Xavier’s sword cleaved straight for the A Grade captain’s neck.
The instant Xavier had flooded the destructive energy into the bone-sword, his concealment had stopped becoming relevant. The concealment relied on keeping his energy restricted, much like a veil worked. He couldn’t hide the destructive energy that was burning in the bone-sword.
It was like a beacon, showing his position.
The woman was fast. She darted backward, avoiding the swing to her neck. Xavier closed the gap once more. The woman couldn’t see him, only the sword he wielded coming toward her. She swung her flail in his direction. He phased out of reality, the flail passing through him as though he wasn’t even there. Xavier struck for her again. This time, she didn’t dodge backward. Instead, she brought her axe up to block the strike.
Big mistake.
That was enough.
All that destructive energy, pulled from fifty-thousand of her B Grade soldiers, exploded out from the bone-sword as the weapons met. The energy sprayed outward toward the A Grade captain. It sliced through her axe, breaking the A Grade weapon, then melted her armour, and boiled her inside it.
For most other A Grades Xavier had faced in the previous waves, that would have been enough.
The A Grade captain screamed. Her face reddened, the skin beginning to melt, sloughing off her, revealing the muscle and bone beneath. She faltered, her legs losing strength, knees slamming to the ground.
But she lived.
All that destructive power hadn’t been enough to take her down, and he’d used every ounce he had. The bone-sword he’d created crumbled when the explosive energy had been released. It was powerful enough to hold it, but not powerful enough to survive being used.
That was the beauty of being able to create weapons from his own bones—it didn’t matter if one of them got destroyed.
He grew another two bone swords, one for each hand, as the woman fell to her knees.
Even as those bone-swords were grown and shaped, he activated other manifested spell patterns. The cement-equivalent of the street beneath her liquified, making the A Grade captain sink into it and become—if only momentarily—trapped. The personal shield that had defended against his ranged attack had been utterly obliterated by the destructive energy, making her even more vulnerable.
Soul apparitions materialised around him. The souls of the many Denizens he’d reaped in the previous waves. They hurtled toward her, pouring through her, causing more and more soul damage, making the woman wince and keeping her from acting.
Xavier couldn’t sense how much health the woman had—A Grades were good at protecting against spells that would give him such insights—but he could feel the energies within her. Her very life force was waning.
She was on the brink of death as he swung the two bone-swords together toward her unprotected neck.
Then something within her shifted. Her cores, still bursting with energy, shuddered in a way he’d seen before. Xavier’s eyes widened. He stopped his attack mid-swing, phased out of reality, and flapped his wings to pull him backward.
Xavier: [Contain the area!] he shouted down the Communication Stone channel.
The woman’s cores exploded in an outpouring of energy not dissimilar to what he’d just done to her. The energy wasn’t targeted toward him, but it didn’t need to be.
The wave of energy emanated outward. That much energy, unconcentrated on a single spot, from an A Grade—it could encompass the entire world if it wasn’t stopped.
He didn’t hear a reply, but knew Queen Aecia and her people would be acting with extreme speed to do what he asked.
There wasn’t only one shield on Galadsea.
Queen Aecia and her people had a thousand years to anticipate the threat coming toward them. They knew that any A Grade or B Grade, even a powerful C Grade, might be powerful enough to target an entire planet. A C Grade wouldn’t be able to do much against a planet as powerful as this one. Their attacks would be thwarted and defended against by most of the more powerful citizens. A B Grade’s spells, as well, even without the shields, would have been countered easily enough.
An A Grade, however… there was a chance their destructive spell could take out millions—perhaps even billions—of innocent civilians.
Even without powers, Xavier knew a planet and its people would be incredibly vulnerable to a nuclear bomb or a thrown asteroid. With powers… that made them all the more vulnerable.
So, in case the main shield ever went down, or in case enemies ever made it down to the planet, a series of containment shields had been created around the different districts on Galadsea.
Xavier felt the shield around this area flicker on. With The All-Seeing Eye he’d kept a close watch on the queen and her entourage. They hadn’t been near as fast as him, and they were still making their way to the area, now trapped outside that containment shield, while Xavier was trapped inside it.
The radiated energy from the A Grade’s cores exploding destroyed everything in its path—everything that she hadn’t already destroyed. It atomised the matter in the ground beneath her, it turned the toppled building into nothing more than dust.
With The All-Seeing Eye, Xavier could see all the civilians still alive in the area. The area the shield covered was massive.
He wished it was smaller.
The area where this wave had materialised had already suffered hundreds of thousands of deaths since the enemy arrived. More. But not everyone had died. Some had hidden. Some had gotten away. Some had surrendered, and though not every one of the enemy let those who surrendered survive, the majority did.
