Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 9) - Chapter 55 - It’ll Probably Just Eat You

Xavier’s shoulders slumped and he was breathing hard. His wings flapped sluggishly, only just keeping him in the air. He’d used 1/30th of the power Galadsea’s inhabitants had gifted him. Through the Energy Buff spell, he’d dumped that energy into the time alteration spell that encompassed only him.

His channels burned.

The pain was far more excruciating than he’d expected, though he’d been through worse. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him, it was the sudden sense of weakness. Using the power in that way had come at a greater cost than he’d imagined.

Yet he supposed the last time he’d used a similar power it had exploded his hand.

Though, as he used this power in an entirely different way—to power a spell, not merely as sheer destructive force—it took a different kind of toll on him.

Still flapping his wings, he shut his eyes and focused on healing his energy channels, wondering if there was a way he could reinforce them.

Energy Channels refinements detected. Grant permission?

Xavier smiled. The feel of the notification arriving had forced his eyes open. It was a notification from his Combat Assistance Overlay—from Roln. Xavier granted permission in the same heartbeat he saw the notification.

The refinements didn’t do anything to his energy channels directly, but they would alter how he used his energy channels the next time.

Thanks, Roln.

Don’t thank me yet. You’re going to need to use this energy a lot more than once for me to get the refinements just right. Using the energy in this way… your body is taking an intensely high toll.

Are you going to tell me you don’t think it’s a good idea?

Even if I did, it won’t change your mind.

Oh, you’re not calling me stubborn, are you?

I won’t dignify that with a response.

The S Grade True Dragon looked essentially frozen outside the time dilation field. Xavier drew in a deep breath. It took several hours for his channels to heal from the damage that influx of energy had done to him, but even as those hours passed, he didn’t see the True Dragon move even a fraction.

He’d thought his normal time dilation field’s strength was high, but this… this was unimaginably powerful. He was moving so much faster than the second time dilation field he had active that he could no longer converse with Queen Aecia at all.

When his energy channels healed, he grinned and looked down at his body. As long as he could stay inside the field, taking that kind of damage wouldn’t be a problem.

Don’t get cocky, Xavier. A time dilation field isn’t an actual shield. If that thing gets a hold of you, it won’t let go until you die. Hell, it’ll probably just eat you.

I won’t let it get a hold of me.

Xavier tilted his head as he stared at the S Grade True Dragon. For the first time since he’d seen the thing transform into this, Xavier used his Immortal Soul lens on it again, raking it with his enhanced spiritual sense, once more feeling the immense power it held within.

The last time he’d felt that power he’d been C Grade. Now, a whole advancement latter, that power still made him feel like his enemy was a world apart in strength.

He shuddered.

But he wasn’t about to let a pesky little thing like fear stop him from facing this thing.

Xavier started manifesting spell patterns, hundreds per second, initiating them the moment they materialised. These were normal spell patterns, enhanced only by his power and not the power of the planet. He needed to get an idea of just how powerful his enemy was. Needed to get an idea of just how strong its defences were.

These were spells of all different types. Elemental spells that shot shards of ice, bolts of lightning, razor winds, and sharpened rock straight at the dragon. Soul apparitions materialised around him as well from a massive Soul Strike spell—thousands upon thousands of the apparitions appeared. He even cast Soul Sacrifice, creating a tunnel to the Otherworld to bring powerful spirits in to fight for him.

He cast Soul Shatter, Spirit Break, Core Burn, Untethered—all spells that he’d relied on in the past. All spells that had won impossible battles for him.

And he cast other spells, too, ones he’d picked up over more recent years. Blades of raw energy. Balls of pure destructive force. Weakening spells, poisoning spells, and other powerful debuffs.

Then, bones grew out from both wrists. Bones that came together and formed a powerful bow. He crafted the bowstring from sinew he grew from his own body. The arrows, too, came from his body—bones he grew for this exact purpose.

They were the most powerful arrows he’d ever used.

Grow, nock, pull, loose. Grow, nock, pull, loose. Over and over and over, until he’d loosed a hundred thousand of the things. They weren’t merely normal shots, either. The arrows were enhanced by every single energy as his disposal, including Reality Energy.

They would explode on contact. They would rip his enemy apart.

At least, that was what he hoped.

When he’d exhausted every ranged offensive spell or weapon he had at his disposal, Xavier paused. He’d expanded his personal time dilation field only a few feet in front of him, so mostly he just saw energy coalescing in the air from all the spells he’d cast, and the arrows all bunched up together—he’d had to fly through the air around the True Dragon, loosing the arrows at it from every different angle so they wouldn’t simply hit each other and become useless.

Every spell and arrow hung frozen in the air, for it couldn’t reach his enemy while they were in such different time streams. To see how much damage he inflicted to his enemy he would need to allow the spells to reach it.

And he would need to allow the S Grade True Dragon to move forward in time long enough to be harmed.

That was the part of this he was most worried about.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to be anywhere near his enemy to test this.

