Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 1 - Shattered

Your cores are shattered.

Xavier sat on the floor of the Staging Room in the Tower of Champions, his legs crossed beneath him, hands on knees, eyes closed.

Everything was black.

Which would have been perfectly normal, considering his eyes were closed. But it wasn’t normal. Xavier had a Farscope. A red lens in his right, non-dominant eye. Even when meditating in a safe place like his Staging Room, Xavier never deactivated the scope.

The Farscope ability simply wasn’t functioning. Couldn’t function. The item required Spirit Energy—a lot of Spirit Energy, since he’d upgraded it a great deal—to be continuously channelled into it to work, and whatever residual reserves had been in it had dissipated as time passed.

It didn’t seem like a lot of Spirit Energy before…

Except any amount of Spirit Energy was a lot to Xavier right now, as he couldn’t produce… Any.

The last floor Xavier had cleared, the one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth floor of the Tower of Champions, he’d once again done the impossible, on a level like never before. Instead of simply helping to defend the Kingdom of Eldaarn’s last bastion—their last castle with the only remaining people left on their world—to turn the tide and clear the floor, Xavier had gone to their enemy’s home world and defeated their leader, the Arakashinai Queen.

Just as he’d done all the way back on the fifth floor, when he’d faced the Endless Horde. Instead of continuing to fight wave after wave of the seemingly infinite enemies, Xavier had taken the fight to the Lord of the Endless Horde and defeated a low D Grade just as he’d advanced to E Grade.

Except this time, Xavier had defeated a low B Grade while he was still D Grade.

He’d received a title for that achievement. Actually, he’d received several titles. He’d barely looked at them and could hardly remember what they specified.

Looking at those notifications made him feel empty.

On that tower floor, Xavier had gained a tremendous amount of skill over the creation of spell patterns—intricate patterns that consisted of thousands of different runes, the very blueprints the System placed in people’s minds so they could cast spells.

He’d used the Willpower Infusion spell pattern over a thousand times so he could gain the same level of control of it as he could with the spell when he cast it himself.

It was an incredible advantage, one that essentially allowed him to cast spells over and over without any cooldown as he could draw the patterns while inside his time dilation field.

Xavier had used this newfound ability to kill the Arakashinai Queen in less than a second of real, in-universe time. He’d drawn three hundred spell patterns, holding them all active simultaneously. The perfect storm of there being millions of Arak drones in a nearby city to where the Arakashinai Queen’s chamber was had allowed him to constantly reap more souls until he’d sent a million soul apparitions at the B Grade insectoid Denizen.

The most powerful attack he’d ever produced. The most damage he’d ever done.

The Arakashinai Queen hadn’t stood a chance. Hadn’t so much as been able to fight back.

When the plan had occurred to him, it had simply been too perfect to pass up. When would he ever be in a situation like that again? The Arak drones, while they had souls, were essentially mindless, lacking any personality whatsoever, only being empty shells that received commands from their hive queen.

That had been why he’d had no qualms experimenting on them with his Willpower Infusion spell, and why he’d had no qualms killing and reaping their souls.

Xavier couldn’t imagine coldly reaping a million souls from any other city in the Greater Universe, even if that city was one ruled by his enemies. He wasn’t one for wanton destruction of innocents.

An enemy army? That would be a different story. There might even be a situation where he could reap that many souls from beasts…

Xavier snapped his eyes open and sighed. Again, his mind was trying to justify his choice, trying to justify why he’d stuck to the plan even after the pressure on his mind, body, and soul began once he was maintaining well over a hundred spell patterns.

He’d known it was hurting, yet he’d pushed forward anyway. The massive risks he’d taken in the past had always been worth it.

Until this one.

I could have done it a different way. I should have done it a different way. But I wanted to do something big. I had to do something amazing.

Why didn’t I listen to Bones’s warnings?

Another sigh, and Xavier stood from the ground. His meditation was getting him nowhere, and not only because he kept getting distracted. He’d been trying to feel his cores. Trying to feel his soul. Trying to walk the rooms of his mind. Each of these things had become as natural as breathing to him.

And yet he couldn’t do any of them.

He couldn’t even cultivate Celestial Energy and cycle it through the channels in his body. He’d lost access to his cores and every one of his spells.

