Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 50 - I’d Shake Your Hand, But…

What?

The elven spirit appeared in front of Xavier with his arms crossed. The connection Xavier shared with the spirit allowed it to hear him and travel to him from just about anywhere in this universe. These days, he always came when Xavier called.

But he wasn’t always happy about it.

Xavier had reflexively stretched his time dilation field to encompass the spirit. He looked Rhaalir up and down. You’ve become more corporeal.

It was something he’d noticed. Something that had been happening gradually over the years. The contract they’d signed that allowed Rhaalir to be in the mortal realm required a small amount of Soul Energy from Xavier. That energy was what allowed him to remain in the mortal realm. As the years past, and more Soul Energy made it to the spirit, Rhaalir had been strengthened by it.

More than the spirit had expected to be.

Xavier had done something else along the way, too—he’d suffused extra Soul Energy into the spirit. That was why their bond was as powerful as it was, and not wholly reliant on the contract.

Rhaalir relaxed his defiant stance at the comment, his arms falling to his sides. He looked down at himself. Smiled. It’s been happening more and more now. It’s actually— The spirit faltered as he looked at Xavier and noticed the scene around them.

Though they were conversing incredibly swiftly, there wouldn’t be time for a lengthy back and forth. Rhaalir understood this.

The Void Being consumed vast amount of Soul Energy. It’s mostly solid, but I saw it flicker. What’s happening?

Void Being— Rhaalir’s eyes widened as his gaze found it. That’s—

Me. Yes. Answer the question.

Rhaalir gulped. The Void Being is… is powerful. Must have needed a lot. He ran a hand through his hair. But the energy is bleeding off him as though from a thousand cuts. He’s using it too fast. That’s why he flickered.

So he’ll run out, disappear back to the void?

Rhaalir pursed his lips, seemed to force out the words. No. He’s in the mortal realm now. He will lose his corporeality, but he’s not going to just—the elven spirit made a wavy hand gesture—poof away. Besides, Void Beings this powerful can feed off Soul Energy. Rhaalir inhaled deep from his nose. And let me tell you, there’s a lot of Soul Energy in this room alone. He eyed Xavier suspiciously, as though sensing his newfound energies, then glanced away. Then there are the other people on the planet, in the sector. If the Void Being makes it out of this room, well… you don’t need me to keep going, do I?

Xavier’s forehead crinkled. The Void Being launched forward across the throne room. The spells coming its way did nothing—didn’t even anger it. A warrior jumped high, straight into its path. The Void Being cut the man in half with a violent slash of its claws.

The Collector was backing away, sweat dotting his brow, his already pale face whitened like a sheet. His gaze was frozen on the Void Being and terror was ripping through him.

The damned coward was going to run again.

The man fumbled for an item. No longer Soul Chained, and clearly not hindered by the runes that should have prevented his teleporting away, a portal flickered into life behind him.

Xavier growled low in his throat. A sound that made even Rhaalir step back. His cobbled-together plan when the Void Being had broken through the fabric of reality and made its way into the mortal realm had been to unleash it on The Collector—to allow The Collector and its guards to weaken it—then Xavier would swoop in and take out Void Being and Collector both.

It wasn’t a bad plan, but it wasn’t going to work if the bastard escaped.

And perhaps allowing the Void Being to feed off more Soul Energy wasn’t in anyone’s best interests, either.

Xavier cast Teleport. He appeared directly behind the stumbling Collector—between him and the portal he’d activated, blocking the man’s escape. Xavier’s scythe was already mid-swing, and he was no longer invisible. Before his strike impacted, he deactivated Phase Out. The Collector responded faster than he’d anticipated considering the man’s weakened state.

But not fast enough.

Xavier had activated a dozen spells. His scythe blade glowed with a massive suffusion of energies. It ripped through the air. The Collector had no red energy shield anymore. He did not block. Could not flee. His terror-stricken expression only intensified at the sight of Xavier. The only thing his B Grade speed allowed him to do before the blade slammed into him was utter a single word.

“How—!?”

The scythe blade cut a diagonal line from The Collector’s top left shoulder and out his lower torso on the other side. The two parts of Gregori The Collector went their separate ways. His mouth parted as the top half slid from the bottom in a choking and coughing of blood.

The Collector’s death wasn’t immediate. The two parts slapped onto the marble floor beside his throne. The B Grade ruler of the Ventorin sector, who had put fear into the hearts of countless men, women, and children for far too many years, lay helpless on the ground, terror-wide eyes staring up at his killer, unable to speak for the blood flooding from his lips, for a long, drawn out second before his heart finally stopped beating and the choking ceased.

There was no time to celebrate. No time to bask in his win of finally taking down The Collector. As the man finally died a terrifying roar sounded simultaneously inside Xavier’s head and from the other side of the room. The Void Being’s guttural voice came from both its body and its soul. The sound was one of anguish and anger. Gogramtla’s kill! Stolen! You will suffer! You will die!

Gogramtla? It doesn’t even remember who it is… Who it was.

