Do you agree to this challenge?
Jhanku stared at the message. He gritted his teeth, reading the notification over again, and again, trying to see where the trick was. He hadn’t gotten this far by being a fool, after all. This was too good to be true, and when something was too good to be true it usually meant it was.
This would give me everything I want from this man, and I don’t even need to let him live—the System will provide his secrets to me if I should… slip.
He wanted to accept, but he wasn’t going to act on that desire. Not right away.
“What game are you playing?” Jhanku asked. He raised his chin. “Sign a truth contract with me. Answer my questions. I can’t agree to such a challenge unless I know you aren’t trying to trap me.”
Xavier smiled. “Oh, I am trying to trap you, Jhanku. The instant you accept this challenge it will seal your fate. You’ll be a dead man once you pass through that portal.”
Jhanku narrowed his eyes. “At whose hand? Who put you up to this?”
“At my hand. And I put me up to this.”
A truth contract appeared. Jhanku read through it, discarded it, then sent one of his own to the young dragonkin—just in case. The young dragonkin signed without hesitation.
Fool.
“Who will meet me on the other side of that portal? Who have you made a deal with to kill me?”
“Only I, Xavier Collins, will meet you, Jhanku. No one from outside the sectors I rule will be a part of this fight.”
The man narrowed his eyes, then.
No one outside the sectors he rules…
That was where the trick was—it must have been. So, who was inside the sectors he ruled? There were very few beings out there who were powerful enough to take on Jhanku in a one-on-one fight. He was one of the top ten most powerful beings in the universe, after all. Even those higher up on the ladder might not be able to defeat him without becoming crippled—or even dying themselves in the process.
But there were a few—at least three—who could certainly take him down, and they wouldn’t break much of a sweat doing it.
The Old Man, for one.
But why would the Old Man be a part of such an elaborate plan?
“What is the highest-grade Denizen under your rule?”
“B Grade.”
“Are there any A Grades or S Grades in these sectors?” Not that he was worried about A Grades. And, yes, it might have been a mistake to mention S Grades, but Xavier Collins wasn’t long for this world no matter what his little challenge was all about.
Besides, something told him that was a secret the dragonkin was already privy to—he certainly made no reaction at the comment.
“There are none. Jhanku, it will be me you face in this challenge. No one else but Xavier Collins.”
Jhanku shook his head. He checked the truth contract was still active—considering the rumours about this man he’d heard—and it was. There must be something else going on here. This was all simply too good to be true.
The dragonkin couldn’t possibly think he would be able to defeat Jhanku in a fight, even with the resources of his empire behind him. He thought back to what he’d witnessed, when he’d been watching Xavier Collins take on the World Destroyer, the way the boy had drawn on the powers of those he ruled, and what it had made him capable of.
He’s drunk with power. Insane if he thinks that’s going to be enough. It might have made him strong enough to one-punch that World Destroyer, but that thing is nothing compared to me.
He must know that.
Then again… maybe he didn’t.
There was a certain arrogance leaking from this man, and he had to be insane to come here in the first place. Yes, there were most definitely oddities about this situation. Things Jhanku couldn’t explain. But while Jhanku had long learnt it was good to be cautious, he also hadn’t gotten this far by being a coward. It made him wonder what this conversation would look like, if it were viewed by his people, or gods forbid by his enemies.
They would think him weak for hesitating for longer than this, now that he’d interrogated the man with a truth contract. Especially since the challenge was sanctioned by the System. The man before him was a C Grade! No, there was no reason he needed to accept this challenge, but he’d be a damned fool not to.
The deal was too good. The things this dragonkin knew how to do, the secrets that he had in his head—this would be the easiest way to get them.
And he didn’t want any other S Grades getting their hands on those secrets first.
If I learn his powers, it’ll turn the tide. It will finally give me what I need to take on the other top-ten—maybe even the Old Man himself.
There were so few things that could genuinely change a Denizen’s power at this stage in a game. So few things that could give him the jump in strength that he needed.
This would mean leaving his empire, but it wasn’t as though he would be leaving it for long. And no one would know he was gone—it would take barely a few seconds to squash this man, even with that time dilation field of his active.
Jhanku might not be a time mage, but he had ways of breaking such spells.
It occurred to him that luring him away from his empire was exactly what the dragonkin wanted, but it also didn’t worry him.
His fingers curled into a fist. He almost summoned his staff to grip it reassuringly, but why would he need any reassurance about this fight?
Jhanku’s eyes gleamed.
He accepted the challenge. When he did. Xavier Collins smiled more broadly than he ever had. A shiver ran up Jhanku’s spine, though he didn’t let it show. The air in the atmosphere the dragonkin had conjured seemed to shimmer with expectation.
The pit of Jhanku’s stomach filled with an instant weight of regret, a regret he couldn’t logically explain, and the words that upstart had said came to him as he floated toward the intergalactic portal:
The instant you accept this challenge it will seal your fate. You’ll be a dead man once you pass through that portal.
Those words had sounded insane when the dragonkin had first said them, but as they replayed in his mind, they sounded more sincere than anything Jhanku could ever remember hearing.
