“Roln?”
Xavier stood inside the central room in his mind. He’d spent a great deal of time stuck in his mind as that A Grade’s explosion slowly emanated outward.
He knew what he needed to do to prevent that explosion from harming the innocents in the area. And now, he’d done everything he could to restore Roln to his previous state.
Xavier, a mental apparition, tapped his foot and glanced around. He no longer had access to the hallway of Roln’s memories, though theoretically he could gain access to it again if he truly wished.
Once he’d made the decision to bring the mental construct back, and after all the practice he’d had with Neural Editing, the steps were made clear to him. He’d visited an older memory, of a time just before the memory mages had ravaged his mind.
There, with the help of his Immortal Soul lens, and the ability to read his own brain map, he’d been able to get a snapshot of what his mind had looked like back then, and he’d pinpointed the mental construct and how it was laid out—how it was differentiated from the rest of his mind.
He couldn’t simply copy-paste that old part of the map onto the new one, but with that knowledge he was able to alter his mind enough to put it back into that state—or as close to it as he could manage.
“Roln, are you there?”
On the other side of the room, an outline of a man began to form. It took longer than it usually did, and it reminded him of what dial-up internet must have felt like when loading a picture.
Slowly, Roln materialised in front of him. The mental construct looked no different than he had before. His forehead was creased, and he was looking down at his own hands, flexing his fingers, staring at them as though confused. He looked up at Xavier. “What…” He glanced around. “Ah.” He winced. “Oh. I see.”
The mental construct was able to see every inch of Xavier’s mind and read every one of his memories. It only took a moment for him to get up to date on what had happened. He blinked at Xavier. “You brought me back.”
“I did.”
“Even though you know that I’m technically just a part of your mind now?”
“That might be so, but you’re… different.” Xavier looked at the ground, finding what he wanted to express difficult. But he didn’t have to express it to the mental construct, because the mental construct already knew.
“All my life, my goal never wavered,” Roln said. “I wanted to see the universe saved, and in some small way I always believed I would be a part of that.”
“Bringing you back, like this, means that you will be a part of it.”
Roln chuckled. “Assuming you actually pull it off.”
Xavier laughed. “Yes, well, I do assume that.”
“Of course you do. That’s that arrogance talking again.” Roln looked around. “Then again, that arrogance has gotten you this far. Though I have to say, I’m surprised you didn’t find out about the 1,000th floor.”
Xavier sighed. “Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t too. But if you think I’m not ready—”
“Since when has my opinion ever mattered?” Roln grinned.
Since I saw what you went through. Since I lived several lifetimes in your memories, and still only saw a fraction of the life you experienced, Xavier thought, but didn’t say out loud—if his mental apparition talking inside a room in his mind could even be counted as out loud…
“So,” Roln said, looking at one of the walls in the central room—this wall showed a projection of what Xavier was able to see outside in the real world. “I see you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a pickle.” The mental construct tilted his head to one side. “I also see you think you have a solution.”
“What do you mean think?”
“What you want to do isn’t going to work—not how you think it will.”
Xavier shut his eyes. All that effort to figure out what information the mental construct might have in its vault of memories and the thing Xavier had found wasn’t going to help him achieve his goal?
“Explain.”
And so Roln did, and Xavier quickly saw the error of his ways. But before the mental construct had stopped talking, he didn’t just tell Xavier where he’d gone wrong, he told him where he could go right.
A new plan formed, one that was infinitely better—though only slightly different—to the one he’d thought up without the dead Wanderer’s input.
“Oh. Well, that shouldn’t be too hard to do.”
~
Xavier returned the majority of his consciousness to the present moment inside his body, looking outward at the explosion that had grown far, far larger since he’d first cast Chronomantic Mindforge. The explosion still hadn’t reached him, but it had destroyed dozens of blocks of buildings, turning everything in its path into nothing more than particle dust.
A dozen feet to Xavier’s left, Roln hovered in the air. The mental construct looked exactly as it always did, except instead of having his arms crossed in slight dissatisfaction, there was a small smile on his face.
I guess something about him did change.
The plan would take time to execute, and Xavier wouldn’t be able to do it while Chronomantic Mindforge was still active. He needed to move.
He couldn’t teleport these people to safety.
He couldn’t contain the explosion.
He couldn’t even turn the power from the explosion into pure energy with Energy Transference.
Right now, Xavier was out of phase with reality. Nothing of the physical world could touch him. But this explosion wasn’t merely physical. Something had become clear to Xavier over the last few hundred waves—the people upstairs, the millions of A Grade captains in the Empire of Servitude’s armada of warships, were watching.
Somehow, they’re perception could pierce through the planet’s barrier in a way their beam weapons couldn’t. Every fight Xavier had been in, they’d been watching.
They’d been learning.
