Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 56 – Hell Yes, I Wish to Advance!

To the gathered Denizens who had newly sworn their allegiance to Xavier Collins, time had completely stopped. Even the B Grades among them with the greatest perception speeds were unable to discern what had happened from one fraction of a second to the next.

When the time dilation field stretched to encompass them once again, the Void Being flickered in and out of existence. This was, however, simply the motion of light catching up to them. In its new place, closer to Xavier, the Void Being was once more frozen in space.

The Void Being was surrounded by different versions of Xavier—drones, ones those watching had encountered before. In front of each drone with a glowing pattern of what appeared to be runes.

None of them had seen its like before.

Behind the drones stood another man. A man with stumps where he should have had arms. Though those paying attention noticed those stumps had grown considerably since time had stopped and began moving again; they had been reformed all the way up to his elbows. The man had a stolid look as he gazed ahead.

The true Xavier Collins stepped forward. The drones were identical to him in almost every way, but their armour and weapons differed in this instance. The young dragonkin raised his head. “What happens next will show each of you a glimpse of the power I intend to share.”

He pointed at one of the strange-looking patterns. “This is a spell pattern.” He opened his arms to encompass all the patterns in the room. “You will notice they are identical. Each pattern is a recreation of a spell I possess. A spell called Soul Shatter—one this thing should be particularly weak against.” Next, he looked at the Void Being. Even frozen the thing radiated power. “In a moment, I will release this monster from its Time Prison. It will move slower than us, but there remains a danger. If you stay within the throne room, I cannot guarantee your safety. Does anyone wish to leave?”

No one moved an inch.

“Very well.” Xavier held a scythe in his hands. His wings spread out behind him. He stared at the Void Being with a cold look of acute concentration. “Are you watching closely?”

The Time Prison spell was deactivated, both freeing it and making it vulnerable to attack. Once more it flickered out of existence. It reemerged directly in front of Xavier, its claw materialising inside the young dragonkin’s chest, bringing it into the time dilation field.

The Void Being released a cold, terrifying laugh.

Xavier raised his chin and stared the thing that looked like him in the eye. The dragonkin had barely reacted to the claw appearing inside his chest. There was certainly no fear in his gaze. He did not shudder, step back, nor try to defend himself.

He only smiled.

The Void Being might have given a look of confusion, but it didn’t have the opportunity. As Xavier smiled, the spell patterns glowed brighter. A stream of energy released from each, invisible to the naked eye, and shot straight for the beast.

A dozen Soul Shatter spells struck the Void Being—a being that was nothing more than a spirit, in truth. Nothing more than its Immortal Soul, even powered by soul energy as it was.

The B Grade Denizens observing this didn’t believe, even after all they’d seen this Xavier Collins do, even after swearing their loyalty to the man, that this would be enough. They could feel the sheer power radiating off that thing. It was more power than Gregori The Collector had ever held.

Xavier may have struck their former ruler down, but to do this?

Yet what they saw could not be denied.

The Void Being did not merely flicker out of existence. Its souls broke into a thousand, thousand pieces. Such a thing might not normally be visible to those without the requisite abilities, but in this case it was seen by everyone in that room, for it was the Void Being’s form that shattered.

C and B Grade Denizens alike flinched from the pieces of that soul coming toward them. The pieces, however, moved through them as though they weren’t there, then continued on through the thick stone walls of the castle’s throne room, down through its marble floor, and up through the glass dome into the vacuum of space beyond.

Xavier Collins glanced at the hole in his chest where a claw had just been. His armour and wound healed rapidly.

“Could have been a cleaner kill,” Palini Damascus, the man behind him, muttered.

“Yes.” Xavier smirked. “I suppose you’re right.” He released a sigh of relief, then clapped his hands together. “Well, now that little nuisance has been dealt with, I think it’s time we got to work—there’s a lot that needs to be done.”

Hovering in the air behind the young dragonkin was something not a single being in that room, not even Xavier himself, could see. A whisp of energy. Not the remnants of the Void Being, for that thing was truly dead and gone.

This was something else. Something that had been brought here by another. By a Wanderer older than the System itself—someone born in a universe that died long before any System had even been devised.

