Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 59 - You Are Not the Requisite Grade

Xavier’s physical body sat, cross-legged on the Bright City of Aethisa’s battlements, the world frozen around him, both sides of the conflict on the hundred-and-twenty-first floor now aiming all their efforts toward killing him.

Xavier’s mental apparition, however, stood in a room within his mind, not giving what was happening in the real world a single thought as he focused.

His stylus soared through the air as he drew runes after rune inside of that room.

When he’d had this idea, to draw a pattern of runes directly into his mind, in the same way the System stamped spell and skill blueprints into Denizen’s brains, he’d thought it would be impossible.

But Xavier barely knew the meaning of the word impossible, and even as the word had entered his mind he’d known he’d needed to try.

First, he’d needed to perfect the pattern. And he’d done just that, improving his Inscribing spell until it reached all the way to Rank 150.

Then, he’d been able to actually activate the spell.

Even after activating it, he still didn’t know if this would work.

Yet the lines appeared as he drew. He drew them with Celestial Energy, and once they formed, they remained there. A part of him worried there wouldn’t be enough space in the room. The patterns of runes in the other rooms were condensed compared with how they appeared when he’d drawn a pattern in the real world.

But he needn’t have worried. Once he’d drawn that first rune, he’d found he could manipulate it. He made it smaller. Then, he realised something else. Something obvious. The mental apparition, the part of him walking around in these rooms, and now drawing the runes, was completely under his control.

It wasn’t real, of course. It was simply the tool he was using to manipulate his mind.

So, he made that tool smaller.

Suddenly, he was like an insect compared to the size of everything else in the room, and the runes he worked on were equally small. He could flap his wings and fly around, drawing the different runes in the pattern just as he had on the battlements. He didn’t even need to flap his wings to fly, either. He could simply float wherever he wished.

The meaning of time fled as Xavier’s focus sharpened to a needle point. Drawing many of these runes came naturally to him, but there were still ones that required more effort. He still didn’t understand the meaning of the majority of these runes, which normally would disallow him from using them at all, but it seemed that because the pattern tied them all together, that was irrelevant.

The runes were drawn. The pattern formed. The room within his mind became filled with the intricate straight and curving lines. It didn’t erase anything within the room. The objects, posters, memories, all remained where they’d been when he’d entered this mental space.

He was simply adding to it.

Xavier hovered backward when he was done. A broad smile lit his face. The size he was compared to that of the pattern made it impossible for him to see it in its entirety, and the Farscope ability he had in the physical world was not something he possessed in the mental realm—he had to focus his attention on something to see it, just as he had to bring a memory forth to recall it. Even in his own mind, he lacked omniscience.

He changed the size of his mental apparition, once more becoming a normal size for the room he was in. Standing in that room he could truly admire what he’d created.

Xavier had drawn the pattern of runes that comprised the gravity spell Untethered. Even though he’d come this far, his still had doubts whether this would ultimately work. He pushed those down, like he always tried to when doubts reared their ugly head.

He tilted his head to the side as he examined the pattern. It had been created with the use of Celestial Energy, and so every line and curve of those runes, interconnecting to make the larger pattern, glowed with that energy.

The other spell patterns in his mind that he’d encountered, the permanent spells he’d learnt, did not glow like this one did. Their lines were dull, black. Etched into his brain by the System itself. They felt more solid, even as they seemingly hovered in space. Xavier was expending a fair amount of energy keeping this pattern in place. The Celestial Energy didn’t simply remain there. He had to consciously hold it up.

He tapped his mental apparition’s foot on the floor and tapped the stylus’s tip to his chin, deep in thought.

Xavier hadn’t gotten farther than this in his plan. Drawing the pattern of runes was supposed to be enough. But he could feel that this pattern, though he’d etched it into his mind himself, was temporary—just as the spell he’d stolen from the dwarven gravity mage was temporary.

Tap, tap, tap went his foot and the stylus as he tried to come upon a solution.

He released a mental breath and stepped up to the pattern. Not sure what else to do, Xavier identified the rune at the centre—just as he’d done in reality—and touched his stylus to it. Unlike when the pattern was incredibly large in the real world, he didn’t need to hover in the air to reach it.

Mentally, he activated the pattern.

His eyes widened as something happened. Another glow, this one different to that of the Celestial Energy that made up the pattern, formed in that centre rune. He knew that glow. The colour had shifted from the purity of the Celestial Energy to a sky blue.

The blue of Intelligence Energy.

He felt it flow, up from his Intelligence Core—the same core that had helped him unlock the Recursive Analysis spell—and into his mind, through the different spaces until it came here.

That had never happened before.

The only energy he’d ever actively brought to his mind was Celestial Energy and Soul Energy. Never the energies from his cores.

His Intelligence attribute was the one concerned with the strength of the Untethered spell, so in a way Xavier could see how this made sense.

But he hadn’t intended it. This had happened seemingly without his prompting, as though his body had known exactly what he’d needed to do to make this happen.

