The process of pushing out the impurities from Xavier’s body didn’t take as long as he’d imagined.
When he’d begun, pushing out that first bit of terrible-smelling sludge, he’d thought the entire process would take him weeks, maybe even months. But once he’d gotten started, pushing more and more of it out of him—the smell overwhelming him no matter how hard he worked on compartmentalising it—the process seemed almost…
Automatic.
It spurred somethin...
2025-09-18 19:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Once Xavier had successfully drawn and initiated the Willpower Infusion spell pattern, he felt like a new man.
After all the pain he’d gone through getting back to this point, after finding every part of him shattered, having to rebuild himself from a starting point that was less than zero, it was invigorating to discover not everything had been damaged.
When he first used the Willpower Infusion spell pattern in that clearing, finding that not only had his control not d...
2025-09-17 19:00:10 +0000 UTC
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The walls to The Collector’s city were absurdly large. Xavier craned his neck all the way back and peered up at the top. The battlements above were so high he couldn’t see them with his Farscope lens.
Xavier’s spiritual sense washed over everything. He ceased the cycling of his eight energies and narrowed his focus to Reality, Celestial, and Spirit Energy—all of which increased the power of his spiritual sense with the appropriate cycling patterns.
He’d burned a good amo...
2025-09-17 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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After six months inside that forest clearing near Collinsville, the breakthrough Xavier had been chasing finally came.
It was not earth-shattering. The clouds above did not part to allow the sun to bathe him in its warmth and light. The System did not suddenly announce he had achieved a great thing by providing him with a title for his efforts.
But it meant everything to Xavier as a trickle of Celestial Energy finally entered his body.
For the five months that he’d been al...
2025-09-16 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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“I’m not leaving this house!”
The woman’s words shook the very walls they were so loud.
“Three hundred years I’ve been in this house. Made it just perfect. Raised several generations of Damascus here. Still am! Your great-great-great-granddaughter is about to have her first, and I am not abandoning her to galivant off to some backwater world in a weak sector because you made a rash decision!” Erina Damascus sighed. Shut her eyes. Then looke...
2025-09-16 19:00:08 +0000 UTC
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The vast grey throne room inside the Sovereign’s Satellite Fortress fell eerily silent for one long, stretched out moment following Xavier’s request.
“You want Damascus as your boon?” Sovereign Rewke Fouran raised his chin, turned his gaze to Damascus somewhat thoughtfully. “Why, so you can kill him?” He frowned, returning his attention to Xavier. “No. That is out of the question.”
“I want him freed from your service so he may come into mine.” Xavier faced Pali...
2025-09-15 19:00:10 +0000 UTC
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The energy seeped out of Xavier’s body almost the moment it had entered. When he’d felt it flow into him, he’d opened his eyes and smiled, reflexively pulling his hands from Justin’s to pump his fists.
The elation he felt was intense, far stronger than he’d expected, but the action rocked him out of his calm, focused state, allowing the Celestial Energy to flow straight back out of him before he’d even released it was going.
The burst of energy he’d received had felt...
2025-09-15 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Sovereign Fouran didn’t utter a single word as they passed the gulf between them. The True B Grade ruler folded his hands in front of him and waited with a silent patience until the two men stood before him.
Sovereign Rewke Fouran looked exactly as the Information Packets had shown him. He appeared as though he were a man in his early forties by unenhanced human standards, with slight lines marring his otherwise smooth face. The advancement to B Grade would have erased any signs of ag...
2025-09-11 19:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Xavier’s mind was chaos.
Sitting on that boulder in the clearing a few miles from Collinsville, his old party lost in meditation and cultivation nearby, the elf spirit Rhaalir silent beside him, Xavier delved deep inside himself.
Before his cores had been shattered, his mind had been an ordered place. Not perfectly ordered, but it had a certain logic to it. One Liana had first helped him find.
Now, all of that had changed.
His emotions were almost completely unchaine...
2025-09-11 19:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“You look confused.”
Palini heard the voice behind him. Fear shot through his body like lightning. Every hair stood on end. There hadn’t even been a perceptible shift in the air to alert him of someone’s presence.
He turned. Slowly, for that voice, the shock, had frozen him. Never once in his hundreds of years of life had he responded to a threat without alacrity.
