Energy flashed around the closest ships again, though not the same ships as last time. Xavier pulled back, having been ready for it. The beams slammed into the shield ineffectually. Xavier took a steadying breath.
Can you alter them again?
More notifications sprang up. Xavier gave the mental construct permission to make the changes.
Four more times, Xavier’s concealment spells were altered. Four more times, he chanced getting hit by one of those beams.
The fourth time, the beams didn’t hit. Xavier breathed a sigh of relief, but Roln told him to be cautious—the armada might be learning.
Xavier didn’t fly onward, hovering just past the shield. The mental construct had a point. If they could still see through his concealment, and he kept on flying, they could shoot at him out in the open. He’d be too far from the shield to gain any sort of cover.
In fact, if they’d done that in the first place, he wouldn’t have survived this long.
I need a shield strong enough to protect against those damned beams.
He gazed at the ships, still a few hundred thousand miles away, then looked down at the planet, zeroing in on the S Grade True Dragon. He wondered, for a moment, if those beams could be used to take down the dragon…
He asked Roln.
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Roln said. “Maybe if they were all concentrated… but even then…”
Xavier’s eyes widened. Those beams were so strong they would absolutely obliterate him. Yet even with several million, Roln wasn’t sure it would be enough to take down the S Grade?
“It’s not too late to back down, you know,” Roln said. “You can still get off this floor.”
Xavier took a full minute to reconsider that option, but even if he did decide to escape through the void… he wanted to see if he could deal with this armada first.
The mental construct, who’d been hovering beside him, disappeared from his view and sighed in his mind.
Would the True Dragon be able to break the planetary shield?
It might take a little bit of time, but… yes.
Xavier inclined his head, beginning to realise just what he was dealing with. When he’d hovered outside the field for what felt like long enough and hadn’t been shot at, he started flying toward the armada again. Perhaps they could still see through his concealment. Maybe this was all a plan to get him out into the open. He didn’t know.
And there was only one way to find out.
After a few minutes of flying toward the enemy shield without those beam weapons firing on him, Xavier was feeling sure the concealment had worked this time.
It was easy to tell which ships still had crew aboard. The ships he’d dealt with last time, and the ships who’d had their crew teleport down to the planet, now lacked a force field around them. The force field had been powered by the joint energy of the Denizens on board, without those Denizens, the shield couldn’t function.
Xavier had little interest in the empty ships, unshielded.
It was the shielded ships he needed to deal with. The last time he’d been up here, he’d been able to take those shields down and get onboard—but the only way he’d managed that was because he was the only one with an active time dilation field.
The instant you cast a spell, they’ll have a chance of zeroing in on your position, Roln said in his mind. You have to be careful, Xavier. Very careful.
Xavier needed to pinpoint where the time dilation field was coming from. He’d long ago learnt to carve his time dilation field to fit any sort of space he wished. He could stretch and change it, make it twist this way and that through any area like a snake.
But he was aware that most time mages didn’t necessarily have that ability. The Time Alteration spell starts off expanding outward from where the mage casts it.
Xavier pushed out his Immortal Soul lens, examining the radius of the enemy time mage’s field. A smile slipped onto his face as he noticed where the barrier ended. The time mage had stretched the field so it would reach the planet’s shield. In doing so, the shield had stretched the opposite way as well—something which for Xavier would have been completely unnecessary to do.
He found the centre of the time dilation field’s sphere.
He was 99 percent sure that at the centre of that sphere he would find the enemy time mage. All he needed to do was take that mage out.
He stared at the ship for a long while, trying to think of the best way to get inside it without making his presence known. He also wondered if there was a way he could simply take out the ship. Those shields were powerful, but once they were down…
Could he blow the ship? The explosion might not be powerful enough to kill the A Grade time mage on board, but it would likely be enough to disrupt their spell. And the time mage likely wouldn’t have the ability to cooldown the time dilation field…
He needed a plan. A good one.
Xavier turned his gaze back down to the planet and wondered about the resources he had at his disposal. He had a few mind-controlled A Grade Champions down there, close to the S Grade True Dragon. They were trapped outside of his time dilation field, but that was an easy enough thing to fix. He also thought about the drones he could summon into existence. Almost all of the drones he’d had near the S Grade True Dragon were already dead, and he didn’t fancy heading down there to pull the other ones out, or to have them use their own time dilation fields—that would risk tipping the True Dragon off as to what was happening.
I guess that’s the same for the A Grade Champions I’m controlling. I can’t pull them out either.
There was a part of Xavier that wanted to simply assault the ship head on. He had no doubt he could break through that shield faster than the last time he’d done it. He had no doubt that he could take down the A Grade time mage inside the ship with a single, calculated strike if he was close enough. Then, that time dilation field would be dealt with, and he could take the rest of the armada out at a leisurely pace.