Xavier had never been accused of having an abundance of caution, but when it came to facing the S Grade, he thought it wise to use as much caution as he had at his disposal. He summoned a drone and had it create a time dilation field of its own, the most powerful one that it could, then he teleported straight into space above the planet and looked down at the True Dragon.

The time stream he was inside was still vastly different to the one the drone inhabited. He had to slow it down fair bit so that he wasn’t waiting weeks to see what happened next. When the drone’s time stream was moving in what looked like slow motion to him, he made the drone expand that field.

He didn’t expand it straight to the S Grade True Dragon. Instead, he expanded it at the slowest speed of the spells and arrows moving through the air toward his enemy. That way the instant the True Dragon was touched by the time dilation field, every one of those spells would hit simultaneously.

Roln materialised a few feet away from him. The mental construct crossed his arms and tilted his head back, staring down at the scene. Of course, he was only truly seeing the scene through Xavier’s senses.

The mental construct didn’t say anything, but his look of doubt was clear.

Xavier released a breath, then had the drone push its time dilation field onto the True Dragon.

Every single spell and arrow slammed into the dragon. The power was absolutely immense. Xavier was sure that every one of his attacks would have been enough to take down, or at least seriously injure, one of the A Grade captains he’d faced in the Empire of Servitude’s armada.

That was how strong he’d become.

And he was hitting the S Grade with thousands of spells and hundreds of thousands of arrows.

As every one of those attacks slammed into his enemy he started to wonder if he would even need to use the rest of the energy he’d been gifted by the people of this planet. There was a chance he’d never really needed their help anyway, except for perhaps in the enhancement of his time dilation field.

Roln glanced at him with a pitying look as he had that thought, and he was sure the dead Wanderer thought he was crazy.

Xavier was examining the S Grade True Dragon with his Immortal Soul lens the entire time, trying to ascertain just how much damage he was inflicting.

Energy rippled over the surface of the True Dragon’s scales. His Immortal Soul lens told him this was a powerful defensive energy. It felt like Toughness Energy but… different. Xavier frowned.

His Immortal Soul lens hadn’t detected this energy before… but how could that be possible? How could the S Grade True Dragon possess energy he hadn’t identified inside it?

With his Immortal Soul lens, Xavier had the ability to pierce through every veil he’d encountered. He’d even been able to pierce through the chamber Arrack had imprisoned him in.

So what the hell was going on here?

His mind, already split into multiple parts, was working on the problem, trying to ascertain just what was happening. Xavier had been able to sense the S Grade True Dragon’s energy from the start. That was how he’d been able to tell it was S Grade in the first place—because Roln had recognised the power of that energy.

With the ability to sense its energy, Xavier could also sense its cores. It had the normal number of cores for a Denizen from this universe, and none of those cores contained this strange, Toughness-like energy.

So what the hell is it?

Inside a mental space within his mind, where time in reality came to a standstill even within his personal time dilation field, Xavier examined what had happened with the dragon’s energy channels. He watched the memory replay over and over again and came to a startling conclusion—he couldn’t sense where that energy had come from.

He sensed it appear, and before that, replaying the memory at the slowest possible speed, he could sense it being fed through the S Grade’s energy channels… but it wasn’t coming from any of its Denizen cores. It certainly wasn’t coming from its Toughness core.

It came from what appeared to be an empty spot inside the True Dragon.

Roln… What the hell is going on? I thought my Immortal Soul lens was the most powerful spiritual sense out there? It has the power of my soul…

There was a short pause before the mental construct responded. Xavier could almost feel the wheels of the dead Wanderer’s mind turning.

It is, and it isn’t. There are still things out there you can’t sense. Though I didn’t think they would be something you would encounter so soon.

You keep warning me not to fight this thing. Tell me. Does… does becoming an S Grade give it another core?

There was another pause.

No. There are only six cores under the System that governs this corner of the multiverse. At least, until you acquired a Reality Core. And even so, the Reality Core can only be gifted with Reality Energy.

So… where is it drawing its energy from?

I don’t know.

Xavier let that sink in.

Roln, a dead Wanderer who’d been around for billions—nay, trillions—of years, who had been far more powerful than this S Grade True Dragon Xavier was facing, had no idea where this strange energy was coming from. Roln, who had more knowledge than Xavier could contemplate…

Is this what you were worried about? Is this why you were warning me?

No, Xavier. This isn’t something I have any knowledge of. True Dragons have been encountered by other Wanderers and have been studied by some. But Wanderers rarely share their knowledge. S Grades are powerful enough in their own right to be something you shouldn’t yet face. But a True Dragon is an unpredictable entity. It isn’t constrained by the System’s rules. Its transformation isn’t a part of this system.

Xavier raised his chin. That… makes it an anomaly, doesn’t it?

It does.

The System almost destroyed me twice for being an anomaly.

Something tells me the System isn’t going to deal with it for you.

No. Xavier paused. And I don’t want it to.

Xavier let a little bit of time pass in reality and watched, eyes slowly widening, fear sliding down his spine, every single one of his attacks was nullified by the True Dragon’s strange defensive energy.