Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 2) - Chapter 27 - There’s Nothing That Can Stand in My Way

Attempting to assimilate Wolven Fang into muscular structure…

Pain stabbed at his stomach. But it was nowhere near as intense as the pain he’d felt when he’d first done this, as though that first time had eased the way for the second.

A minute or so passed until another notification appeared.

Assimilation in progress…

The material you are assimilating has various properties.

You may only draw from one.

Choose from the following:

1. Speed enhancement.

2. Strength enhancement.

3. Piercing damage enhancement.

Holy crap!

Xavier’s epiphany had paid off. Big time. He tapped a finger on the stone floor, looking at the different options.

As he’d been aiming to enhance his Speed—and that happened to be at the top of the list—he almost went for that without thinking. But that would have been foolish. He already had a way to increase his Speed by ranking up the Running skill. In fact, currently, out of the three attributes he needed to get to one thousand points, Speed was already the highest—if only by a small margin.

Piercing damage he could easily do without. Sure, it would be nice to have his staff-scythe blade cut through enemies even easier, but it was hardly the priority.

No, the choice he needed to make was clear.

Strength, he thought, willing the selection.

Assimilation is complete.

Biological impurities of Wolven Fang have been assimilated into muscular structure.

You have gained +10 Strength!

Assimilate Properties has reached Rank 2!

Xavier smiled. He couldn’t help himself. He burst up to his feet and pumped his fist in the air. “Finally!” He’d done it. He’d ranked up Assimilate Properties. That bastard of a skill had been giving him nothing but trouble since he’d started trying to improve it, and now he’d made the first step.

Compared to all of his other skills, getting to Rank 2 didn’t seem like a big deal. Nor did the measly few points in Strength make a major difference. But when you’re pushing at a boulder for weeks without it ever budging and it finally does, it doesn’t matter how much easier you pushed other boulders in the past—it feels like way more of an accomplishment than anything else.

Xavier released a long breath and looked at the description for the skill.

Assimilate Properties – Rank 2

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) – +12 Toughness

Wolven Fang (Muscular Structure) – +12 Strength

Xavier frowned. Toughness and Strength had only gained an extra two points when the skill reached Rank 2. Assimilate Properties didn’t seem near as helpful as even his Running skill. Ranks in that skill—and most others—earned him a higher percentage modifier, which went a long way when it came to boosting his stats.

Still, he couldn’t complain. This was only the beginning, after all. The skill had untapped potential. He would find out just how far it could be pushed.

What else does gaining another Rank in this skill give me?

Perhaps it would simply make assimilating the next material easier. He supposed he would find that out soon enough.

Xavier looked over at the others. They were staring at him, curious looks on their faces from his little outburst of joy from his success.

“One minute,” Adviser Kalren said. He nodded toward the Endless Horde and their endless waves, pushing Xavier straight back into reality.

Xavier just wanted to sigh. Not a single moment to celebrate in this place. But he was used to that. Used to the lack of sleep. Used to be constantly on, never able to slow down for more than a few minutes—and even in those minutes still ensuring he was always working toward something.

He forced a smile onto his face as he turned toward the next wave. The Endless Horde. The fifth floor. The Tower of Champions. The System. All of these things wanted to break him. Would relish in his being defeated. In him dying or giving up.

But Xavier wasn’t going to do either. No, he would keep pushing. He would push until he had nothing left to give.

And that’s not something I’m going to let happen.

This fight. These waves. They weren’t endless. They had an end. One he would reach. And the time that he took doing this—the weeks that had gone by and the months that surely would—would be but a blip in his life. A life he would ensure went on for hundreds—no, thousands—of years.

He’d seen the expressions on those E Grade wave bosses when he’d first faced them. Seen their confidence. Their smugness or stony calm. He’d turned the tables around and made them feel true fear before defeating them.

And I’ll do that with every foe I face. There’s nothing that can stand in my way.

~

There’s nothing that can stand in my way.

The thought crossed Melissa Donavan’s mind as she waded through the bog. The damned ground beneath her was like quicksand, pulling her farther and farther down with each step she tried to make. But she wasn’t going to simply give up and let it. She was going to keep pushing.

Halfway through the bog and she’d sunk down to her chest.

There was movement behind her. Swift footsteps. As gentle as those bastard elves were on their feet, the noise still filtered through the trees and reached her ears.

Melissa swore inwardly.

After days of being the hunter, she’d finally become the hunted. The elves weren’t foolish. They’d noticed their numbers dwindling. Noticed that whenever one elf stepped into the forest alone, they were unlikely to ever return. So now, the elves never left their camp alone—they went in twos.

As though that’s enough to stop me.

Melissa was too good at stalking her prey. Too good at staying out of sight. But now they’d turned her into prey. At their portal—the glowing, pulsing mass that stood at the centre of their camp, protected at all times—one of the elves had sat cross-legged on the ground. His head had been down, his fingers interlaced together before him. He looked as though he were in prayer.

