Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 72 - A Feather Touching Down Onto a Still Pond

Controlling the Willpower Infusion spell pattern with enough precision to enter an Arak drone’s mind was still only the first step toward what Xavier had wished to accomplish with these minds.

It was a step he hadn’t even known he’d needed to take toward this goal, but one he was glad he’d taken.

A new realm of possibilities when it came to his spell patterns had opened up when he’d first activated the Willpower Infusion spell and been able to use it on a specific target on his first try. Now, with the control he had over it, those possibilities expanded even more.

I can control spell patterns—at least, this spell pattern, as well as I can control the spells I’ve learnt…

He couldn’t quite think about all the ramifications of that, but he could think of enough of them to be excited. He also didn’t know if what he’d done with the Willpower Infusion spell was something he would be able to do with other spells.

For instance, would he be able to draw the spell pattern for Summon Otherworldly Spirit and call forth the Spirit of Time whenever he wished?

Instantly, he wanted to deny that as even a possibility. The cooldown of the Summon Otherworldly Spirit spell wasn’t what restricted his ability to summon the Spirit of Time. Still, he knew he would be a fool if he didn’t even try to do that someday.

That would make me even more overpowered than I already am. Surely the System—if not the universe itself—must have some checks and balances in place to stop something like that from happening…

But his mind couldn’t help but venture down that path. Ideas forming unbidden, the possibilities seemingly endless. And there was a chance he could summon the Spirit of Time, especially when he reminded himself that the spirits he summoned using that spell weren’t always the same one.

The Spirit of Vengeance had once been Volkarin—that had been the one who’d come to him. But there were other Spirits of Vengeance, just as there were other Spirits of Protection.

He had to believe there could be other Spirits of Time, too. Maybe he could summon a different Spirit of Time each use of the spell pattern…

Xavier pushed thoughts on what he might be able to do with spell patterns aside. Or, at least, to the far back of his mind, where other parts of him could slowly work on the problems in a theoretical way before he tested them out practically.

He still needed to accomplish something with these Arak drones.

Now that Xavier was finally able to use the Willpower Infusion spell pattern to control the Arak drones’ incredibly fragile minds, it was time for him to do what he’d already tried—conjure his mental apparition in the mind of a being he controlled, so he could more easily find the memory he needed.

Xavier, carefully, did this with the Arak drone before him. He was significantly gentler than he’d been last time. He’d made these minds crumble over a thousand times, giving him an intimate knowledge of just how fragile they were.

Somehow, while he’d been working on his control of the spell patterns and Willpower Infusion, it seemed as though he had gained more control over his mental apparition as well. Perhaps he’d simply entered a new level of focus and concentration, or, more accurately, precision. He wasn’t sure, but it felt surprisingly easy to conjure his mental apparition into the Arak drone’s mind.

The first time, he’d had to force the issue. He’d thought that had been the reason the mind had crumbled.

This mind crumbled just the same, even with his newfound level of skill. Even without having to force the apparition to appear, instead making it materialise as gently as a feather touching down onto a still pond, leaving not even a ripple.

Unlike last time, Xavier didn’t feel any sense of disappointment. He didn’t feel deterred. Hell, he didn’t even feel slightly frustrated.

Instead, a grin of all things lit his face.

If he’d done it right away, that might have felt a little disappointing. He’d been making so many breakthroughs lately—ones he had never really planned on or expected—that he was finding joy in the act of pushing past a difficult challenge.

Xavier had always found pushing past challenges exhilarating. Most of those challenges since the System came down had been fights. Challenges like this, however, were becoming equally pleasing to him.

Especially when he knew how far they were taking him on his path to power.

So, Xavier took a long breath, then let it out real slow. A part of his mind inquired about whether he needed another break—he’d just been working feverishly to accomplish a different goal. He wasn’t so stubborn to think he could work at the same level of intensity forever. But he found that his body and mind were surprisingly relaxed.

And he had a lot of energy. Far more than he’d expected. As though the challenge itself invigorated him.

He pushed on.

He tried to conjure his mental apparition inside a weak Arak drone’s mind several more times. To his surprise, it was only the fourth attempt that it took to work.

Walking through the different spaces in the Arak drone’s mind was a very surreal experience. The rooms appeared exactly as they did in Xavier’s own mind. Xavier had expected something… Different. Then again, it wasn’t all that surprising. He knew that it was his mind that conjured these spaces, as a kind of translation to explain what it was he was experiencing.

Minds didn’t actually look like this. How could they?

He’d worried unlocking the doors to different rooms of the Arak drone’s mind might be difficult, or that doing so would push it toward crumbling, but these mind spaces had no locks. The doors weren’t even closed—they stood ajar, as though they were ready for him to rummage through them.

Xavier didn’t work all that quickly. There was no need. He worried if he moved too fast through the rooms that it would be enough to crumble this mind, too. Just because he’d made it here, didn’t mean it wasn’t fragile.

So he moved from room to room in what he hoped was a gentle way, glancing at the different items in each of the spaces. Tools the builder drone used to help in its work. Posters and pictures on the walls, many of them moving, of the drone’s familiar spaces in reality, or of snippets in its routine.

