Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 17 - Layers

Days, weeks, and months rolled by as Xavier trained his old party members inside the Roving Seed Base.

It didn’t take long for Howard and Siobhan to gain the ability to split their minds, though to Xavier it felt like a long time. Two weeks went by until Siobhan gained the skill. Two weeks after that, Howard gained it too. They had a theory about why that might be—Howard had been an unenhanced, mortal human for far longer than the other three. The neural pathways in his mind, and the expectations of his own abilities, had grown more rooted.

Whether that was a physiological thing, something a part of his brain chemistry even post-Integration, or something purely psychological that he needed to move past, Xavier wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that it could be overcome, and he doubted it would be an issue.

He’d even, privately, posited that it might have something to do with the fact that the man would have more impurities in his body and channels than the others simply because he was older, and had been mortal longer. Something like that could easily be holding him back.

By the time Siobhan could split her mind, Justin had already gotten his Inscribing spell to Rank 100. With Xavier’s direction, and Justin splitting his mind in further parts to take advantage of mental practice, he’d been able to progress faster than either of them had imagined possible.

Rank 100 was the limit of how high he could get the skill while he was still E Grade, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t more that could be learnt.

In the grand scheme, it didn’t take the others all that long to catch up, especially when they were able to utilise the same methods as their ability to split their mind improved, coupled with Xavier’s instruction.

Inscribing wasn’t the only thing Xavier intended to teach them; but in his mind, it was the most important. It was the language of the universe—at least this universe—and it was used by the System.

There were so many things that it could help them do, things he’d yet to even discover.

Once they had a strong enough understanding of runes, and a strong grasp of the technique behind drawing them, with each of them having gained Rank 100, Xavier was eager to see if they could create a spell pattern.

At the same time as he was training them in Inscribing, Xavier ensured that they were progressing in other ways. While Howard, Siobhan, and Justin were incredibly dedicated, he knew that they might not have the exact same capability to focus on a single goal for the same length of time that he could—even if they always had a part of their mind working on it, other parts of their mind needed a break.

So, he helped them bolster their cultivation and their ability to cycle energy through their bodies. Primarily, he focused on their control over Celestial Energy, which they’d already been doing back when they helped funnel it into Xavier. He also didn’t require them to train for as many hours a day as he would in their place. They had plenty of downtime. If they wished to train something during that time, they could. If they wished to relax, read, chat, sleep, they could do that too.

Inside the time dilation field, they weren’t hindered by a time crunch.

Xavier wasn’t idle while his old party members trained, either. The training hall became his permanent home when he wasn’t instructing the others or spending a little of their downtime with them.

His main focus was understanding the changes that had happened to him and furthering his ability to cultivate Reality Energy, while his secondary focus had become repairing his shattered cores.

When he’d fallen into that focus-trance back in Collinsville’s tavern, he’d discovered several things about Reality Energy. The first was that it could be used as fuel for his body, mind, and soul, enhancing every aspect of his strength and power.

But that had only been one thing he’d discovered.

The name of the energy had clued him into something important. When he’d first advanced to Tier 2 and experienced the benefits of that state, he’d been focused mostly on the changes to his body and mind that it had made. Changes brought on by the Reality Energy.

But the name—Reality—implied the energy would be useful for far more than being used as fuel to enhance his body, or to make permanent modifications to him as it had when he’d advanced. To him, it implied that the energy could alter reality. That was what all energy, at its core, was capable of doing, after all.

Celestial Energy was something that could be used for that. He knew that for a fact, even if he’d only scratched the surface with Body Cultivation. But Celestial Energy was only so powerful. The energy became more potent when it was specialised and turned into something else by being cultivated into a Denizen’s core, or even when it was transformed to fill the reserve of energy in one’s soul.

It could also enhance one’s body and mind, or be used to enhance physical attacks—Xavier had been quite good at that, before the shattering of his cores stole his ability to cast spells.

So, it only made sense to him that Reality Energy was simply a more potent version of Celestial Energy. At least, seeing it that way was what had helped him take advantage of the energy.

The first thing he’d learnt how to do while sitting in that tavern, other than burn the energy like fuel to enhance his body, mind, and spirit, was to not burn the energy and instead have it cycle through his channels.

