Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 2) - Chapter 57 - Portal Stones

Xavier threw open the lid on the loot box.

You have gained +2 Skill Points.

You have gained 1 Mastery Point (E Grade).

You have gained 100,000 Lesser Spirit Coins.

You have received 2 Portal Stones.

Xavier tried to hold back his sigh. Two skill points wasn’t bad. He’d long ago found out how helpful his skills could be, so that actually gladdened him.

The single Mastery Point had momentarily shocked him, until he remembered he was E Grade now and Mastery Points worked differently to how they did when he was F Grade. He bit his lip. He supposed being 1 percent on his way toward Level 101 wasn’t a total loss… even if it felt that way.

Something tells me I’m not going to be able to gain any levels from the enemies I face on the next few floors, considering how much the System restricted me in the past…

Previously, he’d thought the first ten floors of the Tower of Champions might be there to help get a Champion to E Grade, or close to it. Now, he knew that was incredibly unlikely, since he’d discovered just how much was needed to get there.

I’ve certainly messed up the normal bell curve.

Maybe the first fifty floors would be enough to get someone to E Grade, or maybe they would need one hundred… He supposed he would find out by looking at the other members of his cohort, assuming they ever got that far.

That gave him an idea. One he would work on soon.

He chuckled at the sight of 100,000 Lesser Spirit Coins. That would barely make a dent. Xavier looked at what he had—it had added 10,000 Minor Spirit Coins into his Storage Ring. He noted the fact that it automatically turned them into Minor Spirit Coins now that he was E Grade.

I wonder how many coins the Lord of the Endless Horde’s possessions I looted will get me.

There would be time for that soon, too. Honestly, he found himself excited for all that needed to be done. Especially since there was a lot more variation in what he needed to do now than there had been for the last six or so weeks.

The last item, or rather items, intrigued him. He asked the others if they’d received Portal Stones. They each shook their heads.

Siobhan stepped forward. “What’s is a Portal Stone? They sound like valuable items.”

Xavier had one Portal Stone resting in each of his hands. The were gemstones, red ones that almost looked like rubies. Each was roughly the size of a baseball. Those would be some expensive rubies. They were also exactly the same size, cut identically.

“They do sound valuable,” Xavier muttered. He used his Identify skill on one of them.

{Portal Stone – Restriction: Sector}

A Portal Stone has the ability to connect one place to another, creating a two-way portal between two points.

The power of this Portal Stone is restricted to a single sector and does not allow the user to travel between sectors.

A Portal Stone is useless if it is not paired.

Identify has reached Rank 24!

“Huh,” Xavier said. “That’s pretty amazing.”

“Well, what does it do?” Siobhan asked.

“I mean, I assume it makes a portal.” Justin grinned.

Siobhan rolled her eyes. “Yes, that’s obvious enough.”

Howard released a deep chuckle as he crossed his arms.

Xavier explained what the stones did. He tossed one up in the air and caught it, then idly started juggling them both one-handed. With his Speed, keeping them up in the air was almost as easy as holding them in his hand. He barely needed to think about it.

“Connect two points…” Siobhan trailed off, tapping her finger to her mouth again. “That is amazing! Of course, you wouldn’t be able to take the Portal Stone through the portal. Perhaps you could keep one at a home base, then travel with the other. You could make a swift retreat with it, but—”

“But you wouldn’t be able to retrieve it, only travel back through,” Xavier cut in.

Siobhan nodded. “And what happens to the stone while your gone? When you close the portal, your enemy could pick it up, through it in a dungeon…”

“Sounds like there’s a lot of possibilities,” Howard said. “And it’s limited to a sector?”

Xavier nodded.

“Well, considering you have a Sector Travel Key that could take you anywhere within the sector, it sounds as though you could connect two places within the sector fairly easily. You wouldn’t have to spend an entire year somewhere if you didn’t want to.”

Xavier smiled. “That was my first thought as well. Though I’d want to be sure of the places I connected.” He couldn’t help but recall Sam’s warning about Denizens luring him places with sinister motives. “I wonder how rare these things are.” He looked at the others. “Neither of you came across word of things like these in any of the books you read back at the castle?”

Siobhan shook her head. “Unfortunately, no, we didn’t. Those books were useful, sometimes… but mostly they were on the history of the sector that we were in. There were many legends, even fictions. And some, ah, romances.” Siobhan blushed, then cleared her throat and shrugged. “None of the people who wrote those books were as powerful as you. There was talk of making portals, but the classes needed to do that were all support classes, and it didn’t say there were items that could do it.”

Xavier nodded. He’d thought that library would be a loophole for them finding information that the System had hidden from them. But perhaps the System had factored that in when it had made that place a tower floor. There hadn’t been access to the System Shop there. No one was above F Grade. And the books, while useful, didn’t give them a strict path to E Grade at all. It was only by the grace of Adviser Kalren, who stayed behind instead of going through the portal during the exodus, that Xavier learnt how to discover his secondary core.

