Chapter 176: Got You

Jaxir pushed himself off the wall while the Black Gem Ancestral Spirit watched him with the same contempt it had shown the junior wolf.

The first thing he reached for was Unmaking.

The L3 Ability was ready inside his staff again. After watching over 3000 HP disappear from one casual beam, Jaxir had no interest in finding out how many more of those he could survive.

The problem was finding a moment where he could actually land it.

His Attune sphere wouldn’t open beneath the Sovereign’s pressure, which left him relying almost entirely on his eyes again. Against an ordinary mage, that would’ve been troublesome enough. However, the ancestral spirit’s beam crossed the cavern so fast that Jaxir couldn’t even tell where it was aimed until it had already hit him.

He could prepare Unmaking all he wanted. If the wolf moved at the last second, he’d just end up firing it at empty space and have to wait a whole hour.

Black light gathered near the spirit’s maw again.

Jaxir saw the glow and threw himself sideways, with no idea whether he’d guessed right. Before the attack could fire, though, the Black Gem Alpha launched itself between them.

The beam caught the junior wolf across the shoulder and carried its enormous body through the air, scattering pieces of black crystal from its coat.

BANG!

It slammed into the cavern floor hard enough to bounce once. Jaxir’s stomach dropped as the creature rolled to a stop.

"Hey!"

The junior wolf tried to get up, but one of its forelegs collapsed beneath it. Several broken pieces of its gemstone coat slid loose and clattered across the ground.

Jaxir squeezed his staff until his knuckles hurt. For a moment, every calculation in his head disappeared beneath the urge to shove Unmaking straight down the ancestor’s throat.

Then, one of the fallen crystal shards caught the light and Jaxir’s anger sharpened into focus.

The beam hadn’t punched cleanly through the junior wolf the way he’d expected. The black light had entered through its gemstone coat and split off along several angles, then bent back toward the point of impact before the whole attack surged inward even harder than before.

In other words, the ancestral spirit hadn’t simply overpowered the junior’s natural defense. It had taken control of the way the wolf’s body redirected mana and used that structure to amplify its own strike.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed.

The Black Gem Alpha was the one who made the crystal hallway that trapped Jaxir when he first arrived. It had cycled mana through a continuous path so cleanly that he couldn’t even sense the mechanism until his Attune got beneath the surface.

Its body was made from the same black crystal. That meant the wolf already had a natural framework for guiding mana through itself. The ancestor had just gotten to that framework first.

Jaxir looked at the junior wolf as it forced itself upright.

"No way."

The ancestral spirit could be a Sovereign, a god’s grandfather, or whatever other ridiculous title Divinity wanted to slap on it. Jaxir still refused to believe it could control the mana inside the junior wolf better than the junior could control its own body.

The real problem was that the poor bastard had spent so long doing nothing, it had probably never learned how to stop someone from hijacking those pathways.

Luckily, Jaxir knew exactly what it needed to remember.

"Hey, big guy!"

The Black Gem Alpha’s ears twitched toward him, though its eyes stayed locked on the ancestor.

"Remember the hallway you trapped me in? Do that with your body!"

The wolf stared at him.

Had it understood him, or had he just yelled advanced magical theory at a dog? Jaxir honestly had no idea.

Then again, Niri was technically an NPC, and she acted no differently from any real little girl he’d ever met. The ancestral spirit had also understood him well enough to blast him across the cavern after being insulted.

Compared to everything else he’d bet on today, betting that intelligent beasts understood speech was one of his safer gambles.

The ancestral spirit fired again.

Black light slammed into the junior wolf’s chest and flooded through the gemstone covering its body. This time, however, the Black Gem Alpha dug its claws into the crystal floor and roared.

Jaxir watched the mana inside its coat buck against the path the ancestor was trying to force on it. Then, it twisted violently sideways as the wolf seized control of the flow for itself.

The beam scattered.

Black light exploded from every side of the junior wolf.

Jaxir dove flat as one redirected lance carved through the space where his head had just been. Another one struck the cavern wall and blew out a crater big enough for several people to stand inside.

At almost the same moment, the ancestral spirit’s own follow-up beam passed overhead. It was exactly that bit of chaos that gave Jaxir just enough cover to roll clear of both attacks.

He came up laughing despite himself.

"Good job! Just don’t kill me next time!" Jaxir shouted as he got back to his feet.

The junior wolf glanced over at him, and its ears dropped in what looked suspiciously like embarrassment.

"Yeah, yeah, we’ll work on aiming later."

The ancestral spirit’s disdain finally shifted.

Its head lowered a fraction while the darkness around its body thickened. As far as Jaxir was concerned, that was confirmation the trick had actually annoyed it.

More importantly, the junior wolf had survived the same attack that nearly killed it seconds earlier. Even now, the gemstone coat along its chest was already starting to settle back into place.

Jaxir pointed his staff forward. "Come on!"

He ran.

The Black Gem Alpha surged up beside him a moment later, heavy paws pounding against the crystal, and Jaxir stayed tucked in close to its flank.

The ancestor stayed right where it had formed. It was still too arrogant to bother meeting them halfway, and another sphere of black light was already gathering in front of its maw.

Jaxir couldn’t sense the trajectory. But, he didn’t need to anymore.

He slipped behind the junior wolf.

The beam fired.

The Black Gem Alpha roared and took the attack square in the chest. Black light raced beneath its crystal coat as the wolf fought to redirect every last bit of it.

Its body shuddered under the strain. This time, though, its paws held firm, and the beam splintered outward instead of folding back into its organs.

By then, Jaxir was already moving underneath it.

He dropped into a slide between the wolf’s hind legs and shot along beneath its belly while black light tore across the cavern around them. For one precious instant, the junior’s massive body blocked him from the ancestral spirit’s line of sight.

Then, Jaxir burst out between its front legs with his staff already raised.

The ancestor’s eyes finally widened.

"Got you."

The stored L3 Ability erupted from the staff.

Unmaking.

It flooded the space around the Black Gem Ancestral Spirit before it could fire again, and a shadowy reaper rose up behind the Sovereign with a curved sickle hanging from each hand.

Crimson slashes appeared across the ancestral spirit one after another, cutting through its spectral body from dozens of angles as the reaper tore into every weakness it could find.

Jaxir grinned from ear to ear.