Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 57 - A Lot of People Will Die

You are no longer classed as an anomaly. Your actions and their consequences are being assimilated into the System Governed Rules.

The eye of the System remains fixed on you.

The fear and panic, the utter helplessness, that Xavier had been feeling receded, though it did not disappear completely. His body was no longer frozen in time, but everyone else in the room still was—even though they shouldn’t have been.

The System still had something in store for him. Something other than his imminent advancement to C Grade.

A woman appeared. A seven-foot woman with silver hair wearing glowing, full-plate armour that hugged her slender figure. A cape flowed from her shoulders, moving in a wind that wasn’t there.

Xavier had seen this woman before, once, in a cave in a universe far, far away.

“The Voice of the System,” he breathed.

The woman smiled. “We meet again.” She tilted her head, her eyes moved left and right for a moment before her head straightened. “The second time I have spoken to you. This version of you, at least.” She glanced around the throne room. “I haven’t been here before, however. This… this is new.”

“Why did the System send you? Again.”

The last time he’d spoken to the woman the System had sent him forward through the tower floors. He set his feet on the ground and gritted his teeth. The second time the System changed something on him, it hadn’t bothered to send this woman. It had simply done it.

It also didn’t always speak through her—its notifications were getting more… pointed.

So why send her?

“Does the System want to make things more difficult for me again?”

The Voice of the System raised her chin. “It tells me that was its first inclination. To pull you from this place. To send you forward in the Tower of Champions once again.”

“Its first inclination? So that’s not what it’s going to do?”

“Not at this stage. You are still to be the Weapon of the System. More so than ever before, I suspect.” She narrowed her eyes. “But the System is confused. You have diverged from any pattern it is familiar with.”

Xavier blinked. “The System doesn’t know what to do with me?”

The Voice laughed. The sound was beautiful and otherworldly. “I do not think it would ever put it in those terms, but between you and me, I have never seen it act like this before.”

Xavier narrowed his eyes at the woman. “You haven’t answered my first question. Why did the System send you?” He was glad the System had decided not to destroy him, but he still had no warmth toward it. He still held his goal of one day destroying it—a goal he wouldn’t dare utter aloud.

“It wishes to give you a choice. You will notice it has been… subtly influencing events around you.”

“Subtle?” Xavier scoffed. “You call what it has done subtle? And since when has the System ever allowed me to choose?”

“The System doesn’t control everything, Xavier Collins. In fact, there is much out of its control. As for choice—there is always choice. You perhaps know that better than anyone.”

“Something tells me this choice isn’t an ordinary one.”

“No. In my long tenure as the Voice of the System, I have never seen this before.” She gazed at him. “But then that has been happening a lot recently.”

Xavier sighed. “What does it want me to choose?”

“The Tower of Champions was created to temper The Weapon of the System. To make them hard. Strong. Unyielding. So that they may face the end as the most powerful version of themselves. It is swiftly becoming evident, however, that the normal path of the tower is not suitable for one such as yourself.” The woman paused. “The System still requires you to move through the floors of the Tower of Champions until such time as you are no longer a Champion, whether through forfeit or death, but it is giving you two options: The first option is for the System to control your path in the tower, progressing you to any floor it deems reasonable; the second option is for the System to release all control to you, removing all floor restrictions and enabling you to step onto any floor you wish.”

“Any… any floor I wish?” Xavier asked. “Even ones I’ve completed before?”

The Voice of the System inclined her head. “Yes.”

The Tower of Champions had one thousand different floors. Xavier hadn’t been to even a fifth of those yet. The last floor he’d cleared was the one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth floor—the floor where he’d faced defeated the Arakashinai Queen and had his cores shattered.

He swallowed, imagining what it would be like to step onto the thousandth floor so soon.

That would probably be suicide…

But god, was he curious. What, exactly, had the System put at the end of the tower? And what other Champions had made it that far in the past? He wasn’t allowed to gain information about the Tower of Champions. From anyone. Normally, information about the Tower of Champions was restricted by the System to word of mouth. For Xavier, however, it had given him “special treatment,” not allowing him even that way of learning about floors he hadn’t set foot on yet.

This could be a good workaround for that restriction.

He opened his mouth, ready to tell the Voice of the System that of course he would pick the second option, but he stopped himself and frowned. “What’s the catch?” The System had changed things for him in the past, but he would never say it was an “advantage.” Being thrown into whatever floor the System wanted him to go to sounded terrible, but that also sounded more in line with what the System usually did to him.

The Voice of the System gave a small smile. “I was hoping you would ask that.” She tapped an index finger to her chin. “The first choice would only apply to you, just as when the System brought you forward to the one hundredth floor or pulled you back into the tower early. The second choice, however, would have consequences beyond you; it would open up every floor of the Tower of Champions not just to you, Xavier Collins, but to every active Champion.”

Xavier blinked. “Every… every active Champion? Even those who have just entered the tower for the first time?” He ran a hand through his hair as the tall woman nodded. “What about… what about clear times?”

It seemed a silly thing to ask about. At first, the titles he’d gained from the tower, being top record titles, had accounted for the majority of his power. They’d been the reason he’d pulled so far ahead of everyone else. But titles alone weren’t enough to become as strong as he truly needed, and no matter how many he gathered he knew they could never be enough, otherwise the System would have piled them onto a single Denizen a long, long time ago, in a universe long dead.

