Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 28 - Considered Barbaric Territory

Xavier stepped out of the portal he’d created into a bustling city. His time dilation field was still wrapped around him, altered so time outside of it moved as slow as he could manage.

The marketplace he now stood within was filled with tall buildings on either side that stretched upward at least twenty floors each. The first few floors of those buildings housed different stores, while the floors higher were all apartments. Various different species of Denizens walked the streets. Human, elven, dwarven. Demonkin, gnomish. Even a single oxkin with large horns and a heavy septum piercing was visible in the crowd, standing two feet taller than everyone else around them.

Xavier deactivated the portal and walked through the city like a ghost, the world standing still around him. He couldn’t help but smile as he walked. Before the System, he’d never felt terribly comfortable in big crowds like this. He’d often worn earbuds so he could block out the world and create his own little bubble, but more than once he’d wished he could have an actual bubble, something that separated him from the mess of people he had to move through.

Now, he had that bubble.

He no longer felt the same type of unease in crowds, but he did value silence and privacy.

This was merely a single stop on his journey to the Collector’s sector. Technically he could use the Universal Travel Key to get there, but he didn’t wish to expend the energy necessary to recharge it. He could do it within a time dilation field, restore his energies, and step through the portal with a fraction of a second passing in “real time.”

But now that he was moving forward, coming out of more than a decade of training with time basically standing still, he wanted to move. And he’d rather pay an exorbitant amount of spirit coins to pass through a sector-to-sector portal than wait any longer to get to where he was going essentially for free.

Sometimes it was simply better to outsource a problem.

Xavier leapt upward into the air, snapping out his large black dragon wings, and soared toward this city’s main portal hub. This city was the capital of its world, and its world was the capital of its sector. Which meant its main portal hub would have portals to other sectors on offer.

There were places in the Silver River sector that had access to such things, but they were few and far between, and the portals were only sparingly active. Empress Larona was a big fish in her sector, but Silver River was—despite its name—a very small pond in the grand scheme of things.

A total backwater.

Xavier alighted in front of the large gate that was the entrance to the portal hub’s building. The building looked more like an arena to his eyes than one designed for transport. It resembled the Colosseum back on Earth. He could have slipped through the place, but there were security measures inside this building that the areas he’d just moved through didn’t possess. Tripping those measures would only serve to place attention on him, and that wasn’t something he wished—not while in a sector with a ruler that was far more powerful than himself.

Xavier cut off the time dilation field. The guards standing at the gate widened their eyes at his sudden appearance. He nodded at them and passed through without being stopped.

The portal hub was even busier than the marketplace.

There were thousands of portals, and the building was so large that it stretched for several miles. Denizens sprinted through one portal to another. Many of those Denizens would be couriers, working for delivery and freight companies, moving goods from one world the next. They didn’t need trucks or trains or planes or spaceships for such things when an abundance of goods could be held in Storage Rings and a quick step through a portal would take you to another country, world, or even galaxy—but they still needed someone to pass those things from one place to another.

The rest would just be normal Denizens of this sector going about their daily lives, commuting to their jobs, heading out for training, or doing all manner of things. Honestly, Xavier was a bit clueless as to how many of these people lived. His life was entirely different to theirs, after all.

He spotted the area he wanted easily as it was almost deserted. A sign pointed to the sector-to-sector portals, but Xavier had already purchased a map of this place in advance and knew where he needed to go. Before he approached the bored-look clerk he just stopped and watched all the Denizens going about their lives. Moving through a crowd had never been something he enjoyed, but people-watching was a whole different experience. He liked imagining who each of these people were, what they did, how they acted, what their homes might look like. The introverted part of Xavier didn’t want to interact with them all, but the storyteller part wanted to know about them.

He didn’t scan anyone, or use Identify on them, but he did push his spiritual sense outward.

