Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 53 - Awesome and Terrifying

Hovering above the Bright City of Aethisa, Xavier gazed upward into the sky, shaking his head, in awe at what he’d just done.

Using the Untethered gravity spell he’d learnt with Recursive Analysis, he had sent a large section of the Bright City’s battlements into orbit, killing every one of the dwarves that had been standing on it.

He looked down at himself. At the staff in his hand. Yes, he could have killed those people just as effectively in a different way.

But what he had just done… It was… Awesome and terrifying.

He imagined what he would have done had he seen that back when he’d been F Grade. God, it would have deeply terrified him to see that kind of control.

Xavier blinked as another notification popped up in his vision. This one wasn’t a kill notification.

It was a rank notification.

Recursive Analysis has taken a step forward on the path!

Recursive Analysis is now a Rank 61 spell.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

Huh.

Recursive Analysis hadn’t gained a rank when he’d learnt Untethered, but it had gained a rank when he’d cast it for the second time?

It isn’t just using Recursive Analysis to gain temporary spells, it’s also how I use those temporary spells…

The same thing hadn’t happened when he’d been using Fire Stream. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because he hadn’t done anything all that creative or unique when he’d learnt that spell.

Xavier cracked his neck and looked back down at the city. In that moment, the possibilities were feeling… Endless. If he could control gravity in such a way, exert these same forces on the Soul Amalgamation the World Destroyer controlled, or even exert them on the World Destroyer itself…

I need to learn this spell.

It was easy enough for him to exert these kinds of forces on D Grade enemies like these ones, as he was so much more powerful than them. It would be a different story if he were to try to cast the same spell on something far more powerful than himself.

That just means I need to gain this spell and become stronger.

He felt giddy as he cast the spell for a third time. He once again cast the spell on an area. But this time, he didn’t make gravity pull in a single direction.

He made it pull inward. As though they were in a weak black hole.

The stone of the battlements cracked and fell into itself. Dwarves slid along the stone, slamming into the centre of the area Xavier had cast the spell on. They all met in the middle. Dwarf and stone and anything else that was caught up with it to crushed together in a mass of destruction. The dwarves’ weapons, axes and swords and spears, moved of their own volition, stabbing into and piercing those who wielded them.

Xavier couldn’t help but cringe at what it was he was doing to them. He tried to exert more force, tried to make the deaths come quicker, but he wasn’t powerful enough to do that.

He cast Soul Shatter on one of the dwarves, not wishing to hover in the air and watch their slow deaths.

Recursive Analysis has taken a step forward on the path!

Recursive Analysis is now a Rank 62 spell.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

Another rank. What I’m doing must be working.

Xavier didn’t use every single cast of Untethered. If he did, he would have to restart the floor—all of his enemies would already be dead. Instead, he flew farther down toward another section of the battlements.

Recursive Analysis had reached the end of its cooldown. Something he hadn’t tried before was holding two temporary spells at once. He’d only used Recursive Analysis on Fire Stream and Untethered thus far.

Still inside of his time dilation field, he made time move fast enough to see the mages below casting their spells.

He cast Recursive Analysis, catching another spell.

~

…

You have temporarily acquired Lightning Bolt with an effective rank of 100.

…

You have temporarily acquired Razor Wind with an effective rank of 95.

…

You have temporarily acquired Blood Boil with an effective rank of 120.

…

You have temporarily acquired Numb with an effective rank of 124.

…

Recursive Analysis has taken a step forward on the path!

Recursive Analysis is now a Rank 63 spell.

…

Recursive Analysis is now a Rank 93 spell.

…

Recursive Analysis is now a Rank 104 spell.

…

Recursive Analysis is now a Rank 120 spell.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

~

For the fifteenth time, Xavier appeared on the cracked desert of the hundred-and-twenty-first floor of the Tower of Champions. He had been fighting on the side of the Phoexians for the last thirteen times he’d been on this floor. The defenders of the Bright City of Aethisa simply had more spells for him to steal.

Xavier could hold more than one temporary spell at a time, but there was a limit. A hard one. It seemed as though he couldn’t hold more than three temporary spells learnt through Recursive Analysis at once—this limit didn’t change no matter how many ranks in the spell that he gained.

And he’d gained quite a lot of them.

If he had three temporary spells active, and cast Recursive Analysis on a fourth spell, he would randomly forget one of the three spells he already knew. A risky business, that.

He couldn’t get enough of using all the different spells, and he found that almost every spell allowed him to be creative with it to some degree. The more creative he was with a spell, the more likely he was to gain a rank in Recursive Analysis. He thought that, along with his Wayfarer of the Infinite Path class and his massively high attributes, was why he gained ranks so rapidly.

Xavier flew toward the Bright City once more. He wasn’t at the point where he could permanently learn another spell. He’d been able to catch more and more glimpses of the different patterns and the runes those patterns contained, but that didn’t help him much—not when he couldn’t understand how that all truly worked.

Even so, he was making progress.

So far, of all the different spells he’d had a chance of using, Untethered was his favourite. It was the one he didn’t want to leave this floor without having learnt.

Xavier took a deep breath of the frigid, dry air of this place. He nudged his foot along the cracked earth beneath him. Gazed at the four suns.

Since he’d began learning so many spells, he hadn’t given much thought to the moral implications of fighting for the Phoexians. He knew that, even though he’d been bailing the floor before clearing it, thirteen times in a row, he’d significantly changed the balance of the fight toward the Phoenix Empire.

There were children and other non-combatants down in the subterranean levels of the Bright City of Aethisa. While he hadn’t killed any of them, his actions likely led to their deaths multiple times once he’d left the floor.