Interesting.

In a way, it almost felt as though his actions had been guided. But it wasn’t that. He did have a spell, Spiritual Trifecta—which had once been Spiritual Guidance—that could subtly guide his actions while in combat. He rarely noticed its influence, and he never had that spell active for long while inside a time dilation field. It wore off rather quickly.

Besides, that spell guided him in combat. This was far from combat.

He took a moment to examine his mind, his thoughts, the energies around him, trying to ascertain whether there was something, or someone, guiding him. Xavier was used to the feeling of being observed by powerful beings. It had happened more than once. He tended not to pay it much attention these days. It was mostly the same presence he sensed, and even though he’d never met the man, he knew it was Adranial’s ancestor.

That presence was nowhere to be felt. Nor was any other. As far as he could ascertain, nothing was influencing his mind but himself.

A frown marred his face, both inside his mental space and outside it, where he sat on the battlements. He had no proof of what had happened, only theories. And only two of them.

First, it could be that his body and mind simply knew what to do. He’d received spells from the System on many occasions. This process must happen automatically when he did. Therefore, the neural pathways already existed, even if he couldn’t but a metaphorical finger on them.

His second theory, he felt slightly uncomfortable about, and he wasn’t sure why. That theory was that it had been the System influencing him, guiding this action. It wouldn’t be the first time it had interfered with his life.

However, he sincerely doubted it was the latter. The System may have intervened, may have changed things for him quite drastically, but it had never actively given him more power, or advanced his spells or skills beyond what he’d achieved himself.

Xavier didn’t think that was something the System was capable of doing. If it could simply make a Denizen more powerful by its will alone, why wouldn’t it do that to the Denizen of its choice, and rise them up to become the Weapon of the System?

He shrugged off these thoughts and focused instead on the pattern glowing with the sky blue of his Intelligence Energy. As Xavier looked at it, the glow dissipated rapidly. His eyes widened, and he tried to think of something to do, but before he could the entire pattern no longer glowed at all—not with Celestial Energy, nor Intelligence Energy.

Xavier stood there, staring at it. A grin twitched up the sides of his lips. A laugh came unbidden, one outside this mental space. He must have looked a little odd with his eyes closed, laughing seemingly at nothing. Not that anyone could see him. Not that he cared.

The pattern didn’t flicker and disappear as Xavier feared. That had happened several times to the pattern in the real world when he’d first been creating it. The glow would dim away, then the pattern would be gone.

Here, the pattern remained. There were no energies keeping those runes afloat. The runes, the entire pattern, had become black. Black like the other spell patterns.

Xavier reached out and touched that pattern, grin still brightening his face. Like the other objects in this room within his mind, to his mental apparition the pattern felt solid.

In a flash, he opened the eyes of his physical body and was no longer walking through those mental rooms. Everything out here had remained exactly as it had been when he’d sat down on the stone floor, the world frozen around him.

But now, several notifications had entered his vision.

Xavier read the first notification.

Inscribing has taken a step forward on the path!

Inscribing is now a Rank 151 spell.

Error…

You are not the requisite grade for a Rank 151 spell.

Inscribing cannot take a step forward on the path.

This rank will be held in reserve for when advance to C Grade.

Xavier blinked, simply staring at the notification. He had five more of those.

Five.

Inscribing had tried to jump up to Rank 155. Beyond the limit of D Grade. He shook his head in wonder. Yet another thing Xavier hadn’t thought possible. Though he didn’t always seek out information in the System Store, as he wished to remain uninfluenced by the popular theories within the Greater Universe, spell ranks had been an exception.

He’d been told by several people that there wasn’t a way to gain a higher rank than was limited by one’s grade, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried. All the information he’d found had simply corroborated what he’d been told. Again, that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t possible. It didn’t even mean that someone hadn’t done it. It simply meant that if someone had done it, they hadn’t made that information easily available.

That happened with most information in the Greater Universe, he’d found when he actually went looking. Information was hoarded. People coveted anything that would help them become more powerful in ways others couldn’t.

Xavier understood that. It wasn’t as though he told the universe everything he could do, though he was writing a story about much of that—which a good deal of details changed. He might have to consider what things he should include, and what might be prudent to leave out.

It must have taken a hell of a lot to do what he’d just done. He’d tried to push other spells to Rank 151. And, when he’d been E Grade, he’d tried to push them to Rank 101. Some spells he’d used incredibly heavily after they reached Rank 150. Yet not once had he received a notification like this. Not with Time Alteration. Not with Body Cultivation. Not with anything.

And here he was, gaining it for Inscribing. Until very recently, he’d been a total novice with Inscribing. Hell, he still felt like a novice. There was so much for him to learn.

The ranks will be held in reserve…

He stopped shaking his head and smiled instead. This could only be a good thing.

Xavier moved onto the next notification, barely able to hold in his excitement.

You have gained the spell: Untethered

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