Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 18 - The Ninth Seat

For Xavier, another year had gone by since his cores had been shattered.

This year had been different to the others. Different to any he’d had his entire life. Because he hadn’t spent the time alone.

Living at home with his mother, before he’d left and found his own place when he’d went to university, he’d never felt like he was a part of a family. Never felt like he had a home. In the evenings, if he ate dinner with his mother, it was often in silence. If it wasn’t in silence, he was being lectured for his choices, belittled into thinking he was worthless, even blamed for his mother’s lot in life.

More often than not, he fended for himself, made his own meals, and ate in his room. It was easier that way. Better. Less conflict.

When he left for university, he’d only had acquaintances, and not many of them—no one he could call a friend. Certainly no one on the level of “found family.” That concept had always delighted him in the books he’d read. If the family you started with wasn’t good for you, or what you wanted, you could move out into the world and find another one.

But Xavier had always done better on his own, always liked the peace and silence of solitude, and had never known how to make those connections. Perhaps that was why he found so much solace in books. A place to escape to, a camaraderie in the lives of the characters he practically lived in.

Even when he was partied with Howard, Siobhan, and Justin back in the first floors of the Tower of Champions, gaining new friends, with hesitant feeling that these people might even become family to him in the long run, he’d felt apart from them. Felt as though he needed to go his own way if he wanted to move forward. That sticking with them would only hold him back, and he’d rather step away than let that happen.

You’re not alone.

It was a lesson he’d thought he’d learnt in those early days of the tower, but it was a lesson he’d left behind. One he kept leaving behind.

The other connections he’d made—Adranial, Rhaalir, Volkarin, Romalda—none of them had really stuck. Sometimes, he’d found it easier to connect to the people he met on tower floors, knowing that their meetings, by the nature of them being in alternate universes he could never revisit the same time stream of ever again, were fleeting. He’d made friends in Adviser Kalren and Queen Alastea, back on the fifth floor.

It had been easy because now he would never see them again. He wouldn’t have to keep things up.

His ability to drop connections, drop out of people’s lives, and not feel as though he was missing out on something, had always felt like a good thing. An asset. Especially with the weight of the world, the sector, the whole universe, on his shoulders.

He couldn’t slow down and let anyone hold him back.

Even Bones, his soulbound weapon that had gained sentience when he’d imparted a piece of his very soul into it, wasn’t a bond he’d fully embraced, and one he kept silent more often than not—despite the fact that the weapon, by nature of what it, he, was, had the ability to grow with Xavier.

In a lot of ways, it still felt true that dropping connections, doing things on his own, was an asset. But he was quickly learning that—with his newfound lifespan as a Denizen, and his ability to practically freeze time, now for years—being alone wasn’t something he needed, or even wanted, all the time.

And while dropping connections might feel like an asset to him logically, that didn’t mean it always served him well in other ways.

During that year in the Roving Seed Base, instructing his old party members, training himself, growing closer to these people, Xavier still valued his seclusion, his solitude, his peace, and while he didn’t have a need for sleep anymore, after the first six months inside the Roving Seed Base, when the hour was late—for they had taken to keeping a twenty-four-hour schedule, despite it always being sunny within the time dilation field—he found himself retiring into the first house in the line of four. His house.

The house the Roving Seed Base had grown for him felt different to his room in the Tower of Champions, and different still to his quarters at the top of the main tower in Collinsville. His quarters in Collinsville were the first place he’d ever felt like was his. But that felt all the more powerful here. The portable nature of the base, with the prospect of it eventually only needing enough space as a telephone booth took up in the future to be planted in a different area, made it feel more permanent.

The feeling of permanence allowed him to make more personal touches in the space. First, it was simply things from his Storage Ring. The Roving Seed Base, supplies to fill the tavern’s food stores, and advanced equipment for the training hall weren’t the only things he’d bought from the System Shop before he’d taken his old party here.

Knowing he would need to outfit the houses, he’d bought a bunch of random furniture and kept it in his secondary Storage Ring. He had an assortment that the others could choose from to fill out their houses until they wished to get things that better suited them.

The house had three bedrooms.

Even without the need to sleep, he found the need to have an actual bedroom, where he placed a king-sized bed and not much else. And so that was what the first room had become. He didn’t need a wardrobe. When he did wear casual clothes instead of armour, they were self-cleaning and self-repairing, and he could fast-equip them straight from his Storage Ring.

Occasionally, he would take a nap in the bed, usually no longer than fifteen minutes. That was more than enough to help him feel refreshed. Sometimes, he would take a book and a cup of tea with biscuits and lose himself for a few hours in another world. Other times, he looked at the bed and wondered if he would one day take company back to it. Those thoughts had been coming to his mind more often these days.

The second bedroom he made into an office with a large oak desk and comfortable leather chair. He’d considered lining the walls with books, but he knew that when he stepped inside that room, he wouldn’t have time to look at them—instead, he would be fully focused on his writing.

It was the first time he’d had a space solely dedicated to his writing, not having it delegated to the corner of a room, or the middle of a time dilation field in some random location on some random world.

