Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 2) - Chapter 37 - Too Good to Be True

Xavier had thought he’d been pushing himself as hard as he could go. He’d thought he’d been testing and stretching his limits more than perhaps anyone else ever had.

He’d been wrong.

With each new wave that came, Xavier made more and more progress.

Though he received no notifications for Tissue Regeneration, as it did not appear to be a skill, he could feel it at work. Xavier would have thought that Toughness, given its ability to heal, would make a trait like Tissue Regeneration unnecessary. Then again, Toughness wasn’t enough to let normal beasts or humanoid Denizens regrow their heads—so there must have been something special about the trait.

And something else, too. His entire body was… more efficient than it had been before. There was just something stronger and more resilient about it. His cores. His Spirit Recovery. His Willpower Recovery. They were more efficient too—more than any gain in his stats could explain.

So it wasn’t only his regeneration that was working better. It was everything.

He assumed it might have something to do with the fact that he had a sliver of an E Grade’s fang assimilated into his body. The System had warned him against doing such a thing, and clearly his body wouldn’t be able to handle it long term, as the countdown timer told him it was on its way to rejecting it—but before his body did start degenerating, it was more powerful than ever.

That was probably why he’d been able to control that E Grade demonkin mage so easily—probably why he’d defeated that wave in record time.

His Running skill, which had stalled out as he’d put his focus elsewhere, ranked up multiple times on every single wave. Something inside his muscles was shifting. His technique was about as perfect as it was ever going to get by this point—at least, that’s certainly what it seemed like. But the efficiency of his muscles was a different story.

This was what he imagined Wolverine must feel like, with his regeneration ability. Able to stand there and lift weights and heal while lifting weights, becoming stronger almost with each rep.

That was how Xavier was feeling as he ran. Maybe that’s how Hugh Jackman got so buff…

Each new rank brought him closer and closer to his goal. But even if it reached Rank 50, he knew the Running Skill alone wouldn’t be enough to push his Speed to 1,000. He was also getting incredibly worried about his ability to gain levels, considering he needed a billion Mastery Points just to get to level 62.

A billion. It was such an absurd number. Whenever he saw it on his status screen it made him frown and shake his head. He was hoping that when he got to E Grade, Mastery Points would be depicted differently—like how the conversion of Spirit Coins was different for each Grade.

How in this world or any other am I supposed to get to Level 100, when it’s going to take probably twenty waves just for me to gain a single level?

When that thought had come, Xavier had pushed it away. That was tomorrow’s problem. Today was all about gaining attribute points.

So far, since Xavier had been integrated into the Greater Universe, he’d gained perhaps two points in Speed from his non-skill training alone. Considering how consistently he was gaining ranks in Running, he knew he would reach Rank 50 by the time the first twenty-four hours of the countdown timer was up. Doing the math, he found he needed to gain an additional seventeen points if he were going to reach the threshold.

In the first five hours, he’d gained five. That’s how much more efficiently his body had been working.

He just hoped he would be able to keep it up.

As for Strength, being his weakest stat, he knew he really needed to push it. And though he’d discovered a way to train, he knew that he couldn’t rely on any one source for his attribute points. Part of him wondered if he could gain any new titles, but no titles had been forthcoming. Not since he’d defeated his first E Grade.

You’d think, after all I’d done with these waves, I would have gotten something more for it.

Fortunately, he hadn’t yet assimilated all of the materials that Justin had gathered for him. Xavier still worried that he would soon hit a hard limit as to how many different materials he was able to assimilate. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to assimilate more than fifty different properties while he was still in F Grade, as each time he’d assimilated something he’d gained a single rank. Though that theory had been somewhat blown out of the water when he’d assimilated that E Grade shard and gained six ranks in one go.

Still, even if there was a limit, right now he figured it was worth reaching it if it helped get him out of this miss.

Justin had dismantled far more than just wolvens for Xavier. Xavier had brought him back corpses of several Winged Bears, Giant Spiders, and Flame Chimeras. Though he was fine assimilating properties from a bear beast, he did sour at the thought of the spider beast making him grow extra legs.

Fortunately it doesn’t work like that… at least, it hasn’t yet. Though if it turned me into Spider-man, that would be pretty darn cool too.

Justin had handed Xavier several things from the beasts. From the Winged Bears he’d gotten a feather, a fang, and a claw. From the Giant Spiders he’d gotten a pincer and—ugh—an eye. And from the Flame Chimera he’d gotten a lion’s tooth and a snake fang.

None of these were things Xavier wanted to ingest, yet he did so for each and every one.