With eight energies coursing through his channels, Xavier had a boost to his spiritual sense from three of them—something he’d come to discover in the more than a decade of training in the Roving Seed Base. Spirit, Celestial, and Reality Energy all helped his spiritual sense, though spirit had to be cycled in a particular pattern he’d previously never discovered or tried before.

Doing research on it, he couldn’t find anything about cycling patterns improving anything except for energy channels, which in this universe only seemed to matter to people because it helped them cultivate more energy. Things like Body, Mind, and Soul Cultivation simply weren’t something people seemed aware of.

The cycling pattern with Spirit Energy was just the first of many he wished to discover and master.

With the energies and cycling patterns increasing the strength of his spiritual sense, and his concentration turned toward it, the entire massive building suddenly lit up with thousands and thousands of brilliant lights. The lights came from these people’s cores, as he was now strong enough to pierce their veils.

It also came from their souls. Their Living Souls, not their Immortal Souls. He only had the ability to sense the former.

For now.

There were more C Grades in the crowd that he’d expected, then again this was a more powerful sector than his own. Without needing to scan them, he could get a feel for their level. He could also get a sense of their power. Xavier hadn’t spent any time using this sense out in public—he hadn’t spent much time in public at all, only occasionally when they moved from one place to another; even then, they often didn’t bother to pass through a city—so he found it quite interesting to discover the sheer power discrepancy between all the different C Grades he sensed.

It wasn’t their levels that made the difference in their power, either.

Normal C Grades and True C Grades.

He shook his head. Even the True C Grades he could feel weren’t as powerful as they “should” have been to his mind. He tilted his head to the side.

Any one of my students, all D Grade, could defeat any of these C Grades one-on-one.

That made him want to stand in front of Empress Larona and pierce her veil. It would be interesting to see how far he’d come since the last time they’d spoke. Was he more powerful than the ruler of his own sector? The woman was C Grade, but she wasn’t merely C Grade—she was a True Progenitor, like Xavier.

He smirked. Well, not quite like me…

Xavier pushed those thoughts aside and finally stepped over to the bored-looking clerk. “I’d like a portal pass, please.”

“Destination?” the clerk asked without looking up.

“The Ventorin sector.”

The clerk’s eyebrows raised along with his gaze. He gave Xavier a once-over. Xavier felt the scan, another new ability for him. The man would see his class graft. A D Grade swordsman. D Grades didn’t often travel from one sector to another unless they had significant backing.

For a moment, Xavier thought the clerk was going to ask for his passport or something—which, of course, was absurd.

The clerk frowned. “Are you aware the Ventorin sector is considered barbaric territory? The same protections you have in Orin will not apply there.” The clerk’s tone was only partially less bored than it had been before, though there was a hint of worry in his voice.

Barbaric. That was putting it lightly. The Collector, the B Grade ruler of the Ventorin sector, ruled his worlds with an iron fist. There was no concept of human rights—or Denizen rights, Xavier supposed—only “might makes right.”

Barbaric was definitely the right word. Xavier wondered why the seemingly benevolent ruler of this sector didn’t take it upon himself to move into the Ventorin sector and liberate the people there.

Then again, Xavier only had a vague understanding of the Orin sector—the sector he was standing in right now. They could have enemies on either side of them. Individuals travelling from one sector to another was one thing, transporting armies was a whole different one. While the sector’s ruler, a True B Grade, unlike The Collector, would be powerful enough to take the man on, leaving his sector would likely have consequences Xavier had no idea about.

“I’m aware,” Xavier said.

The clerk’s frown increased. “Orin has no trade deals with Ventorin. A sector-to-sector portal will be very expensive for a single traveller.” The man tilted his head to the side. “Is there any other sector I can interest you in?”

“The price won’t be an issue. And no, thank you.”

The clerk released a breath. “I hope she’s pretty,” he muttered. “Must be, or why else would you be going there.”

