Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 9) - Chapter 58 - Are All S Grades This Fast?

Xavier flapped his wings, watching intently as that strange Speed Energy poured out of the True Dragon’s scales. It flowed over the shiny scales, and the energy was visible not just through his Immortal Soul lens but to the naked eye. It made the scales shimmer in the sunlight.

The energy spread around the entirety of the great beast until it covered every inch of it.

Xavier’s heartrate was rapid, his breathing shallow. He did his best to steady them. The fear he felt was natural—he had no idea what this strange type of Speed Energy from the S Grade’s hidden core was going to do to it—but it didn’t help him think any more clearly.

Fortunately, Xavier had other parts of his mind, compartmentalised from his main consciousness, to do that thinking for him.

When the energy stopped spreading and coated every inch of the True Dragon’s scales—even flowing over the wound that had yet to heal—it changed the colour of the dragon, turning it green, much like Speed Energy was green.

Except this was far more than a speed infusion.

Those other parts of his mind that were separated were examining the inner workings of that energy in depth, studying what it could do from one fraction of a second to the next. But Xavier didn’t need their insights to know what he was looking at. He could see it clear as day.

The True Dragon had activated a spatial distortion. A personal time dilation field much like when Xavier kept his wrapped around only himself.

The exact thing Xavier had been worried would happen.

The wound the dragon had suffered at the hand of his pocket-space bone arrow began to heal rapidly, though remarkably it didn’t heal as fast as Xavier had suspected.

Xavier watched in awe as the S Grade True Dragon flapped its massive wings and began to rise upward, head turning to exactly where Xavier was up in space. Xavier analysed the spatial distortion and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t as fast as the time dilation field he currently had active.

And, fortunately, it wasn’t faster.

The dragon’s time dilation field was moving at roughly a tenth the speed of Xavier’s own, but even at that speed the dragon was moving impossibly fast, for the S Grade True Dragon was many times faster than Xavier’s own speed.

Xavier gritted his teeth. When he’d retreated into his mental space and tried to come up with a plan to counter whatever the True Dragon had been about to do with the strange energy from its hidden core, this had been one of his worst-case scenarios.

Roln, still hovering nearby, didn’t say a word, but the look on his face spoke volumes.

On the True Dragon’s way, it opened its giant maw and released a stream of flame toward the drone that was near it. The drone burned up, dying in a flash. Xavier felt every bit of its death. He could have disconnected a part of his consciousness from the drone. He’d even considered it, as he’d been quite sure something like this would happen.

But keeping his connection with the drone, feeling its death as though it were his own… he knew it would bring a well-needed clarity.

Xavier forced a slow exhale through his mouth as he watched the True Dragon’s rapid progress. Even in a time stream ten times slower the great beast was unbelievably fast.

Are all S Grades this fast? Xavier asked Roln, though he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

No, Roln replied. Some of them are faster.

Yeah—he hadn’t wanted the answer.

For a long moment, perhaps too long, Xavier just hovered there in space, flapping his wings, watching the True Dragon approach. There were many things he could have been doing in that moment, but none of them seemed appropriate. There were very few things that would actually harm the S Grade. He’d found that out already. And using one of his arrows again would weaken him for hours, forcing him to spend time healing his energy channels for far too long. Even if he could find somewhere safe to heal between uses of the energy this world had gifted him, it wouldn’t be worth it.

The True Dragon would simply heal from every wound Xavier inflicted upon it. And in the time he was gone, it would rip through every being on the world.

As he hovered there, he wondered if he should send the order down to Queen Aecia to evacuate her planet. Perhaps that order was already long overdue…

Just before the start of this fight, Xavier had been feeling confident that he was closing in on the level of strength he needed to be at to defend Earth, the Silver River sector and the Ventorin sectors from the powerhouses in his universe. The ones he’d all but challenged after he’d defeated the World Destroyer.

The ones that had set their sights on him.

Feeling this thing’s power, seeing what it could do and how fast it could move, he knew for a fact that he’d been getting ahead of himself. Though perhaps things would be different if he had the power of his sectors at his back…

When the True Dragon came close enough that Xavier was sure he could hover there no longer, he turned and flew farther away from the planet. To an observer it might look as though he were fleeing. But to an observer his flight would be strange, as anyone who had the ability to watch this fight would very well know that Xavier had the power to teleport.

If he wanted to escape, wouldn’t he just do that?

But Xavier wasn’t trying to escape.

He was leading the True Dragon exactly where he wanted it to go.

Except the moment he’d turned, flapped his wings several times, and made it several feet away from where he’d been waiting, a tremendous force slammed into him. It wasn’t a physical force, and it didn’t slam into him, exactly—it slammed into his time dilation field.

Xavier’s eyes widened. Now this was another one of those worst-case scenarios he’d been worried about. More than once, Xavier had encountered enemies who had the ability to influence his time dilation field. The enemy who’d influenced it the most had been the World Destroyer—though it hadn’t been his World Destroyer. This had been the World Destroyer he’d faced on the eightieth floor.

Even the World Destroyer hadn’t been powerful enough to stop Xavier from using his time dilation field, but it had stopped him from altering it. He and the other version of him from that Tower of Champions floor had been essentially stuck inside that field. Xavier couldn’t mould it. Couldn’t move it.

