Time and space worked rather differently out here in the void.
Xavier’s understanding of how things truly worked in the void was limited, to say the least. The Spirit of Time’s understanding was better than his own, as the spirit—like all spirits from the Otherworld—had spent a great deal of time in the void when her mortal life had ended.
Roln, however, had a rather thorough understanding of the void compared to the two of them. As a Wanderer, he’d spent the most time out of the three of them navigating the vast and unknowable darkness.
The mental construct seemed to think the Spirit of Time’s plan had merit, although what they were about to do was outside even his wheelhouse.
When the first unfolding was initiated, Xavier saw himself.
Though he’d only summoned the Spirit of Time once while inside the void, he’d thought he’d had a pretty idea of exactly what would happen. The unpredictable nature of the void, however, reminded him not to be too certain of anything.
Xavier remained inside the grey pocket of spacetime with the Spirit of Time. This was a pocket of spacetime that beings of the void, he had seen, could breach. But beings from outside the void—like the True Dragon, still stuck back in the universe of the seven-hundred-and-fiftieth floor—could not.
The instant the unfolding had been activated, another version of Xavier Collins—an exact copy—popped into existence.
This was the part of the process Xavier was most wary of. The part where things were liable to go wrong. Xavier could see the other version of himself quite clearly, though unlike when he was in a universe, he couldn’t see out through the other version’s eyes. They both existed simultaneously, and even though the other version of him was outside the pocket of spacetime, he could move forward through time regardless.
More than one new universe was created when this unfolding came into existence. The Xavier’s origin universe was created, and so was another version of the seven-hundred-and-fiftieth floor’s universe—meaning that now there were two S Grade True Dragons that they would need to deal with.
That was a problem, but at the same time it was a known problem. A part of the plan Xavier had anticipated he would need to overcome—and one reason why this plan was an absolutely insane one.
Time in the universes Xavier was connected to didn’t move forward, but time in the universes the other version of him was connected to did. There was a time in Xavier’s past when contemplating all of this would have given him a headache.
Now, it merely made him frown.
From where he hovered in the void, the beautiful Spirit of Time not far from him in the pocket of spacetime they shared, and Roln—only visible to him—a few feet away on the other side, Xavier could easily perceive the hole through the fabric of reality that had just appeared. This hole was identical to the one he’d just cut to get into the void.
Xavier peered through the hole, to the new version of the seven-hundred-and-fiftieth floor that had just been created—the version that the new Xavier Collins was connected to.
The first thing he saw was the S Grade True Dragon, hurtling toward the void. He still had no idea whether or not the True Dragon would be able to break through into the void—and even if it could break through, he wasn’t sure it would.
Even so, seeing that thing on the move, not frozen outside the pocket of spacetime, made his heart beat like a fast-paced drum. He held his breath, his natural sight locked onto the other version of him, waiting, hoping the other man would be fast enough.
There was a flicker. Faint and fast. In what amounted to a fraction of a second, the other Xavier had… disappeared from his sight.
Another Xavier Collins materialised a few dozen feet away from the first.
Xavier blinked, taking in what had just happened.
There was now a third hole in reality, leading to a third version of the seven-hundred-and-fiftieth floor.
Xavier took a moment to examine the hole in reality he’d come through. It had become slightly larger when he’d activated the first unfolding, but as he hadn’t activated the second unfolding, the damage from that one had gone to the second hole in reality.
The S Grade True Dragon was still unmoving on the other side. And now, through the second hole in reality, the second True Dragon was frozen as well—though this one was slightly closer.
The Spirit of Time tilted her head to one side, peering from one hole in reality to the other. The woman didn’t need to speak her thoughts for him to know what was on her mind.
Wasn’t he just recreating the problem?
Now, there were more S Grade True Dragons.
The process was repeated.
Soon, there were ten versions of him. Then twenty. Thirty.
When Xavier had decided on this plan, he’d intended to create a hundred versions of himself—ninety-nine other versions. Each time a new unfolding was created, the True Dragon inched a little closer to the hole in reality, but by the time the last one was made, it still hadn’t reached it.
Now, the hundredth version was created. One-hundred versions of Xavier Collins. One-hundred versions of the S Grade True Dragon.
It was time to start the next phase of his plan—the phase he was least sure would work, but most needed to work.
Time would move forward in every single universe at once, increasing the odds of the S Grade True Dragon reaching the void—one of them, or maybe even all of them.
But that was a risk they were going to have to take.
God, he wished he’d seen another way to do this.