Assimilating all of these ingredients had taken a bit of time. He’d managed to acquire enough of each to ingest and assimilate them ten times—something he wasn’t about to do for the E Grade Elemental Hydra’s material.

Not that he didn’t have enough. Oh, he had plenty of its fangs, and could cut plenty of slivers off them. He simply worried about what would happen if he ingested them.

I’d probably just die faster.

As he assimilated more and more of the ingredients, he felt… changeshappening in his body. Changes that made him once more doubt the Assimilate Properties skill.

These impurities are normally purged by the body. And I’m instead making them a part of me. What… what does that mean for me? What does being “impure” mean in this Greater Universe?

He constantly ran his tongue along his teeth. Sharper. He looked at his skin. Grey. His fingernails… they looker overgrown. Sharp. More like claws than anything else. He didn’t have a mirror, but after he’d assimilated the Giant Spider Eye, he wondered if that had changed him too. His vision didn’t seem any different.

Even though these things changed him, he didn’t stop. He couldn’tstop. Consuming all of these properties? It was working—it was giving him exactly what he needed to advance. The skill he’d gained back on the battlefield with the elven and human armies was feeling incredibly overpowered now. He could tolerate its downsides.

He didn’t mind looking like a beast if it made him more powerful.

In those twenty-four hours, speed was the first of his physical attributes to hit the 1,000-point threshold. A surge of energy ripped through his body and mind. Everything shifted. He was in the middle of a wave when it happened. His enemies always felt slow when he compared them to himself, unless he was facing an E Grade. Now, it was as though they were moving through molasses.

Strength, previously his weakest attribute, came next. Most of the things he consumed seemed to improve to the Strength attribute—something he was damned glad for, as even with Tissue Regeneration, he simply hadn’t been able to push his body hard enough during the breaks from the waves.

Though he had gained thirteen attribute points in Strength for his efforts, it was an absolute drop in the bucket compared with assimilating things into his body.

I’ll be able to gain more by training in the future. Thirteen attribute points might not seem like a lot in comparison, but I wasn’t training in optimum conditions, nor did I have the requisite time to dedicate myself to it.

There was potential there. In physical training, especially with Tissue Regeneration—but he hadn’t been able to gain the Strength Training skill, if one such skill existed, from hit efforts.

I’ll have to try again in the future.

Having over 1,000 points in Strength made him feel more powerful than he ever had. He didn’t need his scythe-staff to separate his enemies’ limbs from their bodies. He found himself wielding Soultaker with one hand, slashing it left and right as he grabbed soldiers with his offhand, crushing their skulls through their helmets.

It was an insane rush. A rush that reminded him of his occasional urge to have chosen the path of the warrior. But he didn’t need to go down the path of the warrior to be capable of fighting like one. He’d found that out the first time he’d killed a goblin by smashing in its skull.

This has to have some consequences I’m not aware of, Xavier thought, contemplating how many attribute points Assimilate Properties had offered him—more than his strongest titles. This has got to be too good to be true.

He pushed past those reservations, however, as he knew if he didn’t, he would die.

When he hit his Toughness threshold, he felt as though he’d been carved from solid rock. Felt like nothing could break through his skin. For the most part, his skin still felt soft to the touch, but there was a roughness to it that hadn’t been there before. He didn’t know if that was because of the Toughness attribute being so high, or because of the different properties he’d assimilated into his body.

But he didn’t much care. He’d bloody well done it—and with time to spare. He looked at his assimilate properties attribute, barely believing how much it offered him.

Assimilate Properties – Rank 17

This is an epic skill that grants you the ability to assimilate foreign properties into your body, mind, and soul if the perfect conditions are met.

List of Current Assimilated Properties:

Crucible Steel (Muscular Structure) – +60 Toughness

Wolven Fang (Muscular Structure) – +60 Strength

Wolven Claw (Muscular Structure) – +60 Speed

Sandstone (Muscular Structure) – +60 Toughness

Winged Bear Fang (Muscular Structure) – +60 Strength

Winged Bear Claw (Muscular Structure) – +60 Toughness

Winged Bear Feather (Muscular Structure) – +60 Speed

Giant Spider Pincer (Muscular Structure) – +60 Strength

Giant Spider Eye (Muscular Structure) – +60 Intelligence

Chimera Fang (Muscular Structure) – +60 Speed

Chimera Tooth (Muscular Structure) – +60 Strength

Unidentified E Grade Material (Muscular Structure) – +52 Strength, Toughness, and Speed

By the time the first twenty-four hours were up, Xavier had reached Level 62 and his first goal—every one of his attributes had passed the 1,000-point threshold.

All he needed to do now was gain thirty-eight more levels and advance to E Grade in the next twenty-four hours.

Sounds easy enough…