The third room, at first, he’d had no idea what to do with. Until the thought had occurred to him to use it as a space for true seclusion. A space where not even sound could intrude. When the others had invited the families to live within the base, Xavier had upgraded the Roving Seed Base to include a System Shop pedestal. It was easy enough then to find the materials he needed for the task, materials that the Roving Seed Base easily merged with itself as he gave it new commands, altering the space to his needs.

It was in that space that he made the majority of his breakthroughs. Where he created and laid down the energy channels for his artificial core, and discovered so much else.

However, it was the living room he had the most pride in. That was where he lined the walls with bookshelves. Actually, the walls were already lined with shelves. He’d given that intention to the Roving Seed Base when he’d activated it. The shelves weren’t full of books yet—he didn’t have enough—but in time he knew they would be. In time, he would have to alter the space, make the walls farther apart, have new shelves created, as his collections of books grew over the passing of years.

Walking into that room, with its comfortable couches, armchairs, soft blankets, and soothing atmosphere, coupled with its collection of outward-facing spines, each offering an escape, an adventure, a new home to get lost in, always brought him a sense of calm without him having to take any effort to attain that inner-calm he’d cultivated.

It was a different sort of calm. A different sort of peace. In that space, he could let go of the expectations on him, of the weight on his shoulders. He could put aside the lofty goals and nonstop training.

But while he was falling in love with the house he was slowly turning into his own, he found it wasn’t the personal touches in his personal space that was making him think of the Roving Seed Base as an actual home.

It was the people.

Instructing Howard, Siobhan, and Justin felt natural almost from the start. The bond they shared from the first floors of the tower, and their time back on Earth afterward, had locked right back into place. Here at the Roving Seed Base, that bond only grown and strengthened.

He didn’t need to eat anymore, yet more often than not he took the time to sit with the others for breakfast and dinner. At first, it felt like old times. Like when they’d taken breaks between floors to eat, drink, and chat in the tavern. But as it was only the four of them, it felt more personal.

When Howard, Siobhan, and Justin had invited their respective families here, their addition made Xavier feel awkward. He’d seen them with their families before, but this was different. It was as though five strangers had just entered a space that felt personal to Xavier, but they were only strangers to him, and so he once more became an outsider.

His old party members’ families had agreed to live within the Roving Seed Base for as long as Howard, Siobhan, and Justin trained within it, and the space quickly became a home to them. Xavier was glad they’d agreed—glad for what it meant for his friends—but it had taken time for him to adjust to.

Justin was eighteen now, but even back at Collinsville he lived with his mother. The two were incredibly close. Watching them together revealed a different side to the young swordsman. He wasn’t merely excitable, adventurous, or a dedicated fighter. He was vulnerable, calm, and thoughtful.

His mother, Miranda, had chosen a support role and class when the System had come down, and had been looking after children under integration age in a Safe Zone—until there were no Safe Zones left on Earth. She encouraged Justin’s training without reservation. The confidence and pride she had in her son was evident in her eyes, revealing a glimpse of what their lives must have been like pre-System, when Justin had been an Olympic fencer, his mother at every practice session, at every competition, there for every win, and every failure.

It was strange for Xavier to see a mother and son so close, to behold the genuine love they shared. It made something buried deep inside of him ache for a life that could have been. In the infinite, alternate worlds of the multiverse, he wondered if there was a version of him and his own mother who’d had that. With all the seemingly impossible things he’d seen and done, he struggled to imagine such a reality.

Even if it had happened, even if Xavier could start his life over and have that, he was comforted to find he didn’t want it. If altering any part of his past would lead him to somewhere other than where he was right now, it wasn’t something he would ever dream of doing.

I like my life, just the way it is.

Howard’s wife, Kelly, had also chosen a support class looking after children in one of the Safe Zones, and not only because their children, Rebecca and Michael, were in such a zone. Helping others was clearly her calling. Xavier often overheard the woman talking about how the world could be changed and how lives could be improved. She wanted to bring people up. Wanted to improve the quality of everyone’s lives. When the System had come and the world seemed to be coming to an end, her husband torn from her and her life thrown in disarray, she hadn’t lost hope or despaired. She’d kept working to help those around her.

He couldn’t help but listen to the things she said. It always made him realise how much more he could be doing for the people of Earth, if only he had the time, if only he had the resources—things he knew that with enough effort, he could attain.

Eventually, he got to talking to the woman himself, asking her what she would do for Earth in his shoes, how he could ensure that everyone got what they needed, and even what those things might be. His focus was so sharply on saving the world in the future, in order for there still to be people to help, that he seldom spared a thought for how he could help the people today.

Howard, like Justin, was a different person around his family, too. His normally stoic expression was far softer. More often than not he could be found smiling. The look in his eyes when he gazed at his wife was filled with a staggering amount of love and devotion, the emotions bled out of him like Xavier had never seen. The former cop had the same look when gazing at his two children.