And if that had been enough, that universe would have been saved, and Xavier’s might never have existed in the first place—certainly not as it was.

That’s too much to think about…

Losing his record titles wouldn’t be the biggest deal in the world, especially these days, but it would still take a good chunk of his power away. Not only that, it would damage his pride.

Not that that would come into play in his decision.

“Record titles will only apply to Champions clearing a floor for the first time,” the Voice of the System said.

Xavier nodded, thinking that through. It meant Champions could jump ahead, train themselves to become stronger on higher floors, then come back and clear lower floors and get better titles. But such things had always been true, in a way. Champions could train back on their worlds when they were taking breaks from the tower, or they could grind out floors over and over, becoming stronger inch by inch. It might end in him losing a few record titles, but even so it wasn’t what would make the decision for him.

“It seems a dangerous thing, allowing any Champion to step onto any floor.” Xavier frowned. “A lot of people will die.”

“A lot of people die already. Every fraction of a fraction of a second brings the death of trillions of people all over your universe. When you bring in all the other universes…” The Voice of the System trailed off.

“You’re saying that shouldn’t matter?” Xavier asked.

“I’m saying death is inevitable, Xavier Collins, and every action a man such as yourself makes—whether to act, whether not to act—will cause death.”

Xavier almost argued with the Voice of the System, but she was right. Every single thing he did had consequences—some foreseen, many not—this was no different. The actions he’d just taken in the Ventorin sector would soon cause a lot of people to die, no matter how swiftly he was able to take control, no matter how noble his ultimate goal of peace for all was.

Everything he did or didn’t do caused death. Xavier released a long breath. There was a heavy weight of responsibility on him. A weight he was used to—a weight that was only getting heavier with every year that passed since the System had integrated Earth. The weight started comparatively small, with the death of Julian Myers, the Navy SEAL who’d inadvertently sacrificed his life for Xavier, making him work harder to live up to the name “Champion.”

Then, as he fast became the most powerful Denizen on Earth, that responsibility only grew, to the entire world. Then the whole galaxy. The whole universe…

Xavier’s brow furrowed. He knew what the best choice was for him. And, as arrogant as it was to admit, he was convinced the best choice for him was the best choice for everyone.

Is it really arrogant, when the System itself it focusing so much of its attention on me?

Something occurred to him. It was rare to be able to ask a question of the System and expect a possible response. With the Voice of the System before him, now was his best opportunity.

“When I was hovering in space, all that Soul Energy coming at me, I almost lost control. I would have lost control. Then… Then I felt something. Something powerful. A spark of energy. It… woke me. And I had the sense that I was being watched.” Xavier stared up into the tall woman’s eyes. “Do you know what that was? Do you know who’s watching?”

The Voice of the System was silent a long while. She tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes. It almost looked as though she were about to drift off to sleep while standing, then her brow furrowed, and her head came back up.

“Something happened… Something outside the System’s control.” The Voice shook her head. “It will not tell me more.”

Outside the System’s control…

Xavier had seen the power the System wielded. To think something was outside its control… Xavier knew there were domains the System didn’t stretch, and those places weren’t just the galaxies and worlds the System hadn’t stretched to in his own universe. There were other versions of the System out there—that was where his Reality Energy had come from, another System in another corner of the multiverse—therefore it made sense that there were things outside the System’s control.

The death of the universe is outside its control.

Xavier shuddered, unsettled by this revelation. He closed his eyes, pushed his enhanced spiritual sense outward. But without the constant stream of Soul Energy coming his way, without that massive abundance at his disposal, he wasn’t able to sense anyone watching. Not even the Old Man, though that could have been because the System had made that impossible by actually stopping time.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t other beings out there, somewhere, powerful enough to watch even with the System trying to stop them. I felt so many eyes on me. And that spark of light, of power… Like a sun exploding. Who, what, could have done that?

He blinked and pushed the thought away, compartmentalising it into a small, closed off part of his mind where it wouldn’t seep back into his consciousness unless he wished it.

“Have you made your decision, Xavier Collins? If you cannot choose, the System will choose for you.”

“I’ve made my choice, though I have one more question—”

“The System is done answering your questions,” the Voice of the System interrupted, sounding sad. “Choose now.”

Xavier had been about to ask how this would affect people’s time in the tower, whether they could control their breaks from it or not and when they returned—that would make a huge difference to him, and all Champions. Immediately. He sighed. He supposed he was lucky the System answered any of his questions at all.

“Option two. I want to step onto any floor I wish.”

The Voice of the System lowered her head in a bow. “So be it.”

The woman disappeared.

The choice you made will come into effect on your return to the Tower of Champions.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

Everyone within the active time dilation field was moving again. Palini frowned at him, a question in his eyes. Clearly, the man had known something had changed. Xavier would tell him what happened, but now wasn’t the time.

Everyone will learn of this. Soon. It might just be the biggest news in the entire universe…

The last thing that had happened before the Voice of the System had arrived to speak with him had been the System “assimilating” his anomalous nature into the “System Governed Rules”—a term Xavier had never even heard before now.

And before that, it had done a deep scan of him, adjusting his status screen to reflect the true changes that had been made to his body, mind, and soul since he’d gained Reality Energy and walked another path of advancement—that of the Cultivator.

He itched to look at his status screen. To see what had changed. But he was still in the middle of advancing to C Grade.

A notification appeared.