Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 27 - Moving Forward

Xavier stood outside the Roving Seed Base. Gathered behind him were his old party, Howard, Siobhan, and Justin, along with the members of their family. All people he considered family now.

He raised his chin as he stared at the base. He couldn’t see into the base from outside of it—not anymore. Over the years they’d been inside of it, he’d acquired several upgrades. One of those upgrades was a sort of cloaking mechanism. To the outside, the base looked like nothing more than a large, grey standing stone.

When he’d acquired the upgrade, he could have chosen a tree, or a blue telephone box, or basically anything as long as it fit within the right amount of space.

Xavier smiled as he ran a hand along the smooth surface of the standing stone. He’d chosen for it to appear as a standing stone because in mythology—at least on Earth—standing stones were sometimes considered gateways to other realms, such as the fae realm. In one of his favourite fantasy novels, standing stones played an important part, and he supposed he felt a bit of nostalgia about them.

It was also symbolic. To him, entering the Roving Seed Base was like entering another world. A world where time stood still. A world where he could train and experiment to his heart’s content. And a world where he had a family to share all of that with.

As the base belonged to him, he had a mental connection to it. A bond. With a thought, the Roving Seed Base shrunk to the size of a small seed that hovered to rest in the palm of his hand. He felt a pang of sadness as he peered down at it.

Now that the Roving Seed Base had been activated, he could no longer place it back inside of his Storage Ring. It was a spatial device in its own right. He pulled out a necklace that had been tucked beneath his armour that held a locket at the end of its chain. He’d crafted both the locket and chain after he’d learnt blacksmithing from Howard. He was no silversmith, so they weren’t the prettiest of things, but they were strong.

Each link in the chain had several runes inscribed into them to strengthen the already powerful metal material, while the locket itself had many more runes. Runes of protection, mostly. And runes of binding, too. Like his Storage Ring, only his energies were able to open that locket, and no other Denizen’s spiritual sense should, in theory, be strong enough to pierce it.

Xavier placed the seed inside the locket and shut it with a click.

“I’m going to miss this place,” Rose said. She leant into her sister, who wrapped an arm about her shoulder.

“Me too,” Siobhan said.

Xavier said nothing. He turned to face the others, looking from one to the next, and smiled. He would carry the locket with him and have access to the Roving Seed Base whenever he wished, but he would miss his newfound family, too.

Still, that wasn’t the only thing he felt. He also felt a thrill of excitement. They had all been in what had amounted to stasis for the last eleven years, while in reality merely a week or so had passed in the normal time stream of their universe—and only so much time had passed because they had needed to travel outside the time dilation field on occasion, or communicate with Information Brokers.

Now, their time in seclusion had come to an end, and they were all about to enter the “real” world again.

There was so much he needed—and wanted—to do.

He also felt proud. Proud of what each of his students had managed to become. In that eleven years, there had been a lot of hurdles to leap, and they all helped the other get over them.

One of those hurdles was, of course, the Pocket Time Stream spell. Xavier could see the spell pattern clearly etched in his mind. The spell required all six energies from all six Denizen cores, yet at D Grade every single one of them could cast the spell.

Xavier, of course, was able to maintain the spell for the longest time out of any of them, but the fact that they’d all managed it…

It was awe inspiring.

He took a deep breath, taking a moment to look inward at his energy channels, and everything that was currently coursing through him. It had taken some time, but he’d learnt how to not only passively cultivate every energy he had access to, but also cycle every energy through his channels simultaneously.

 Well, perhaps not every energy.

For instance, Xavier didn’t make a habit of cycling Soul Energy through his body constantly—though he had improved his use of it.

Still, through his channels he felt eight different energies: Celestial, Reality, Spirit, Willpower, Speed, Intelligence, Strength, and Toughness.

Each of these energies coursed through him. The constant cycling of Celestial Energy and Reality Energy made him so, so much stronger—in every single way—than he “should” have been at this grade that it was tremendously absurd.

As to how he was able to cultivate and cycle Strength and Toughness, well, that was just a matter of practice, patience, and a little help from his friends. He hadn’t suddenly unlocked the secret of how to uncover his last two cores without being the appropriate grade to do so—there were locks in place, ones they assumed had been put there by the System, that prevented a Denizen from managing that.

For their own safety, presumably—much like how a spell’s power was restricted by a spell pattern, and how cooldowns were enforced by those patterns.

At least, that power and those cooldowns were put in place by System-made spell patterns. Fortunately, the family of monsters had started to learn how to create spell patterns of their own, ones that weren’t held back by the System’s pesky need for “safety.”