Xavier blinked as the Void Being version of him flapped its wings, causing a massive wave of power to throw the ten B Grade Denizens that had been stopping it from advancing to fly across the room. The dragonkin spirit swooped toward Xavier with a demented look on its face.

This reaction from the Void Being wasn’t the only thing that happened following The Collector’s death. The chains that bound every subject—every slave—in Gregori’s “collection” were broken and swept away. Every Denizen, C Grade and B Grade alike, inside the throne room suddenly seemed to snap into a different state of awareness. The two B Grade Denizens who’d been guarding Palini Damascus took a hesitant step back, blinking at one another in confusion.

Palini began rising from the ground, his dismembered arms still lying beside him. The stumps protruding from his shoulders had already scabbed. Those stumps twitched.

Healing. The arms will grow back.

But they wouldn’t grow back fast enough for Palini to make a difference in this fight. He couldn’t rely on Palini, or anyone else in the room.

Besides, he might not the reason for the Void Being making it into this world—that blame could be put squarely on The Collector—but killing this thing was his responsibility, and not just because it shared his face. If he was going to turn around and tell the most powerful Denizens remaining in the sector that he was in charge now, he had to show that he could protect them.

Xavier was still encased in a separate time dilation field to the Void Being. While the difference in speed was significant, he didn’t want to underestimate the enemy before him. He still knew very little about Void Beings, let alone what this one was capable of in its current, Soul Energy-enhanced state.

Its enraged. Not thinking straight—assuming it even has the ability to think straight. I can use that. Lure it away. Out of here.

Another portal could work. With Pocket Time Stream, he’d ensured that spell had reached the end of its cooldown already. But no—that would be too risky. It might not follow, and once Xavier went through, he wouldn’t be able to see what the thing was doing…

He glanced up at the glass dome above, the one that lead straight into space. The fight would be different out there, but it would take him outside the realm of the other time dilation field. Breaking the ceiling would require a lot of energy, but—

The room around him froze, and the Void Being swooping in the air toward him froze with it.

What the…

Xavier blinked, taking a long breath. The second time dilation field was no longer in play. His attention swept toward the only other movement in the room. A woman, smiling weakly, giving the start of a very slow wave. One of The Collector’s B Grade Time mages—the one that had controlled the other time dilation field. She hadn’t cancelled her spell, she’d simply condensed it into a bubble around only herself. Looking at the woman, he instantly knew he’d been wrong. He’d thought he couldn’t rely on anyone in the room. Thought that none of them would make a difference—and he realised a part of him didn’t want them to make a difference. He was still fighting that part of him that needed to do everything on his own.

Xavier smiled back at the woman. Then, he walked over to her.

On the way, he brought others into his own time dilation field. He did this slowly. The Void Being wasn’t completely frozen in time. He saw its eyes move, inching across the room, trying to keep him in sight, but not being fast enough to. The first person he brought into his field was Palini, who’d still been halfway through rising to his feet. Xavier almost offered him a helping hand, then thought better of it. When Palini entered the field his gaze shot toward the body—in two parts—of The Collector before coming to rest on Xavier.

“You crazy bastard. The Collector told me you were dead—or about to be.” The former Head of Security for the Transport Minister in the Orin sector waved, gesturing through the glass dome at the space beyond. “I felt that explosion of energy. Everyone did, I imagine. That power… How the hell did you survive?” His gaze shifted to the Void Being frozen mid-swoop. “And what the hell is that thing, and why does it look like you?” His nose crinkled. “It’s… not one of your drones, is it?”

“No,” Xavier said. “It’s a Void Being.”

Palini swore. “Crazy bastard,” he muttered.

The man looked like he wanted to keep asking questions but held off as Xavier brought two more people into the field. The B Grade guards who’d forced Palini’s cheek into the marble. Palini hesitated when they stopped being frozen. His stumps moved, his feet shifted into one of his sword stances, then he faltered.

Xavier had seen these two step back from Palini when The Collector had died. A sign that they weren’t about to be hostile.

Out of the four people standing in that time dilation field, Xavier was the first to speak. He looked at the two B Grades guards. “I killed The Collector because I wanted to free you, and the rest of your sector, from the contracts that held you all in his sway. That man did not deserve to rule, and the way he ruled showed that he did not deserve to live.” Xavier raised his chin. “I intend to show this sector what a ruler should be, and I’d like to do it with your support.”

The two B Grades exchanged a glance, looked at the remains of their former ruler, then lowered their eyes to the marble floor. At the same time, they both bent their knees as though they were about to kneel before him.

Xavier sighed. “No, no.” He shook his head. As he did, he felt a shock of fear emanate from the two Denizens.

One of them shook slightly as a tremor ran through their body. The other froze completely, halfway down to kneeling. Xavier almost moved forward to pull them back to their feet but stopped himself. “How long have you been under The Collector’s contract?”

The shaking guard was the one who spoke. He had broad shoulders and wore heavy armour. A massive tower shield was strapped to his back, and his hands were large enough to grip Xavier’s head. He slowly stood back up. He must have been a full foot taller than Xavier, yet the way he held himself like a frightened child made him look small. The man hung his head, still staring at the ground. “A—a thousand years, Your Majesty. Twelve… Twelve-hundred-and-thirty-two, to be precise.”

