Xavier ripped everything out of Jhanku’s mind.
What he found in there made it very clear there was no reason to give this demonkin the opportunity to become a part of his empire, not that Xavier had ever seriously considered that course of action.
These old monsters… very few of them would be able to change.
They had been in charge for so long they’d forgotten what it meant to follow. And those like Jhanku, over the years they’d held ultimate power over their followers, had done the most terrible things imaginable.
Perhaps there was a way to come back from that. Perhaps even the most obscene of acts, the most horrible of deeds, did not mean one was totally lost to redemption. Maybe Jhanku could have become a good man, given opportunity, time, and heavy guidance.
But Xavier didn’t think so, nor did he care to find out. None of the two thousand Xaviers wanted to.
Like those he’d passed judgement upon in the many sectors he became the ruler of, there were some who simply… didn’t deserve to live. Sometimes it still felt so perverse, believing such a thing—he never used to, when he’d been merely a “normal” human, before the System. But things had changed.
Jhanku didn’t deserve to live.
The two thousand Xaviers had full dominion over the man’s mind. There was nothing they couldn’t make him do. With the combined power of their psychic connection, they forced the man to burn through all his cores—just as they’d once forced another man to do the same, what felt like a long, long time ago. The Lord of the Endless Horde had felt so powerful, and yet he was an insect compared to Jhanku.
And right now, Jhanku felt like an insect compared to the Xaviers.
Oh, how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go.
The Xaviers fight against Jhanku wasn’t a fight at all; it was a slaughter.
The two thousand versions of Xavier watched as one of the top ten most powerful beings in their universe burned through every one of his cores until there was no power left. Until no power remained within any of his cores to sustain his body. Even then he didn’t die. Even hovering in space, without oxygen, he was powerful enough to survive a very, very long time.
But he wasn’t powerful enough to fight back.
The Xaviers called upon the power of twenty thousand sectors, and they didn’t need to call upon all of it to get the job done. Just a fraction was enough to allow them to incinerate the S Grade’s body and destroy him where he hovered.
The thought, a dangerous thought, crossed every one of their minds at once:
We’re unstoppable…
The Xaviers felt Jhanku’s last thoughts. They’d inspected the man’s memories leading up to this moment. The confidence he’d felt at first, and that confidence being rocked. That shudder of fear. The instincts deep within him that told him to be afraid—the instincts he made himself ignore because he was too powerful to be thwarted. Too arrogant to think it could be possible.
Arrogance.
The Xaviers had been accused of such a thing, many times. They’d accused themselves of being arrogant more than once. And yet here they hovered, watching an S Grade Denizen who’d been around for billions of years become incinerated by their power, a Denizen who was completely unable to fight back.
The Xaviers had every reason to be arrogant, but that didn’t stop them from wondering if they’d ever be in the same position as the demonkin. If they were to ever underestimate an opponent to the same degree…
We won’t let that happen.
As Jhanku’s life finally left him, after every memory had been scraped from that skull of his, the Xaviers became aware of a strange feeling. Or, rather, their mental constructs made them aware of it. At the very edges of their combined Immortal Soul lens, they sensed… something. Something that, to the mental constructs—currently sharing in that same mental link the Xaviers were—found familiar.
What is it? the Xaviers asked when the Rolns hadn’t been forthcoming on their own.
There was a pause before they responded. It couldn’t have been a long pause, less than a second, but to their processing power it felt more significant.
She’s watching.
The Xaviers blinked in unison. They’d been in the middle of basking in their combined victory over one of the top ten most powerful beings in their universe. The feat they’d achieved hadn’t been close to sinking in. This made them shift gears. It didn’t take them long to realise what the mental constructs meant by she.
Your faction leader? That’s what—who—we’re sensing.
Yes. Her and… others.
This isn’t a surprise. We knew she would be watching us. She’s no doubt been watching since she inserted you into my mind.
She has been. I have no doubt of that either. But… this is the first time you’ve been able to sense her.
The Xaviers tilted their heads all at once. A small part of their conjoined minds couldn’t help but wonder what this little spectacle would look like to an observer. Eerie, no doubt.
They’d known, far back in their minds, that they would be watched. It didn’t matter that they’d cloaked every sector under their control from the eyes of everyone else in this universe, as there were simply those in the multiverse who could break through that cloak with ease and without detection.
The Wanderers and others like them would always be watching.
There was a part of him that was grateful to the watching Wanderers, as creepy as it felt to be watched at all times. The fact they were protecting this little corner of the multiverse from outside interference was a good thing to them.
Even if the Xaviers had already benefitted from outside interference.
But the mental constructs were right—they hadn’t been able to sense the watchers before. That meant one of two things: their powers had become stronger than they’d imagined, or the watchers wanted to be sensed out there.
The Xaviers, even the Rolns, were honestly not sure which one it was, but something nudged them toward thinking it was the latter.
As they turned their collective focus to the watchers, any hint of them disappeared as fast as it had come. That by no means meant they were gone, but it did mostly confirm that whatever reason the Xaviers had been able to sense them, it wasn’t because of something they were doing—it was something the watchers had done.