But Jhanku dismissed the shiver that ran up his spine. He dismissed the heavy feeling of regret in his stomach. And he refused to listen to the doubt that entered his mind.
He’s C Grade. Nothing more than a child playing. That’s all this will be—child’s play.
Jhanku floated through the portal and was transported to a patch of space in the very outskirts of Xavier Collins empire.
It was time to show Xavier Collins what happened when he played games with titans.
Jhanku knew what would happen the instant he arrived. He’d been prepared for it. Since the moment he’d decided to accept this challenge he’d been focusing his mind, speeding up its processing power so that he would be able to perceive what was happening in a faster time stream.
And he’d been right—the time dilation field the dragonkin had around him vanished.
Jhanku examined the area where he’d arrived. A C Grade—even a C Grade with the strange powers this Xavier Collins possessed—couldn’t possibly wield a time dilation field strong enough to stop him dead in his tracks. Jhanku was confident in the speed of his body, mind, and most importantly spells.
He’d summoned his staff to his hand just as he’d moved through the portal. Yes, he didn’t need it. Yes, this challenge was nothing more than a farce. There was no way this boy would be able to hurt him, and no way Jhanku would even need the extra powers his staff offered him.
And yet, it was still a System-sanctioned challenge. It was still a battle to the death. Xavier was confident for a reason. Jhanku was no coward, but he was no fool either. He wasn’t going to walk into a fight unarmed, no matter how weak his opponent was.
Examining the area, Jhanku only found… empty space. In that empty space he could sense something, however. A time distortion. Xavier Collins’s time dilation field. Except, no… this time distortion was far more powerful than the one that he’d used on the other side of the portal. There was something different about it, and it encompassed a much larger area.
Does he have an army inside that time dilation field, an army from his empire that he thinks will make some kind of difference?
That was when the beings appeared. There must have been at least two thousand of them, and every one of them was within that time dilation field. Despite how fast Jhanku’s mind was moving the figures moved faster. They were a blur. A blur he could barely perceive. And yet, there was something familiar about them.
Wings. Dark wings flapping in the midnight black of the vastness of space.
Everyone one of them was dragonkin. All two thousand of them.
Of course. These are merely Xavier Collins’s drones. I knew he would have those.
And yet, even at this realisation something shuddered in his mind. It wasn’t a shiver running up his spine—his body couldn’t move fast enough to shiver. It was something else. Something primal. Something… afraid.
But why would Jhanku be afraid of what was about to happen? He’d thought he’d dismissed that foolishness, and yet it persisted.
He had nothing to fear. Nothing.
Jhanku hadn’t been idle since he’d floated through the intergalactic portal. The instant he’d arrived and the challenge had started, he’d been working on a spell. Outside his enemy’s time dilation field it would take time for this spell to be cast, but not a lot of time.
All those billions of years ago, before the System had come down to integrate his young planet and he had been nothing more than a Singer’s Son, Jhanku had known all the words to every song his mother ever sang—and he could sing them just as well as her.
Better, so his mother would say.
When the System came, Jhanku didn’t abandon his heritage. He enhanced it. It helped him on his journey toward power. He chose to become a mage. First, he’d chosen a summoning spell, but the music, the songs in his heart, influenced him in ways he hadn’t imagined they would. As he was given classes to choose from and learnt new and interesting spells, his ability to sing came into play—he harnessed and strengthened the power of his voice to the point where he didn’t just control the beings he summoned, he could control other beings up well, all with the songs that he sung.
All with the influence of his voice.
Songs could keep history alive, but they could do more than that. They could alter moods and talk to the very soul. They could influence. Change.
Control.
Had Jhanku chosen to capture Xavier Collins, he was confident he would have gotten the secrets from him in the end. He would have sung them out of him. Now, he didn’t have to.
But Jhanku’s voice didn’t only control—it killed.
The first thing he was going to kill was that time dilation field.
Jhanku cast his spell. He didn’t need to move his body or even open his mouth to cast this spell. This song wasn’t one that needed to be sung by his mouth, it was a song sung by his heart and soul. A song that could be sung almost instantly.
The music of his spell was unleashed.
A terrible, powerful energy shot forth from him, an energy that could move so fast it didn’t matter that he was stuck outside the dragonkin’s time dilation field.
And when the field is down, I’ll sing one more song. The song of Xavier Collins’s death.
Except, something strange happened when the energy surged out of him. Something that shouldn’t have been possible, and yet somehow was. From inside the time dilation field, more people were revealed. It happened so very fast Jhanku had great trouble perceiving it—but perceive it he did. They moved almost exactly the same way as the other people inside that time dilation field.
More drones?
They would have to be—they all looked exactly the same. They all had the wings of a dragonkin. They all wore the same dark robes.
Except, there were millions of them.
And that wasn’t the strange thing that happened. It was only the precursor to it. Jhanku’s spellsong was thwarted. The energy from it disappeared. Scattered into space. The time dilation field remained.
It was then that terror struck Jhanku like it never had before in his very long life.