Hearing his name stopped Xavier in his tracks. He just hovered there in the air, halting his drones from moving forward as his eyes widened.
How in the hell do they know my name? Did they hear me tell the queen… Were they observing even back then?
But no—that couldn’t be true. He’d been in a different time stream when he’d told the woman who he was, and soon after that they’d been communicating entirely through their linked Communication Stone channel. Unless one of her entourage had been kidnapped—but the queen hadn’t mentioned anything like that.
“The other Champions,” Roln said. “They’re from your universe. If the armada are observing you, so are they. Ninety-nine different parties of A Grades, one among them is bound to know who you are.”
Of course.
He tried to think if this changed his plans in anyway—it didn’t.
But it did make him more wary.
Well, if you know me and you’re watching, it’s time to show you what I’m made of.
Xavier sent in his drones. They didn’t lift their concealments—they didn’t need to. The instant they started setting off spells, the five A Grades were aware of their presence. Shards of ice shot from the great big golem, slamming into several drones.
While a single one of those ice shards wasn’t enough to kill the drones, they did take out a third of their health.
Strong for a defensive golem.
His drones may be significantly weaker than him, but they had strong, active defensive spells of their own.
None of the drones’ spells managed to penetrate that shield, but Xavier hadn’t expected them to. Simply slamming spells into that shield allowed Xavier to get a read on what kind of energy it was able to repulse, and what energy it struggled with.
Once he’d gotten a good read on the defensive shield’s energy, he smiled. He’d yet to cast a single spell at the A Grade Captains, but that would happen soon.
Very soon.
He was in the head of every single one of his drones—feeling the deaths of those that didn’t survive the onslaught of A Grade attacks. A dozen of those drones hadn’t set off a spell yet. He had them come around to the opposite side of the enemy’s shield, and he hovered behind them.
Looking through their eyes, Xavier did something he’d been working on, trying to master. He’d gotten it right a few times, but there was a nuance to this particular technique that was difficult.
A nuance that made the technique difficult to achieve from the drones’ perspectives.
But the mental construct hadn’t only been working on adjusting the Time Prison spell while Xavier had been making his way to the five A Grade captains. The dead Wanderer had also been working on something else.
The notifications for those adaptions came rolling in. The instant they did, Xavier got to work.
From the perspective of the dozen different drones, Xavier activated their Immortal Soul lenses—for all the drones had souls, just like any “real” Denizen would. And because they had souls, activating their Immortal Soul lens wasn’t the only thing he was able to do with them.
He could make them manipulate foreign energy outside their own bodies, and it didn’t matter if he exhausted their Soul Energy.
The reason he hadn’t used this against the last A Grade was one: because he hadn’t realised he should have; and two: he hadn’t yet mastered the technique.
Now that he not only had access to Neural Editing, but access to the mental construct once more, he was able to fix that.
As he leveraged the power of the drones’ souls, he watched with satisfaction as the A Grade’s defensive shield was scattered into the wind. Without needing to hold back their Soul Energy, Xavier was able to utilise enough of their power to poke a large enough hole through the shield that it could no longer be sustained.
The shield disintegrated at the same time as all dozen drones expended the last of their Soul Energy. They didn’t merely suffer from soul sickness—their lives expired.
There were safeguards in place around a soul to stop a Denizen from using up all their Soul Energy, though those safeguards didn’t prevent them from acquiring soul sickness.
Xavier was able to push past those safeguards, basically making the drones self-destruct.
Now that he was beginning to see the drones in this way, their uses had expanded.
The drones had just become far, far more powerful assets. With this technique at their disposal, they might even be powerful enough to take down an A Grade.
Those dozen drones that had died weren’t the only drones he’d been keeping in reserve, preventing from attacking the enemy so they wouldn’t be injured or killed. Another dozen was just behind him.
Now that the enemy’s shield was down, he had them perform the next task.
Six of the drones targeted one A Grade captain, while the other six targeted another. These were the A Grades Xavier had deemed the weakest as he’d read their energies through his Immortal Soul lens.
At least, they had the weakest minds.
Xavier made every other remaining drone—of which there were only forty-two—target these two A Grades with mental attacks. Purple energy flowed through the air toward them, trying to breach their mental barriers. None of those drones would be able to break through even the weakest A Grade’s barrier, but they didn’t need to break through, all they needed to do was activate their defences.
The moment those defences were activated, Xavier had the dozen drones scatter those defences. This was more difficult than scattering the shield had been. It was the most surgical of surgical strikes.
And Xavier didn’t even know if it would work.
At first, it didn’t work. But before the Soul Energy from those drones was completely depleted, more notifications from the Combat Assistance Overlay streamed into his vision, making adjustments to the problem on the fly.
The two A Grades had their mental defences obliterated.
Xavier activated two Willpower Infusion spell patterns that he’d manifested in his own body. Purple energy shot out of him, revealing his position to the enemy for the first time. Before that purple energy had even reached the two A Grades, all five of the captains had turned to face him. Clearly, they could read that his attack was more powerful than any of the drones’ attacks had been.