He should feel an immense amount of guilt because of that. There was some guilt, deep down. But he was finding, more and more, that once he’d decided he needed to do something for the betterment of his world, his sector, and ultimately his entire universe…

That guilt subsided considerably.

Still, a part of him wondered if he were a monster. Just like he, from time to time, thought the System was a monstrous thing. He’d felt intense rage toward it many times—especially when he’d entered the eightieth floor, where the World Destroyer would imminently obliterate the Earth and anyone left standing on it.

And the floor wasn’t about saving the Earth.

The World Destroyer wouldn’t exist if the System hadn’t spread so wide. The System altering each universe so wholeheartedly, providing energy to worlds and moons and even asteroids that simply wasn’t there before, changes… Everything.

And the way it pushes conflict so much…

How many trillions upon trillions of deaths is the System responsible for?

Trillion wasn’t even a good number to use. The multiverse dealt with numbers on such a staggeringly high level that it was completely unimaginable to Xavier.

But he found, more and more, that rage against the System was bleeding away. He’d thought it before—that the System wasn’t culpable. It performed its duty. The duty it had been created for. And that duty would one day prevent the end of time.

It was admirable, as Xavier’s goals were admirable.

He hated to think of it in terms of the greater good, for he knew countless atrocities had been justified using the greater good as an excuse. And how often had that greater good been for the betterment of an individual, a cause, a religion? And not actually for something good?

But what else could he do?

And so, he found it progressively easier to discard his worries for those that were lost in his pursuit of power. While the ends didn’t wholly justify the means—he would save whoever he could whenever he could—this was all so much bigger than he could ever imagine.

These people’s deaths were tragic. This war wasn’t his.

But they weren’t all innocent.

Xavier sighed. He ordered his mind, pushing these thoughts down deep.

He had a job to do.

With a great leap, Xavier launched himself upward into the air. His leathery wings spread wide with a snap. Heat blasted in his face as he soared toward the Bright City of Aethisa above that cracked desert.

The notification appeared, asking him to choose which faction he fought for. In that moment something occurred to him. Something he hadn’t let himself think until then.

Xavier always tried to think outside the box when it came to the tower floors. That was how he’d achieved much of what he had in the past. But for these last few dozen floors, he’d been clearing them as swiftly as possible—not including this floor, of course.

As he saw the notification, the System prompting him to choose which faction to fight for, doubt settled in his heart. All the justifications running through his mind seconds ago, the ones he’d supposedly pushed deep down, bubbled back up.

What would happen if he didn’t choose?

The System wanted conflict. He’d found that out early—the moment he’d been integrated, really—when he’d chosen to be a Champion of Earth then been pitted against another man who’d simply wanted to do the right thing.

A test of their mettle. A battle to the death.

If he didn’t choose a faction to fight for, and instead tried to circumvent the purpose of this floor, would the System punish him?

How?

It wasn’t as though he could die on this floor. Even if the Phoexian Empire and the Bright City of Aethisa banded together and targeted him, they couldn’t harm him.

The notification hovered in the space before him. Not having chosen a side hadn’t frozen the floor. Things kept on moving as they normally would.

He minimised the notification, his mind working on this idea as he flew. He cast Time Alteration and formed the barrier around himself. This gave him time to contemplate how he might go about doing things.     

Xavier reached the walls. It wasn’t only a single mage who possessed the Untethered spell he wished to permanently learn. There were several of them, spread in intervals along the battlements. Their gravity spells were effective at scattering the Phoexian flights above Aethisa.

The young dragonkin alighted on the hard stone of the battlements beside the first dwarven mage he’d captured the Untethered spell from.

She was in the middle of casting that exact spell against a flight above.

Xavier altered the flow of time enough for the energy of her spell to move a little bit more in the air. Simultaneously, he cast Recursive Analysis. His net caught the spell’s energies.

Recursive Analysis is attempting to capture the spell Untethered.

Untethered is a Rank 135 spell.

Recursive Analysis is a Rank 120 spell.

The rank discrepancy will affect the efficacy of the learnt spell.

…

Recursive Analysis has succeeded!

You have temporarily acquired Untethered with an effective rank of 127.

Xavier grinned as he learnt the spell. Just as the amount of different temporary spells he could hold at once had a hard limit, so did the number of casts. That number remained unchanged since reaching it.

He could cast Untethered ten times.

Xavier altered the flow of time again and sat, cross-legged, on the hard stone floor. The stones were incredibly hot. Hot enough to breach his protective armour, though he barely registered the sensation.

He sunk into a deeply meditative state. The state he used to sense runes. He’d done this many times before when trying to permanently learn a temporary spell.

So far, he hadn’t had any luck.

This was, however, the highest rank he’d ever been able to learn an enemy spell, so he figured it was worth trying again.

Xavier closed his eyes. The pattern of runes that was the Untethered spell was clear in his mind. Clearer than it had ever been. His forehead creased as he examined it, poring over the different runes he could identify, memorising the ones he couldn’t.

He tilted his chin downward as his concentration intensified. The more he looked at the runes, the more his mind made different connections to them.

After a long while—hours or days inside that meditative state within his time dilation field, Xavier didn’t know—his eyes snapped open, and a small smirk lit his face.

 He drew the Lost Bone of a Dead God from its scabbard at his waist and balanced it along his knees, then he shifted it into a stylus and held it up in his right hand.

Xavier directed his thoughts toward the soul bound weapon.

I think I have an idea.

Click here to read the next chapter now!