Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 9) - Chapter 46 – The Myth, the Legend

Xavier found himself lying on the floor in the middle of the room. He must have fallen down from his sitting position sometime during the transformation.

Every ounce of pain that he’d just been experiencing disappeared in a flash. He blinked, feeling as though he was coming out of a deep sleep. A deep sleep that left him feeling more revitalised than he could ever remember.

His body, as always, felt different. He was almost afraid to move, knowing his Strength would be considerably higher. As he lay there, he contemplated the 50,000 points he’d just received to each of his attributes and smiled, looking a little insane lying there on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with that smile.

He slowly got to his feet, not wanting to push it. It always took time to adjust to an advancement. While he’d been improving his strength considerably before between advancements, he always had time to practice after those shifts in power.

This was a much bigger shift in power than any one thing he’d been able to do by himself, so he was well aware that the adjustment period might take longer.

He got his feet under him and looked down at his body. He looked exactly the same as he always had. Though the changes made during advancement had most definitely been of a physical nature to a large degree, none of those changes were evident in his appearance. His muscles weren’t larger, his face was… exactly the same.

One could almost be mistaken to think there was no difference at all.

Except, he could feel the differences. He raised his arms and tensed his muscles. His muscles might not be larger, but they were stronger. Everything about his body was denser. Heavier. He wouldn’t be able to sit on a normal, non-reinforced chair with how heavy he was, though he supposed that had been true for a long while.

His muscles. His bones. Even his skin was heavier.

My bone swords will be even stronger than before. Everything will be…

But it wasn’t just his body that had changed. His mind and Living Soul felt so much more powerful. His mind had expanded. He could sense that there were more rooms, more space, more processing power.

Xavier drew in a long breath, feeling the air as it travelled in through his nose, down through his throat, and into his lungs. He had an inward sense that could identify every particle in that air. His body awareness had improved to an insane degree, one he hadn’t even known was possible.

And his Living Soul… he could draw upon more Soul Energy than ever before, even if the System didn’t seem to count the Soul Core as an actual core, it was there, at his disposal.

He clenched his fists and let out a small laugh. A feeling of invulnerability settled into him, and he wondered, not for the first time, how hard it would really be to take down that S Grade True Dragon.

Surely he’d just gone a long way toward closing the gap between their levels of power?

Roln materialised a few feet away, leaning with his back against the wall and his arms crossed. He raised an eyebrow. “You can’t seriously think you’re close to matching that thing?”

“Well, that’s one way to say congratulations,” Xavier muttered.

Roln sighed. “Congratulations on your rather inevitable, totally expected advancement to B Grade, Xavier. I couldn’t be more proud.”

“Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

The dead Wanderer pushed off the wall and uncrossed his arms. “Sorry.” He shook his head, looked away. “I just worry about you, is all. I still worry about you hanging around on this floor. You’re B Grade now. You’ve gotten what you wanted from this place. I think it’s time you leave.” He paused. “There’s plenty to be done back in your universe, and I’m sure Adranial would be pleased to spend more time with you. You miss her, don’t you?”

Xavier narrowed his eyes at Roln. “I don’t know that trying to manipulate me is in your best interest.”

“I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m trying to save you. Besides, anything that keeps you alive is in my best interest, Xavier. I figured you would know that by now.”

“You really believe I don’t stand a chance against the True Dragon?”

Roln stared at him, hard in the face. “I believe it’s not worth the risk. The myth about those things—”

“The myth! That the Interdimensional Dragon could have come from something like that? Isn’t that all the more reason for me to face it? And maybe…” There was a glint in his eye. “Maybe I can learn something from it. If I find out how the dragonkin were able to transform into that thing, it’s possible that I might—”

“No!” Roln’s voice was so strong and sharp that it managed to cut all the thoughts from Xavier’s mind away, leaving a blank space where he just stared at the mental construct for a long moment.

“No?” Xavier muttered. Then he straightened, stepped toward the dead Wanderer apparition. “No? Since when do you tell me no?” Anger rose within him, an anger the mental construct would be able to acutely feel from inside his mind. “What I do is my choice, you are here to help, advise, nothing more…” He drifted off, his head dipping in thought as he realised something. “The thing you’re not telling me, about that True Dragon, about the Interdimensional Dragon.” He stepped forward again, thoughts racing now. “What is it?”

Roln shook his head. “I won’t tell you.”

“I could find it out. I know where you are in my mind now.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Xavier. This isn’t information you need. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

“And why are you the one who gets to judge that?”

“That’s why you brought me back, isn’t it? Not just to sift through the information in my memories, but because you know I’m an asset. You value my opinion.”

