Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 52 - Untethered

Hovering above the Bright City of Aethisa, wings flapping lazily, Xavier watched the ballistae bolt as it shot toward him. Phoexians scattered after the force field powered by the massive subterranean crystal had pushed them high into the air.

The bolt moved slow enough for him to perceive its arc in the air. He shifted the Lost Bone of a Dead God into a shield and lazily held it in front of him. The ballistae bolt—which crackled with lightning—slammed into the shield and splintered all along its length. It didn’t penetrate the shield, and it barely caused more than a slight vibration to go up Xavier’s arm.

He lowered the shield and stared down at the dwarf that had fired the bolt at him. The dwarf’s eyes were wide. A quick scan showed he was a Dwarven Engineer. The engineer pointed up at Xavier. He could feel the dwarf’s fear—not just his fear, either. That fear spread, rippling out to the other engineers at the ballistae that noticed him stoically hovering in the air.

The engineers reloaded the massive bolts with the use of their Storage Rings. The ballistae were very manoeuvrable, like anti-aircraft guns they could be moved to face anywhere in the sky.

Every single one of those ballistae were now aimed toward him.

Xavier couldn’t help but give a small grin.

He fed off that fear as he flew downward. The engineers were casting some sort of spell on those ballistae as they shot the bolts—or maybe the spell was shooting the bolts in the first place—but Xavier had no interest in gaining a spell from them.

The engineers weren’t the only ones firing attacks at the Phoexians above the city, and at Xavier, who happened to be among them.

There were more.

It was in that moment, with the ballistae bolts and spells coming toward him, hundreds of them fired directly at Xavier, that his Time Alteration spell hit the end of its cooldown.

He cast the spell, contracting the barrier so it covered only a small space around him. The defenders below and the attackers above all froze.

Xavier observed the different dwarven defenders on the wall. The melee fighters that had come out to try and take him down when he’d landed upon their battlements. The engineers behind their massive crossbows.

And the mages in their towers, shooting spells from murder holes that might traditionally be used by archers in lands without magic. Unlike the Phoexians, who seemed limited in the number of different spells and classes their people possessed, the dwarves of Aethisa had considerable variety.

Lightning spells, fire spells, wind spells, and even rock spells were cast. He felt the energies in the air, even if their effects hadn’t been fully realised. There were other spells, too, though their like was harder to discern without letting them play out.

Xavier had gotten his Recursive Analysis spell all the way to Rank 60, but he’d done it using it only on a single enemy spell, and the ranks had begun to stagnate.

He figured the answer to that would be learning the widest variety of different spells he could from the enemies below. Though he was glad he’d gotten to experience the spell used against Fire Stream so many times. He’d gotten a feel for how that spell had operated.

While casting it, he’d split his mind, having several parts examining the energies in his body as he used the spell. Several times he’d been able to glimpse the spell’s pattern, though he hadn’t been able to gain a stable image of it.

Even if he had, he still wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Observing the patterns of different runes that the System used to impart spells to Denizens was one thing, but recreating them?

That was something altogether different.

Xavier figured his best course of action would be to simply test Recursive Analysis on as many enemy spells as he could find. He grinned at the thought of doing that. He enjoyed using different kinds of spells. Excitement flowed through him.

He cast Recursive Analysis. At the same time, he expanded his time dilation field, but only toward a specific enemy. One thing he’d been learning how to do with the barrier wasn’t just expanding and contracting it or changing the flow of time within.

He’d actually learnt how to shape the barrier, which allowed him to push it outward in a line until it reached the mage he wished it to reach. Xavier could see the different mages within their towers with Farscope, straight through those solid stone walls.

He targeted a female dwarf. The dwarf wore a purple cloak and had a staff with elaborate rune-work up the shaft. The crystal was black, and the powers she used were unknown to him.

The instant the time dilation field encompassed her, her spell blossomed from her staff. The energies shot through the air toward him. Recursive Analysis’s net caught those energies, and a notification popped up into his vision.

Recursive Analysis is attempting to capture the spell Untethered.

Untethered is a Rank 135 spell.

Recursive Analysis is a Rank 60 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 97.

Untethered? What the hell does that do?

Xavier had this thought as the spell slammed into him. Xavier wasn’t worried about taking any damage from these people, especially not from single attacks like this one, so he hadn’t bothered dodging the spell.

The moment it hit him, he started floating in the air.

Xavier was dumbfounded for about a split second, before he realised what was going on. This was gravity magic. The Untethered spell had stopped him from being influenced by the planet’s gravity, effectively making it so he was in freefall—zero G.

Except… No. This was different.

It wasn’t just that he was floating. Xavier had gained a lot of experience moving around in zero G back on the eightieth floor of the tower. He could manoeuvre quite effectively with the use of his wings.

The spell caused another debuff.

He couldn’t seem to move. His could move his limbs. His arms. His legs. His wings. All of these things should have allowed him to manipulate where he was, and yet he stayed in the same place.

Then, he dropped like a stone.

What the hell?

He wasn’t dropping down.

He was dropping up!

Straight into the sky.

He was flipped around, facing those four suns as they glared down at him with immense heat.