That had taken him several attempts. He’d burned maybe a tenth of the Reality Energy from his core before he’d finally managed to push it through his channels without that happening. Preventing it from being burned to enhance him took a force of concentration and will, and a rewiring of his instincts. The moment the energy was released from his core it wanted to be used. It needed to be used. His body responded to that need instantly if he didn’t stop it—that was how potent and powerful it was, enough to overwhelm his own will if he wasn’t careful.

Cycling it through his body was difficult at first—and not only because the energy commanded to be used—but with all of the training he’d had when he’d rebuilt his channels, pushing Celestial Energy through it while in desperate agony, stretching them to make them bigger, had paid off.

Sitting in that tavern, he’d managed to cycle the energy through every single one of his channels. As he did, it was like muscle memory had reasserted itself. He’d remembered all the ways he’d cycled Celestial Energy through his body to enhance himself. Remembered all of the patterns he’d used to make his muscles, tendons, and bones stronger. To make his blood stronger. His organs. His skin. His mind.

Everything.

He made the Reality Energy flow in those patterns, feeling the strength of it. Like Celestial Energy, but more. The patterns and the pooling of the energy inside him didn’t make him as strong as when he burned Reality Energy for fuel—that was an entirely different experience. But unlike when he burned it, the effects lasted.

The energy was, technically, still burned as he cycled it in these ways—to enhance himself—as Celestial Energy was when he did the same, but it was burned at a mere fraction of the pace as when he’d initially used it, allowing him to strengthen his body and mind for far, far longer.

Though in that initial focus-trance, he’d discovered that while he could make it strengthen his brain—which in turn strengthened his mind—it wasn’t in the same way as when he instinctively burned Reality Energy. He was improving all of its processes, making his mind work better and faster, but there was something intangible he was missing that simply burning the energy had given him, but cycling it was not.

He also didn’t know how to use it to power the strength of his spirit. When burning the energy, he’d been able to feel the presence of another being’s core, their aura, even if it was veiled. He didn’t even know where to begin to move toward achieving such a thing when he was merely cycling the energy through his channels.

But those initial things that he’d learnt hadn’t given him the ability to unlock his Storage Ring. That was something else the energy was able to do. Something he’d done purely as an experiment, not thinking it would work, but merely hoping it would.

Xavier had drawn upon his perfect memory. He’d brought forward the experience of cycling Spirit Energy through his Spirit Core. Not just one memory of it, either—he’d flicked through thousands and thousands of them. He’d burned a little bit of the Reality Energy when he’d done this, to make his mind work better than it ever had, allowing him to flick through the memories with a speed that he’d never imagined possible. It was as though time had stopped around him while he’d been doing that. He’d split his mind into hundreds of different parts to experience the memories even faster.

After Justin had explained how he’d practiced Inscribing more efficiently inside his mind with mental practice and motor imagery, Xavier realised this was what he’d been doing. The experience of the memories had reinforced his body and mind’s ability to do what he needed to do. It may have even influenced his spirit, as that was where the strength of his Spirit Core came from. 

In a normal Denizen who didn’t have a shattered Spirit Core, creating Spirit Energy was a natural process that happened all the time. When a Denizen discovered their core while they were F Grade, that process could be strengthened and enhanced. They could also gain more Spirit Energy when they killed an enemy—whether a beast or another Denizen.

The only thing that was needed for a Denizen such as this, a normal Denizen, to create Spirit Energy was to bring Celestial Energy into their Spirit Core.

That was it. Whether it was naturally, or with the aid of active cultivation.

To strengthen one’s Spirit Core, or any other core, Spirit Energy was cycled back out of the core and through a Denizen’s channels, then back into it. The more times this was done, with the more points of the relevant energy, the stronger that core became.

But it had been the creation of that energy that Xavier had wished to experience.

When he’d experienced all of those memories, he’d paid special attention to his Spirit Core. As with when he’d reexperienced the memory defeating the Arakashinai Queen, back when his cores had been shattered, he found that there were sensations inside him that he could sense even if his focus hadn’t been on them at the time.

It was a remarkable ability to draw upon. It made him wonder why a Denizen’s ability to do this wasn’t spoken about more often.