The whisp of energy wasn’t only invisible to those in the room, either, for it wasn’t only those in the room watching these events unfold. Others watched. Some with all their attention, most with merely a small part. The Old Man that resided in the same universe observed the scene with wide eyes from the observation deck of his starship, wondering who—or what—had been powerful enough to stop his interference. Anhelina, currently of the title of Spirit of Time in this corner of the multiverse’s Otherworld, watched from a different plane of existence only one remove from the mortal realm. She would not know there were beings powerful enough to observe her.

Wanderers watched, from almost all the factions, their gaze drawn to this one man not only because of what he was fast becoming, but because of what another Wanderer had done.

There were more watchers than this. A powerful Void Being or two, and other, unknown entities powerful enough to hide their identity and location, but not powerful enough to hide that they watched from the one controlling the whisp’s movement.

The whisp of energy had been placed there by Derrida, one of the oldest and most powerful Wanderers in the multiverse. It took much of her power to prevent the whisp from being detected by those who watched. She drew upon stores of energy she had not needed to access for billions of years. Stores of energy that would require great efforts to renew.

The whisp of energy flowed down toward the young dragonkin’s head. It did not seep into his ear nor enter through his nose. It did not even enter through the man’s pores and into his energy channels. It simply phased through the D Grade’s unusually powerful protections, his skin and bone, straight into a single point inside his brain.

The brain in most species of sentient beings lacked touch and pain receptors. Dragonkin were not an exception to that rule. The whisp of energy, had it been in the mortal realm’s phase, would have been felt by the man’s skin. But when it reached the target inside his brain and condensed down to the size of a single neuron then phased into the mortal realm, it wouldn’t be felt at all.

Not even the young prodigy’s powerful spiritual sense would be able to detect this energy. Perhaps he would feel something. A subtle shift. But he wouldn’t know what it was.

Not until it revealed itself.

Safely inside the man’s brain, Derrida removed her protections veiling the whisp, no longer worried about the observers noticing. The strongest among them might register a tiny spark, but as she had masked its entrance, they would think it originated from inside the man.

None would know where it truly came from.

I hope this is worth it, Xavier Collins. I hope Roln was right, and that you are the one, for interfering in this universe goes against everything I believe.

Derrida pulled her full awareness away from the young dragonkin and the universe he inhabited, leaving a single part of her mind—a mind split into trillions of pieces, watching over every universe under her protection and more besides—to focus on him.

Travelling through the vast void between universes and indeed between Systems, she made her way to her seat of power. A constructed world that sat outside the governing of the Systems. There, she called out to every member of her faction.

It was time for her to begin preparations, for whether in a hundred years or thirty-three billion, a Wanderer war would be fought over that universe and the young dragonkin who inhabited it.

Assuming he doesn’t die before the war starts.

~

Xavier had just clapped his hands together and announced that it was time to get to work when he paused and tilted his head to one side. His eyebrows came together, and his brow furrowed.

 Palini instantly noticed the shift in his behaviour. [What is it?] he asked through their linked Communication Stones.

[I’m not sure. I just felt something… strange.] Xavier almost reached up to touch his forehead but thought better of it. He was being watched by the group of Denizens that had just sworn their allegiance to him, and they were all looking at him expectantly. He shrugged the feeling off. [I’m sure it was nothing.]

There was a lot of work to be done, and not a lot of time to do it. When he’d repaired his cores and the System had recognised this, registering that he once again met the requirements to enter the Tower of Champions, the only reason he hadn’t instantly been pulled straight back to the tower was he currently had claims to this castle, world, and the entire Ventorin sector to organise.

The most efficient way to gain System-recognised ownership of the sector would be to fulfill the claim of the sector right away. He wasn’t worried for a moment about losing to anyone who wished to fight him for it. But the instant he won, he would be teleported straight to the tower, and the sector would be left in the hands of Palini and those in this room.

No. More needed to be done before he left. Much more.

“Skip claiming the castle,” Palini had told him before they’d brought the others into the time dilation field. “Claim this world and do it fast. The whole sector will be watching, waiting for the outcome. The System will notify them of what happens.”

And so that was what he was going to do. A show of power, and a show of mercy—or attempted mercy, depending on the attitude of whoever ended up facing him.

