Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 9) - Chapter 31 - I Won’t End Up Like That

Xavier had absolutely no frame of reference for how to search through Roln’s memories. The hallway looked as though it stretched on for eternity because it almost did. Roln, a Wanderer, had been alive for many billions of years, and here was perhaps every single memory he’d ever had. A treasure trove of valuable information. Insights that could save Xavier’s life a million times over, completely unlocked, without the mental construct holding a single thing back from him.

And yet it was all a jumbled mess, without him knowing anything about the memories until he opened one of those doors—and every time he opened one of those doors he felt more of that splitting pain, that mental anguish, that he’d experienced when he’d been on that table with Arrack and the three memory mages standing over him.

Xavier almost quit a thousand times.

The memories didn’t even make sense at first. They lacked context. Some memories were clearly from when Roln had been a child, others from some unspecified time when he was an adult. Still others from when he’d become a Wanderer. They weren’t linear. They weren’t chronological. They jumped around in time and they differed on content. There seemed to be nothing connecting one to the other except that they’d happened to the same person.

The memories didn’t even last for the same amount of time. Some lasted for barely a few seconds. There was one that was simply him catching the eye of a beautiful woman, her smiling back at him. There were others that lasted for days. Battles Roln had fought in back when he’d been alive. Battles that had made the waves of the Empire of Servitude Xavier was facing feel like absolutely nothing in comparison.

Stepping into the man’s memories was fascinating. The more memories he experienced, the more context for the man’s life he gained. Roln, like Xavier, had been chosen by the System to be its weapon, though the System that Roln had experienced differed a great deal from the one Xavier’s universe had.

Xavier also experienced what it was like to live in the other man’s body. He could feel the man’s cores—only three of them—his energy moving through his channels. He’d felt the power he’d been able to possess.

But going through those memories one by one wouldn’t get him the information he needed. None of these memories had anything to do with constructing a shield that would be strong enough to contain the energy emanating out from the A Grade captain’s cores. Nothing he’d found would help him save those innocents from their inevitable deaths.

He was looking for a needle in a haystack the size of an entire planet, and he was stumbling around in the dark searching for it.

But while he wasn’t learning what he needed to save those innocents, he was slowly learning something that might help him get to that information.

Roln had been around for billions of years. In that time, he’d learnt a great many things about the mind and the brain. Many of those things were evident in the memories Xavier was experiencing—especially the ones that came from later in the dead Wanderer’s life.

Roln could alter his own neural pathways, just as the mental construct had been able to alter Xavier’s neural pathways. He could smother a bad habit, basically deleting it from his life, and he could create a good one, by essentially writing it into his brain.

Xavier had experienced the benefits of the ability, though he’d only ever experienced those benefits when it came to combat. There were, however, a lot of other ways that one could benefit from this—ways that Xavier had barely begun to think about.

Now, he was thinking about them.

The mental anguish he experienced whenever he entered one of these memories was nothing more than a habit his brain had learnt from the trauma it had gone through at the hands of the memory mages.

The pain he’d experienced had been so strong that it had imprinted onto every part of the mental construct—and therefore, every memory Roln had ever had. That was why it had made the mental construct into a huddled mess in the corner of Xavier’s mind.

But that wasn’t incurable. There were ways to heal from it. Not through the use of Toughness Energy. This wasn’t the same as other wounds Xavier experienced, as it didn’t present as a wound—it wasn’t something that the brain thought it needed to heal.

But if Xavier were able to learn how to change his own neural pathways, he would be able to target the ones that had been affected.

So he went through every single door that he could. Outside his mind, time was essentially frozen. He had an eternity to experience everything he needed to learn how to do this. Whenever he came upon a memory where Roln was actively using this ability, Xavier would replay that memory as many times as he could so he could gain a thorough understanding of it.

Bit by bit, Xavier experienced more and more of Roln’s memories, understanding more of what he needed. At the same time, he understood more about the Wanderer who’d sacrificed everything because he’d thought Xavier might one day have a chance at becoming the one who’d defeat the Interdimensional Dragon.

Over billions of years, Roln had never given up believing that it could be done, even if he’d given up on doing it himself. He’d searched countless universes, he’d watched countless different unique Denizens progress toward that ultimate end battle.

And he’d watched the ends of even more universes than Xavier could contemplate.

Those were the memories Xavier struggled with the most. The memories of the Wanderer hovering in the void, watching as the Interdimensional Dragon ripped into yet another universe, and doing absolutely nothing to stop it. The Wanderer would simply hover there, sometimes alone, sometimes surrounded by other beings—mostly Wanderers like himself—who’d come to observe another end.