He’d pinpointed the natural processes going on in his Spirit Core, feeling how it moved when it converted Celestial Energy into Spirit Energy. This was something he’d never given much thought to in the past.

The very first time he’d discovered his Spirit Core, when he’d gone to Sam down in the Tower of Champion’s tavern looking for guidance, he’d also learnt about the aura he was giving off. Containing one’s aura, veiling their core, amounted to creating a balance between how much energy you brought in, and how much energy you burned. That balance needed to be perfect, else—like a candleflame being snuffed out—it would create “smoke,” and one’s aura would leak.

Containing his aura, veiling his core, had been his only experience with actually interacting directly with his various discovered cores. Maintaining that balance had become second nature, something he didn’t think about at all. A small amount of energy was constantly being burned from a Denizen’s cores—this process didn’t prevent that from happening, it simply helped balance it.

He vividly remembered trying to do that for the first time. He’d accidentally spurred the process of burning that energy into overdrive, making him fall unconscious. That experience had helped him learn how to burn an enemy’s core—it was how he’d killed the Lord of the Endless Horde, and it was what his Core Burn spell did.

But the process of creating Spirit Energy? Converting Celestial Energy into any other type? That had been a mystery to him.

Until now.

Xaiver had watched, and studied, the exact motions of his Spirit Core. Before doing this, he’d thought that the instant Celestial Energy entered his Spirit Core it was transformed. That simply crossing the barrier that separated his core from the rest of his channels was all that needed to be done.

He’d been wrong.

Though he’d experienced the memories at an incredibly high speed, to his absurdly enhanced mind he’d been able to slow down and observe every tiny detail. He was able to experience what happened each fraction of a fraction of a second.

The conversion of Celestial Energy into Spirit Energy wasn’t instantaneous. It was constant, and it took time—even if it didn’t take much. Using his newly gained powerful spiritual sense, further enhanced by burning Realty Energy, Xavier found another aspect to his Spirit Core that he hadn’t even been aware of. The energy at the centre of the core had been so bright that it had hidden this other aspect with its light, a light that his spiritual sense hadn’t been able to penetrate before. Now, he discovered what that hidden aspect was.

His Spirit Core had an outer layer.

Actually, it had several outer layers.

The first outer layer was where the Celestial Energy entered. His core was like a series of concentric circles—or, rather, concentric spheres, but thinking of them as circles initially helped his mind grasp the concept.

In that first layer, the Celestial Energy simply flowed in a constant circle. The flow didn’t shift or change direction. Sometimes it slowed, if less Celestial Energy was entering the layer. When it had more, it sped up.

When the outer layer had enough Celestial Energy within it—and at first, when he’d been F Grade, that had been a very, very small amount—some of that energy was then pushed into the second layer. If the flow was slow, it was drip-fed. If it was fast, it was flooded.

The second layer was where the magic happened, so to speak. Thay layer didn’t simply flow one way constantly. It shifted and changed and was tugged this way and that as though by hidden, tidal forces. When Xavier had first discovered this layer, he’d been unable to discern any conceivable pattern to the mess of movements. To his eyes, it was like a tangle of hundreds of different wires all knotted together. The energy didn’t flow one way at one time. It flowed hundreds of ways. And it seemed to fight one another.

But as it fought, it changed. The Celestial Energy became something else—Spirit Energy. Small pools of the energy formed in seemingly haphazard spots all around that second layer. Those pools slowly flowed toward gaps on the layer’s inner surface that took it into the centre of the core, where the dense Spirit Energy was kept in reserve, the only part of the core that Xavier had been aware of before discovering this.

Though he’d only sat on that chair in Collinsville’s main tavern for perhaps fifteen hours or so, to his mind it felt as though months, perhaps years, passed. He burned more and more Reality Energy to push his mind harder and harder.

Slowly, the patterns began to make sense. The tangle of wires he saw wasn’t a tangle at all. It was an intricate design, much like how the runes of a spell pattern were connected. Each connection began to make a strange, logical sense, and he started to see each direction—each “wire”—was a very small energy channel.

Understanding this was like a revelation.