The System does a good job of hiding information it doesn’t think we’re ready for.

He stared at the Portal Stones for a moment, wondering how they’d come to be in his possession. Just like the Sector Travel Key, a part of him didn’t know if these came from the System or not.

An entity powerful enough to change what the System rewarded me in one of its loot boxes… that would be quite the power indeed.

If it were true, it seemed as though he had a benefactor out there, somewhere. Someone who was trying to curry his favour. Someone who was dramatically more powerful than him, yet had their eye on him still.

Haven’t even left the tower and I’m already making a name for myself. I wonder what things will be like when I step into the wider sector, or even out into other sectors.

Xavier deposited the two Portal Stones into his Storage Ring. He definitely wanted to experiment with them, but there would be time for that later.

He’d placed the Lord of the Endless Horde’s equipment into his Storage Ring. The man had had six rings on his fingers. He hadn’t been able to put the rings into his own Storage Ring, which meant each of them must possess spatial storage of their own.

His entire party huddled around the System Shop’s terminal, placing their hand on the glowing crystal atop the pedestal. There had been plenty of things to loot during his time facing the Endless Horde, but there hadn’t been enough room to keep it all. All the others’ Storage Rings were completely full by this point as well. He let them sell off any items they wished, even if he’d been the ones to kill the enemies. They needed money of their own, after all, and this would be the fastest way for them to get it. They’d been giving him their Lesser Spirit Coins from their loot boxes ever since the end of the first floor.

Now, he didn’t need them anymore.

First, Xavier sold off everything except for a few choice items that he kept for himself. He had various weapons, armour, and other equipment that he’d looted off E Grade wave bosses whenever he’d had the time to do so—which hadn’t been as often as he’d liked.

By the time he’d sold all of that off, he’d gained over 600,000 Minor Spirit Coins, more than doubling what he already had, and putting the figure over a million. If there were still Lesser Spirit Coins, he’d have ten times that number.

God, that’s a lot. Or it certainly seems like it.

He looked at the slender sword he’d taken from the Lord of the Endless Horde. At the beautiful jade scabbard. For a moment, he thought of keeping the weapon for Justin. But this was a D Grade item, one he wasn’t even able to Identify. It would take far too long for Justin to be able to wield it. They needed the money more.

I’ll outfit him with weapons whenever he needs them. I’m sure I’ll be wealthy enough to.

Part of him knew that selling items straight to the System was no doubt losing him a great deal of money were he to simply sell them straight to interested buyers, or auction them off somehow, but as he had no way to do that… it seemed like the right choice.

The more money we have, the more security and power we can buy ourselves now, which will get us even more later.

It seemed like sound logic to him. Or perhaps he was simply impatient. Either way, he sold the sword, the scabbard, the robes, the golden bracelet, and the golden anklet straight to the System.

Xavier’s eyes widened in shock as he received his payment.

The System paid him 15,800,900 Minor Spirit Coins.

I have over sixteen million Minor Spirit Coins… that… that’s insane.

Growing up, Xavier had wild dreams of becoming rich. He supposed most people did. When he decided to become a writer, he knew those dreams would likely never come true. But a part of him also knew that if he got lucky, if he did well enough, maybe they would. Maybe he’d be able to buy a mansion, get any car he wanted, travel on a whim…

The world, the universe, was a different place to when he’d had those dreams, but he couldn’t help but wonder what all of these coins would buy him. He had a responsibility to protect Earth, and something told him being as powerful as he was this soon after his world’s integration was going to attract attention he didn’t want. Threats he couldn’t even contemplate in that moment.

But his power, his money, his long lifespan… perhaps there would be more to his life than simply fighting. Perhaps he would be able to fulfil those frivolous dreams he’d had. Assuming he even wanted them anymore.

When I return to Earth, I will be the most powerful person there…

Xavier stood there, day dreaming about owning a massive castle. About having the freedom to do… whatever he wished.

He shook his head. Maybe that would happen, but there was a lot to get done before then.

The six Storage Rings he’d taken from the Lord of the Endless Horde were on his fingers. They felt a little awkward, clinking against each other. He didn’t plan to keep so many. Maybe one on each hand, taking the largest of the two of them.

Xavier looked inside the first of the Storage Rings, wanting to inspect its contents, but something was blocking him. It was familiar—much like the mental block the Lord of the Endless Horde had put up before Xavier had taken control of the man with Willpower Infusion.

Except this block wasn’t cracked.

Lines creased Xavier’s forehead as he pushed against the block, pouring all his focus into this task.

Crack.

Xavier widened his eyes, staring at the ring.

{Storage Ring} of unknown grade has been destroyed, along with all of its contents.

“Oh crap,” Xavier said, then swore under his breath.