Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 70 - What in All Hells?

Xavier emerged from the portal, his time dilation field still wrapped around him. Not for the first time, he had to thank Yarien for prompting him to learn how to push it through a portal in the first place. It was an invaluable skill.

He’d imagined using it in this way, to sneak through a portal to an enemy world, but he hadn’t known he would be doing that so soon.

The moment Xavier had materialised on the other side, he paused in the air and simply gazed around. His Farscope ability gave him complete awareness of the world around him, but taking in what he was seeing wasn’t instantaneous. Especially when he regarded the scope of it all.

Xavier honestly wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Since the portal he’d flown through had been inside of a mountain, he didn’t think he would emerge on a plain of green grass or something. But he hadn’t quite expected this.

He was inside of what appeared to be a large, underground chamber. Xavier had thought the chamber he’d just been in was huge, but this one made that previous one look as though it had been made for ants—regular sized ants, not the giant, insectoid things the Arakashinai were.

There wasn’t much light in the chamber, though it was clear the Arakashinai still required light. The previous chamber had been lit by glowing green moss that stretched along the walls. This chamber was lit by the same stuff, but it was much farther away.

Xavier craned his neck to look at the ceiling.

His Farscope ability showed him everything within a 1,000-metre radius, which was truly overpowered. It even encompassed the ceiling of this place. But that didn’t make the area any less impressive.

That ceiling was so high that he was sure the Empire State Building would only stretch halfway up it. Hell, the entire island of Manhattan might very well fit within this chamber it was so large—Xaivier’s Farscope might reach the ceiling, but it didn’t so much as brush up against the edges of this place.

Xavier hadn’t known whether this insectoid race of Denizens would have buildings like that of most races. He half expected them to live in mounds of dirt, or in nests like bees or wasps, with thousands of holes in the walls.

He wasn’t wrong about the latter. There were thousands upon thousands of holes in the walls of this place. But those walls—and the cavern itself—wasn’t made from earth.

They were made from stone.

And there were, in fact, building inside the massive chamber. They reminded him of most of the places he’d encountered in the Greater Universe, as they were all some approximation of medieval looking.

Then, there were the Araks.

Millions of the bastard things were crawling and flying all over the place. Xavier couldn’t hear the noise they must be making, what with time frozen outside his field, but he could almost imagine it.

Xavier had been to a lot of different worlds since the System had integrated Earth. Well over a hundred, what with the Tower of Champions taking him to a different one on each floor. He’d been to worlds that felt alien to him—like when he was standing on the surface of the Hell Moon Thazamar or gazing up at the four suns blazing down on the cracked desert outside of the Bright City of Aethisa—but hovering there, looking out at this place, he knew this was the most alien world he’d ever encountered.

Once he’d gotten a good look at the place, he knew he needed to move… He just didn’t know where he needed to move.

According to King Elric, the Queen of the Arakashinai had conquered this entire planet. She was the one remaining hive queen left on this world. The chamber Xavier was standing in, as large as it was and as crazy as it seemed, was likely one of hundreds just like it—maybe even thousands—all across the planet.

And the queen could be in any one of them.

At least, in theory. Something told him the queen would be far closer. Likely somewhere within this very chamber. She was producing a constant stream of Arak drones to send through to continue the siege of Eldaarn. It would only be practical that she be near the portal. It wouldn’t be a security risk, either. If the Eldaarn defenders ever turned the tide enough to come through that portal, she would see it well ahead of time.

Xavier split his mind and scoured everything he could see with his Farscope, eternally grateful that the ability was able to pierce through solid walls as long as they weren’t enchanted in some way.

Blessedly, none of the walls in the Arakashinai city blocked his Farscope. What need would they have of costly enchantments in a place like this?

The vast number of Araks he saw as he scoured the area continued to overwhelm him. He’d scanned a few of them, trying to see if they varied in level to the ones outside the Eldaarn castle.

They didn’t.

There were no Arakashinai children, either. Xavier wasn’t sure how that worked. The Arak drones were clones, coming out fully formed. But the queen must have been a child—or a larvae—once, mustn’t she?

That wasn’t a mystery he needed to solve. What was more alarming was the fact that every single Arak he saw was a drone. There were no “normal” Araks. No individuals in this place at all. Every single one of them was controlled by the queen.

The buildings, too, as he looked inside of them, were utilitarian in nature. There were no flourishes in the architecture, nothing to distinguish one building from the next. There was no art on the walls. What furniture there was looked alien to him, and also uniform, without variation.

What a terrible place to live.

Xavier saw no sign of the queen within the 1,000-metre radius that he could cover. Usually, in a situation like this on one of the floors when he needed information, he would simply take that information from one of the Denizens here with the use of his Willpower Infusion spell. It was easy enough to mind-control some answers from someone, after all.

In this case, Xavier wondered about the consequences of that.

He was once more reminded of his encounter with The Nightmare, and along with that, what King Elric had said about the Arakashinai queen speaking through one of its drones.

If they have a collective consciousness, the queen will be alerted of my presence—or at least alerted of something wrong—if I mind-control one of her Araks.

That was even assuming he could.

Well, one way to find out.

As long as he remained inside the time dilation field, the queen wouldn’t find out until time began flowing here again. Enemies had been able to attack his time dilation field before, but even the World Destroyer hadn’t been able to just end it.

Xavier attempted to pinpoint a lone Arak, which considering how packed together they all were was a difficult prospect. As he couldn’t find one on the ground, he settled for a flier, one that was emerging from a stone hole in the wall closest to him.

When Xavier neared the Arak flier, he expanded his time dilation field around it in the air. The instant he did, he grabbed one of the insectoid’s wings in a vice grip so it wouldn’t fly out of the field.