Xavier threw up a defensive shield of his own, then flapped his wings to create distance between himself and the enemies. As they couldn’t track him, only the location from which his two Willpower Infusion spell patterns had come from, there was no way for them to track his movement.
When the two Willpower Infusion spells reached the two A Grades, Xavier took over both minds with incredible ease. Not only were their mental defences absolutely obliterated, they also had no way of fighting back against his hold. This wasn’t some short-lived mental control—Xavier had seized their minds and would likely be able to hold onto them for several hours before they managed to break free.
And if he continued to adapt at the speed he was currently adapting at, it was possible that he might never lose his control over them, as long as he had the resources to enforce his hold.
Xavier had invaded the minds of previous A Grade captains, but he’d never tried to hold onto their minds for long. It simply hadn’t been necessary—before he’d accidentally allowed fifty waves of enemies to go by without him wiping them out, he’d been aiming to get the best Wave Rewards to maximise the number of Mastery Points he received.
Now, Mastery Points weren’t even a consideration to him. Not until he’d cleaned up the waves that were wreaking havoc all over Galadsea.
He needed to purge every single one of them as fast as he could.
The two A Grade captains instantly turned on their comrades. Being that close, their attack unanticipated, they were able to inflict intense amounts of damage in a very short period of time. Two of the other A Grade captains were already dead before the third started fighting back. Then, Xavier was in the mix, slamming his bone swords into that final A Grade captain’s spine.
Xavier landed on the ground beside the two A Grade captains he controlled, cancelling his concealment to reveal himself. Looking up, through the barrier around the area, he peered all the way out to space and directly at the armada of ships in orbit.
Xavier: [Drop the force field. The five captains are neutralised.]
Queen Aecia: [We’re reading two still standing.]
Xavier: [They’re under my control.]
There was a pause.
Queen Aecia: [Understood.]
The barrier around the area disappeared. Still looking upward, Xavier smiled. “You may know my name, you may think you know what that means, and what I’m capable of. But you have no idea what you’re in for.”
A moment after he uttered those last words, he concealed himself again. He brought two of his few surviving drones close, one each to shadow the two A Grade captains under his control, then he had them extend their own concealments to the A Grades, hiding them from sight. The armada might still be able to see them, Xavier’s wasn’t yet sure, but the concealment would still help against enemies on the ground.
Xavier summoned more drones then split them into three groups, sending the two A Grade captains and a detachment of his drones off in different directions. At the same time, Xavier took flight alone and made his way toward the next nearest batch of A Grade enemies.
Xavier repeated this process time and time again. He took down most of the A Grades he encountered—he didn’t need an army of enemies mind controlled, he wanted to wipe out every single one of them—but he converted enough of them to his will that he was able to clear the waves of enemies left around the planet with increasing speed.
This was only possible because he’d brought the mental construct back. Roln was on a roll, editing Xavier’s neural network with a new and enhanced vigour. It was like something in the mental construct had been unlocked. He was operating faster than before, helping Xavier adapt faster than ever.
Even as fast as he’d become and as powerful as he was, Xavier still couldn’t clear the enemies fast enough. With the Teleportation and Portal Blocks in place, new waves were appearing all over the place—as far away from his last detected location as the armada could manage. Even with his mind controlled A Grades spread out around the planet, the enemies were accumulating faster than he could deal with them.
You need to come up with a new plan, Roln said within his mind.
The mental construct was right. Xavier might be able to wipe the floor with these enemies faster than ever, but that didn’t count for much when they kept gaining ground. Millions and millions of civilians were dying. More and more of the planet was being overrun.
He needed to catch up.
He needed to move faster.
Even with his drones he simply couldn’t be everywhere at once, and as powerful as his drones were, they weren’t quite enough to take on an entire wave.
Not fast enough to make a true difference.
Maybe I do need an army of mind controlled A Grades. Maybe I’ve been killing too many of them…
If he converted enough of them, at least until the excess waves were dealt with, maybe he could get things back to how they’d been… with the A Grades spread around the entire planet…
But even he had limitations. He currently had two dozen A Grades under his mental control. Even as fast as Roln could help him adapt his mind, with all the resources he had at his disposal, he simply didn’t think he’d be able to keep enough A Grades under his control to cover a big enough area. Already, pushing his mental control as hard as he had, he’d lost control of more than one along the way.
He needed a different plan. A better plan. A way to move so fast that he could reach the enemy wherever they were around the planet, but with portals and teleportation not being an option, he simply didn’t know how that would be possible.
Speed Energy, Soul Energy, even Reality Energy—none of it was enough to get him moving fast enough, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be as sustainable as he needed it to be.
So, he posed the question to Roln, and the mental construct came back with an answer. Something that would solve his problems…
As long as he was willing to endure the risk.