Rebecca, who was fourteen, and Michael, only ten, seemed to take their new circumstances in stride. Perhaps they each should have been out of the time dilation field, off at the school that had been started in Collinsville, with a chance to hang out with people their own age. Instead, they weren’t bothered by the seclusion at all. If anything, they seemed to relish it. Perhaps it felt like a break, or a vacation. That didn’t stop them from learning, however—they had their own training and studying to do, even in here.

Siobhan’s little sister, Rose, looked like a younger version of the Irish-American redhead, though she lacked the same hint of an accent as her older sister. She’d been sixteen for a few months now, passed System age, but was still Level 1. A choice that Xavier found interesting, if a little confusing—though he didn’t prod Siobhan or Rose about it. While Siobhan doted on her little sister, Xavier didn’t notice much difference about the woman than he had before, though he did gain some insights.

She’d always had a protective streak about her—it was what made her such a good healer—and it was clear now where those instincts had come from.

As the months continued to roll by in that first year, Xavier continued to eat breakfast and dinner in the tavern, on the long table. Some days, all nine of the inhabitants of the Roving Seed Base would be at the table. Other times, it might only be half that. But Xavier always had someone to share a meal and a conversation with—conversations that weren’t only about training, cultivation, the threat to their world, or anything to do with fighting at all.

Though even when the conversations were about those things, Xavier found a certain comfort in them. When that first year came to an end, it wasn’t only Howard, Siobhan, and Justin who felt like family to Xavier. Miranda, Kelly, Rose, Rebecca, and Michael started to as well.

The life Xavier and the others had created inside the Roving Seed Base wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d taken his old party here to see if he could make them strong and powerful, and while he was managing to do just that, he’d created something else to.

A home, and a found family.

When the “morning” of the 365th day inside the time dilation field came, Xavier strolled into the tavern/training hall/makeshift school that was the largest building in the base to find all eight of the other inhabitants already sitting down for breakfast. The structure had grown since it had first been created. The area behind the bar was larger and had stovetops and ovens and a fully stocked kitchen. Howard and Kelly were clanging about, making pancakes, bacon, French toast, and a fruit platter.

A steaming mug of coffee waited at the head of the table where Xavier tended to sit, and every face turned to him as he entered, making him pause. Their expressions made him sure they had something to tell them.

All of them.

Xavier had incredibly enhanced hearing, not to mention the ability to use his Farscope lens and see everything within the Roving Seed Base—and much beyond it—but he made a point of not spying or listening into the others’ conversations. He’d also ensured, when he realised it was necessary, that each of the houses were soundproofed and even protected from his Farscope lens. He wanted everyone to be sure of their privacy, even if he didn’t intend to snoop. That, coupled with the fact that he’d just spent the last five hours in his Fortress of Solitude—his room that had been outfitted for ultimate seclusion—meant he had no idea why they were all looking at him like that.

He paused near the doorway, smiled awkwardly, then kept walking and sat in his usual spot, wrapping his fingers around the mug. “Why do I feel like you all have bad news?”

They’re tired of being here, he thought. They all want to go back to Collinsville.

Their training was nowhere near complete, but this had always been something voluntary. They could each leave if they chose.

Well, I always knew this would come to an end. I’m doing important training here myself, but it’s not like I didn’t know I’d need to leave eventually. This is the longest I’ve spent on Earth since the System came down…

Kelly placed a large plate filled with everything her and her husband had been making, giving him a warm, reassuring smile. The food smelled delicious. Just because he didn’t have to eat, didn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable. Looking down he realised they’d prepared his favourite breakfast meals, which only made him worry more.

Howard and Kelly sat, and the table was silent before Miranda, Justin’s mother, raised an eyebrow at her son.

 “Oh, I should start?” Justin asked. He cleared his throat, looked at Xavier. “So, we’ve, all of us, been talking, and—”

“You want to leave the base?” Xavier hadn’t meant to interrupt the man. The words had just spilled out. “It’s okay. I understand.”

Justin’s forehead creased and he blinked. “What?”

“Is that what you think this is?” Siobhan asked. “A farewell… breakfast?”

Michael, the youngest among them, gave a small laugh. “We don’t want to leave!”

Xavier relaxed, not having noticed the tension he’d been carrying. “So, what is this, then?” He sipped his coffee, sinking into the ninth seat at the table.

“We want you to expand our training,” Justin said. “And, well…” He ran a hand through his blond hair. “We were wondering if…”

“Oh, I’ll say it if you won’t,” Rose said, blowing a strand of her hair out of her eyes with an impatient puff. “We want you to train us.”

“Us?” Xavier asked, looking at Rose. He couldn’t help but notice that one side of the table had Rose, Miranda, Rebecca, and Michael, while the other side sat his old party. “You mean, all of you?”

He blinked. He hadn’t even considered that. Not really. While he wanted others to benefit from what he was teaching Howard, Siobhan, and Justin, still thinking of them as a test-case, that was more of a long-term plan… and two of these people hadn’t even reached System-integration age yet.

Xavier turned his attention back to Justin. “And what do you mean by expand your training?”

Howard straightened in his seat. “Perhaps I can explain.”

The man leant forward in his seat, telling Xavier exactly what they’d all been talking about.

It hadn’t been what he was expecting at all.