A part of Xavier felt disgusted by how this man was acting. He was a B Grade tank, for god’s sake. The contract binding him was gone. Yet here he stood, cowering!

No wonder he signed that contract. He was too weak to resist.

Then, Xavier shut that voice down. He didn’t know why the man had signed the contract to be controlled by The Collector. Whether it was because he simply wished to survive, or because The Collector had tortured him, tortured his family, or even threatened to destroy his entire world. Maybe there hadn’t been that kind of leverage at all, and he’d simply done it because he didn’t feel like he had a choice.

Who was Xavier to judge that?

And the way the man was acting now…

Twelve-hundred-and-thirty-two years, and every single one of them spent living a life he couldn’t control. A life haunted by constant stress—constant terror. Knowing nothing but following commands without question. Without agency. Without escape.

Escape… The only way this man, and everyone else in this room, could have escaped was through death. Should they have done that? Died, rather than become slaves to a terrible man, and no doubt perpetrate atrocities in his name? That same part that felt disgusted shouted, Damn right they should have! Xavier clamped the voice back down and shut his eyes.

Of course this man is afraid. Of course they both are. This submissiveness… It isn’t weakness. It’s learned helplessness.

He was reminded of a behavioural study he’d read about, where dogs put inside a cage and were unable to escape electric shocks. After experiencing that over and over, when the cage was finally opened, they still didn’t escape—they didn’t know they could anymore.

The cage—the contract—is gone, but in their minds the bars remain. I killed The Collector to take his place and now they see me as him.

Xavier stood there frozen, completely out of his depth. He’d felt pain. More than a lifetime’s worth. Hell, on far more than one occasion he’d felt what it was like to die. Yet he still couldn’t begin to understand what these two, what all these people, had been through. He could give them commands, and he imagined they would follow. Maybe they would even do it with what looked like eagerness and loyalty. Maybe they would even seem relieved to know their place again.

But at the heart of it they’d be acting out of fear, and that wasn’t what he wanted at all.

Xavier wanted to lead in a different way. People couldn’t be their best selves if they lived afraid all the time. Fear, like all emotions, could be a powerful thing once harnessed—he’d benefited from using the fear he felt in that way more than once—but living in constant fear hindered people considerably. It stopped them from being able to think clearly. To access those higher parts of their brain. Even in enhanced Denizens, he’d seen this.

Not only that, but he also didn’t want to make people afraid. As idealistic as it sounded, he wanted these people—and all people who would one day be under his rule—to look up at him and feel confident, secure, safe, because he was in charge. He’d seen, on smaller scales, what that kind of leadership did for people. He’d seen it in the Roving Seed Base.

It was life changing.

Everyone deservers to have that, don’t they?

In the end, it wasn’t him who spoke next. Even with all these thoughts running through his head, he didn’t actually know what to say. Palini Damascus, armless and still covered in damaged, bloodied armour that was slowly repairing itself and cleaning away the remnants of the fight, took a step forward, standing between Xavier and the two B Grade guards. The cowering guard didn’t stop shaking, nor did he move his gaze from the ground. The frozen guard—a female fighter clad in leather armour with daggers strapped in two dozen places around her body—stopped breathing altogether.

She’s bracing… She thinks he’s going to hurt her, but she’s not even trying to get away.

Xavier almost pulled Palini back. Palini brushed him off with a glance. [Let me try,] he said through their linked Communication Stones.

“My name is Palini Damascus. I’d shake your hand, but…” His gaze dropped to the stumps protruding from his shoulders. “Well, you know.” He shrugged. “I’m sure my name doesn’t mean anything to either of you, but I want to tell you a little story. First, I need to make it clear that we’re not here to harm you.” He looked around the room.

The Void Being was still “frozen” in the air, though it had managed to move roughly half an inch since that second time dilation field had been condensed. Its gaze was locked squarely on Xavier. The Collector wasn’t the only dead Denizen in the room. Several corpses lay strewn about the marble floor, eviscerated, dismembered, torn apart, in the Void Being’s short passage from one side of the throne room to the other. Not including The Collector, twenty-one Denizens had died since Xavier had come here. While not a single one had died by his hand, and he did not grieve them nor feel the guilt of their passing, he took responsibility for their deaths and regretted that they’d happened in the course of fulfilling his goal.

“I’m sorry for the loss that has happened today,” Palini continued, sounding sincere. “Not the loss of The Collector—that asshole had it coming—but the loss of those who were forced to follow him.” He raised his chin. “That story I wanted to tell…” He stepped aside slightly and looked at Xavier. “Is about this man here. Hard to believe, but I only met him earlier today. I arrested him, actually, trying to travel from the Orin sector to the Ventorin sector. As he wasn’t a citizen of Orin, by my sector’s laws I was allowed to force him into a truth contract.” He chuckled. “That, however, did not work, and I’ll tell you why.” He sighed. “Because this man, Xavier Collins, from a fringe sector and a backwater planet called Earth, is the most stubborn bastard I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”