Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 37 - That Would Have Been Messy

“I’m not leaving this house!”

The woman’s words shook the very walls they were so loud.

“Three hundred years I’ve been in this house. Made it just perfect. Raised several generations of Damascus here. Still am! Your great-great-great-granddaughter is about to have her first, and I am not abandoning her to galivant off to some backwater world in a weak sector because you made a rash decision!” Erina Damascus sighed. Shut her eyes. Then looked past her husband at Xavier. “Not meaning any insult, dear, and I can’t say I blame you for my husband’s choices. I’m sure your world is a lovely place,” she said, her voice soft, a warm smile planted on her face.

 The tirade continued as the C Grade turned her attention back to her husband. For Palini Damascus’s part, he merely stood there as his wife kept speaking, a placid expression on his face, nodding as she listed all the reasons this was a foolish thing for him to have done.

Xavier had suggested he wait outside while they spoke, but Erina frowned and told him that her husband wasn’t the only one she needed to have a word with.

The portal Damascus had activated with the Sector Travel Key had taken them directly into an exceedingly large living room with several couches and armchairs. Art adorned every wall and fresh-cut flowers sat in a myriad of different vases. His wife hadn’t been—and still wasn’t—the only one in the room. There were other Denizens along with pre-System age kids around.

Xavier, Erina, and Palini had taken their conversation elsewhere, and were inside a time dilation field that encompassed a large dining room.

When Erina had finally stopped talking, her hands were on her hips, and she was staring at her husband with a daring look of challenge. “So? What do you have to say for yourself, Pali?”

Xavier smiled slightly, which earned him a glancing glare from Erina.

Palini released a breath. That alone seemed to infuriate the woman. Then, he explained. The longer he went on, the more the woman’s expression softened. Xavier had told him he could be honest with her, that there need be no secrets, and so the confidentiality contract didn’t hinder his explanations.

“Well.” Erina all but collapsed onto one of the dining table’s chairs. “I suppose I understand why you made the decision.” She shut her eyes. “You are the Patriarch of the Damascus family, Palini. I know you, have known you for centuries, so I also know I can’t talk you out of going to Ventorin. But whatever you do, don’t get yourself killed. This Collector… It isn’t worth your life.”

“As Patriarch, it’s my duty to show our family they should fight for what is right. If I didn’t do this, what would that teach them, hmm?” Palini sat at the chair beside her, taking her hands. “And I won’t die, my love.”

“Sometimes, what is right is not fighting other people’s battles, but staying to protect those closest to you.” Erina squeezed her husband’s hands in return. “But I know we disagree on when those times are.”

Xavier felt awkward. His social skills had improved in the decade he’d spent with his students—his found family—but this wasn’t a situation he was familiar with, nor were these people he was familiar with. They were both many times older than him, with a relationship he couldn’t fathom.

And he was just standing there in the background as this all went down.

Time wasn’t passing in the rest of the universe anymore, at least not by much, but he was beginning to feel antsy. He’d developed more patience over the last dozen years than he’d ever thought possible, but that fight with Palini—especially the start of the fight, when he fought with sword alone—had relit a fire in him.

Time to move forward.

“So,” Erina said, her gaze now on Xavier. “You plan to kill The Collector? My husband tells me you’re C Grade. You may have bested him, but I have to ask, are you sure you can do this?”

Xavier raised his chin, looking at the woman. Now, he suspected, wasn’t the time to correct them about his grade. This woman needed reassurance that he wouldn’t be putting her husband in danger.

Except, he was putting the man in danger.

He hadn’t known what that would mean when he’d agreed to it. Hadn’t known anyone in the man’s life. That life was becoming clearer to him the longer he spent in the man’s house, the more he heard the man’s wife speak. It made him wonder about all the lives that would be lost because of the choices he made, because of the orders he gave, if he ruled, and extended that rule…

The lives saved and bettered will outweigh any lost.

But did that truly balance the scales?

Then again, what was the alternative? Not acting? That would only cause more death.

“I can do this,” Xavier said, infusing his voice with a certain weight—something he’d discovered was possible with the pooling of Celestial Energy about the vocal cords, and was even stronger if one used Reality Energy. “I can kill The Collector.”

For these words, he used both.

