside him started to dull.

Then, one dark silver eye cracked open.

Jaxir laughed and leaned back on his heel. "Look at you playing dead, you cowardly little wolf."

The Black Gem Alpha let out a low whimper. It sounded offended enough to wipe out whatever concern Jaxir had left.

"What? So you weren’t lying here hoping that asshole wouldn’t look your way again?"

The wolf’s eyes slid away from him, until it was suddenly very interested in an empty section of the cavern wall.

Jaxir snorted and reached over to pat the top of its head. However, his hand stopped when his palm sank a bit into what should have been hard crystal.

The black gemstone covering the wolf was smooth and oddly soft when he stroked it in one direction, almost like dense fur, even though it looked as though someone had carved every strand out of polished stone. Thinking back on it, riding on its back hadn’t felt much different from what Jaxir imagined riding an oversized normal wolf would be like.

"Weird."

He ran his hand back the other way.

A sharp edge opened his palm from below his thumb to the base of his little finger, and Jaxir jerked his hand back.

The Black Gem Alpha made a low chuffing sound. It was suspiciously close to a laugh.

Jaxir stared at the blood running down his hand, then at the wolf’s eyes, which had gotten a lot brighter all of a sudden. He raised his middle finger right in front of its face.

"Fuck you too."

The wolf’s tail thumped once against the ground.

Jaxir shook his head and pushed himself back up, slapping both hands against his thighs before he turned toward the center of the cavern.

The Black Gem Ancestral Spirit was gone. Though, the pillar that had given birth to it was still there, black light moving through its surface in slow currents while three objects hovered nearby. It was only then that Jaxir noticed the notification waiting at the edge of his vision.

[Slumber of the Black Gem has been completed.]

[Quest Rewards are available.]

[Receive Rewards Now?]

[Yes] [No]

Jaxir looked at the options for a moment, then left them alone.

If the Mage Conjurer God really had taken notice of him, and if the quest reward included even a chance at the God’s Legacy, then that was probably the most important thing waiting for him in this cavern.

So he would rather look through everything else first. Who knew if accepting it would teleport him away on the spot, start another trial, or drag him into whatever other nonsense this god seemed to enjoy?

Besides, the three objects near the pillar looked separate from the quest reward notification anyway.

Jaxir limped closer, stretching one shoulder and then the other to work some of the stiffness out of his body as he went.

The closest was a necklace, a thin dark chain with a single curved fang hanging from its center. The fang looked like it had been cut straight out of Black Gem crystal.

Jaxir reached out and caught it. The moment his fingers closed around the fang, a familiar status screen unfolded.

Name: Black Light Fang

Grade: Ultra

Level: 12

[Filter Cast through the Black Light Fang to convert its mana into Black Light.]

[Black Light possesses exceptional piercing power and highly reflective properties. With sufficient control, it may be shaped to redirect mana and form defensive barriers particularly effective against mana-based attacks.]

[With greater mastery, Black Light may also redirect physical force.]

Jaxir’s eyes lit up before he had even reached the last line.

"Now we’re talking."

He turned the fang between his fingers and reread the first effect, already working out what it meant for Cast.

His ordinary Cast was about as pure an expression of magical force as an Ability could get. That was what made it fast, flexible, and cheap enough for Jaxir to throw absurd numbers of them around without a second thought.

The downside? Raw mana wasn’t particularly specialized at destroying anything.

Black Light solved that.

The ancestral spirit’s beams had shown Jaxir exactly what that piercing power looked like when it was properly controlled. They had ripped through thousands of points of defense with enough concentrated force to make his own Charged Casts look gentle.

More importantly, the necklace didn’t replace Cast, and it didn’t hand him some entirely separate Ability he would have to level up from nothing. It let him filter something he already understood through another mana characteristic.

Jaxir’s grin widened.

That alone would’ve made the necklace ridiculous. However, the defensive side interested him even more. Honestly, he wouldn’t use this to enhance his offensive power all that often. After all, he was currently leveling up his Casts through the lens of his Path. This would divert too much attention away from that. But defense was something he was sorely lacking in.

He couldn’t just keep chugging a hundred mana potions every time he was pushed into a corner.

The ancestral spirit’s three moving shields had redirected everything from his ordinary Casts to his Hexes. As for the junior wolf? It had survived attacks far beyond its own strength again and again by forcing Black Light away from its body.

Jaxir had spent most of that battle learning just how irritating reflective mana could be from the wrong side. Now he had some of his own.

He slipped the necklace over his head, and the fang settled against his chest, cool even through the cloth.

When he focused on it, a thread of his mana slid into the crystal. The black surface swallowed the silvery-blue light right away, then sent something much sharper back to his senses.

Jaxir cut the flow before anything actually fired. He was in no condition to start experimenting.

His MP was scraping the bottom, his Aegis had almost nothing left in it, and his HP was still flashing red enough that the warning was hard to ignore.

Even so, holding an Ultra Level-12 item after everything this quest had put him through made the potion bill hurt a little less. If the other two rewards were anywhere near this good, he might even forgive the Mage Conjurer God for stealing three bosses’ worth of loot.

Jaxir looked toward the remaining objects.

One hovered a bit higher than the other, wrapped in so much black light that he couldn’t make out its shape from where he stood. The third rested beneath it, smaller and almost completely hidden behind the glow spilling off the pillar.

Jaxir reached for the closer one.

The light peeled away.

His eyebrows slowly rose.