Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 20 - A Family of Monsters

Xavier sat on one of the couches inside his massive library. The main room of his house inside the Roving Seed Base was three times larger than it had been when it had first been grown. He snapped the book he’d just finished reading closed and gazed out at the shelves.

Every single one of the shelves lining the walls was packed so full of books that he’d had to stack them horizontally atop the ones shelved vertically. Xavier liked to keep his physical books sorted by genre and subject, then alphabetically by author. Seeing the horizontal stacks was like looking at large red stains on an otherwise perfectly white rug.

I’m going to have to expand the house again soon…

The thought brought a warm smile to his lips. Expanding the library’s space was always on occasion he enjoyed. The smile, however, was a little bittersweet as he thought of what the day would bring.

Xavier activated Light Telekinesis. The book he’d been reading rose from his hand and smoothly inserted itself back into its proper spot on the shelves, and the mug of coffee he’d neglected on the table where he had his feet up rose to hover over into his welcoming hand. The coffee had grown cold. Xavier funnelled heat through his hands and into the mug with Fire Manipulation until it was the perfect temperature once more, then drank the last few sips before rising from the couch.

It was just before dawn on RSB (Roving Seed Base) time. Soon, the others would be gathering around the large table over in the tavern for breakfast.

The door to his house opened without him having to lift a finger and he paused over the threshold, glancing back at his library, wondering when he would set foot inside it next.

Whenever I choose, I suppose.

That was the benefit of bringing it along with him.

The door clicked shut as he strolled along the vast expanse between the houses and the tavern. Each of the houses had grown considerably over the years, to the specifications of the inhabitants. The only room in Xavier’s house that had grown was his library, and it remained a one-storey building.

The garden that surrounded his house was filled with various different herbs and strange looking plants, interspersed flower beds and fruit trees, that had all been gathered, planted, and cultivated by Kelly. The garden around Xavier’s house actually stretched all the way to the other three houses in the Roving Seed Base, making it one large garden, with paths that connected the four houses—houses that now stood farther apart than they had originally.

He glanced at the houses as he walked through the garden. Justin and Miranda’s house had become a two-storey building, and they had claimed a floor each. Justin, with his ability to fly, had of course chosen the top floor. He often exited his house via the roof. Miranda, on the bottom floor, had a room dedicated to rune and spell pattern crafting, where her and Rebecca spent as much time as they could.

Siobhan and Rose’s house had grown outward, rather than upward. They’d each added several different rooms for their hobbies and specialties.

Siobhan, once a budding game designer pre-System integration, had reignited her love of designing worlds, though she did it rather differently than she had before. She had found some interesting things inside the System Shop that helped her create what were essentially virtual game worlds. She had a studio in their house dedicated to sketching out how these worlds would look and work and created them with the use of various spells.

Like with Xavier’s stories, there was a whole category in the Entertainment Feed dedicated to these worlds. They weren’t created with technology as Xavier understood it—you didn’t need a full-dive pod or something like that—but rather they worked by inserting memories that allowed for a sort of lucid dreaming experience that was tied to certain parameters established by the designers.

Not only was this a thoroughly interesting field to Siobhan, it also became interesting to Xavier—especially with his progression using mental practice. This gave them the ability to create various simulations within their own minds to train their combat abilities in different situations in a way that reminded Xavier of using the Spirit of Time to create different unfoldings, even if they were never as exact and real as different time streams could be.

To say it had revolutionised all of their training was not an understatement.

Rose’s hobby was also one that had started pre-integration. She had a love of cooking. Though there was a kitchen at the tavern, she’d expanded their house to create one that was even larger, and had an entire room that possessed the ability to keep her food in stasis that functioned as her pantry.

They had all benefitted from her love of cooking.

Howard and Kelly’s family home was the largest. That place had grown upward and outward as Rebecca and Michael had grown up. It now had five floors. The bottom floor was where the family spent most of their time together, and the other floors were claimed or shared as they saw fit.

Howard, now finally given the time, had confessed his interest in crafting—specifically blacksmithing. Using his ability to inscribe, among other insights gleaned from Xavier’s training, he was able to craft incredibly powerful armour and weapons for his grade. Kelly, coupled with her love of gardening, pursued alchemy, creating various different potions, poisons, and other concoctions.

Rebecca, though a genius with rune and spell pattern crafting, didn’t have a room in their house for that. Instead, she had a studio where she painted in her spare time—what time she wasn’t spending rune-crafting and experimenting with Miranda, that is.

Michael, the youngest inhabitant of the Roving Seed Base, was barely ever at home. His dedication to his combat training didn’t seem to allow any space for a hobby, and he didn’t show any interest in gaining one. His training hall was his second home, and that was where he could generally be found. Though his parents seemed to worry about his lack of downtime, they didn’t interfere with his choices. He was twenty years old now. Strange to think that Michael, who seemingly not so long ago had only been ten, was now as old as Xavier had been when the System came to Earth.

Xavier smiled as he thought of each of the people he’d gotten to know so much better over the past ten years, and all the different things that each of them had achieved. None of which would have been possible if not for the base he’d created, and his idea of bringing his old party into the fold.