Erina blinked. “For some reason, I’m inclined to believe you.”

~

They didn’t linger long at the Damascus’s stately residence. It turned out Xavier wasn’t the only one eager to get to the Ventorin sector. Less words were exchanged in that conversation than he’d expected, and once all was said things were left in a better state than he’d imagined they would be.

Much of that had to do with Palini allowing him and his family to retain citizenship in Orin. Now, with all the man had to lose, Xavier could see why he’d done it.

Xavier and Palini stood at the edge of a massive forest. The forest’s trees stretched so high the tallest among them pierced the clouds above. Their trunks were so thick you could hide a four-bedroom house behind them.

The two Denizens, one B Grade, one D Grade, stared out from the forest at a city whose towers dwarfed the trees, making them look like nothing more than blades of grass on a field.

“Tall buildings,” Xavier muttered.

“They’re completely unnecessary.” Palini grunted. “But The Collector likes grandeur.”

“Showing off, more like.”

Palini chuckled. “Yes. That’s my thought, too.”

Xavier hadn’t planned to do any of this with another Denizen. Honestly, he didn’t have much of a plan for his next steps at all. He’d wanted to land in the middle of The Collector’s capital city while wrapped in a time dilation field, then go from there.

Palini had convinced him that there were other options.

“The Collector is a very fearful man,” Palini told him. “He doesn’t trust anyone. Even the lowliest of Denizens under his reign are contracted to serve him and not bring harm to him the moment they reach System age.”

Xavier hadn’t known that part. The more he spoke with the man, the more he realised that a lot of the information he had about the Ventorin sector was surface level. The Collector was perhaps the most paranoid person he’d ever heard of. All the things required in his System contracts meant that very little true information ever made it to the more public-facing Information Brokers available in the System Shop.

It wasn’t that the information couldn’t be gathered by an experienced Information Broker if they wished, it was more that outside Ventorin it simply wasn’t seen as worth it.

The Collector wasn’t at war with any other sector and was considered too weak to be a threat, but too powerful for anything to be done about him by his neighbours, meaning he’d been left to do…

Whatever he wished.

“It happens a lot,” Palini told him. “Not just here. Everywhere. All over the Greater Universe there are trillions upon trillions upon trillions of people that are simply not considered by those powerful enough to help them.” Rage had permeated the former lawman’s voice. “Not a thought is spared for the suffering that is their lives.”

“You speak of it differently to Sovereign Fouran.”

“I think differently to the man. I just… didn’t realise how much until that conversation between the two of you.” Palini looked at Xavier. “It opened my eyes. I’m not sure yet if I should be grateful for that or not.”

“So, you don’t think I’m naive as he does?”

Palini smiled. “Oh, you are naive. Idealistic. And damned young.” He sighed. “But maybe that’s what’s needed. Besides, using such terms to diminish your value…” He shook his head. “I may be B Grade, and centuries old, but if I were to step into one of the middle sectors, or even one of the central sectors, I would be considered more of a child than the sovereign thinks of you as one. Does that mean my opinions hold no weight? Does that mean the things I want to achieve should be dismissed by someone older, simply because they say such things aren’t possible?”

Xavier smiled. “No. I don’t think it means that at all.” The way spoke… It was often the way Xavier felt about things. About what was possible. He’d taken a chance with Palini. So far, it seemed to be paying off. “You know, there are some who would consider even the oldest Denizen in our universe a child,” he muttered.

Palini blinked. “You speak as though you’re familiar with people like that.”

Xavier thought about elaborating—the man he was thinking of was his son, and he was both very familiar with him and not familiar with him at all—but he decided not to.

He’s not my son… Not in this universe, anyway.

Palini seemed to see this and brought the topic back to the matter at hand. “Fearful men have more protections in place than one might first imagine. You remember what happened when you entered Containment Room 238B?”

“Oh, I remember,” Xavier said.

“Well, that’s what happens whenever anyone unauthorized enters that city.” The man nodded at the massive walls and the towers so damned tall their tops were no longer in the planet’s atmosphere.

“There are spell-interrupt runes covering the entire city?” Xavier swallowed. “My cores will grey out, my energy channels shut down?”

