Chapter 181: Yes

The last of the light around the second reward peeled away, revealing a scepter a little shorter than Jaxir’s forearm. Its shaft was made from the same dark crystal as the Black Gem Alpha’s body.

A miniature wolf’s head had been carved into the top, its jaws closed around a polished black sphere. Thin silver lines ran through the handle and disappeared beneath Jaxir’s fingers when he picked it up.

The status screen appeared a moment later.

Name: Scepter of the Black Pack

Grade: Ultra

Level: 12

[Establish authority over wolf-type creatures within a one-kilometer region.]

[Issue simple commands to affected creatures. Precision and obedience vary according to the target’s talent and level.]

Jaxir raised an eyebrow and turned the scepter once in his hand, waiting for some extra line to show up and make the effect more immediately useful.

Nothing came.

"Huh."

He could see situations where that would come in handy. If he ever ended up in a region full of wolf-type monsters, he could get scouts, distractions, or a few dozen angry bodies all running in the same direction.

The problem was that Jaxir had never been particularly interested in becoming the guy who walked around with a parade of beasts doing his fighting for him. Half the fun was figuring out how to win by himself. Tricking people, manipulating them, and generally making someone regret underestimating him was usually the best part.

However, Ultra was Ultra, and niche was a very different thing from useless.

Jaxir slid the scepter into his Inventory instead of writing it off, already picturing what would happen if he wandered into a wolf dungeon one day and discovered it worked on half the enemies inside. At the very least, making an entire pack turn around and attack something else sounded funny enough to be worth keeping.

As for the third and final reward? It was much smaller than the others, almost completely hidden inside the black light surrounding the pillar.

Jaxir reached into the glow, and his fingertips brushed against a familiar hard edge.

A Vestigem Card.

That alone was enough to make him stand a little straighter, aches and all. The moment he pulled it free, the light disappeared.

The card looked nothing like the Common and Uncommon ones he had spent most of his time using. Black lines covered its surface in tightly packed circuits that seemed to rearrange themselves whenever Jaxir changed the angle, and a pale silver border ran around the outside.

When his mana brushed against it, the border pulsed once.

Then, its information opened.

Name: Arcane Rejection

Grade: Ultra

MP Cost: 50

Description: Reject all foreign magical influence upon the user. Magical attacks, curses, debuffs, bindings, suppression effects, and other externally imposed magical effects cannot influence the user while Arcane Rejection remains active.

Duration: 3 minutes

Recommended Classes: Magic; Tank

Jaxir stopped breathing for a moment.

Then his eyes lit up.

"That’s what you used."

The ancestral spirit’s last hidden ability made a lot more sense now.

Entropy hadn’t been resisted, and it hadn’t lost some contest of strength against the Sovereign. It had simply stopped affecting the thing the instant Arcane Rejection activated.

That was why every Hex Jaxir had spent the battle layering into its body had gone useless so cleanly. The bastard had been sitting on minutes of magic immunity, and it had still waited until the last possible moment to use it.

’Arrogant little shit. Well, thanks, I guess?’

Jaxir stared at the card, his mind already running through everything three minutes of complete magical immunity could do for him.

Maelis would become a lot less terrifying if none of her magical abilities could touch him. Most Magic Class players would turn into people waving expensive sticks in his direction. Even Hexes like his own would just stop mattering until the duration ran out.

His thoughts jumped straight to the Vestigem Card Template sitting in his Inventory.

Jaxir pulled it out with his free hand and looked back and forth between the two cards. For a second, he was already picturing 20 copies of something this ridiculous.

Then reality ruined it.

The Template was only Epic Grade. It could permanently fuse with a Vestigem Card up to Epic Grade, and after that, its durability let it reproduce that card around 20 times at double the normal activation cost.

Arcane Rejection sat one full Grade above what the Template could accept.

"You couldn’t have been Ultra too?"

Jaxir glared at the Epic Template as though it had personally decided to insult him.

The thing had seemed absurd when he first got it, especially once Nick explained that it could reproduce an Epic Vestigem Card, so Jaxir wouldn’t have to permanently sacrifice every rare card he wanted to use. Now, he had finally found something worth copying without a doubt, but it was too good of a card to copy in the first place.

’Just my luck.’

He put the Template back in his Inventory and looked down at Arcane Rejection with a good deal more respect than before.

Even as a single Ultra Vestigem Card, minutes of immunity to foreign magic could completely overturn a fight if he picked the right moment to activate it. He had just watched the Black Gem Ancestral Spirit nearly use the same effect to erase 3 minutes of preparation in an instant.

Jaxir had no intention of wasting it casually, even if he had Encore.

The card went into his Inventory beside the scepter. Between that and the Black Light Fang resting against his chest, the mountain of mana potions he’d burned through suddenly hurt a lot less.

One reward gave his Casts access to Black Light. One let him boss wolves around. The last could make magic stop working on him for three minutes. It seemed the Mage Conjurer God was a pretty good guy when he wasn’t busy stealing everyone else’s loot.

Jaxir glanced back toward the Black Gem Alpha. It had managed to push itself upright and was now sitting near the edge of the cavern, watching him.

Its gemstone coat was still cracked in several places. Though, the dead emptiness Jaxir had first seen behind its eyes hadn’t come back. If anything, the stupid wolf looked more interested in what he was doing than it probably wanted to admit.

"Not bad, puppy."

The Black Gem Alpha made a low sound in its throat and turned its head away.

Jaxir chuckled, then finally turned his attention back to the notification that had been waiting all this time.

The three physical rewards had already been better than he expected. If that was the case, whatever the Mage Conjurer God had attached directly to Slumber of the Black Gem had just become a lot more interesting.

He pulled the quest window back into the center of his vision.

[Slumber of the Black Gem has been completed.]

[Quest Rewards are available.]

[Receive Rewards Now?]

[Yes] [No]

Jaxir looked at the Black Gem Alpha one last time, then at the pillar of black light still standing in the middle of its den. After everything the Mage Conjurer God had put him through, he doubted that pressing this button would get him something simple enough to drop into his Inventory and forget about.

His grin came back as he lifted one finger.

[Yes]