And his prayers had been answered when, roughly an hour later, a beast came through the portal.

Melissa had been in one of the trees nearby. High above the elves where they couldn’t see her. The canopy was thick enough that the only thing they’d be able to spot were her eyes staring back down at them, an eventuality that fortunately hadn’t come to pass.

The beast that stepped out of the portal was like nothing she’d ever seen. It acted almost like a dog in the way it moved, but it was more like a giant lizard. It was about the height of a pony, and maybe twice as long. The elf that had been praying on the ground for the past hour threw a chunk of meat to the beast. It opened a mouth riddled with rows of teeth and chomped on the meat excitedly, wagging its massive tail behind it.

Another of the elves brought forth an arrow. It stepped up to the beast, slightly hesitantly—as though wary it would bite his arm off—and held up the arrow in offering.

The lizard—after Melissa had scanned it, she found it was called an Obatri—sniffed the arrow near the fletching.

The arrow had been Melissa’s, and the lizard was sniffing for her scent. She must have left the smallest hint of sweat behind on it from holding it. It wouldn’t be much. She doubted a normal hound would be able to catch her scent from that alone.

But this Obatri lizard beast caught her scent instantly. After it had sniffed, it had looked directly at her up in the tree.

And now she was on the run.

It wasn’t just the elves’ feet that she could hear coming after her. It was that damned lizard. It wasn’t near as stealthy and quiet as the elves that were its masters. No, this damned beast trudged through the forest like a bull in a China shop.

Stuck in the bog, Melissa stopped trying to wade through it. She breathed in deeply, then let it out slowly, calming her body and mind. She pulled a rope out of one of her Storage Rings. She smirked, looking at the rings on her fingers. So far, she’d recovered three from the elves she’d killed.

Not all of the elves possessed Storage Rings, but she was glad when they did. Inside each of the rings she’d found supplies—this rope was one of them. Melissa hastily tied the rope around the shaft of an arrow. The other end, she tied around her wrist so it wouldn’t go missing.

She nocked the arrow, aimed at a tree, and loosed with an exhalation.

Thunk.

The arrow slammed into the tree so hard that the arrowhead came out the other side. She tugged on the rope, glad the shafts of those arrows were stronger than they looked.

Melissa deposited her bow into the Storage Ring. Slowly—almost agonisingly so—she dragged herself up the rope, one hand at a time. There was a loud sucking sound as she came out of the bog, a sound that made her cringe and scrunch up her face. Not the most pleasant thing she’d ever heard.

The sounds of pursuit grew ever louder. They would be on her soon. The lizard-beast would scent her coming through this bog and head straight for it.

Come on. She pulled harder, faster. She needed to get out of that damned bog. You can do this, Melissa. You have to do this.

She’d gained what felt like a tremendous amount of Strength since the System integrated Earth, even if Strength hadn’t been her main attribute. It was remarkable, what she was now able to do.

As the sounds of her pursuers grew nearer and nearer, she finally made it out of the bog. She kept pulling on the rope, letting it take her a little ways up the trunk of the tree until she grabbed onto one of the branches and swung herself up to it, landing atop it in a crouch. She then jumped up to the next one and quickly got into position, summoning her bow back to her hand.

Melissa nocked an arrow, drew the string until it was softly digging into her cheek. Her lips twitched up at the sides as the Obatri padded into the clearing—into what looked like a clearing.

At the beginning of the bog, where the trees ended and the “clearing” began, Melissa had covered the soft ground with leaves, grass, and fallen branches to make it look like solid ground. These things were light enough that they often took half a day to sink into the bog, and so it was a task she’d been diligently repeating each morning.

It was her insurance in case the elves ever came after her. She’d only be able to outrun them for so long. Besides, she didn’t want to outrun them. That would only have them run her out of this forest.

No, she wanted to outmanoeuvre them.

And that’s exactly what she’d done.

The massive lizard didn’t pause as it broke through the trees. It kept running, in that odd way that lizards ran, coming up on two legs almost comically. The elves—a good ten of them—were directly behind the beast. They, too, were not slowing.

This turned her small smile into a full one. The lizard-beast and the elves that followed it fell right into her trap. The bog was deceptive. She herself had almost gotten sucked deep into it the first time she’d encountered it. At first it simply felt like soft ground, until you began to sink. And by the time you realised what was going on it was too late to simply turn back.

Then, panic began to settle in. If you could not contain that panic, it turned into swift movements that only made the person sink faster.

Melissa didn’t know if the elves had bogs where they’d come from. Frankly, she didn’t care—she knew it wouldn’t matter either way.

For they’d been snared in her trap. The Obatri and the ten elves were swiftly sinking into the bog. Considering their superhuman levels of Strength, Speed, and Toughness, she was mostly sure they would be able to get themselves out of this mess if they were careful enough.

But that would take time.

Melissa loosed the first arrow.

There’s nothing that can stand in my way.