The S Grade True Dragon was unharmed.
Xavier had hit it with every single one of his most powerful spells, along with over a hundred thousand enhanced bone arrows. Every single one of those attacks had hit it simultaneously.
And it was unharmed.
He hadn’t done a single bit of damage. Not a scratch. Not a fraction of a fraction of percent of its health had been affected.
Xavier stared at the thing, mystified, and more than a little afraid, though he still didn’t feel as though he was in any real danger. That thing was trapped outside of his most powerful time dilation field yet. There was no way it could get to him.
Was there?
Inside his mental space, he took a few very long moments to compose himself. He’d expected the S Grade to be tough. Sensing the power of its energy, how could it not be? But he hadn’t expected to do no damage whatsoever.
But Xavier reassured himself with the knowledge that he hadn’t done everything he could yet. He’d only used 1/30th of the energy gifted to him by this world, and he hadn’t used any of that offensively.
Still, he couldn’t help but be blown away by just how strong that thing’s defence had been—and it had all come from what must be some sort of hidden core.
A hidden core that no one from this corner of the multiverse should even possess.
Even through all the fear, what Xavier felt most of all was a thrill running through him. A sense of excitement. This didn’t merely look like an impossible challenge, it felt like one. And there was a mystery here, too.
If he were able to figure out what that hidden core was, maybe there was chance that he would be able to possess it himself. And if he were able to take possession of another core, one that even the majority of Wanderers weren’t aware about, one that the Interdimensional Dragon itself must possess… well, then that would certainly stack up the advantages at his disposal.
Of course, getting a hold of that core was assuming a lot of things—namely, that he could defeat this thing in the first place, which was something that had just been thrown into a whole hell of a lot more doubt.
Are you ready to listen to my warnings now? Roln asked.
Xavier gritted his teeth, both in reality and inside his mental space.
No, he replied, but what he felt inside was more like, Not yet, and the mental construct would know that.
Xavier returned the main part of his consciousness to his physical body. For a long while, he did nothing more than study the strange defensive energy he could sense, trying to see if he could find where it came from, even though he’d already attempted that. Once he’d exhausted that angle, he tried to identify what made this energy different.
He had the impossible thought that if he could figure out just how the energy worked, that might mean he could figure out a way to counteract it. He didn’t even dream of being able to recreate it, however. He knew from his experience of creating artificial cores just how complicated creating a core could be. A core was more than just a battery that stored energy, it was a converter. It took one type of energy—namely Raw Celestial Energy—and turned it into another.
What he wanted most was to see how his Immortal Soul lens, through the burning of Soul Energy, might affect that strange defensive energy the True Dragon possessed. Given enough Soul Energy—perhaps used by his drones—would he be able to scatter the dragon’s defences?
Another thing that was curious was the fact that his attack on the S Grade True Dragon had been almost instantaneous. The S Grade shouldn’t have had time to react, even as powerful as it was. He couldn’t see a way it would be fast enough to perceive the attacks coming then bring up this defensive energy as a shield in time to defend against them.
Which means, the energy is always active, even if I can’t sense it when it’s not in use.
Usually, Xavier could sense when a defensive spell—or, well, any spell—was active. And yet for this, he couldn’t. It made him extra wary, to the point where he was still hovering out of Galadsea’s orbit, staring down at the True Dragon from space.
I need more of an opportunity to study this thing.
He looked at the drone that flew not far from the dragon. It was still inside its own time dilation field, and to Xavier’s eyes it moved in slow motion. He was connected to its mind, a part of his consciousness driving the empty shell that looked like him. With a sigh, he pushed that time dilation field back onto the True Dragon.
Xavier needed to observe what it was capable of. When it had first appeared, he hadn’t spent much time near it. He’d gotten the hell out of there the moment he could. He’d gone back through his memories and studied some of what the True Dragon had done, feeling the energy from it breathing fire, but he hadn’t been there when it had killed all the other Denizens around it.
He had, of course, experienced it killing his drones.
The True Dragon’s throat was already glowing red. Its gaze flicked toward the drone with incredible speed. Its maw opened wide. A stream of flame was released, engulfing the drone in an instant. Xavier felt the drone die—just as he’d felt all the other drones he’d left down there die when he’d fled following the transformation.
The instant the drone died, its time dilation field died with it.
Xavier examined the event in great depth but, as he suspected, he didn’t encounter anything new. The defensive energy was nowhere to be seen, and why should it be? The True Dragon hadn’t had any reason to use it.
Xavier knew what he needed to do next. The problem was, he was worried about what the outcome would be, and what that would mean for what he was trying to do.
But there was no point hovering there and getting stuck inside his own thoughts.
Xavier grew the bone-bow once more, stringing it with his own sinew, enhancing it with every energy at his disposal. Then, he grew an arrow, enhancing it in the same way, except more.
