Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 8) - Chapter 17 - Die by the Sword

Roln had been right. Xavier could have done this a dozen different ways.

He stood, fingers wrapped around the hilt of Bones in the form of a sword, breathing in and out easily. A weight pulled him down—the universal pressure of having used all those spell patterns—but otherwise his entire body and mind was relaxed.

The sovereign was powerful, but as time had passed Xavier had pushed his spiritual sense more than he ever had, breaking through the man’s veil to get at true glimpse at just how powerful he was.

Xavier had been surprised at what he’d found. In the traditional sense, the sovereign held more raw power than Xavier.

But that power… it would do nothing for him now. Xavier pushed his mind and identified the man’s weaknesses.

Sovereign Rewke Fouran had already spent a vast amount of his energy breaking down the first time dilation field. Now, that wasn’t a feat he could replicate. He was stuck. The second spell the sovereign had cast was a strong one.

But it would never get a chance to do anything.

Xavier could have used a bow for this next part, but this… This way felt the most right.

The sovereign would die by the sword.

As he cast Strike Out, so did every single one of his drones. He’d split his mind and controlled each one of them directly so their movements could be performed perfectly in sync. The Strike Out spell allowed the sword to appear close to the enemy. Xavier and the drones made a ring around the sovereign, but they each remained ten feet distance away. Xavier didn’t want the sovereign to have any chance of bridging the gap and entering the time dilation field proper.

He wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

The man’s physical defences were powerful, but he was a mage. He would fold soon enough.

Thirteen swords came down in a flash. The glowing swords made a circle around the sovereign’s head. Every one of those swords struck around the top of Rewke Fouran’s skull. For the instant that those blades touched the man, he was once more enveloped in the time dilation field.

The Strike Out spell was then toggled off. The blades disappeared from where they’d struck. The sovereign was again trapped outside the field. He hadn’t had time to act. Hadn’t had time to move his body at all—he hadn’t even had time to blink.

The thirteen strikes hadn’t made a sound—not one that could reach Xavier, at least, as the sound waves would be trapped in time.

But what they lacked in sound they made up for in damage. Xavier imagined a crack whipping through the air when those swords had hit. Looking at Sovereign Rewke Fouran’s skull, there were thirteen noticeable dents around his crown, dents he could discern even through the man’s hair.

The dent at the very front, on his forehead, was the most sizable of all—where Xavier’s own sword had struck.

The sovereign, though his mind might be swift enough to perceive what had happened, wouldn’t be fast enough to respond.

At least, that was what Xavier was betting on with this strategy.

“Again,” he breathed. He didn’t need to utter a command considering he directly controlled his dozen drones, but it only felt right to do so.

Once more they struck. Thirteen strikes at the exact same instant, in the exact same spot as the last time, and the sovereign too slow to dodge in the fraction of a fraction of a second he was enveloped inside the time dilation field. With Strike Out toggled off again, the enemy—essentially frozen in time—couldn’t heal.

He was stuck.

The dents were larger. If there had been time to bleed, they would have bled—but of course, there was no time.

“Again.”

“Again.”

“Again!”

Xavier and his drones’ swords slammed into the sovereign’s head over and over. He didn’t use any enhancements. Didn’t use any spells to make the strike stronger or to make his muscles—or the muscles of his drones—more powerful.

He didn’t even use his ability to sense how much health the man had remaining. He didn’t need to see the percentage go down to know it was reducing.

All he did was strike, and strike, and strike, until his enemy’s skull was a caved in mess of blood and bones and exposed brain matter.

His enemy was still alive, even then. B Grades, especially True B grades, were hardy.

But Xavier, unlike the sovereign, had time on his hands.

His enemy couldn’t escape the strikes. Couldn’t move.

It took longer than Xavier had expected, but in the end Sovereign Rewke Fouran, ruler of the Orin sector, was defeated. He still stood in the exact spot he had before. Even after all those strikes, even after he’d gone unconscious and then finally succumbed to death, his body hadn’t had the time to fall.

He was dead long, long before he hit the ground.

The System notification came while Xavier was still inside his time dilation field.

Congratulations! You have defeated the final challenger to your claim of the Ventorin sector!

You have now fulfilled your claim! You have become the rightful ruler of the Ventorin sector.

Xavier released a long breath. He didn’t change the speed of the time dilation field. He just stood there. He needed a moment to take everything that had happened in. That observer was still in his seat, staring down at Xavier. His face was hidden, his identity unknown. What the man had said—that he would have to make his acquaintance in the near future if he won… It was a little ominous, but somehow Xavier didn’t get bad vibes from the man.

Not that vibes were enough to put his trust in someone.

He rolled his head around, cracking his neck, and stretched out his shoulders. Xavier had spent several days working on a plan to defeat his enemy, and that plan had been thwarted before he’d even come up with it. He stepped over to the body of the sovereign. The man was still standing exactly where he had been when he’d gotten locked out of the second time dilation field. His body hadn’t had a chance to fall, and it wouldn’t until Xavier allowed it to.

The damage to his skull, his entire head, made the man unrecognisable. It had taken a lot of strikes to kill him. Xavier released a breath and shook his head. It was a waste. Someone with that much power… He could have become an asset to Xavier. Could have helped unite the sectors, the universe, but for a man like that such a thing never would have been in the cards.