Xavier Collins, the dragonkin Palani had just killed and placed inside his Storage Ring, was standing tw...
2025-09-10 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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“I assume you have some sort of plan?” Siobhan asked.
Xavier would have run, would have flown, back to the portal to Earth if he wasn’t mindful of the others having to keep up. As it was, he was walking so swiftly they each had to jog just to match his pace.
Walking back through the city of Mareketh was a completely different experience to what it had been when they’d arrived here. He still felt vulnerable. That hadn’t changed. How could he not, given what he’...
2025-09-10 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Palini Damascus was a strike or two away from incapacitating the infuriating B Grade dragonkin that was proving to be far more of a nuisance than he’d imagined when his opponent disappeared again. His sword would have cut off the Denizen’s hand at the wrist or at least injured his dominant arm if he’d a chance to follow through.
Mind still as stone.
Palini did not falter at the sudden teleportation. His enemy had already shown that ability, even if he shouldn’t ha...
2025-09-09 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Mareketh was exactly as he remembered it. The time that had passed since his last visit hadn’t changed the place at all. The streets were as bustling as ever, the people just as varied.
It was strange walking through the markets without his Farscope ability. As unnatural as the ability to see everything around him sounded, it had become normal for him. Walking around without it was an eerie experience, one that made him feel like danger could be lurking anywhere, and he would...
2025-09-09 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Xavier had never moved faster in his life.
The instant he arrived inside the Roving Seed Base, he was able to cast all his spells again. Teleportation and Time Alteration were the first ones he’d cast, and he’d had Pocket Time Stream active briefly after creating that first portal to rejuvenate his cooldowns. Body Cultivation, of course, was active as well.
Celestial Energy and Reality Energy coursed through his channels, cycling in their respective patterns, strengthening his...
2025-09-08 19:00:14 +0000 UTC
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The notification loomed in front of Xavier’s vision as he stood a few feet from the Tower of Champions’ tavern doors.
I don’t meet the requirements to remain within the tower?
Xavier didn’t even know the tower had requirements he needed to meet for him to remain. Though through all he’d been through, he’d barely given a thought to the fact that the System hadn’t prompted him to go to the next floor. Champions usually couldn’t take this long of a b...
2025-09-08 19:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Your cores are shattered.
Xavier sat on the floor of the Staging Room in the Tower of Champions, his legs crossed beneath him, hands on knees, eyes closed.
Everything was black.
Which would have been perfectly normal, considering his eyes were closed. But it wasn’t normal. Xavier had a Farscope. A red lens in his right, non-dominant eye. Even when meditating in a safe place like his Staging Room, Xavier never deactivated the scope.
The Farscope abil...
2025-09-04 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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What in all hells!?
One moment, Palini had been inside Containment Room 238B, the next he was rolling on the grass under a grey sky that looked startlingly like the containment room’s ceiling, except several hundred times larger.
Back in the room, he’d seized the D Grade swordsman by the collar and slammed him into the wall. The man had been insolent, acting all cavalier, as though he wasn’t afraid of where he’d found himself. The physical threat should h...
2025-09-04 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Bolts of brilliant white lightning sprang to life from the Soul Strike spell pattern, filling the chamber with their glow before shifting and materialising into ten thousand soul apparitions that launched themselves toward the Arakashinai Queen.
The soul apparitions were stopped at the edge of Xavier’s time dilation field.
Xavier paid no attention to the pressure on his body, mind, and soul from holding so many spell patterns active. Instead, he expanded his time dilation field....
2025-09-03 19:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Xavier sat on a very uncomfortable chair and drummed his fingers on the steel table in the middle of the interrogation room. His heavy, reinforced bones and hardened skin, coupled with the increase to the gravity in the room, made each impact sound like a large stone slamming into a steel wall. He could have made the drumming gentle, except he didn’t want to.
The man across from him narrowed his eyes at Xavier’s fingers but otherwise didn’t mention, or seem bothered, by the noise....
2025-09-03 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Xavier hovered over the alien Arakashinai city, his black wings flapping lazily as he stared at the notification before him.
21,802 Kill Notifications Counted.
The number was absolutely absurd. He knew he could kill these Arak drones with ease, but… A single soul infused into Soul Strike would kill forty-three of them?
The moment stretched as Xavier hung there. The silence in the area following his attack almost made him forget that he’...