He had brought them here to train them, to experiment and see if they could experience the same breakthroughs he had. In that respect, he had been—for the most part—incredibly successful.

What he hadn’t expected was to find a family.

Breakfast was an equally joyous and sombre affair. Rose, as she often did, had cooked for everyone. She’d catered to each of their palates perfectly. She’d even started brewing and preparing coffee alongside her cooking, and Xavier now exclusively drank coffee that she’d prepared. The redhead had obligingly made him several thousand mugs that were now all stored within his Storage Ring for when he soon wouldn’t have her as a neighbour. He could have stored the coffee in thermoses, but that just didn’t feel the same—he liked the ease producing a steaming mug straight into his hand.

He also had several dozen large sacks of coffee beans that Kelly had made especially for him with the help of her alchemical skills altering the properties of the beans to his particular palate—it was those beans Rose brewed the coffee with.

Xavier breathed in the smell of the coffee Rose put down along with the simple plate of eggs, bacon, and toast that always hit the right spot for him, even nowadays when he didn’t need to eat.

For the most part, the conversation flowed easily that morning, only with the occasional pause here or there. They talked about their training and their side projects, and they even talked about what they each planned to do once time started flowing “normally” again.

For the last ten years, they hadn’t spent every moment in the Roving Seed Base. Right now, they weren’t on Earth, or even in the Silver River sector. They were in a neighbouring sector two galaxies over, one with training grounds befitting each of their grades. Even Xavier was able to a accrue decent number of Mastery Points from the beasts here, though without the ability to respawn the training grounds were quickly cleared—of course, these days, they had a solution for that.

It wasn’t the first time they’d travelled out of the sector, either.

When they spoke about the future, that was when the awkward pauses came. There was a kind of hesitant excitement that permeated through the air. They may not all be as reclusive and in love with seclusion as Xavier was, but they’d each grown comfortable here.

It had turned into a home for all of them.

While Xavier would be able to enter the Roving Seed Base almost whenever he wished during his travels, the same would be true for the others. They soon wouldn’t be on the same world, after all.

But he was comforted by the fact that this wouldn’t be the last time they all came together like this. They all had unimaginably long lifespans. They might make their homes in other places, but they would always have this one to come back to in the future.

Something they each intended to do.

When the meal was finished, they all sat in silence, and no one seemed to want to be the first to stand. Xavier smiled and sighed, standing first so no one else had to. “Michael,” he said. “Come on. Let’s see how you’ve progressed.”

Xavier intended to spend a couple of hours with each of them that day, assessing their training, talking about their goals, before the others packed up their things and journeyed back to Earth. He could have used his drones for this task, as of he often did, and split his mind to inhabit each of them. But he wanted to do this in person, with his own body. It would make for a long day, but they made their own time in this place.

Michael grinned. Before any of the others could so much as stand up, he blinked out of existence. Xavier sensed him outside, in the middle of the large, smooth circle of wood that, among other things, acted as their sparring ring.

Xavier activated Teleport, cutting a rift through time and space much like his portals did, but far faster, and appeared a few feet across from the young man.

“Eager, are we?” Xavier asked.

Michael rubbed his hands together. “Of course! It’s not every day I get to spar with you.”

Xavier raised an eyebrow. “You spare my drones every day. Sometimes two at once.”

“That’s not the same. You know that else you wouldn’t be standing here.” At breakfast, Michael had been wearing casual clothes. Now, armour flickered into being where those clothes had been. It wasn’t heavy armour, like the kind Howard, his father, wore. This was a lighter variant. It was still full plate, in a sense, but thinner and with more flexible joints that allowed for a wider range of movement.

The full-plate armour was made from what looked like small, interlocked shells. To the untrained eye, it wasn’t clear what even connected those shells to one another. The shells shifted and slid around as Michael moved, responding smoothly to his movement, seemingly connected by nothing but air.

Xavier could see the glowing runes on the armour’s underside—something not at all visible to the naked eye, but visible to his—that kept the shells connected. Each of the interlocking shells didn’t merely have a single rune, either. They had dozens. To fit that many runes on those shells, Howard had to pack them in very tightly together. He’d achieved this in the same way he made metal denser in his other blacksmithing projects—through a spell called Size Manipulation.

The shells that made up the armour were acquired from D Grade Giant Astral Turtles on a high-gravity world in this very same sector. A few months back on RSD-time, Howard had journeyed to that world without explanation, leaving the base with a Time Alteration spell wrapped around him so he wouldn’t be gone long. When he’d returned, he still hadn’t said a word until he’d finished making the armour and presented it to his son.

The shells, in their natural form, were as large as the room Howard did his blacksmithing in. The man had later told them he’d needed expand the room so he could move within it, doing the rune inscribing while the shells were large, then reducing their size without losing any of their density.

Size Manipulation wasn’t supposed to have a permanent effect on whatever it was cast on, but they’d discovered ways around that issue.