The Xaviers thought about saying something. Thought about addressing those watchers. There were lots of things they would have to talk about, after all. Like saving the universe, for instance—though only Roln’s faction seemed to be interested in doing such a thing anymore, given that the other Wanderers had long ago given up.
At least, according to Roln.
But the Xaviers said nothing. In fact, they pretended as though they didn’t even know they were being watched at all. They’d already gained the scrutiny of just about every powerful being in their own universes—at least, the ones that had heard about them—and the scrutiny of powers from outside their universes. The last thing they wanted to do was inadvertently challenge the watchers like they’d challenged the old monsters here.
There might be other beings out there. Ones who weren’t a part of Roln’s former faction. No doubt some of them had taken an interest in the Xaviers too—though even thinking such a thing made them feel even more inflated than usual.
Still, as powerful as they were, they knew they were still small compared to those powers. And as insane as many of the things they’d done were, they weren’t completely foolish.
The last thing they wanted to do was piss off a powerful Wanderer.
The Xaviers smirked, all at once.
At least, not yet.
The Xaviers didn’t linger in that part of space for long. When the S Grade’s body had been completely incinerated, they briefly observed the particles left behind scatter through space, stopping when they reached the end of the time dilation field.
Jhanku’s attention on the Xaviers had been something that had weighed heavily on them for some time. There would be no way any individual version of Xavier would be able to handle an attack from a being that powerful—not yet—and if they were being attacked all of them would be attacked at the same time, as their universes outside their empire hadn’t diverged much at all. It might help to create more unfoldings, more Xaviers, if they had mastery over time during the fight, but that was something they couldn’t guarantee.
In fact, they now knew it wouldn’t have been possible. Jhanku had the ability to shatter and even control another’s time dilation field. That was what the spellsong he’d cast ultimately did. If one of them had been alone, they wouldn’t have been able to stop that attack from happening, and their time dilation field wouldn’t have been fast enough to avoid it, either. And if Jhanku had decided to attack Xavier or his empire, he would come with his own time mages. A lot of them.
No. There would have been no way Xavier would have been able to survive without the help of the others.
Which meant that now they needed to deal with the other nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-nine versions of Jhanku in the remaining universes. But at least now they could create more Xaviers who no longer had Jhanku around in their universe.
That was an amazing boon, though it was something they didn’t need to take advantage of yet.
And once they’d defeated every version of Jhanku? The immediate threats—the ones that were obvious to them—would be dealt with. They could allow their individual empires to continue to expand, even live their lives a little along the way. And beyond that, they could continue to become stronger.
Because if they were this powerful at B Grade, with a Tier 3 advancement in their Cultivation path, how powerful would they be if they pushed those paths forward?
And then, how much more powerful would they become if they were able to finally unlock the secrets of the hidden core the True Dragon had possessed?
As powerful as the Xaviers were—and they could become even more powerful by creating more unfoldings—they knew this couldn’t be their only path. Unity over thousands, millions, trillions of different universes would no doubt make them powerful on a level they couldn’t currently imagine, but that didn’t mean it would be enough to take down the Interdimensional Dragon.
Each of them was still merely an ant compared to that thing.
They needed to become more.
Far more.
Each of them needed to be powerful enough to take on the Old Man themselves. No… each of them needed to be powerful enough to take on a thousand versions of the Old Man all at once.
Hell, even that probably wouldn’t be enough.
Their attention was pulled back to the watchers, although they could still no longer sense them. Thinking of those Wanderers among the watchers, beings who’d journeyed through a great amount of the multiverse over more years than the combined power of their mind could contemplate, the Xaviers knew they would need to leave their own universe to grow their power to the level that was necessary.
It was a thought they’d never truly put to words before, something that had lingered at the back of their minds, as for so very long it hadn’t seemed like the right approach to take. If becoming a Wanderer and finding power out there in the multiverse was enough to become strong enough to take on the Interdimensional Dragon, then why had all the Wanderers who’d done the same never managed to defeat it? Why had almost an entire generation of the most powerful beings in the multiverse been utterly destroyed by the Interdimensional Dragon when they’d tried?
That knowledge had made it feel like the answers weren’t out there, that they were here, inside each of their individual universes. That was what the System had been designed for in the first place—to spin out enough universes until finally a solution was found.
But the Xaviers hadn’t become this strong by following the rules the System laid down. And what did it matter if other Wanderers hadn’t become powerful enough to defeat the Interdimensional Dragon? Why should that stop them from journeying outward?
Before the Xaviers opened a portal to another of their universes to deal with the next Jhanku, they’d all come to the same decision at the same time.
Soon, they would have to venture outward. Soon, they would become Wanderers themselves—but they wouldn’t do it to escape the ends of their universes, and they wouldn’t ever be gone long.
They would do it in order to save their universes.
The mental constructs were quiet as this all was decided, but the trepidation radiating from them was abundantly clear.