“Nothing quite so severe as that. That would require a far more powerful Inscriber than he has at his disposal. But once you enter that city—no matter how you enter that city, whether by foot, portal, teleportation, or”—Palini glanced at Xavier’s dragon wings—“flight, whatever spells a Denizen has active will be completely cancelled out.”

Xavier frowned. “My Time Alteration spell.”

“Would have fallen away. Everyone in the area would have seen you. Had you entered through a portal as planned, The Collector’s army, and The Collector himself, would have been alerted of your presence in less than a second.”

Xavier took a moment to consider what that would have been like. “The runes aren’t as powerful, you say? My cores won’t lockdown?”

“They’d strip your active spells and lock your cooldowns for about an hour, depending on how easily you’re able to resist, delaying them, but only if a spell is already in cooldown, or the cooldown is triggered by your active spells being stripped. The runes won’t hinder your energy channels or cores, however.”

Xavier nodded. He could have handled that. It wouldn’t have been ideal, by any means, and without Time Alteration available for at least an hour or the space to draw up a spell pattern…

“That would have been messy,” Xavier replied. “What other protections does he have in place?”

“I can’t say I’m aware of all of them. All the intelligence I’ve gathered says he’s the only B Grade in the sector. He covets powerful Denizens as part of his collection, but he refuses to allow them to advance to his grade.”

Xavier nodded. This was something he was very aware of. “That should only work to our benefit.”

Palini’s forehead creased. “Maybe. Except I’m not so sure how true that is. No one outside the sector has been able to get close enough to his inner circle to confirm it. Tell me, if you were a fearful man, would you not ensure you were protected against those just across your borders?”

Xavier really didn’t know what he would do. While he feared those who were more powerful—he would be a fool not to fear them—he did his best not to allow that fear to control or dictate his actions. “I haven’t a clue what I would do, but I understand what you’re saying. A man like him, nipping at the heels of the sovereign, he can’t only rely on the fact that men like Rewke Fouran are simply too busy.”

Palini grunted. “My thoughts exactly. I think he has something. Some secret defensive measure we won’t be aware of until we move forward.”

“What do you suggest we do next?” Xavier asked.

Palini raised an eyebrow. “I’m here to provide you with information and a healthy dose of caution, but I don’t know everything you’re capable of, so I’ve no idea how you might be able to circumvent the city’s protections.”

Xavier nodded. “The Collector’s castle will no doubt have even more protections.”

“Indeed.”

“Well then.” Xavier clapped his hands together. “No time like the present.” Xavier was about to cast Portal to get them closer to the gates, when he paused. “Any idea if he can sense space distortions around his city?”

“Oh, most certainly,” Palini said. “He might even have sensors, or the ability to sense, space distortions on the entire planet.”

“We came through wrapped in a time dilation field, so he can’t have been alerted of our presence yet. Still, best not to use too many portals if they can be tracked, especially of the field ends up getting disrupted.” Xavier sighed, tapping his boot on the soft ground. If he didn’t have someone else’s life to worry about, he’d likely ignore the portal sensors.

Palini looked at him. “I’m slowing you down, aren’t I?”

Xavier almost told the man that he wasn’t, but he paused. No point lying. “Yes. You are. But not in a bad way.” He gestured at capital city of the entire Ventorin sector. “I have a tendency to barge in and make a straight line toward completing whatever goal I’m after. Even with an awareness of those rune protections, I might have portalled straight into the city anyway.”

“Confident,” Palini said, but his tone hid another word.

Xavier smirked. “Reckless, I’m sure you mean. This mission, however… I have killed enemies who are only my enemies because of the contracts that were forced upon them before, and I won’t hesitate if I deem the action necessary again. But as I was telling you in that containment room, I’m trying a different, more considered approach.”

“This new approach of yours—that’s the only reason I’m still alive, isn’t it?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure what I would have done before.”

“Before…” The man frowned. “Before what?”

Before my cores were shattered. Before I attained an advancement in another System. Before I spent over ten years training and living with people I now consider family, seeing what peace could be like, Xavier thought, but didn’t say.

Instead, he shook his head. “Perhaps I’ll tell you in time.” He nodded to the walls. “Now, try and keep up, would you? We have a castle to break into, and a sector ruler to kill.”

He thundered forward in a sprint, expanding the time dilation field as he went so it still encompassed the both of them.