Xavier didn’t bother counting the different rooms he entered. He found, as he’d suspected, that it was far easier to look through the drone’s memories this way than it had been when they were simply a massive ocean his mind dipped into.

It didn’t feel as though it took him long to find what he needed. He stopped in front of a picture, unmoving, on the wall of one of the rooms. The picture was of an Arakashinai. Though this creature was nothing like any of the Araks he’d seen before.

It was absolutely massive.

It was inside a large chamber, where its mass brushed against the walls. Xavier got a sense of scale of the creature only because of the Arak drones at its feet.

The Arakashinai queen, like the drones it produced, had ten legs. It stood on six of them, while four of them were holding something… Food? That it appeared to be moving toward its mouth. The image being frozen, Xavier wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing.

The queen wasn’t just large, it was fat. Rolls and rolls of skin protruded from its midsection and ballooned out at the sides. The Arakashinai queen had wings behind it, but they were shrunken, small things, crushed up against the chamber wall. Xavier couldn’t imagine they were functional.

It looks like it’s stuck in there.

Xavier moved to the picture and touched a hand to it, ready to experience the memory. In an instant, he was standing on the ground, gazing up at the massive queen. Like all the memories Xavier had experienced when he first rummaged through the mind of one of these drones, no thoughts were streaming through in this memory. It was just standing there, staring, as though it was waiting for something.

The queen’s four arms were constantly moving. Xavier’s first assumption had been right—it was shovelling food into its mouth. There was a massive trough beside it that Xavier hadn’t given a thought to when he’d seen the frozen image.

The room had a terrible smell; one Xavier couldn’t really identify. He tried not to think about it.

Xavier had thought that maybe here, in the queen’s chamber, he might see other Araks. Ones that weren’t simply drones but were actually conscious. However, there was no evidence of that.

The Arak drone Xavier was experiencing the memory from stood there while the queen glowed. Before her, another drone appeared. Then another, and another—as though she had no cooldown for this spell at all.

Well, at least they aren’t birthed.

Xavier wondered about that. Perhaps that was how the Arakashinai queen would have done this without a spell, without the System having integrated her into the System. He didn’t know.

This whole society, all these drones in the city, on this world… The army attacking Eldaarn… They aren’t a different culture. They’re just one being. They’re all just her.

He’d already known that, but as he watched the queen, it was as if he was being confronted by the fact again. Seeing this in action made it all feel more real.

Xavier remained in the memory. When a hundred drones had been created by the queen, the drone he was experiencing this all from began to receive orders.

He felt those orders, almost as though they were entering his mind. The orders weren’t words, merely thoughts, backed by a strong will. If Xavier’s mind were weaker, simply experiencing the memory of those orders might have made him move toward doing the queen’s bidding.

That took him by surprise.

Her mind is just as powerful as I suspected. Maybe even more powerful.

Then, the entire group of drones began to leave. Xavier paid close attention to where they went—down a long, long tunnel, one that was far too small for the queen herself to fit through—until they emerged in a different chamber.

At first, Xavier thought the chamber was the one he was inside in reality. It was a city, and it appeared identical—only, it wasn’t. This one was larger. Twice the size of the one he had arrived in.

The Arak drone flew over the city until it entered another long tunnel. It entered fifteen cities, all underground, all huge, before it finally came to the one Xavier was inside—he recognised it by the skyline, as he’d become rather familiar with that since his arrival here.

Now he had what he needed, Xavier exited the memory. He left the Arak’s mind and released his grip on its wing, letting it fall to the bottom of his time dilation field, crashing into over a thousand others of its kind.

Xavier was suddenly very glad he’d done things the way he had. The different tunnels and cities the Arak drone had come through were like a maze. Those tunnels had forked off in hundreds of different directions. Xavier’s Farscope ability would have helped him, but it still could have taken months—if not years—to finally find the queen’s chamber.

He wished that he could have scanned the queen inside that memory, but that wasn’t how these things worked.

Xavier looked at the mess of drones beneath him and thought about all he’d just done here. He tilted his head to the side. All the experimenting he’d done… He couldn’t imagine having done that on minds that actually had a personality, that were actually self-aware. When he’d planned on coming here to kill the queen, he hadn’t thought the drones would be the perfect test subjects for him.

Would I have done what I did to them to real Denizens?

Xavier’s forehead became heavily lined. That wasn’t a thought he wished to entertain. His knee-jerk reaction was that no, he would never have done such a thing to people, to Denizens who possessed minds of their own. But he’d done a lot of things in the time since the System had come that he’d once thought he would never do. Things that he’d thought he wouldn’t be capable of that it turned out he wasn’t merely capable at doing, but incredibly skilled at.

He pushed that thought away. Instead, he chose to feel glad that he’d encountered these drones. That he’d been able to carry out these experiments without the burden of guilt weighing on him.

Xavier looked away from the dead-minded Araks. Not because he felt bad for what he’d done, but simply because he wanted to push forward.

It was time to find the Arakashinai queen.