The shells themselves were reflections of the night sky on the world the Giant Astral Turtles inhabited. At the size they were now, there were several thousand shells, and the armour gleamed with hundreds of thousands of pinprick stars.

It was quite a sight.

One might think the armour was heavy, with that many interlocking formerly giant shells. And while it was heavy—nothing a normal human could ever wear—to Michael’s amount of Strength it wasn’t much at all. The shells were naturally dense and light, as the Giant Astral Turtles weren’t land or even sea animals. They were flying ones who made homes of the skies they inhabited in their worlds.

Xavier was always fascinated by the interesting things Howard did with his armour, things that were only possible with the influence of every mind within the Roving Seed Base and the foundation Xavier had helped each of them build.

Next, a spear appeared in Michael’s hands. It wasn’t a soul bound weapon like Bones, nor was it able to shift into other weapons, but it was a powerful weapon for the man’s grade. Another item his father had forged for him.

At ten years old, Michael had wanted to wield a sword. As part of his training, however—years before he reached System-age—Xavier had trained him in each of the weapons he himself was skilled with. He didn’t believe that every Denizen was suited to his particular fighting style, but he wanted the boy to see what other things were available.

Swords, at least on his own world, had a romantic vibe to them. They were always what one imagined powerful fighters wielding, so his interest in them had been no surprise.

Michael had decided he wanted to master the spear instead after his first lesson with one, and the boy—now a man—hadn’t looked back since.

“Spells?” Michael asked with a grin.

Xavier shook his head. “We’ll start without, then add a few into the next bouts.”

Michael nodded.

Xavier’s own armour flickered into being around him, quick-equipped. The armour didn’t look as flashy and sparkling as Michael’s armour, but it did have some interesting modifications to it. Right now, the armour looked entirely non-descript, even a little battered. He had a breastplate, pauldron, gauntlets, and greaves, with chainmail beneath it all, covering his arms and flowing a little over his legs.

The armour made him look like nothing more than an average swordsman. Which, of course, was the point. The class-graft that Emperor Larona had put on him was still active, his identity still hidden with it. Though he was far more powerful now than he’d been when he’d asked for that, he still felt as though it was necessary to have a disguise.

There were a great many things that he’d discovered and learnt over the last two decades that had passed for him. Things that he knew others far more powerful than himself would kill for.

The swordsman guise wasn’t his only one.

With a thought and the flow of the appropriate energy, Xavier could activate runes in the different pieces of armour he wore to make them appear as though they were something else. If he wished, the armour could appear to be the flowing, black robes of a Denizen in the Reaper line of classes, or it could change to white robes and make him appear as a healer, or the deep red robes that a blood mage might wear.

It could change into anything he wished, all the while retaining its original protective qualities. And Xavier, having done his due diligence, reacquiring his ability to learn any spell he wished, was able to take on the qualities of each of those disguises.

Howard had not been the one to create the armour, though he had helped in its construction a great deal—mostly by the sharing of his memories of blacksmithing, which allowed Xavier to acquire the necessary skills through abundant mental practice, playing through those memories over and over as though he were the one crafting the armour.

It was a brilliant way for them to learn from each other, and as they all trusted one another with their lives and their thoughts, they eagerly shared their memories for this purpose.

Mental practice wasn’t enough, however. It served well when it came to laying down a foundation, imparting the specific way a movement felt, or the more nuanced details of a craft. But one still had to practice outside of that. The Mind Simulations Siobhan created were helpful toward this end, but there was still no substitute for real-life training.

Xavier drew Bones as a sword, then shifted it into a spear, setting his feet as he stared across at Howard’s son, Michael. The twenty-year-old man still resembled the ten-year-old he was when he came to the Roving Seed Base. And to Xavier’s eyes he still looked quite young.

I guess because I’m over forty now…

But the child had grown into a powerful young man. His body had filled out with dense muscle, though his frame was more slender than that of his father, making him whipcord strong. He had his mother’s freckles and light brown hair. The freckles only served to make him look younger, and his hair was down to his shoulders. He never tied it up, yet it never seemed to bother him when it got in front of his eyes.

{Human Wayfarer of the Infinite Path - Level 215}

Xavier smiled. Michael, like everyone else in the Roving Seed Base—Xavier included—was D Grade. Michael was the last of the others to reach D Grade, but he’d been the grade for almost a year now. He could have gotten there faster, but though they all progressed significantly faster than anyone else he’d heard of in this corner of the multiverse, their intention wasn’t actually to rush through the grades.

They only pushed forward when they were each ready.

As for Michael’s class, Wayfarer of the Infinite Path, it was the same class that every one of them held.

Xavier had wanted to create more Denizens like him, and he’d managed it.

He’d managed more than that—he’d created monsters. Powerhouses the likes of which the Silver River sector had never seen. Denizens that weren’t constrained by the “normal” rules.

For they weren’t merely D Grade Wayfarers of the Infinite Path like him—they were all Tier 2 Cultivators with Reality Cores.

He raised his left hand in the air, fingers splayed, then dropped one finger at a time.

When the last finger dropped, the sparring match began.