There was no time to hesitate. The final unfolding wasn’t about to summon the Spirit of Time again, which meant the last of the S Grade True Dragons—the one closest to entering the void, still assuming that it could—was still on the move.
Xavier and the other ninety-eight versions of him who’d been inside separate pockets of spacetime all appeared in the void at once. Fifty other versions of him faced him at once—the first fifty who’d been created, just as he’d planned before creating the first unfolding.
Their minds became open. Another dangerous thing to be doing within the void. Telepathic communication, similar to that of a Communication Stone but even more intense, started with all of them—this was a spell Roln had provided the spell pattern for.
Every single one of them had a time dilation field active. But their time dilation fields were not fast enough, only making their time streams ten times the speed of the S Grade True Dragon’s.
They would need to empower a time dilation field far more strongly to do what had to be done.
While every one of the Xaviers had opened their minds to one another, it was only the fifty who faced him that acted first. They each gifted him a portion of the energy they had at their disposal. Xavier had created an Energy Funnel to bring it all in. It flooded into him. Instead of parcelling up the energy into several different pocket spaces, he put it all into a single Energy Buff pocket space.
The instant all that energy entered the pocket space Xavier dumped every single bit of it straight into his active time dilation field, a field that was only enveloped around himself.
The pain was… something else.
His energy channels were ripped to shreds. The agony became so severe that at one point he felt his mind simply detach from his body, and it was as though he was looking down on himself, merely seeing his body experience the pain rather than be a part of it. This was a base, instinctual reaction. Something almost all beings had.
Out of the fight/flight/freeze responses his body had chosen to freeze.
Xavier hovered there above his body for what felt like a very long time before he was finally able to take back control. The reaction worried him. If something like that ever happened in the middle of a fight, he’d be completely defenceless. But perhaps somewhere in his subconscious his body had known that in that moment he wasn’t in any danger whatsoever.
Because the Energy Buff had worked. Xavier had used only 2/30ths of the power he’d been gifted by the planet Galadsea, which meant all the other versions of him had 28/30ths left.
Fifty of those versions had gifted all that remaining energy to him, toward one spell.
He peered through the last hole in reality that had been created by the final unfolding.
The S Grade True Dragon on the other side wasn’t moving. At all. Xavier peered at it, looking for the smallest movement, whether on the outside or the inside.
There was nothing.
He peered through all the other holes in reality. After looking through all one hundred of them he was satisfied.
He couldn’t feel exactly how strong the time dilation field was, but if he didn’t know any better, he would think that time was completely frozen outside of it, but as far as he knew that wasn’t even possible.
Then again, there were a lot of things he hadn’t known were possible that he’d discovered most definitely were…
He could envelope the rest of the versions of him into the time dilation field, and he probably should have. He had more than enough energy in the spell to make that happen.
But he didn’t. Not yet. His energy channels were still torn to shreds, and because of that he could barely even move his body, let alone circulate energy through it. He hovered there in the middle of the void for a very, very long time, merely forcing breath into his lungs one inhale at a time.
Roln was hard at work. Refinements from the Combat Assistance Overlay kept coming in, notifications popping up every few minutes as the mental construct worked on making his healing of his energy channels more and more efficient.
Though Xavier was in a tremendous amount of pain and was barely able to move his body at all, he felt… ecstatic. His face was contorted in a smile that looked a lot more like a grimace, and if it didn’t hurt so much, he would have punched his fist into the air at the victory he’d just experienced.
This was only the first step in their plan, but it was the one where the most things could go wrong.
And things hadn’t gone wrong. It had worked!
As his body slowly healed and he was able to push bits of energy through his channels from his perfectly intact cores, Xavier was able to breathe easier and easier. The process of his healing, though at first it seemed to take forever, was definitely speeding up the more refinements the mental construct provided. It made him wonder just how fast his energy channels would be able to heal from using one of the smaller amounts of energy—but that wasn’t something he was about to test.
Not just yet, at least.
When his energy channels were finally healed, something that must have taken at least several days, if not weeks—honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d hovered there for several months—Xavier examined each of the S Grade True Dragons through the holes in reality.
Despite how much time had just passed for Xavier, not a single one of them had moved a muscle.
In fact, the same could be said for all the different versions of him—none of them had moved.
Xavier’s breathing quickened, despite his body now being fully healed. He was anticipating the next part of his plan. He pushed the most powerful time dilation field he’d ever had over the other versions of himself, enveloping all ninety-nine of them.