Xavier could feel the man’s desire to act. But every single time he hadn’t acted, because he’d known it would be futile. Uncountable numbers of beings died every time one of those universes was extinguished, and the Wanderer didn’t do so much as try to evacuate a single soul from those universes.

Doing so would be too dangerous, and it wouldn’t change anything.

But it hurt.

That’s why you did it, Xavier thought. When you saw me, when you thought I might have a chance of winning… you knew if you interfered, if you stopped the Old Man from saving me and forced me to save myself, that it would have consequences. That it might even lead to your death. But you were sick of standing by. Sick of watching so many die. Sick of being so damned helpless for so long.

He knew it was true. He could feel that it was true. The more he stepped into those rooms, the more the memories were starting to properly integrate with the rest of his mind.

Xavier didn’t know how many years had passed, or how many of Roln’s memories he’d experienced, by the time he walked back through that hallway to the room where this had all started, but it felt like several lifetimes had gone by.

Xavier’s mental apparition slumped back into a chair. He closed his eyes. In reality, he was still in mid-air, frozen in time, flying away from the explosion—though as he put his attention toward the outside world, he couldn’t help but notice the explosion had grown.

Time wasn’t truly frozen, after all.

In his mind, he sat in that chair for a long time, letting his thoughts drift, letting himself find that inner state of calm. Before that calm set in, a tear slid down his cheek, for though he had not experienced every one of Roln’s memories, he’d experienced enough of them to get a very clear picture of who the man had been in life. He’d experienced much of the loss the other man had gone through. Before he’d left his own universe, when he still thought he could save it, he’d sacrificed everything in his life to make his goal a reality.

He’d lost everyone he’d ever loved.

And when he became a Wanderer, those people that he’d cared about who’d still lived… He’d tried to go to them, before the universe was destroyed. Tried to bring them with him. But they refused to come. They’d each lived exceptionally long lives, and they were ready to accept their end.

Xavier felt… grief, and not just at the losses Roln had experienced, but at the loss of Roln himself. A man he’d never met. A man that, in a way, was much like himself.

But I won’t end up like that, Xavier thought. I won’t sacrifice my own life in pursuit of this. I won’t.

Xavier wished that he could have met the dead Wanderer in life. Wished that they could have worked side by side. Wished that they could have been friends.

Something told him that the two of them would have gotten along.

When the tears had stopped, and Xavier felt that inner state of calm he’d been trying to engage, he got started with the real work.

After experiencing so many of Roln’s memories—memories that were damaged by the trauma he’d experienced at the hands of the memory mages—Xavier’s own mind was suffering. The pain was everywhere, and he struggled to feel a sense of safety. He struggled to feel like he could act. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to withdraw and stay safe inside his mind, inside this moment, forever…

That was not a part of his mind that he was going to indulge, however.

He’d managed to put together enough pieces from the man’s memories to create a spell pattern. Something that would allow him to alter his own neural pathways, to purge the trauma, and finally search through Roln’s memories properly so he could find what he was after.

This might even allow him to restore the mental construct, bringing the version of Roln that he knew back to life…

The spell pattern was actually the easy part. If all Xavier had needed to find from Roln’s memory was that, he would have exited the memories a lot earlier. It was the actual operation of the spell that he needed. The spell pattern was merely a tool for seeing the neural pathways in his brain and editing them, the experience he needed to find was how to actually locate the necessary pathways and alter them correctly.

It was like having the tools of a surgeon but not knowing how to operate. If he didn’t do this right, he would create more damage than was already there.

There was another thing to take into regard when it came to this. The spell pattern would take time to initiate. His body was frozen. Chronomantic Mindforge allowed energy to move through his channels, as part of the spell’s purpose had always been taking energy from another Denizen’s cores into oneself, but it didn’t allow for this.

Xavier could manifest a spell pattern in what felt like an instant, but it wasn’t an instant.

With Chronomantic Mindforge, he didn’t have the same mastery over time that he would have were he using Time Alteration, which meant he had to sit there and wait for the spell pattern to form. As he waited, he put himself into a sort of trance, blocking him as best he could from experiencing the amount of time that was passing. A part of him was set to watch the explosion as it continued to expand, farther and farther, getting closer toward the innocent civilians in the area.

By the time the spell pattern had finally formed, the explosion had grown twice as large.

All right. Time to start editing my brain…