Xavier cocked his head to the side. “You said no the second I started thinking about the dragonkin’s ancient technique, the transformation that made those four A Grade dragonkin turn into a True Dragon. You’re afraid of that, aren’t you?” He sniffed the air. “I can feel it. The connection between us is stronger than it used to be, ever since what happened to you, ever since I healed the damaged parts of your mind, you’re less walled off.”

“Parts that were only damaged because I saved you, Xavier. Remember? Remember what I did for you? If I hadn’t protected your mind, they would have ripped everything out. Neither of us would be standing here right now. Once Arrack had gotten what he wanted, he would have disposed of you. Your journey would have ended right there and then if not for me.”

Xavier stopped advancing on the mental construct. He gritted his teeth. Roln was right. He had saved him. And he was right about what he’d said before. Xavier had brought him back because he valued his guidance. Not only that, he’d grown to trust the mental construct. A lot.

But there was something strange going on here.

What, exactly, could the mental construct be holding back from Xavier?

Why, exactly, did he not want to tell him?

What was he afraid of?

You don’t know what you’re asking.

Xavier’s mind went to a million places. A million possibilities. The multiverse was a big, big place. The Interdimensional Dragon had been around longer than perhaps any other entity out there. There may very well be Wanderers out there who were older. If there were, they’d have to be older than the System—than every version of the System.

If the myth, the legend, was right, and the Interdimensional Dragon had come from dragonkin—several dragonkin turning into one—was it who had transformed that Roln was hiding from him?

That doesn’t make sense? Why would it matter to me who they were? I don’t know any dragonkin.

A thought occurred to him, a crazy one, that his mind forced him to entertain for a moment even though he knew it was impossible.

What if it came from me? A version of me. I’m a dragonkin, after all…

But that thought was absurd in every possible way. Xavier may be dragonkin now, but he’d been born human. And while there were other versions of him out there who’d become dragonkin, he couldn’t possibly see how that could have happened in a universe that lacked the System.

Without the System, Earth would never have been integrated…

Technically, a transformation like that would have been possible even without the System, but how could something like that have actually happened?

Earth had simply been too weak to have enough Celestial Energy naturally.

No, without the System integration, something like that simply couldn’t happen.

Except, even as he said those words, he felt something shift inside his mind, telling him that he was onto something. It was similar to the types of insights he got when he was meditating.

At the same time, he knew it was different.

Roln took a step back, a look of deep and profound worry distorting his face. An instant later, the dead Wanderer disappeared, retreating back into Xavier’s mind.

Xavier, knowing he was onto something, even if he had no idea what that something was, lowered himself to sit cross-legged back on the ground. Only, he lowered himself too fast and ended up falling on his ass instead. He hadn’t taken a moment to adjust to his body yet after the advancement to B Grade.

That’s what I should be doing, instead of focusing on whatever this is. I still have the rest of the armada to destroy, and an S Grade True Dragon to fight. And yet…

Xavier pulled his legs under him and shut his eyes. He turned every part of his consciousness toward figuring out exactly what that feeling he’d just had was.

An insight. An insight that had come from somewhere deep inside him. Not an insight from the universe or an insight from the System.

It was the look on Roln’s face that had tipped him off. Ever since the mental construct had been implanted into Xavier’s mind, Roln had known everything about him. Every thought, every feeling, every memory…

And now, Xavier wondered, with the connection between them having strengthened to such a degree, if perhaps Xavier knew the same for Roln—maybe he couldn’t consciously access all of that, but perhaps it was still there, hidden beneath the surface.

With a mental apparition, Xavier stood in the central room of his mind. His body back in reality was in a meditative state, breath steady, heartrate slow, sitting perfectly still.

Here, he didn’t start walking the different rooms of his mind. He simply sat on the ground, much like his real body was sitting, and meditated as his mental apparition. This wasn’t something he’d ever thought to do before. With the rooms, every part of his mind should have been there, but there was a lot to search through, and some of those doors might be locked.

He also knew those rooms were nothing more than a representation of what his mind actually was. Truly, his mind was far more chaotic than what he saw when he walked through it.

Now, he was wondering if there was a layer beneath the one he knew. Something he hadn’t been able to access before. A sub-subconscious, he supposed. Perhaps it was visible when he looked at the brain map and worked on editing his neural pathways.

But there must be another way to reach it…

That insight he’d had, it had felt as though it had come from somewhere deep down. And so that was where Xavier looked. He fell into such a deep meditative state that reality blurred then disappeared. All he knew was the inner workings of his mind. Then, eventually even that seemed to disappear. His sense of self became murky, then downright non-existent. He did not judge what he saw, he simply observed. Swimming through a pool of thoughts and memories and instincts until he found what he was looking for.

The place the insight had come from wasn’t Roln after all.

And while it was from inside him… what he found didn’t feel like him.

Not exactly.