While Xavier didn’t have confirmation of this, as he hadn’t been able to steal into one of the A Grade’s minds since having this theory to confirm it, he’d started to notice that the A Grade captains and their B Grade hosts were better able to counter the things Xavier did. They seemed prepared for his attacks—and the attacks Queen Aecia and her entourage threw into the mix—in a way that previous waves hadn’t been.
It hadn’t saved them, but it had made fighting them more of a challenge.
And though Xavier still hadn’t set sight on any of the other Champions on this floor, all of whom had chosen to fight for the Empire of Servitude, he was sure they were watching his every move too.
All of this meant that the A Grade captain was well aware of his ability to phase in and out of reality, and when she’d set herself to self-destruct, exploding every one of her powerful cores, it hadn’t been wishful thinking on her part.
The spell she’d used didn’t only work on the physical plane—it worked on the plane Xavier’s had phased into as well.
And, knowing how powerful that explosion was, he now knew that there was no way he would have been able to survive it.
Everything he’d just done, all the effort he’d gone to in order to bring the mental construct back, it hadn’t only helped him devise a plan to save the innocents in the area, it had helped him devise a plan to save himself.
When he hadn’t even known that his own life had been in danger.
Xavier had had access to every single one of the mental construct’s memories, and he had the ability to read the energy coming from the A Grade’s explosion, but he hadn’t looked at it close enough—he hadn’t noticed what it would be able to do to him.
If he’d decided to let all the innocents die without even trying to save them, then he still would have perished in that explosion.
Xavier had released a long sigh when Roln had told him that. Once the mental construct had gained his bearings, he’d noticed instantly what would happen.
Xavier had felt like all the air in his body had left him. He would have died, and he hadn’t even realised it. If he hadn’t chosen to bring the mental construct back, if he’d just used the hallway of memories…
I wouldn’t have even known what hit me. I guess I do still need a bit of guidance from time to time.
Xavier’s plan to save the innocents wouldn’t have worked not just because he would have died, but because his plan had been to take them out of phase too.
Roln had suggested a little tweak.
Now, Xavier just had to make sure he pulled it off correctly.
Before Xavier deactivated Chronomantic Mindforge, he moved the energy inside his body, constructing the spell patterns he would need to save himself and everyone else in the area. Those spell patterns would take a long time to form, just as the Neural Editing spell pattern had taken a long time to form, as he still had Chronomantic Mindforge active.
But the moment he deactivated Chronomantic Mindforge, those spells would activate almost instantly. Xavier just hoped he was flying backward fast enough to avoid getting hit by that explosion.
Do or die, he thought, before finally deactivating Chronomantic Mindforge.
The noise from the explosion pounded into his ears, almost all-consuming in its ferocity. Air slammed into him, his wings flapping wildly. He didn’t move fast enough to widen the gap between him and the approaching explosion, but he was able to slow its approach ever so slightly.
The spell patterns activated.
The first spell pattern he’d cast was something he’d needed to build. Something Roln had helped him create. This was a spell that Roln, even as a Wanderer, had never needed to use. The spell that was currently working on Xavier—as spell that placed him out of phase—didn’t technically place him out of reality at all, if one were to assume that this universe was reality.
All it did was place him on a different plane of this reality. In this instance, it was putting him in the Spiritual Plane. His mind remained here, able to see what was happening in “reality” but not able to do anything about it, but his body was essentially gone. Safe in the Otherworld.
That was how Otherworld Phase worked, after all.
The energy from that explosion, however, was able to ride the connection between his mind, body, and spirit. As long as his mind remained here, he was vulnerable to this specific attack—an attack of a type he’d never encountered before, something he’d never even thought possible.
The power from that explosion could destroy even souls, causing anyone it touched to suffer a true death.
Roln had seemed particularly pissed off about that part, calling it “overkill on a grand scale.”
The first and second spell patterns worked simultaneously. Xavier, looking through the Immortal Soul lens, saw everything that was happening around him in acute detail. His heart thumped harder than it ever had. Though Roln had helped him with this plan and they were both confident it would work, there was still a chance it wouldn’t.
Xavier had almost summoned the Spirit of Time, but there was a problem—he’d left things too late. He didn’t have time to summon the Spirit of Time and get another unfolding going. He had time for these two spells and nothing else.
Neither he nor Roln was 100 percent sure that this was going to work. They also didn’t know whether it would mess with the Time Alteration spell that had changed the System timer.
This, like many things Xavier had done in life, was a gamble.
The altered spell patterns he’d created with Roln’s help were a variation on Time Prison—it was the only way they could figure out how to save his body and soul from being obliterated by the A Grade’s self-destruction.
They’d programmed the spell so it would only imprison him and the other innocents on the planet for a short time—they were hoping for a single minute.
But there was every chance they’d gotten that wrong.
The spells activated.