He used another 1/30th of the energy gifted to him by the people of this world. To do this, he needed to create a pocket space on the tip of the arrow, one strong enough to hold the destructive energy he was placing inside it. This was something he hadn’t been able to fully test. He’d tested using a pocket space in his arrows, but he couldn’t test this until now.
The pain was excruciating.
He couldn’t simply move the pocket space that was already inside his body into the arrow. He had to transfer the energy from one pocket space to another. For that, he needed to move the energy through his channels.
The refinements the mental construct had made to his neural pathways made an incredible difference. He could already feel how different the experience was to the last time. How much “easier” it was to push the energy through his channels. But even with those improvements, the energy still seared his channels a great deal, causing him to hover there in space for several hours until his channels recovered from the damage.
But he couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t needed as much time to recover as the last time.
Xavier held the arrow in his hand and brought the arrowhead up a foot in front of his eyes, admiring the work that had gone into creating something so powerful. That arrowhead held more power condensed in that pocket space than the entire nuclear armaments of pre-integration Earth. There was enough power in that arrow to destroy an entire star system. Maybe even several star systems. Fortunately, the destructive energy would be contained to a small area.
An area roughly the size of the True Dragon.
Xavier nocked the arrow, drew back the string, and focused on his target.
When he’d faced the World Destroyer, using a ranged attack simply hadn’t been an option. The World Destroyer consumed any and all energy that came at it. A melee strike had been the only way that he could circumvent the World Destroyer’s ability to consume.
The S Grade True Dragon, however, was a different story. It didn’t have the ability to consume energy—not as far as Xavier had observed—and he was hoping that ranged attacks would be more than enough to deal with this thing.
The last thing he wanted to do was get up close and personal with it.
Xavier held his breath inside his Force Armour as he adjusted his aim. As fast and as straight as this arrow would move, there were a lot of calculations he needed to take into account.
He released the breath and the bowstring at the same time, loosing the arrow down toward the planet’s atmosphere. The bow didn’t make a sound. The only sound Xavier could hear in space was his own breathing and the beating of his heart. But he felt the vibration of that string being released. Felt the bone of the bow shudder as it flexed.
Considering how much power that arrow held, one might assume his bow would shatter into a billion pieces, or that the force of releasing such power would harm the very arms that held that bow, but that was not so, as the power was trapped inside the pocket space until it reached its target.
The arrow stopped a few feet away, at the edge of his time dilation field.
Xavier summoned a drone and had it create a time dilation field of its own. Just like the last time he’d attacked the True Dragon, he made the drone stretch its time dilation field down toward the enemy. Xavier made the drone stay close to the arrow, so that the time dilation field—weaker though it was—wouldn’t stretch all the way up to where he waited.
Xavier had never wanted to keep so much distance between him an enemy before. In a way, it felt almost cowardice, but he wasn’t about to let pride stop him from doing the rational thing.
Roln laughed darkly somewhere in his mind at that thought.
The arrow slipped through the atmosphere. From space, Xavier couldn’t hear the sonic boom it would have created. But he heard it from his drone’s perspective. The speed of that arrow was amazing. The drone, flying as fast as it could, couldn’t keep up.
He wondered how close its flight got to the speed of light, but that wasn’t something he could track under these conditions.
Xavier followed its progress, forcing himself to breathe so he wouldn’t hold his breath the entire damned time. His whole plan to defeat the S Grade True Dragon was to use the energy the people of this planet gifted him. If this had no effect just like all his other attacks had had no effect, Xavier wasn’t sure what else he could do.
You don’t know how this is going to play out, he told himself. Just wait and see.
So that was what he did. He waited. And it was a long time, considering that drone of his was moving in slow motion even inside its field. Roln materialised a few times, hovering with his arms crossed, a worried look creasing his forehead. Then, after a little while, he would disappear again, only to reappear later.
As the arrow flew, Xavier once more retreated to the deepest part of himself, to that spherical room where he could feel the presence of his Ancestral Soul gazing at him from some strange beyond. When he reached that room he felt as though the soul’s presence was stronger than the last time he’d attempted to commune with it, but no matter how much he tried it wouldn’t talk back. Xavier was sure his Ancestral Soul would know exactly what that hidden core was.
More than that, it might even have the blueprints for him to create his own one.
A part of him cursed his Ancestral Soul for not sharing that information with him, but he supposed the Ancestral Soul had helped him get this far. Maybe it knew what information to give, and what information to withhold.
Ah, so you trust a version of yourself with such things, but not me, Roln said.
Xavier didn’t respond to the mental construct’s snarky comment. His thoughts would be response enough.
When the arrow was finally close to reaching his enemy, Xavier brought his full attention onto the moment.
The arrow slammed into the S Grade True Dragon. At the same instant as the arrow hit, the pocket space released the destructive energy—1/30th of the power of this world blew up in the dragon’s face.