Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 7 - Grinding

Xavier couldn’t answer all the questions that were swirling in his head after discovering those runes in the stairwell and casting Otherworldly Communion.

So he returned to the Thirtieth Descent, carving his time dilation field down the stairwell.

Still, the questions had stayed with him.

What was most worrying to him was the fact that the spirit he’d conjured through Otherworldly Communion—the demonic goat-thing—hadn’t known anything more about the woman than that she was a Universe Hopper.

The spirits in the Otherworld had access to vast amounts of knowledge, and yet that was all he’d gotten out of them…

Then again, he was aware that the spirits didn’t need to answer the call. He had met Rhaalir first by using Otherworldly Communion. The elf spirit had told him he could have refused the summons—it wasn’t within Xavier’s power to drag any spirit he wished out of the Otherworld and have them divulge all their secrets, after all.

Which meant there could be a spirit out there in the Otherworld who did know who this woman was.

I wonder if Adranial’s ancestor knows who this woman is. He’s been around basically forever—at least, in this universe. Perhaps it’s about time I use that to my advantage.

Adranial.

The Communication Stone that she’d given him was universe-wide one, which meant that he could contact her no matter where she was—except, of course, when she was on a tower floor.

Adranial hadn’t spoken to him in some time. Xavier assumed she was grinding the different floors, but he also imagined she was feeling slighted by the fact that he no longer wished for her advice—that was something that couldn’t be helped, however, as Xavier couldn’t take anyone’s advice about the Tower of Champions as per the restrictions the System had put onto him.

Still, she—and by extension, her family—were an ally he didn’t want to alienate. That was one of the main reasons he’d never truly considered getting rid of her. That and his moral compass didn’t quite point to being that ruthless unless she was actively being a threat.

Something told him her family would hold a grudge if he was the cause of her death, and it would be incredibly easy for them to squash him, and Earth—hell, it would likely only take a wave of a hand to obliterate the entire Silver River sector.

Yeah, he wasn’t about to piss her off. At least, not too much.

Xavier dodged a dozen Monstrosity legs that were coming down at him. Their bladed limbs slammed into the stone, scratching the smooth surface. He thrust Lost Bone of a Dead God up, the weapon shifting even as he moved it, and impaled the beast’s bulbous abdomen. The acid that shot from the wound sluiced easily off his Body Cultivation reinforced armour.

Xavier had first wondered how the stone floor could remain so smooth with these bastard demons scratching it up so much, as each time they fought it left deep grooves in the floor.

Now he knew it was because of the runes. Just as the demons respawned after he left the descent, so did the very stone itself in this place.

Xavier had taken it slow as he’d pushed the time dilation field onto the Thirtieth Descent. There really was no reason for him to rush with time practically frozen. As he’d walked toward the third group of Monstrosities—always clumped together in their groups of five—he’d maintained a meditative state so that he could sense any runes that might be about.

There were more runes on the Thirtieth Descent than there had been in the stairwell. He could sense them everywhere. In the floor. In the walls. Hell, they were even high up on the ceiling.

Xavier imagined, for a moment, how much effort it would have taken to create a place like this. To carve every single one of those runes. And the caves themselves… They were most certainly artificial, not naturally occurring.

Whoever this Universe Hopper was, they’d been meticulous at crafting this place.

The question remained, burning in his head—why?

Why would someone create a place like this? What was its purpose? It was, of course, a training grounds. That much was clear—but who had the training grounds been built for?

A bladed Monstrosity leg slammed into his chest. It managed to break through his armour and pierce the skin. Xavier winced as he transformed Lost Bone of a Dead God into a cleaver and cut the leg off.

He’d experienced what these legs could do once they stuck into someone. They had hooks that got into your skin and bone, lodging in there so they could pull their prey closer and impale them with the rest of their limbs.

Xavier wasn’t about to let that happen.

But he’d been sloppy—he should have been able to avoid that attack, but he hadn’t.

He’d let his thoughts about the Hell Moon distract him from the very demons that lurked within it.

Xavier refocused his attention on the fight in front of him. He’d only just gotten to a point where he could defeat all five of these demons without resorting to anything more than his physical attacks and the use of Body Cultivation. The last thing he wanted to do was take a step backward from that.

Xavier tore through the Monstrosities. Spikes and acid and bladed legs came flying at him from every direction. He dodged and blocked and whirled. His wings knocked the spikes away, or he simply took the hits when he couldn’t manage to get out of the way. He fought like a demon himself, using every trick he knew. Every strike he landed with a miniature explosion of force as the Celestial Energy shot out of him.

He’d considered using Soul Energy in his attacks, but he didn’t want to become reliant on it. Soul Energy was incredibly powerful, but it was something of a gambit. Something he only wanted to use when he truly needed to.

For he knew the consequences of overusing it could be lethal.

When the group of Monstrosities he’d fought were all dead, Xavier looked at his health.

Your health is at 6%.

Xavier grinned.

The improvement was, admittedly, rather minimal. That didn’t matter, however—he had improved. An improvement by an entire 1 percent was far more than it seemed, and would add up fast.