But there was something else that had to be done first. Something he’d been waiting a long, long time to do, but didn’t want to wait a moment more. He brought up one of the notifications he’d recently received, reading over it once more with a smile.

Congratulations, you have fulfilled all the requirements to advance to C Grade!

If you have not prepared your body, mind, and cores appropriately, your attributes, spells, and skills might be damaged, or the transformation may cause your death.

Do you wish to advance to C Grade?

Hell yes, I wish to advance!

Xavier braced himself.

The process started immediately.

Initiating advancement of Denizen XAVIER COLLINS from D Grade to C Grade.

Denizen’s attributes deemed as: …

…

Error.

Attribute values higher than anticipated.

Recalibrating advancement…

…

Attribute values higher than limit.

Advancement Interrupted.

Still inside his time dilation field, Xavier stared at the System notification. He had expected this—the same thing had happened on his advancement to D Grade. If he were right, more notifications would soon be coming.

He grinned as a title appeared.

Title Unlocked!

Strongest D Grade (Unmatched): You are the strongest D Grade who has ever lived in the entirety of the Greater Universe. The System has never encountered an advancement such as yours before.

This is an unmatched title.

You have received +5,000 to all attributes.

That many? That’s ten times as much as the last title!

It wasn’t the largest boost to his attributes he’d ever gotten from a title, especially with how well positive percentage modifies helped him, but it was nothing to scoff at.

Reinitiating advancement to C Grade.

Error.

Advancement Interrupted.

Another error? This didn’t happen last time…

System recalibrating…

Commencing intensive scan of XAVIER COLLINS.

Scanning…

Scanning…

Error located.

Foreign core, Reality Core, unaccounted for.

Foreign advancement, Cultivator: Tier 2, unaccounted for.

Artificial Cores identified for Spirit, Willpower, Speed, Intelligence, Strength, and Toughness, all unaccounted for.

Assimilating information.

Adjusting attributes…

Attributes adjusted.

Adjusting other factors…

Other factors adjusted.

Recognition of Artificial Cores has been denied. Denizen must discover natural attribute cores to advance to B and A Grades.

Title Unlocked!

Dual Advancement: You are the first in the Greater Universe to walk two paths of advancement.

You are an anomaly.

This is an unmatched title.

This title is unrewarded.

Title Unlocked!

Artificial Core: You are the first in the Greater Universe to create an artificial core. This action interferes with the natural progression of a Denizen’s advancement.

You are an anomaly.

This is an unmatched title.

This title is unrewarded.

Title Unlocked!

Anomaly: An anomaly is classed as something deemed impossible under the System Governed Rules. The System Governed Rules were created to guide Denizens to greatness.

You are circumventing those rules.

Anything that circumvents the System Governed Rules is either assimilated or destroyed.

This title is unrewarded.

Please wait while the System decides your fate.

Xavier tried to widen his eyes at the final notification in the stream that he’d been reading but found that he couldn’t them at all. He couldn’t move anything. He was frozen in place, along with everyone else in the room. His mind still worked but that was all.

The System had frozen time. Something told him it wasn’t just a localised event, either. He had the feeling that the entire universe—maybe every universe the System governed—had been frozen.

Anomaly.

The System had only recently given him a notification that had called him anomalous. Though Xavier had been curious about that, this was not what he thought would happen.

Frozen there, staring at the words, Xavier felt more helpless than he ever had.

He couldn’t move. His heart didn’t beat. He couldn’t shift energy from his cores or around his channels, for the energy within him was frozen too. All he could do was see and think.

Xavier didn’t have anything up his sleeve in response to this.

He had been confident, only moments ago, that he would live to see the end of this universe—live to fight it.

Live to save it.

Now he couldn’t be sure of anything.

The feeling of vulnerability was sobering.

Other anomalies detected.

Adding their fate to be decided.

Other anomalies? Xavier panicked. He wasn’t the only one with two advancements or artificial cores. Not anymore. He’d thought it would be safe to teach them these things. The System hadn’t harmed him for what he’d done. He’d gotten to know them. More. Gotten to think of each of them as family.

Now they might all die because of his actions.

I didn’t know… How could I have known?

Another notification appeared.

The System had made its decision.