They, like Xavier, were all trapped inside the shield.
Xavier wanted nothing more than to alter time. To make sure this explosion wouldn’t reach the innocent people in the area.
But the consequences of doing that…
They’re too high. Far too high.
But there must be something he could do.
To give him a chance to think, he activated Chronomantic Mindforge. He targeted one of the B Grade enemies that were still alive, but he didn’t bother pushing the spell at them. Now, with time frozen around him, his mind could work freely.
He took that further, putting more of his mental resources into the mental space he had functioning. Already, a part of his mind had been inhabiting that space, giving him time to think.
That was the part that had decided he needed more time.
In that mental space, he ran countless different simulations, trying to see if there was anything he could do. The situation was similar to when Arrack had exploded. The damage of that A Grade exploding had destroyed the base and the entire moon it had been built upon.
Back then, Xavier hadn’t been strong enough to scatter the energy of that explosion. He hadn’t needed to scatter it, either. He’d been able to simply freeze the explosion and get everyone free of the base.
But now…
I’m still not strong enough.
Every simulation he ran had him failing. He lost all his Soul Energy long before scattering the energy had any effect. It was simply too much. His Immortal Soul lens, and manipulating energy outside his body with the power of his Soul Core… it was an incredible ability, one that had saved his life more than once.
But it wasn’t everything.
He abandoned that plan of action.
The rest of his simulations had him creating shields of his own. Ones that were far smaller than the one around the area. Ones that would be small enough to contain the explosion and save the innocents who would be destroyed by it. But the shields he could create… they might be able to withstand an A Grade’s spell, but not a powerful self-destruct like this.
He exhausted every single avenue he could think of. With the Teleportation Lock and the Portal Lock in place there was no way that he could get these people free.
With The All-Seeing Eye, he pinpointed the many children inside the shield. They, more than anyone, deserved to be saved. They deserved to be spared this fate. They hadn’t even gotten a chance to truly begin their lives, and already they would be extinguished. Killed long, long before their time. They had no say in anything that was happening. No ability to defend themselves. No ability to flee.
Xavier might be strong enough to fight every single one of these damned three-million Empire of Servitude waves, but he wasn’t strong enough to save these people.
I can’t save everyone.
That was a fact he’d thought he’d made peace with. But with the world frozen around him, unable to act, and unwilling to deactivate the spell and watch those children die, he wasn’t so sure.
There must be something… something I can do!
For a second time, he retreated back into that mental space.
He ran all the simulations again, trying to find out if there was something he’d missed.
But there was nothing.
The only way he could think to save these people was to retract his time dilation field. Bring it close, so it was just around him. He still had many drones around the planet. There were ones close to Queen Aecia. He could have them reach her, using their own time dilation fields, and have her drop the shield.
He could carry every single innocent person out of the area, then have the shield come back down.
None of the many thousands of children and adults had to die if he did that.
But he already knew that wasn’t the choice he would make. Already knew it couldn’t be the choice he’d make.
The System timer would revert. He would get stuck here. Millions of years would pass back home by the time he’d finished all the waves. And if he abandoned this place through the void to prevent that from happening.
Even more lives would be lost.
Xavier was a moment away from deactivating Chronomantic Mindforge, from admitting that there was simply nothing he could do, when he stopped himself.
What if…
He walked the rooms of his mind. He could have just appeared at his destination with his mental apparition—technically, he was already there. But he walked slowly, deep in thought, until he opened the door to the room where Roln, the wounded mental construct of a dead Wanderer, was huddled in a corner, arms around his knees, still rocking back and forth after protecting Xavier from what Arrack had tried to do to his mind.
The other part of Xavier’s mind that was constantly with him looked up. This part of Xavier had been here for a long time, constantly keeping the mental construct company, giving him the care that he could.
For a moment, staring at that other part of him, it was almost like looking at another version of him. He felt disconnected to this part of his mind. The mental apparition that had been stuck in this room looked haunted. Exhausted. Emotionally wrung out in a way Xavier’s full self wasn’t aware of.
Xavier tilted his head to one side, closed his eyes, and reintegrated that part of him into the main part of his consciousness. He was flooded with a feeling of strain. Of a complete lack of energy. This part of him had been a carer for the mental construct constantly.
The weight of that emotional strain hit Xavier as he walked through the room. A room it now felt like he’d never left.
Roln was in the same place he’d been all along. The mental construct didn’t look up at Xavier. He didn’t register that anything in the room had changed. The dead Wanderer was lost.
Whatever had happened to him had broken him.
And I’ve come here hoping for his help?