No, Xavier hadn’t uncovered his final two cores. Instead, Howard and Justin had shared memories of their cultivation and cycling of Toughness Energy and Strength Energy, along with every memory they had that showed those two cores.

Though the two fighters had embraced the Wayfarer of the Infinite Path class and all that it had to offer, they’d each focused on uncovering the physical cores of Strength, Toughness, and Speed, before starting on one of the other cores as their fourth now they were D Grade. They’d simply discovered each of these cores at different grades, in a different order, still embracing their respective melee fighting styles.

Xavier had used their memories much like he’d used the memories of Denizens that had spells he wanted to uncover spell patterns for. Studying their memories, he was able to craft an artificial core for Toughness and Strength, allowing him to create both energies.

No normal Denizen would have been able to handle all these cores at once. It was only possible for Xavier because he wasn’t a normal Denizen—he was a Tier 2 Cultivator on top of that. That was what allowed his energy channels and his mind to be powerful enough.

It had been a long and arduous process, learning how to control all eight of those energies in tandem. Celestial and Reality Energy ended up being the easiest, in a way, as the nature of his artificial cores meant they were technically less efficient than the naturally occurring cores that other Denizens possessed. But with his more powerful mind and more powerful energy channels, those inefficiencies weren’t evident from outside observation. Each of his artificial cores were far more powerful than any other True D Grade’s natural cores would have been.

Though those artificial cores did have a drawback. A strong one. The artificial cores, like naturally occurring cores, cycled Celestial Energy through two of their outer layers to transform it into the core’s specific energy type. Each grade, there was a different cycling pattern that this energy travelled through the core’s outer layers. Xavier possessed most of the cycling patterns for all of these energies between F and D Grade, only requiring the pattern for each of their D Grade energies.

But he did not possess the cycling patterns for C Grade cores, nor did he know how to improve the artificial cores’ structures so they could handle those more powerful energies.

That was an imminent problem, one he intended to solve very soon.

Xavier released a sigh as he brought his attention back to the people gathered in front of him. Despite all they’d learnt and discovered inside that Roving Seed Base, there were simply things that couldn’t be done in seclusion. Answers that couldn’t be gleaned from Otherworldly Communion or bought through Information Brokers. The cycling patterns for more powerful cores might be acquired from brokers in the future, but the question of how to heal and harden his Immortal Soul had been a total dead end.

Sometimes, to move forward, you had to move forward.

“It’s been an honour to train and live with all of you over the last decade,” Xavier said. He produced his Universal Travel Key from his Storage Ring. They were standing in the middle of a large, frozen tundra. Around them were scores and scores of dead beasts, though it wouldn’t be long before more beasts ventured into the area.

This was not Earth. The planet they were standing on wasn’t even in the same sector, but a neighbouring one. Technically, with the Universal Travel Key, Xavier could have taken them anywhere in the universe—and, well, he had, in the past. But this had been their last stop.

This entire planet had been set aside by the ruler of this sector as a beast hunting ground. If Denizens had once made a home on this planet, it was enough years ago that there was no trace of them. The beasts were left to breed and fight each other, left to grow in power over many long centuries and millennia.

The planet was called Arturom X—apparently it was the tenth of several hundred beast hunting ground worlds in this sector. Xavier could have brought his people here without the owner of the world’s permission, but that seemed an unnecessary slight against a more powerful entity. The ruler of this entire sector was, according to the information Xavier had acquired, actually somewhat benevolent. A man who invested in the development of even their weakest citizens.

He was also a True B Grade, an oddity on this side of the Greater Universe. He would be far more powerful than the Arakashinai Queen and the Collector.

Instead of slipping his people onto this world without permission, Xavier had bought a two-day training pass that covered the entire northern part of the continent they stood on. It was incredibly expensive, especially for someone from outside the sector as there was a mark-up, but it had been more than worth it.

Xavier, and Earth, didn’t need more enemies.

They’d spent far more than a single day in this place, at least from their perspective. They all still stood within a time dilation field that spread outward into the entire area. Actually, there were technically two time dilation fields. This was a trick he’d learnt from Rebecca’s suggestion. Xavier had never even considered maintaining two time dilation fields simultaneously before she’d put the idea toward him, simply because it had never occurred to him. The Time Alteration spell certainly didn’t allow for it.

But with the use of spell patterns, or even two Denizens, it became possible.

For their purposes, it was easier to have a single Denizen maintain both the time dilation fields. In one section of the time dilation field—the section they stood within—time moved so fast that the normal time stream was at an absolute crawl, moving roughly ten seconds for every hour that passed.

If they were to stay there for a year—assuming Earth years—8,766 hours would pass. For the outside world, being 87,660 seconds, just a little over 24 hours would pass.

That was just in their section.

