“This seems dangerous,” Xavier said.
He was standing inside a mental space in his mind. Two armchairs sat facing a fire to his left, though no one was sitting in them. This was same mental space he usually shared with Xavier Prime. A single, separated part of his mind was currently inside that mental space, conversing with Roln.
Here, Xavier’s mind’s processing speed allowed him to view the outside world as if it were moving in slow motion. Here, he could consider all the options before him and communicate those options to the ruling part of his consciousness.
Roln raised an eyebrow. “You calling an idea dangerous? That’s rich.” He paused. “Actually, that’s worrying.”
“Oh, I always know when the things I do are dangerous. It’s knowing whether they’ll be worth it…” Xavier trailed off.
But there was no point talking about Roln’s idea any longer. He’d already decided he was going to do it. There simply wasn’t any other way for him to succeed on this floor otherwise. The enemy’s presence on Galadsea would become more and more numerous, until tipping the scales back would be impossible, even with his resources and the resources of the entire planet behind him.
If that happened, it would leave him with only two options: escape the floor or reverse the time distortion effect on the System timer. And he wasn’t about to do the latter.
He didn’t want to abandon this floor either. He didn’t want to give up on the people he’d been trying so hard to save. Not unless there was nothing left for him to try. So even though this was dangerous, he instantly latched onto the idea.
Xavier: [Don’t worry. I’ll be back.]
Queen Aecia: [You’ll be back? What do you mean? Where are you going?]
Xavier blocked her communications out of his main awareness and shot upward, through the atmosphere. He needed to be careful about where he did what he was about to do, considering the risks involved, but with Roln’s assistance he didn’t need to go where he’d went last time.
He could enter the void without a supermassive black hole nearby—all he needed was to make the walls of reality thinner.
And that was something he was rather adept at.
Therein, of course, lay the danger. At least, one of the dangers. If Xavier weakened the walls of reality around the planet enough, then there was a strong chance a Void Being might try to break through.
And a Void Being was the last thing the planet Galadsea and her queen needed to deal with.
That threat wasn’t something he knew how to minimise, but Roln assured him the likelihood of a powerful Void Being breaking through such a thin hole in reality was incredibly slim. Only the weaker Void Beings would be able to get through. When Xavier asked if a stronger Void Being would be able to further weaken the walls of reality, the mental construct had simply pursed his lips and said, “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”
And that wasn’t even the part of the plan that Xavier had remarked was dangerous.
He had to travel into the void, and he wouldn’t be using a portal this time.
Even as he flew, the mental construct was working on editing his neural pathways. And it wasn’t only his neural pathways that were getting edited. Xavier felt shifts and changes in his body. Roln was suggesting and making alterations to Xavier’s physiology, things he’d never even mentioned were possible before, which meant that the mental construct had been keeping a thing or two from him.
He’s probably keeping a hell of a lot more than a “thing or two” from me, Xavier thought, knowing the dead Wanderer would be able to hear.
Xavier was curious about the changes, but he didn’t have the time nor the concentration to be double-checking the mental construct’s work.
All he needed to know was that the changes would help him do what he needed to do next.
Among the changes was a spell pattern he had never been aware of before. Xavier had a spell that allowed him to enter the void. That spell required he capture the soul of someone still alive. That was something he could have easily managed to do again if given a moment. There were plenty of B Grade enemies down there after all.
But with Roln’s way of entering the void, apparently it wasn’t necessary at all.
“That’s a very barbaric way of doing this. Like using a club as a hammer. It gets the job done, but it certainly isn’t ideal,” the dead Wanderer had said when they’d been discussing the plan.
Xavier didn’t fly too high. He was merely in orbit above the planet. It didn’t take him long to reach this position—it would take far, far longer to travel to the other side of the world. If he could, he would have weakened the walls of reality somewhere else, somewhere farther away.
On the other side of the Empire of Servitude’s armada would be a good idea. Then if a Void Being got loose in this universe, it would go straights for the ships…
But that would defeat the purpose of what he intended to do. For one, he wanted the Mastery Points from defeating these enemies. And two… he needed to enter the void so he could move faster around the planet.
Xavier still felt a bit shaky about that part, but Roln assured him it was possible—that “Wanderers did it all the time.”
Except, of course, Wanderers were always far more powerful than Xavier’s current level. The void wasn’t a playground for him.
It was a deathtrap.
Enough thinking about it, it’s time to act.
When he reached orbit around the planet Galadsea, Xavier manifested dozens and dozens of different spell patterns simultaneously. Spell patterns he didn’t intend to activate. Spell patterns that, at their power, he simply wouldn’t be able to activate all at once—not if he wanted to remain conscious.
Then he manifested several dozen more.