The Spirit Core’s second layer was a set of different energy channels. And every one of those energy channels had a purpose. The placing of those energy channels, the strange logic, snapped into place as he burned more of his Reality Energy—so much so that he was left with less than 5 percent of it in his new core.

But the realisation he came to about those energy channels was what made what he learnt how to do next possible.

Each and every one of the energy channels in the second layer of his Spirit Core was laid out in the exact same way as a corresponding energy channel in Xavier’s body. The pattern had been incredibly difficult to discern simply because the energy channels in the core’s second layer had to flow around the inner, centre sphere. The way those channels zigged and zagged, the way they moved, some of it felt so natural, and yet some of it felt forced, even if the logic of it always remained.

Because it’s trying to imitate the channels in my body.

Xavier had more energy channels inside his body than there were in the Spirit Core, but that didn’t discourage him. With his eyes still closed, oblivious to the world around him, using his memories as a blueprint, Xavier had cultivated some ambient Celestial Energy and flowed it through each of the energy channels in his body that corresponded with the one’s in his Spirit Core—before it had been shattered.

When he’d observed the pattern that the energy flowed in inside that second layer, he’d discovered that it grew more intricate each time he advanced to a different grade. Observing his Spirit Core back when he was merely F Grade, he found there were less channels, and the pattern the energy flowed through them was different, too.

With each progressive grade, more channels were created in that outer layer, and the complexity of the pattern the energy flowed in increased.

So Xavier had begun by using the simplest of the pattern with the fewest energy channels needed. Even then, it was an incredibly complex thing to recreate. To do it at all, he’d had to burn another percentage point of his Reality Core’s energy, bringing him down to a mere 4 percent from what he’d initially had when he’d discovered it.

The moment the Celestial Energy finished flowing through the entirety of that F Grade pattern, Xavier had successfully converted Celestial Energy into Spirit Energy.

And he’d done it outside of his Spirit Core.

The achievement had made him absolutely elated. Though he’d had to burn Reality Energy to figure out the process, he hadn’t actually needed to use any Reality Energy to create Spirit Energy—all he’d needed was Celestial Energy, like any other Denizen.

The problem was holding onto that pattern was incredibly difficult. When he’d told the others that the Reality Energy had helped him access his Storage Ring, and that it was capable of more than being burnt as fuel, he hadn’t lied—that was the truth.

It had helped him access his Storage Ring, by allowing him to view his memories with more speed and detail than would have been possible without it. Beyond that, the discovery that he could use it in the same way as Celestial Energy was used in Body Cultivation was another boon.

The problem was, the only way he currently had to hold onto that pattern was while burning Reality Energy—even while only using the simplest, F Grade pattern. The Spirit Energy he’d been using to activate his Storage Ring and Farscope lens, along with his Communication Stones, had been from the initial pool of it he’d created. A pool of energy that he had to constantly flow through his channels so it wouldn’t dissipate too quickly, as it had no core to be stored inside of.

But before he’d come out of that focus-trance inside the tavern, he’d been come by an epiphany. Reality Energy. Energy that could be used to alter reality. Both inside himself, and outside himself. All energy did this. Whether to create, or to destroy. This energy, however, was more potent. More powerful.

Create.

In that moment before he’d forced his eyes open and seen Justin sitting across from him, the tavern dark, Xavier had tested something. Using the last few percentage points of his Reality Energy, leaving him with a measly 1 percent left, Xavier created something inside himself.

A new energy channel.

Xavier didn’t need new energy channels for cultivation or the cycling of his energies. What he did need, however, was a Spirit Core.

Even if, at this stage, it would only be an artificial one.

So while Xavier wasn’t instructing the others or testing the limits of his newly advanced body, mind, and spirit, he was working on laying down the lines of an artificial core, somewhere he could create and store Spirit Energy.

It was a slow process, but one he made a little bit of progress on every day he spent within that time dilation field inside the Roving Seed Base. Part of the slowness was how much Reality Energy it took to create those energy lines. He was constantly cultivating the new energy, bolstering his new core, slowly becoming more efficient at the process.

As he created that core, he probed his shattered one, hoping the process he was learning would help him finally repair it—along with the others.

Soon, he would make himself whole again.

Better than whole.