But patience was important.
Xavier retreated from the armada and back through the planetary shield. He no longer had any mind-controlled A Grades from the Empire of Servitude’s previous waves. He’d killed the last of those captains when he’d caught up with the waves. If he left any of the previous wave alive, it stopped him from gaining a wave reward for the next one.
Now, he wished he’d kept a dozen or so on the sidelines, just in case he’d needed them.
But how could he have envisioned something like this happening?
The S Grade True Dragon was stuck outside the time dilation field…
Would it really be so dangerous for Xavier to pull out the mind-controlled A Grades near it, and even mind-control more of them? Was he ignoring possible resources?
What could the S Grade do while stuck in a slower time stream?
That’s a bad idea, Xavier. Trust me, you don’t know what that thing is capable of.
Do you?
There was a pause. No. I honestly don’t. But I’m imagining the worst. S Grades are capable of things A Grades aren’t. He’ll have more control over reality than you imagine. We just won’t know how much control unless we see the dragon in action.
Xavier sighed. He supposed it would be too easy if he could simply turn the A Grades down there onto his side and make them deal with the time mage in the armada.
Still, he needed some sort of distraction.
Do you think we can conceal the drones as well as we’ve concealed me?
I don’t think that will be possible, but it’s worth a shot.
Xavier started summoning several drones. When he had a dozen around him, he had the first form the same concealment he benefited from. The concealment couldn’t be as powerful as his own, but there was a chance it didn’t need to be. Concealment wasn’t about power, it was about hiding power. About making oneself completely invisible and scouring reality of any possible energy source.
Xavier, having assumed direct control over the drone, had it fly through the planetary shield. A flash of energy came from the armada, but unlike Xavier the drone wasn’t fast enough to slip away from the beam.
It took the full force, dying in one painful instant.
Xavier had expected this. For a moment, it made him wonder if he could simply send out a few million drones to bait the beams. Then, the ships wouldn’t be able to shoot at him at all. But that would take a devastating amount of energy.
Energy I could simply regain from cultivation, if need be. It’s not as though I’m short on time. And it would be a hell of a lot safer if their beams were gone…
But he had no guarantee that the ships would keep shooting once they realised what he was doing. It would take a long time for him to test something like that out.
Let’s call that Plan B. Maybe even Plan C.
Xavier and Roln altered the concealment spells again and again, making them more and more efficient until, finally, the hundredth drone he sent out wasn’t fired upon by the ships.
Do you think it’s a true concealment? Or that they’re trying to confuse me?
I think they’re prone to firing first rather than clever tricks, Roln said. Considering all we’ve seen from these people, they’re not exactly what I would call subtle.
Xavier summoned more and more drones, until he had a thousand at his disposal. He could have created more, but as he was controlling every single one of them individually and he was not currently benefitting from the combined power of two galaxies, he figured a thousand would have to be enough.
Xavier and his entourage of drones flew through the planetary shield. He held his breath as he made his way to the armada, fully expecting his concealed drones to be fired upon. But the armada didn’t fire off a single shot. They must have seen the drones disappear, but there was no way for them to know the right place to shoot.
They could have shot wildly around, but space was incredibly massive. The chances of them hitting the right spot, even with over two million attempts, was astronomically small.
When Xavier and his thousand drones reached the armada, he sent a small contingent toward the time mage’s ship. He knew the moment he started trying to get through that ship’s shield, the armada would become aware of exactly what he was trying to do.
Not only that, Xavier doubted this was the only time mage in the armada. The moment they realised they might lose the first time mage, other time mages would start creating their own time dilation fields, to ensure they never slipped back into the universe’s normal time stream.
Taking out the armada might be a little more difficult than I’d thought…
I seem to recall you saying something about it being a piece of cake?
Xavier gritted his teeth but didn’t respond.
From the perspective of the small contingent of drones he’d sent to the time mage’s ship, he had them spread out around the ship, covering every possible angle. He’d sent a full hundred drones—10 percent of his force—hoping it would be enough.
He’d never broken through one of these shields with a drone, and he needed to do this as swiftly as possible.
Every drone had their Immortal Soul lens active, and with him controlling each of their minds that gave him the ability to have them target the exact same parts of the shield. Except, that wouldn’t work. When he’d been taking out the ships’ shields before, he’d targeted a single spot and scattered the energy there, making a hole in it.
Something like that had only been possible because of his time dilation field. The rest of the shield couldn’t fill that hole with its energy because it was practically frozen out of time.
So, there were other spells his drones needed to cast.
Xavier sent a further ten drones to the target ship. They manifested spell patterns inside their body—this was something their concealment hid effectively. Then, he had each of them cast Time Alteration.
Let’s hope this works…