He’d done a lot of work protecting himself against the effects of Universal Pressure—the force that had shattered his cores when he’d killed the Arakashinai Queen—but it still affected him if he pushed his spell patterns further than he could currently handle. And there was always a way for him to do that.
He had to go against every instinct he’d learnt, stopping himself from pulling back, from cancelling the patterns, as the pressure pushed down on him.
On his body, his mind, his soul.
The universe around him became a little fuzzy. His thoughts sluggish. His movement even more so. In his Force Armour, he kept his breathing as even as he could manage. He tensed and untensed his muscles progressively, forcing it into a state of relaxation even as the pressure intensified.
When it had reached the necessary peak, he kept it at that level, creating no more spell patterns. This was exactly where he needed it to be. If he pushed it any harder, it might very well pierce a hole in the fabric of reality.
Not only that—it might shatter his cores.
That wasn’t something he wished to experience a second time, even if it had all worked out for him in the end.
I don’t have time for that.
He couldn’t imagine rebuilding himself from the ground up again.
With his Immortal Soul lens, he was able to gaze at the walls of reality with far more clarity than ever before. His spiritual sense had long become strong enough for this purpose, but this was on a completely different level. Not only that, he felt as though he could reach out and pierce a hole in those walls himself.
He hungered to try.
The walls of reality seemed to be made from a pure, denser sort of Celestial Energy. Though he’d studied the walls of reality in depth in the past this was something he’d never noticed before. The small differences between the different energies simply hadn’t been clear to him in the past, he supposed.
He reached out at the wall before him, ready to burn a small amount of Soul Energy in order to nudge the Celestial Energy. To scatter those dense particles, or even to force them to be cultivated.
What would cultivating energy from the walls of reality do for him?
The idea was an enticing one. Perhaps it would bring him to new levels of power…
Stop! Xavier, STOP!
Roln’s voice was loud in his mind, and it sounded as though it wasn’t the first time the mental construct had tried to get his attention.
Xavier blinked. He pulled his arm back—he hadn’t even realised he’d moved it. What… what just happened?
Why the hell would he want to scatter that energy? Why would he want to create a hole in reality? He only needed the walls to be thin, not broken. That would bring Void Beings here for sure!
The mental construct was silent for long moment before he finally responded. Honestly, Xavier, I’m not sure. Something… something came over you. I don’t understand what it was.
The mental construct’s words made the blood flee from Xavier’s face. Pins and needles played along his cheeks. The dead Wanderer could see every inch of Xavier’s mind, could read his entire brain map and interpret every single different neuron that fired and why it was firing… and yet, he had no idea why Xavier had just done that?
Worse, Xavier had no idea why he’d done it.
I didn’t do it, he told himself. I stopped myself. But it was weak reassurance—and without the mental construct insistent warnings finally getting through…
He would have done it.
He spent a moment checking his mental defences and walking the rooms of his mind. This would take barely a fraction of a fraction of a second on the outside, and it was something he needed to do to make sure everything was working as it should. He was sure he would have noticed if someone—or something—was influencing him, but what if he was wrong about that?
What if the influence was so subtle he hadn’t noticed it?
He had to check.
Checking the mental defences, walking the halls and the different rooms of his mind, he felt like a dad walking through a house, making sure the doors and windows were all locked before heading to bed.
Everything was in order. Not a single thing out of place. He couldn’t detect any sort of outside influence.
So what the hell made me do that?
He didn’t have the answers, and he didn’t have time to linger there and find them.
Instead, he manifested and initiated the spell pattern Roln had taught him.
The spell had many names, Roln had explained to him, but it was most commonly known as Void Wanderer, as it was a spell that all Wanderers eventually ended up learning. It wasn’t always the spell that brought them out of their reality—according to Roln, there were many ways to leave one’s own reality. But it was considered the easiest, and safest, way to make one’s way into the void.
And not only into the void.
The spell wove energy all around his body, energy that even with his Immortal Lens active was difficult for him to see. The strands were thinner than spider silk. Examining them as the spell formed, Xavier hadn’t even known strands of energy could get that thin and translucent. Perhaps if he was able to make energy strands of other spells this thin, he could make his spells harder to detect.
That would be a great boon when he was using concealment to hide his whereabouts…
Like a silencer for spells.
When the spell finished weaking those strands of energy, Xavier’s entire body was encapsulated, and a new awareness entered his consciousness. He could feel the walls of reality, just as thin as they’d been a moment ago, but there was something else, too. The spell was tugging him to certain spots on the wall.
He let the spell guide him. Interestingly, the spell didn’t take him to where the wall was at its thinnest, as he’d initially imagined it would, but somewhere in between two spots where the wall was thin.
It felt right—the spell had an instinct of its own.
Xavier took a deep breath.
Once more into the void.