If that happened now, Xavier wouldn’t be able to fly toward his destination. He wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. Not at this speed. And if his time dilation field failed, the True Dragon would catch up to him in less than a heartbeat.

Instincts drilled into his mind by the editing of his neural pathways came to life. Instincts he’d had Roln place there while he’d retreated into his mental space. This was one of the eventualities he’d worried about, which meant it was something he’d already prepared for.

He hadn’t been idle while he’d waited for that energy to spread from the hidden core to cover the entirety of the True Dragon. In that time, he’d summoned several thousand drones. By themselves, these drones weren’t all that powerful, but together, being able to burn their Soul Energy and direct it through the Immortal Soul lens, they were a weapon he could point straight at his enemy.

But they weren’t just a weapon—they were a defensive measure, too.

Diving deep into the structure of energy and scattering the Raw Celestial Energy that comprised other energies wasn’t the only thing that he could do with this ability. He could manifest spell patterns outside himself. He could alter energy outside himself.

He could interact with the very building blocks of reality.

Xavier had his mind split in many thousands of different parts. His instincts kicking in from every single one of those drones, he had them act. What they targeted wasn’t the S Grade True Dragon. Instead, they targeted the time distortion around Xavier, and they reinforced it, blocking the True Dragon’s outside influence, creating barriers between Xavier and the True Dragon.

This took a tremendous amount of Soul Energy, to the point where the drones were dying off dozens at a time. Before the dragon had gotten this close, Xavier had extended his time dilation field to encompass the drones, as that was the only way they were fast enough to act.

The True Dragon didn’t shoot a stream of flame at the drones. Doing so from this distance wouldn’t help, not with the time dilation field active. It would simply leave the flames trapped behind it. In fact, there was nothing at all it could do until it reached them.

The drones weren’t fast enough to fly alongside him, and they were dying by the dozen as their Soul Energy was exerted to protect his time dilation field. Xavier simply couldn’t bring the drones with him. As he flew, with the True Dragon not only keeping pace but slowly closing the gap, he summoned more and more drones along the way, expending their Soul Energy. He manifested spell patterns as swiftly as he ever had.

Corpses of beings that looked identical to Xavier Collins soon littered the space above Galadsea in droves. The True Dragon reached the first batch of drones and widened its maw, clutching several of them in its jaws as it passed, grinding them between its teeth.

It’s going to do the same to me once it gets close enough.

But it was working. The drones were giving up their lives to keep Xavier’s time dilation field from failing. The pressure the S Grade True Dragon had been exerting on his shield hadn’t completely disappeared, but it had lessened to a degree where he had to focus to actually feel it.

And Xavier was nearing his destination.

Escape had never been his plan when he’d turned to flee. Why would it be? If he wished to escape, he would have torn a rent in the void and left this entire universe. He’d already be back in his own, perhaps down in the Tower of Champion’s tavern, sitting by one of the fires, ordering hot food from Sam, with Adranial across from him…

Bacon, eggs, a steaming cup of good coffee. Good conversation. A safe, familiar space.

God, that does sound much nicer than this.

And to think, he could be there instead of here.

If all goes well, I’ll be there soon.

He didn’t like to think about what would happen if things didn’t go well. Some would say they already hadn’t.

His destination was, of course, the large section of space where he’d faced, and destroyed, the entirety of the Empire of Servitude’s armada. As he neared the destructive energy that was trapped inside a time dilation field another of his drones was keeping active, Xavier spared a thought for what might happen if he did simply escape this place and head back to his own universe, reminding himself of one simply fact: The S Grade True Dragon had come from four A Grade dragonkin champions—Denizens from his universe.

If he didn’t defeat this thing here, chances were good he’d one day have to face it again.

Something told him this beast wasn’t merely trying to kill him to clear the floor—something about the rage in the True Dragon’s eyes made it feel far more personal than that.

This thing would seek me out. In doing so, it would become yet another threat to those under my rule, those I swore to protect. And with a time distortion as powerful as that, assuming it can maintain it, I wouldn’t have years and years in which to prepare for its arrival…

Xavier flew straight to the edge of the time dilation field that was keeping the destructive energy in its place, then he started to fly around it. The True Dragon still followed, the gap between them becoming ever smaller.

He tapped into the mind of the drone inside that slowed-down time dilation field. Its reaction times would be incredibly slow. Xavier wasn’t even sure if this part of his plan would work, if his instructions would be carried out in time, but he’d come up with a contingency plan in case that happened.

He could manipulate the drone’s time dilation field directly with the use of his Immortal Soul lens and the burning of some Soul Energy. This was something he’d never done before, but he’d run enough simulations to burn the process into his brain.

As long as it worked the same way…

This wasn’t something he was going to leave to his drones, either.

The moment the dragon was close enough, Xavier decided he wasn’t going to bother sending an instruction to the drone inside that field—the connection between them was too tenuous given the drastic differences between the time streams.

Instead, he exerted his will and took direct control of the time dilation field around the destructive energy. Then, he rapidly expanded that field and altered the flow of time within it, speeding it up to its maximum.

He’d expanded it so it would fall directly on the S Grade True Dragon.