He didn’t want peace under someone else’s rule.

Rewke tore out his soul before he faced me. Who does such a thing?

Roln told him a thing or two about how that might be possible.

Xavier understood why the man had done it. He touched his own chest. Even so, he couldn’t fathom doing the same thing to himself.

I suppose, even though it didn’t save him, it worked to his advantage in the end. I would have torn his soul apart had it remained in his body.

Xavier waited for another notification to appear. The notification that said he had won a claim for the Orin sector. But it was slow in coming. He tilted his head to the side as something occurred to him. Before he could finish the thought, however, a notification flashed into his vision.

You have defeated the ruler of the Orin sector. While this would ordinarily give you a claim to the fallen ruler’s sector, the ruler’s soul lives on.

As the soul remains alive, its claim to the Orin sector is still intact.

Quest log updated!

Quest log?

Xavier blinked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d received a quest. Honestly, he’d thought the System had given up giving on him quests, as he tended to gain more by doing his own thing.

Quest: Find Sovereign Rewke Fouran’s Soul.

Sovereign Rewke Fouran has hidden his soul somewhere in the Orin sector. For as long as his soul remains within the mortal realm, a full claim on the Orin sector is impossible, and each world must be claimed one at a time.

To fulfil this quest, you must locate Sovereign Rewke Fouran’s soul and either destroy it or restore it into a different host so the sovereign may rule again.

Xavier frowned as he read the quest.

That’s one hell of a loophole.

He bit his lip. He didn’t like, at all, what that meant for the Orin sector. Though Xavier couldn’t identify the rulers of the neighbouring sectors by their faces, he was sure they were in the seats. Once Xavier’s time dilation field came down, they would see what happened. Though there was a good chance a fair few of them had already witnessed it—Rewke Fouran wouldn’t be the only Denizen here who could speed up their mind fast enough to perceive what was happening even while trapped outside his time dilation field, and though it was likely few of them would have been aware during his first field, they would all have seen it shatter.

I wonder who out there is watching?

It didn’t much matter. They would all soon find out that the sovereign was dead. They’d all heard what happened to his soul. They would know the Orin sector was vulnerable—there wasn’t a single Denizen in the entire sector even near the strength of its dead ruler.

Like vultures, they would descend upon it, pick at its corpse, claim one world after another for their own.

It will be chaos. Absolute chaos.

But without a full claim to enact, this quest he’d received simply wasn’t going to be enough for the System to postpone his return to the Tower of Champions.

Well, this is a mess.

Xavier sighed. He supposed there wasn’t any way around it. There was no point worrying about the things he couldn’t control.

Besides, he didn’t intend on spending a great deal of time—at least, his universe’s time—in the Tower of Champions. He would make it back to the Orin sector to fulfil this quest soon enough.

Xavier looked pointedly at the observer and gave him a nod. He’d come in here, to this fight, thinking he would need an elaborate plan to defeat a man like Sovereign Rewke Fouran. He was sure those two hundred spell patterns he’d drawn would have been more than enough to kill the man where he stood…

But in the end, he hadn’t needed any of that. He’d taken a risk, pushed himself to the limit of the level of universal pressure he could handle, and it hadn’t done a damned thing.

Even though that plan had failed miserably, the fight had been an easy one. He hadn’t taken a single percent of damage—he hadn’t taken any damage.

Fighting The Collector had been more intense than this.

Have I truly come so far since that fight? Has my advancement to C Grade given me that much more power? That, and all the foreign Soul Energy I took in and reshaped myself with?

He looked at his hands, wondering at the strength of them. To kill a True B Grade with nothing more than his clones, swords, and two clever spells…

This was not something he could do only a short time ago.

Xavier glanced around the stands and gave the sovereign one final look. “Time to go,” he breathed, altering the parameters of the time dilation field so he could observe what was happening in the arena in real time.

The body of the sovereign finally fell. As gravity claimed its prize, blood fountained from the thirteen extensive wounds on the man’s head. A pressure that had built and built and built with each successive strike was now allowed to release. As the man’s heart had stopped pumping, he did not continue to bleed for long once he’d hit the ground, but a sizable pool drenched and darkened his robes.

Gasps echoed about the seats as the observing sector rulers saw what happened. The majority wouldn’t have been able to see what Xavier had done, only the aftermath. They would have seen the sovereign standing there then suddenly collapse, and Xavier and his drones would have seemingly teleported to stand around him.

None of them shouted in outrage or surprise. In fact, most of them simply disappeared from their seats, returning to whatever sectors they ruled. There were a few who lingered, however, giving the whole scene a curious look, or staring hard gazes at Xavier. Others smirked, eyeing the body of the sovereign, a twinkle in their eyes as plans formed in their minds. Xavier ensured to clock every single one of the rulers and take in exactly what their expressions were.

The Information Brokers were about to get a lot of his business.

Of course, many of the sector rulers who remained to take a longer look had their identities hidden.

It felt like a long time until the System notified him that it was going to pull him out of the arena.

His claim to the Orin sector fulfilled, it was finally time for Xavier to return to the Tower of Champions. He wondered if the System would allow him to return to the Orin sector before sweeping him off to the tower.

He was about to find out.