2025-09-02 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Palini narrowed his eyes.
Something had changed. Something small, but he was trained to notice such things. The person he was observing—a mere low-level D Grade swordsman—shifted almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t the first strange thing about this man. Palini could have sworn the man’s form had flickered a moment ago, as though a field had engulfed him, but only for the barest moment, happening so swiftly even he couldn’t perceive what it was.
Time dilation, perhaps?
2025-09-02 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Time once more lost all meaning to Xavier.
When he’d worried the Arakashinai Queen would be able to notice what he’d done to its drones even with time moving at the slowest crawl he could manage outside his time dilation field, he’d rushed to her chamber.
That sense of urgency had left him when he’d realised the queen itself had never had a confrontation that wasn’t conducted at a distance with her drones.
Inside the chamber, he did not feel the weight of the queen...
2025-09-01 19:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Xavier stepped out of the portal he’d created into a bustling city. His time dilation field was still wrapped around him, altered so time outside of it moved as slow as he could manage.
The marketplace he now stood within was filled with tall buildings on either side that stretched upward at least twenty floors each. The first few floors of those buildings housed different stores, while the floors higher were all apartments. Various different species of Denizens walked the streets. Hu...
2025-09-01 14:18:33 +0000 UTC
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Xavier flew through the different underground tunnels of the Arakashinai home world, moving across hundreds of miles, flying over one vast stone city after the next with skyscrapers taller than any back on Earth. Cities filled with nothing but mindless drones—or, at least, fragile minded drones without their own will or personality.
He was headed toward the Arakashinai queen’s chamber.
His time dilation field was wrapped tightly around him. Time outside of the field w...
2025-08-28 19:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Xavier stood outside the Roving Seed Base. Gathered behind him were his old party, Howard, Siobhan, and Justin, along with the members of their family. All people he considered family now.
He raised his chin as he stared at the base. He couldn’t see into the base from outside of it—not anymore. Over the years they’d been inside of it, he’d acquired several upgrades. One of those upgrades was a sort of cloaking mechanism. To the outside, the base looked like nothing more...
2025-08-28 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Controlling the Willpower Infusion spell pattern with enough precision to enter an Arak drone’s mind was still only the first step toward what Xavier had wished to accomplish with these minds.
It was a step he hadn’t even known he’d needed to take toward this goal, but one he was glad he’d taken.
A new realm of possibilities when it came to his spell patterns had opened up when he’d first activated the Willpower Infusion spell and been able to use it on a specific target...
2025-08-27 19:00:09 +0000 UTC
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The blue-robed man smiled. “Ye—” He frowned at the ceiling. “Technically, no. You are not my father. But Xavier Collins is my father. Honestly, I’m surprised you came to that on your own. You’re not always that fast.”
Xavier was surprised himself. When the idea occurred to him, it felt… Foolish. Like he was grasping for something. Like he was wanting there to be more to the story. More to the interaction.
Yet the spirit couldn’t lie.
“Wh...
2025-08-27 19:00:08 +0000 UTC
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I held three hundred spell patterns all active at once, Xavier said in response to the blue-robed spirit.
And the spell patterns would have been glowing, as energy was primed and ready to enter each of them. This is akin to holding all of your energy pores open to a dam of energy ready to flood into you. The pressure you felt at simply doing this must have been incredibly intense. It would have served as a warning not to continue. Is this true?
Xavier pur...
2025-08-26 19:00:07 +0000 UTC
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In the frozen pocket of time, experiencing the Universal Pressure of holding the spell pattern for Pocket Time Stream active, Xavier stared across at a serious-looking man in blue robes that had eyes that could pierce solid stone.
The spirit didn’t utter a single word as Xavier explained how the pressure was presently pushing down on him.
He did not stop there, either.
For the first time, he explained the events that happened inside the Arakashinai Queen’s chamber to som...
2025-08-25 19:00:11 +0000 UTC
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You have gained the spell: Territory Defence
Territory Defence – Rank 150
Warning: Territory Defence is one of the two main spells in the Defender line of classes. When used in conjunction with Unity Defence, the spells will severely hinder the procurement of Mastery Points at the cost of heightened power.
This effect does not come into play if the spells are used alone.
2025-08-21 19:00:05 +0000 UTC
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