Chapter 174: Updated

The last of the Hollow Mana Spirit scattered into pale motes above the oasis, and Jaxir let out a heavy breath as he reached into his Inventory. The battlefield hadn’t even finished disappearing around him yet.

By the time white light wrapped around his body, a Grand Mana Potion was already against his lips. He drained it while the Mage Conjurer God dragged him through space yet again, and he didn’t have the energy left to complain about the lack of warning.

The black crystal cavern formed around him a moment later. Jaxir appeared in front of the Black Gem Alpha with another potion already in hand, popped the cork with his thumb, and drank.

The wolf watched him from the ground. By now, it was seemingly used to him showing up in worse condition every time it saw him.

Jaxir wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and finally checked his Inventory.

He had started this little adventure with somewhere around 90 of them. Sure, 38 Grand Mana Potions was still a ridiculous amount of emergency mana, but that didn’t make the number any more pleasant to look at.

Ironically, most of the losses had come from the Storm Scar Vulture rather than the Hollow Mana Spirit, even though the spirit had been far more dangerous every time one of its attacks actually landed.

The difference? The spirit had been a glass cannon. The vulture, on the other hand, had turned the entire battlefield into a problem Jaxir had to spend resources solving.

For most players, the Hollow Mana Spirit probably would’ve been the bigger nightmare.

Its domain of mana control made it difficult to hit, and its Casts came from too many directions at once. Anyone who couldn’t adapt to that larger field of awareness would’ve spent the whole battle buried under attacks they couldn’t read.

However, Jaxir happened to be exactly the sort of genius who could turn getting overwhelmed by 20 spells into an Attune lesson halfway through a fight. Though, that didn’t mean he wanted to see what the Mage target at the end of this quest would do.

All of a sudden, 38 potions didn’t seem like nearly enough to have left. He should have made more.

Jaxir checked the Aegis next, and his brow furrowed at how much mana the last battle had carved out of its reserve.

His own MP wasn’t the immediate concern anymore, not with Attune now sitting at Level 58 and the staff cutting so much from his Cast costs. But, walking into the next fight without the full 10,000 MP stored inside the Aegis? After everything he’d just learned, that sounded stupid.

He started drinking again.

One potion went down, then another, and Jaxir stopped bothering to taste whatever passed for flavor as the reserve climbed. By the time the Aegis was back at 10,000 MP, 5 more empty vials had vanished from his hand.

33 left.

Jaxir stared at the count for a moment before closing the screen.

It was only then that he realized he was still here.

Usually, the Mage Conjurer God gave him just enough time to recognize the Black Gem Alpha before ripping him away toward the next disaster. This time, several seconds had already passed without so much as a flicker of teleportation light.

Had some forgotten god suddenly developed manners halfway through the quest? Jaxir doubted it. That meant this time was different.

He pressed a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes.

His mana was fine, and his Aegis was full. Physically, he felt about as good as Divinity allowed a person to feel after being thrown through 3 Elite battles back-to-back.

His mind was another story, unfortunately.

Jaxir had spent hours calculating attacks and reading movements while tracking every bit of mana on the field, and the focus it took had left his thoughts worn thin.

It wasn’t some hidden game mechanic, either. There was no Mental Exhaustion debuff flashing across his status, and nothing suggested Divinity was penalizing him for using his brain too much.

He was just tired.

’Focus, Jaxir.’

He took a slow breath and lowered his hand.

The Black Gem Alpha was still lying across the crystal floor. However, the way it watched him was different now.

The emptiness that used to sit behind its eyes was gone, and even the laziness Jaxir had first mistaken for its entire personality had faded. It looked calm.

Jaxir’s gaze narrowed.

That was when the cavern began to tremble beneath his feet.

The tiny lights trapped inside the black crystal walls started fluttering faster, and the vibration only deepened as a notification appeared across his vision. Jaxir straightened immediately.

The wolf did the same.

[Your accumulated sacrifices are being utilized.]

The Black Gem Alpha slowly rose to its feet.

Shock filled its dark silver eyes as a crack split the center of the cavern floor, widening until the crystal collapsed inward around a perfectly black opening.

There was no light at the bottom and no visible end to it. The sinkhole swallowed every reflection the surrounding crystal tried to cast across it.

Jaxir tightened his grip on his staff.

Something shot upward.

A pillar of black crystal burst out of the sinkhole, though it wasn’t made of stone alone. Beam after beam of condensed magic folded into it as it climbed, each one wrapping around the last until the pillar was reaching for the cavern ceiling.

The lights trapped in the walls began drifting toward it.

The Black Gem Alpha changed in an instant.

The crystal along its body lifted like fur standing on end, and its head rose as it stared at the pillar with an intensity Jaxir had never seen from it. Its tail swept behind it once, then again, faster each time, until the heavy thing was striking the floor hard enough that Jaxir could feel it through his boots.

For the first time since they’d met, the wolf looked awake. More than that, it looked excited.

Black light burst from the pillar and washed over the cavern, turning every surface into a different shade of midnight. The embedded fireflies only shone brighter beneath it.

Mana rushed outward with the light, and buried inside it was a structure so old that even Jaxir’s expanded senses couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Then, a howl filled the cavern.

The Black Gem Alpha answered.

Its head lifted, and the sound tore from its throat with enough force to shake dust loose from the crystal above. There wasn’t a trace left of the creature that hadn’t cared enough to move yesterday.

Jaxir watched its tail keep sweeping behind it, and a smile crept onto his face despite how exhausted he was. Whatever was inside that pillar, it had finally given the big bastard a reason to get excited.

Then, the wolf froze.

The howl ended first, cutting off so abruptly that the silence afterward felt wrong. Its tail stopped mid-sweep before slowly lowering to the ground.

Jaxir’s smile vanished.

Whatever the wolf had sensed inside the pillar had changed.

The excitement drained from its eyes almost as fast as it had come, and a sadness settled in its place so suddenly that Jaxir recognized it right away. Compared to the dead emptiness from before, this was worse in its own way.

It had hoped for a small moment. But now...

For several seconds, the wolf simply stared at the pillar. Then, its head slowly turned toward Jaxir.

Those enormous dark silver eyes settled on him with an expression no creature that size had any right to make. Its ears dipped, the lights beneath its crystal body dimmed, and whatever remained of its earlier excitement collapsed into something painfully close to puppy-dog eyes.

Jaxir knew right then that he was about to get screwed. He groaned and dragged a hand down his face.

"No."

The wolf kept staring.

"Don’t look at me like that." Jaxir pointed his staff at it, and its expression somehow became even more pitiful. "I have thirty-three potions left, my brain feels cooked, and your dead god friend has already stolen three bosses’ worth of shit from me."

A notification appeared and Jaxir stopped. He had already known that complaining wouldn’t do anything. But he had really, really hoped that someone would have grown a conscious by now. Unfortunately, that sort of thing didn’t seem to exist in this virtual reality game.

[Quest Updated]

[Slumber of the Black Gem]

His lip twitched as another line began forming beneath it.