I’m thirsty. His stomach grumbled. And hungry.

Losing access to his cores and the ability to produce Spirit Energy—or any energy, for that matter—wasn’t the only thing that had changed for Xavier since the pressure from activating and wielding that many spell patterns had bore down on him and broken something vital.

He had become… Weak.

Human.

Well, not human. His massive black wings were still at his back. He flexed them, spreading them wide, feeling all the individual muscles, then tucked them in close to his shoulders. The race change from human to dragonkin hadn’t reversed.

But his body had changed.

He wasn’t as weak as a normal, unenhanced human—or an unenhanced dragonkin. The strength of his body was still superhuman. He was even still strong for a D Grade.

But whatever he’d done to himself with his last impossible stunt had made his body work differently. He’d spent three months lying on the Staging Room floor in a coma. During that time, a good portion of his body’s muscle had withered away—something that shouldn’t have been possible anymore, as far as Bones said.

And he could no longer sustain his body simply through the cultivation of energy now that his cores were cut off from him.

He required water, food, sleep.

He felt so very… Mortal.

There was a part of Xavier that didn’t want to leave this room. Didn’t want to face the other Champions down in the tavern, or Sam, the bartender, again.

He’d been up in the Staging Room for two days now trying to reconnect to his cores without any luck. He’d already gone down to the tavern once since returning to the tower. When he’d stepped in there, he’d been relieved to find Adranial sitting at one of the tables with her party.

His entrance had instantly garnered her attention, then the look on his face had garnered her concern. She’d tilted her head to the side in that familiar way that many Denizens did when they were communicating telepathically.

Only Xavier hadn’t received whatever she was trying to communicate.

When he’d first woken up in the Staging Room after the three-month coma, his Storage Ring had been working normally. He’d summoned an armchair, a bottle of water, and a piece of toast to slowly nibble at.

After he’d discovered he’d been cut off from his cores and also noticed that his Farscope ability wasn’t working—he’d been so disoriented upon waking that it had taken him an inordinate amount of time for that to even register—he’d tried to summon a small mirror from inside his Storage Ring to look at his right eye where the Farscope was.

But hadn’t been able to.

A Storage Ring, like any spatial device—unbeknownst to him—required energy to be channelled into it to function. The amount of energy was so infinitesimally small in the vast majority of spatial devices that the user never even noticed it was happening unless they specifically went looking for it.

He’d used the last of his Storage Ring’s residual energy when he’d summoned those three items.

Xavier had several other Storage Rings, but as he hadn’t used them in some time, they were all inert.

That meant he lost his connection to every one of his Communication Stones, not to mention every other item he owned—including all of the food and water and other supplies he kept within them.

Not that he would have been able to use the Communication Stones without being able to channel energy…

Xavier and Adranial had taken a seat at an empty table. He’d requested to speak with her alone, and she’d left her party—looking curious—behind.

Though he’d hesitated at first, he ended up telling the woman everything. He was glad his old party hadn’t been there. He didn’t think he could face them.

He wasn’t sure why he felt comfortable telling all of this to Adranial. Perhaps it was because he still held her memories in his mind. The woman had a vested, personal interest in helping him, on top of the orders given to her by her ancestor.

Adranial had slumped back in her chair when he’d finished. The blood had rushed from her face, making her look paler than ever before.

“Have you ever heard of anything like that happening before?” Xavier had asked, his voice flat of the hope he held in his heart.

The woman had shaken her head. “No. What you described… What you did with those runes… What it did to you…” She spoke haltingly and with disbelief.

He’d never intended to share the secrets of the spell patterns with this woman before. It had all spilled out, the consequences of giving the information away not even occurring to him. He hadn’t asked for a contract. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could create and use a contract in his current state.

Even so, Adranial had promised to keep what he was going through to herself. Promised, even, not to report it to her ancestor. Though even as she had, she’d told him he was a fool for not wanting the man’s help.

Still, she’d made that promise, and she’d examined his cores herself. He had no veil up to stop her from doing this. Nothing to protect his mind or soul from her senses. He hadn’t even felt when she’d done it.