In the section that spread farther outward, covering the training grounds they’d purchased the use of, time moved even more swiftly. For every day that passed in that section, only a second passed on the outside world.

This amount of time dilation was only something he’d been able to manage recently—it was the fullest extent of his abilities with his current stats.

Xavier’s mind was good at math, at least since he was integrated into the System, but even that took him a moment to reconcile.

So, in one hour within their section of the time dilation field, ten days passed by in the other section—the section they thought of as the beast’s section.

Xavier’s “family of monsters” had stayed in these training grounds for a year from their own perspective—8,760 hours. That meant that in the beast section, 240 years had passed. Xavier rubbed his head just thinking about it. It wasn’t the math, it was the time. They could have spent so much longer here themselves, if they wished. He could do so, so very much with time dilation.

But again, sometimes you have to move forward and enter the real world.

The advantage of having two time dilation fields working in tandem like this was that the beast hunting grounds they were in never fully depleted of beasts. There were B Grade beasts on this world, but the frozen tundra they’d been training on had mostly C Grades or lower. Beasts and Denizens often advanced at different rates, and the beasts in this place advanced far more efficiently than any Xavier had encountered before. Not only that, but there were actually beasts that could be born of a higher level than 1, and a higher grade than F.

The way Xavier was able to control the two time dilation fields allowed for the Denizens to move through any area they wished always under their own time stream. It also gave them the advantage of being able to cooldown their own spells while the beasts couldn’t cooldown theirs, as they all could use Pocket Time Stream to that end.

Xavier cancelled out the second time dilation field. A Time Alteration spell pattern a few miles away flickered out of existence, along with the line of energy that connected him to it. The effort of concentration needed to control that spell pattern lifted from his mind, like a constant background hum that had suddenly gone silent.

“It’s been an honour to learn from you,” Michael said. He bit his lip. Xavier knew what the young man was going to say next. “You’re sure you won’t have me along? I won’t get in the way.”

Howard placed a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder, though he didn’t say anything.

“What I’m doing, I have to do alone,” Xavier replied, then he smiled. “But that won’t always be the case. In the future, I’m sure you will all fight by my side if that is what you wish.” He looked down at the key in his hand. There weren’t any doors around here, but that was no matter. A door, or even a wall, wasn’t actually necessary for this device, it merely seemed like it to those who didn’t fully understand how it worked.

While Xavier didn’t fully understand it, his understanding was increasing. Which allowed him to do what he was about to do.

He pushed the key forward into the empty air, his forehead creasing momentarily in concentration, then he gave the key a quarter-turn clockwise. When he pulled the key out, a portal appeared in the air.

Xavier smiled at the portal. The Universal Travel Key he’d acquired was incredibly valuable. Usually, however, it took six months for it to recharge for another use—not including its return journey.

Now, with Pocket Time Stream, he could recharge the key far more swiftly. At first, he thought he had to be holding the key while he was connected to a universe’s different time stream to help recharge it. Then, he realised he could cast Pocket Time Stream directly on the key. The spell’s System description said it had to be cast on a being, with no mention of items at all, but there were always things spells could do that weren’t explicitly mentioned in descriptions, Xavier had found. Sometimes that thing wouldn’t be added to the description you did it, as well.

Xavier deposited the key back into his Storage Ring.

The portal the key had created led back to Earth—back to Collinsville. It wasn’t for him, however. It was for the others.

One by one, his newfound family stepped through. Each had a goal, a mission, they wished to accomplish. Several, actually. For some of them, Earth was where they wished to remain for a long while. For others, it was only their first stop. Howard, Siobhan, and Justin’s break from the Tower of Champions would come to an end soon enough as well, and they weren’t sure how long it would be until they came back again.

Xavier didn’t know when he would return to Earth, only that he would. When the others left and the portal was deactivated, he didn’t summon and recharge the key. Instead, he used his Portal spell to take him to another world in this sector.

He was Level 300. Had been for a long while. Every single one of the spells he possessed was at their highest rank for D Grade—Rank 150. Hell, most of them had several dozen ranks waiting in reserve for when he advanced.

But there was something stopping him from advancing to C Grade. Something that wasn’t under his own control.

Usually, when he reached the requisite level, a notification would pop up asking him if he wished to advance.

In this case, that had not happened.

Xavier had artificial cores to replace his shattered ones, but his original Spirit, Willpower, Speed, and Intelligence Cores still lay in broken pieces within him. The System had not restored his ability to return to the Tower of Champions, nor had it allowed him to push forward to C Grade with his shattered cores.

Despite how powerful he was, it did not appear to recognise his artificial cores.

So, there were places he needed to go to find answers.

First, however, it was finally time for him to face the Collector.