The clerk motioned to an empty section of stone floor behind him in the far corner. “That is the designated area for single portal travel to another sector. As no new portals were scheduled for activation today, I’ll have to call in the mage team. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.”

The man motioned toward the small pedestal in front of him on his desk. It was like a miniature System Shop pedestal, with a similar looking crystal at its top. Xavier touched the crystal and a notification for the fee came up. He raised an eyebrow but paid it without complaint.

Xavier strode over to the corner the clerk had indicated and summoned an armchair from his Storage Ring, not minding if such an act was considered impolite. He also summoned a mug of coffee and wrapped his fingers around the ceramic.

The clerk glanced over his shoulder at him and shook his head, muttering something about not being liable for others’ poor decisions.

The mage team arrived in only ten minutes, not half an hour. Xavier put his armchair away and examined the newcomers with his spiritual sense as they gathered. He’d never actually seen a sector-to-sector portal created before, and this was of great interest to him. Xavier possessed the Portal spell, and he was also strong enough to create portals from one world to another—as long as they weren’t too far away—but the gulf between galaxies was something far different than the gulf between worlds in the same sector. Creating a portal that went that far remained well beyond his abilities.

Still, he was a little surprised to find the mage team for this task consisted of one hundred C Grade Portal Mages.

One hundred portal mages for a sector-to-sector portal for a single individual? Well, no wonder that ticket was expensive…

One of the mages, a proud-looking woman wearing silver robes and carrying a heavily rune-marked metal staff, stepped over to him. “The clerk said you neglected to mention the target world you wished to travel to in the Ventorin sector. One might assume the world you arrive on is of importance to you, hmm?”

“Yes, it is.” Xavier smiled. “I’d like to travel to the capital.”

The woman pursed her lips, but that was the only outward sign of disapproval she gave as she turned back to her team.

Xavier watched as the spell was cast and couldn’t help himself. He, discreetly within a time dilation field, cast Recursive Analysis so he could see what spell they were using. He chuckled when he found out the name of the spell was called “Portal Team.” It was one of many spells he’d heard of that required more than a single Denizen to cast. These spells were reminiscent of the main spells of the Defender line of classes to him, though they didn’t have the same drawbacks on Mastery Points.

“Team” spells needed each of the Denizens casting the spell to cast it at the exact same time. It required a level of synchronicity that took a bit of practice to achieve. It also required the Denizens to be thinking on the same wavelength—targeting the same enemy or wishing to create a portal to the exact same spot. These things were easy enough to achieve with linked Communication Stones.

In the central room of his mind, Xavier looked at the spell pattern for Portal Team and wondered if he could have created a sector-to-sector portal with the help of the others back in the Roving Seed Base. Was he being too arrogant to think that nine D Grades could muster up enough power to recreate what a hundred C Grades were capable of?

He honestly wasn’t even sure.

Xavier dropped the temporary time dilation field—a field that had been up for a fraction of a fraction of a second in real time, so no one should have noticed it—and observed as the mages continued casting their spell.

As he watched the energies coalesce in the air and move through it in intricate, weaving patterns, the power swirling out from each mage only to intersect and build, pooling together into a single mass that would soon make a portal materialise, something twitched in Xavier’s spiritual sense.

He was being scanned again.

The scan was incredibly subtle—far subtler than when the clerk had scanned him. It was so subtle he almost didn’t notice it. A feather-light touch at the far edges of his senses. Without looking in the direction of the scan, Xavier activated his Farscope lens and examined the area it was coming from, instantly discovering its origin.

A non-descript man in casual clothes leant against the farthest wall from him inside the main portal hub. It looked like he was staring off into space, bored, but his gaze was directly on Xavier—though to see Xavier the man would need to not only look through people but walls as well, as there were several small kiosks serving food and coffee to travellers between them.

Out of every one of the many thousands of Denizens in the building, all a bright spot to his spiritual sense, their auras and souls glowing, this man was dark.

Xavier couldn’t pierce his veil.

And who might you be…