A look of despair had filled her face once she’d completed her examination and spoken the words that kept replaying in his mind since: “Your cores are shattered.”

Xavier hadn’t known what that meant. He’d never heard of such a thing happening before. He had a spell called Core Burn, one that he’d received as a boon from the System after he’d killed the Lord of the Endless Horde what felt like an eternity ago. But that didn’t shatter a core, it simply forced an enemy to burn through all their energy.

Having the ability to shatter a core would be unthinkably powerful.

Adranial told him a shattered core was incredibly rare. She hadn’t realised that was what he’d done when he’d first told her what happened because while shattering a core was something she’d heard of, shattering every single core wasn’t.

A shattered core didn’t simply cut off a Denizen’s connection to that core, it bled the energy dry and prevented the Denizen from cultivating more. This didn’t stop them from retaining the benefits of the attribute that was associated with the core, at least initially, but even that would diminish in time the longer the core was shattered.

Though Adranial had told him she could only sense the cores he’d discovered—his Spirit, Willpower, Speed, and Intelligence cores. She didn’t know about his Strength and Toughness cores, though something told Xavier they were shattered too.

“What do I do?” Xavier had asked the question as casually as he could manage, but he was sure the woman had heard the thick undercurrent of panic in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Adranial had said. “I’ve never heard of anyone recovering from this. It… It’s crippling.” Before he’d even opened his mouth to reply, she’d put up a hand. “But it’s not like this is something I’ve ever researched. You should let me tell him. Or at least my mother. I’m sure they would know a lot more than me about these things.”

Xavier had shaken his head. “No. That’s not what I want.”

He didn’t know if it was pride, stubbornness, or sheer stupidity that had made him refuse that kind of help. He’d gotten help from Adranial’s mother before, after all, during that brainstorming session. She was who had told him what spell he should pursue to better his chances of defeating the World Destroyer.

And besides, there was every chance her ancestor already knew. The man could observe him seemingly from anywhere in the universe. Xavier hadn’t felt his presence since this had happened, but he didn’t think he would be able to anymore, so that didn’t mean the man wasn’t aware of what had happened.

After refusing to ask for help, Xavier had stood and walked straight out of the tavern, returning to the Staging Room to try and meditate on this himself.

At least, that was the reason he’d given himself for leaving.

Now, with thirst and hunger overwhelming him, he returned down the curling stairs of the Tower of Champions all the way to the bottom floor where the tavern was located. He stopped ten feet from the double doors and just stood there for a long while, wondering if this was how his counterpart on the eightieth floor had felt in the face of fighting the World Destroyer.

Devoid of all hope.

He hated this feeling. Hated it was a deadly passion. He couldn’t ever remember feeling this discouraged. This disheartened.

This shattered.

He couldn’t use the energy from his cores. Couldn’t cultivate more. Couldn’t cast any spells.

In a flash, he’d become a weak shell of the man he’d once been. What he’d do to take his actions back. To turn back time and change what he’d done, alter his course. It would have been so easy to choose a different path.

Even if he could cast his spells, his mastery over time did not include turning it back.

Am I to become yet another failed attempt by the System to create its weapon and save the universe?

He was so sure he’d be the one…

Xavier shut his eyes and inhaled long and deep, then let it roll out of him slowly, opening his eyes as the last of the breath was expelled.

I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is move forward.

Words entered his mind, then, ones he hadn’t thought about in some time. Ones he hadn’t needed again. Until now.

If its endurable, then endure it. If it’s unendurable, then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well.

Xavier was done wallowing—for he knew that was what he’d been doing alone in the Staging Room, with no one but Bones to talk to. It was time to swallow his pride and have Adranial contact her ancestor. He worried about what getting his direct help might cost him. He didn’t for a second believe it would be free.

He was equally worried with what he thought he might willingly agree to.

But he needed to fix this—by any means necessary.

As Xavier took a step toward the double doors of the Tower of Champions’ tavern, a notification popped up in his vision, one that couldn’t be dismissed, one that had a sense of importance and urgency he’d never felt from a notification before.

System Error.

You do not meet the requirements to remain within the Tower of Champions.

You time within the tower has been suspended.

You will be returned to your world of origin until the requirements are met once more.

Prepare for instantaneous teleportation.