Just as quickly as the spell had affected him, however, it stopped. The world’s gravity had him again. He started to drop back down the opposite way, toward the ground—where one should drop—and felt control come back over him.

Xavier spread out his wings, catching the air, stopping him in place over the enemy battlements.

The mage who’d cast the spell was staring up at him with awe. Something told him the spell she’d cast usually lasted a lot longer than that. She must have expected him to fall straight out of the atmosphere—and if gravity wasn’t bringing him down, would that mean he’d have no resistance? He wouldn’t need the thrust one normally would to get out of a gravity well… But would moving through the atmosphere still cause intense friction and heat?

He shrugged those thoughts away and focused on the mage. She glanced around, noticing everyone else was frozen except her. Fear slammed into her then.

Rapidly, Xavier brought up the spell description for Untethered.

Untethered – Rank 97 (Temporary Spell)

Casts: 10

Untethered is a gravity spell that allows the user to untether an object, being, or general area from the influence of gravity around them. As this spell becomes more powerful, it can also prevent an enemy from being able to manoeuvre through that gravity of their own will.

Untethered can also give the user the ability to control what gravity affects an enemy—it can have gravitational forces pull from different sides, causing an enemy to drop away in any direction.

The more powerful the spell rank and Intelligence of the user, the more control over gravitational forces one can bring to bear.

Xavier couldn’t help but grin at the description of the spell. It was even better than he’d thought.

Just as it was evident the enemy mage was about to cast another spell on him in her frantic panic, Xavier cast Untethered on the dwarf. He’d never used a gravity spell before, but it was a path that interested him. He’d read books in the past where characters were able to control gravity.

It gave one a multitude of options.

Xavier had long realised that when it came to spells with a myriad of creative options in how one could use them—like his Time Alteration spell, where the barrier and time itself could be manipulated to interesting results—thought often created action.

So, as Xavier imagined the thing he wanted to do, he exerted his will upon controlling the spell to make those thoughts become reality.

The dwarf’s eyes became so wide they looked like they were about to pop out of her skull as she realised the same spell she’d just used was being used on her. He supposed it was some sort of poetic justice, but he didn’t real

Xavier didn’t make her fall upward, or left, or right, or diagonally…

He made gravity pull in its natural direction—he just amplified that gravity to its fullest extent.

The spell’s description mentioned that he would be able to do that based not only on the rank of the spell, but his Intelligence attribute.

Xavier’s Intelligence attribute was absurdly powerful.

At two times gravity, it barely seemed to have an effect on the dwarf. Xavier supposed that made sense. She was D Grade. High-level D Grade, at that.

He doubled it.

Still nothing.

So he doubled it again. And again. And again. At such a rapid rate that he couldn’t even keep track of it. There was no counter telling him exactly how many G forces the woman was pulling as he kept exerting gravitational forces on her. He knew black holes exerted more than one and a half trillion G’s, and absently wondered if gaining this spell would ever allow him to do such things.

Maybe a black hole would sort out that damned World Destroyer where a sun exploding in its face couldn’t…

The dwarf tore straight through the rock. Through the ceiling, then another, and another. She burst through into the subterranean compound beneath the Bright City of Aethisa, moving so far down Xavier couldn’t see her anymore with his Farscope.

Straight down into the core of this world…

Xavier had received the kill notification long ago.

For a long moment, he just stared at the hole in the battlements where the woman had been. He’d had to alter time, making it move faster outside of the time dilation field so he could see the effect Untethered had on the dwarf.

He didn’t have to alter it that much, however, considering how damned fast she’d been falling.

He looked at the cooldown for Untethered. It wasn’t as long as he’d thought it would be. Only about three seconds. He wondered if that was more to do with its rank or his attributes.

Xavier flew upward. Time moved outside of his barrier, but those three seconds took roughly a minute for him to experience. He was deep in thought during that minute.

Gravity spells are one of the things Adranial’s mother, Rowalla, recommended I acquire.

And Xavier could see why, but his Recursive Analysis spell wasn’t powerful enough for him to permanently learn a spell. Not yet, at least.

Maybe I’ll be able to find a spell like this again on another floor…

But it wasn’t as though he could ask anyone if there were gravity spells on the later floors.

Perhaps he would just have to grind on this floor longer than he’d expected to…

Untethered reached the end of its cooldown. The side of his lips twisted. He cast the spell not on a single opponent, this time, but on an area.

Untethered!

A massive section of the battlements broke free, being torn upward by an exceptional force. As the area had significantly more mass than the single dwarven mage he’d used the spell on a moment ago, Xavier wasn’t able to exert as much gravity as before.

But he could still exert a great deal.

Fifty, a hundred G’s. He wasn’t quite sure. But the force he exerted made the section of wall shoot straight upward into the sky. Screams filled the air. He winced as he got a kill notification for a Phoexian, one of his supposed allies now that he’d chosen to fight for them. The section of the battlements had slammed into them where they’d been flying above the city.

There were at least a hundred defenders on the slice of wall he sent straight up and out of the atmosphere.

And without Force-Shield Armour or the ability to survive in the vacuum of space…

It took a while for the section of wall to reach orbit. When it did, the kill notifications began to start rolling in.

Holy crap.