Xavier wasn’t sure what he’d expected the creature to do—screech, attack him, violently writhe as it tried to escape his grip—but what happened the instant he grabbed it took him by surprise.

It just… stopped moving.

The Arak drone became still. It breathed. Its wings and massive eyes twitched slightly. But otherwise, it was as though it had been stunned. Xavier furrowed his brow as he cast Willpower Infusion. The purple energy seeped into the Arak flier, reaching for its mind, and found—

Nothing.

There wasn’t a mental block preventing him from accessing the insectoid’s mind. There just wasn’t anything, as though the creature Xavier held, slowly swaying beneath him, wasn’t alive at all.

Except it was alive.

Xavier took a moment to process this. He’d thought the Arakashinai queen simply exerted her mind’s will upon her drones, but this… This creature was an empty shell. There was no mind to control. Not as far as he could discern.

He stayed there for a long while, the purple mist from his Willpower Infusion spell still in the air. He made it probe the Arak flier again and again. This didn’t make any sense to him. How could the drones act as they did if they had no mind whatsoever? Were they programmed in some way, like a computer program? There was a part of him that wanted to dissect the insectoid, but despite Xavier having the Dismantle skill, he wouldn’t know how to interpret what he found.

So, he pushed the purple mist again.

His forehead creased deeply in concentration. He closed his eyes, pushing his senses as hard as he could. Momentarily, he blocked out all other distractions. He reformed his split mind into one and focused on this single task.

Xavier’s eyes flashed open.

There!

The creature did have a mind. Or, at least, some approximation of one. The mind was so weak that his Willpower Infusion spell hadn’t even recognised it for what it was until Xavier had pushed, delving deeper and deeper.

You have gained +50 Willpower!

Xavier blinked at the notification that appeared. It had been a long time since he’d gained attribute points through mental or physical exertion alone. And, honestly, he was surprised this was what had done it.

Not that he was about to complain.

Now that Xavier could sense the mind within the drone, he pushed his influence into it. Doing so required an intense amount of precision he wasn’t used to having to use with this spell. Taking over the mind itself wasn’t difficult—there were no mental blocks, nothing preventing him from getting inside it—but he imagined that was because the time dilation field was blocking it from its queen.

Xavier had to be careful, however. It was easy to feel just how fragile this mind was. If he pushed his spell too hard it would completely crumble under his will. It required a very gentle touch; one he wasn’t used to.

Time passed, he didn’t know how much. He lost himself in the trance of deep concentration, until finally he was sure he’d struck the right balance.

The instant he did, another unexpected notification appeared.

Willpower Infusion has taken a step forward on the path!

Willpower Infusion is now a Rank 151 spell.

Error…

You are not the requisite grade for a Rank 151 spell.

Willpower Infusion cannot take a step forward on the path.

This rank will be held in reserve for when advance to C Grade.

What in all hells?

Xavier shook his head when he read the notification, feeling more than a little dumbfounded. This was the action that had pushed his Willpower Infusion spell so far that it tried to reach a new rank, one he wasn’t ready for?

Now that’s two spells I have that will rank up the instant I advance to C Grade. Are my attributes so strong that I’m somehow brute forcing the spells into doings something they just shouldn’t be able to do right now?

If that was the case, he wondered what other spells he might be able to manage that with. He was still surprised Time Alteration hadn’t had the same thing happen to it, especially after his encounter with the World Destroyer.

However—like with having gained those 50 points to his Willpower attribute—even if Xavier was baffled, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Xavier imposed his will with a feather-light touch on the Arak drone’s mind. There was no presence within it—nothing that he could compel to answer questions for him. Even though he finally had touched upon a mind in this creature, his first assertion had been right. The drone was nothing more than an empty shell.

At least, it was empty in one sense. Even though there was no presence controlling the mind, Xavier was still able to find much inside of it.

Stored memories. Thousands of them. Every single thing the creature had experienced since the moment of its birth—or, rather, creation.

Except the memories were a complete jumble. Xavier had never found it easy to delve into the memories of another Denizen—and even harder to delve through the memories of a beast.

The memories weren’t neatly ordered in any way. They were drops of water in an ocean of madness. He could see the memories, once he touched them. Pushing his will toward them allowed him a limited experience of them. It was a sensation he always found remarkably strange.

As Xavier had possessed a better way of finding information than delving through another’s memories—simply asking for that information while a Denizen was mind controlled—he hadn’t focused on this particular unexpected ability of his Willpower Infusion spell.

If he wanted to find the whereabouts of the Arakashinai queen, however, he would need to change that.

And so, Xavier delved deeper in the memories of the Arak drone. The memories that he experienced were all pretty much the same. The drone, on closer inspection, wasn’t a fighter like the drones Xavier had seen outside the Eldaarn castle. It was a different kind of drone—a builder.

That was all Xavier saw it do. Build. Return to its nest to rest. Wake, eat, built, rest.

There was no deviation to its day-to-day routine. There was no leisure time. No socialising.

Just eat, work, rest.

After hours must have passed of him looking through the memories, Xavier still hadn’t found what he was looking for. He started to wonder if he was wasting his efforts. The drone never visited the queen. It would have a memory of it, from when it was first birthed—or created—but that could be its only memory of the queen.

One amongst thousands and thousands that Xavier had to search through. And with the process that he was using, that would take a very, very long time.

It was far worse than finding a needle in a haystack. More like finding a needle in a building-sized stack of other needles.

I need to find a different approach. This isn’t working.

If he spent enough time at this, he might eventually stumble upon the right memory. But the approach wasn’t a sustainable one. Something had to change.

That was when a brilliant idea struck him.