After looting the corpses of the dead Monstrosities, Xavier sat in the middle of the time dilation field and meditated. Deep meditation could help his health regenerate a little faster than it might naturally. He could also help his health regenerate faster through the use of Body Cultivation.

His mind was split, doing both at the same time.

There was a lot that spell could manage that he was still discovering.

Xavier didn’t usually have to deal with low health, but that had all changed when he’d started grinding out levels on the Thirtieth Descent, especially with the way he was restricting himself.

He knew that the more he trained this way, the better his health regeneration would become.

Xavier didn’t know how much time passed inside that time dilation field before his health finally reached 100 percent again. But when it did, he sprang up from the ground and continued on to the next enemy.

~

Xavier stood at the end of the Thirtieth Descent.

Before reaching this spot, he’d lost count of the number of times he had cleared this descent. And he’d certainly lost count of the number of Monstrosities he’d killed.

Honestly, he hadn’t been keeping track. It was all a blur of demon limbs and spikes and acid and kill notifications.

He’d kept his time dilation field active for as long as possible, to the point where he’d gained another two ranks in the spell before it had ended that first time he’d used it while on this descent.

As he’d been using his Time Alteration spell so heavily since entering Thazamar, it was the only one of his spells other than Body Cultivation that had been gaining more ranks.

He was becoming more and more adept at keeping the time dilation field going—more and more adept at carving it into a space and moving with it.

He’d cleared the floor three times before the spell had finally ended and he’d needed to wait for it to reach the end of its cooldown. Instead of spending that time idle, Xavier had turned around and absolutely destroyed the Monstrosities with the use of almost his entire arsenal of spells.

He didn’t want to become rusty with them.

He’d portalled from one end of the descent to the other. The Monstrosities didn’t seem to know what to do with him as he obliterated them with Soul Shatter then made minions from their corpses with Soul Puppet.

Xavier cast Fear Dominion, making them scatter as his puppets marched through their ranks.

By the end of it he had a few hundred puppets at his side. He’d cleared the entire descent before his Time Alteration spell had reached the end of its cooldown—and all without using Soul Strike.

Xavier had smiled.

The others were still fighting on the Fifteenth Descent high above him. He knew they weren’t clearing the entire thing. Without Xavier, they had to fight a lot more cautiously. Whenever Xavier’s Time Alteration spell reached its end, he’d touched base when them to ensure they didn’t need his help.

Xavier had used his Time Alteration spell to help him clear this descent many times now, always obliterating the enemies with his spells while waiting for it to cooldown.

Now, he could clear the floor twice in the cooldown window.

As he stepped into the stairwell between the Thirtieth and Thirty-First Descent after losing count of how many times he’d cleared it, a notification popped up in his vision.

Title Unlocked!

1,000 clears – Thirtieth Descent: You have cleared the Thirtieth Descent of Thazamar 1,000 times.

Your tenacity has earned you a further reward.

You have received +100 to all stats.

Xavier tilted his head to the side. He hadn’t known that it was possible to gain further titles for descents that he’d already cleared. The others had been clearing floors for months without anything like this happening—and it certainly wasn’t a part of their knowledge base.

But they hadn’t cleared a single descent a thousand times.

Xavier blinked as he stared at the number of times he’d cleared this floor. He honestly hadn’t realised he’d cleared the floor that many times. He knew he’d lost count somewhere after two hundred, but he hadn’t realised he’d lost count that much.

He was Level 220 now, which just showed him how damned long it took for him to gain levels now he was D Grade—especially since he’d been facing C Grades that were more than a hundred levels higher than him.

You’d think that would get him enough Mastery Points to really rocket his levels forward, but that wasn’t the case.

Still, he knew he was being quite greedy with the speed at which he moved through the levels in D Grade. The others were telling him that it had taken them centuries to go from D Grade to C Grade, and here he was trying to do it within the span of three years.

And at the rate he was going, gaining levels this swiftly, perhaps he would be able to do it even faster than that—though he didn’t want to get to C Grade without mastering everything he could, within reason, in D Grade.

That would definitely be a mistake.

Xavier shook his head. He’d cleared the Thirtieth Descent one thousand times, and it had only gained him +100 stats.

But that was 100 stats that he wouldn’t have gained otherwise.

He did the math.

If Xavier were able to claim the 100 clear title for every single one of this Hell Moon’s Descents, that would have him adding 10,000 stats to each of his attributes—a staggering number that felt absolutely insane to him.

He chuckled to himself and sighed as he knew what he would have to do next.

It was time to claim this title for the first twenty-nin descents.

He alerted the others of what he was about to do, then he portalled up to the entrance of the Hell Moon Thazamar.

When he arrived there, he froze.

Since he and his companions had come to this place, they hadn’t come across any other Denizens. The others told him that didn’t mean there weren’t Denizens here—they were probably down training in the deeper descents.

As he stepped out of the portal he’d created, he found that he was no longer alone.

A party of four Denizens were just about to step down into the First Descent.

They all turned and looked at him.

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