Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 11 - Competing Origins

Xavier stared at the strange notification with a blank look on his face.

He had seen System Errors before, but he’d never seen anything like this. Universe Iteration? He imagined that referred to his universe, though which universe that was had been redacted—which was something he’d definitely not seen before.

And… System Version?

He’d never supposed that there would be different versions of the System, but now he realised he was foolish to imagine that in an infinite number of alternate universes there wouldn’t be other versions of the System.

The System wouldn’t only have been created once. Not only that, it might update itself when a new universe was created, if it realised it needed different capabilities to achieve its task—which only made him wonder if “conflict” was treated in the same way in every universe by the System, or if that was only the case in his little corner of the multiverse.

While all of that was interesting, what interested him the most about the strange notification was that the information about his core was from a System with a “competing origin,” and that the [UNKNOWN] Core he’d discovered was apparently incompatible with not only the System, but his universe…

How does that make any sense? Is what I’ve done truly so… unique? And how could what I’ve done be incompatible if I’m… doing it?

Xavier read over the notification several times. At the end, when it had said it was loading a new notification, he’d thought that would appear rather quickly. He’d never known the System to be slow, after all, even when he was inside a time dilation field.

An hour passed as he sat there waiting for the notification. The time allowed him to get lost in his own mind, going down several tangents as he imagined what these “competing origin” universes were like.

Xavier’s understanding of the multiverse was still in its infancy, and was highly skewed by the way the Tower of Champions functioned, and by the information the first older version of himself had given him.

He’d realised he’d been shortsighted whenever he considered the “multiverse.” With the information he had, he imagined that once the System had been created, it spread to every newly created universe—that was roughly how it had been explained to him.

The System and the universe—his universe and an uncountable number of other ones—had started at the same time. The System spread slower than the universe, giving life time to evolve and populate countless different worlds in a myriad of galaxies before it finally reached them, turning their galaxies into sectors, and integrating their worlds one by one until it governed everything.

Xavier saw the multiverse in the same way. Each newly spawning universe, whether it spawned now or billions of years ago, would have a System of its own—at least, since the System’s creation. There were also the new universes that spawned from the different choices people made, or from outside influences—like the tower floors. Each time a Champion stepped onto a tower floor, they were entering an alternate universe. Not only that, but they were also entering that universe at a specific moment in time, in a specific location, thus creating an entirely new, diverging universe.

The universe did not begin again from scratch, it simply continued from that moment onward, thus creating a near infinite number of more universes that populated the multiverse.

Then there were the universes that lived and died before the System’s creation. He’d imagined there were fewer of these, but who was he to say? The multiverse theory said there was an infinite number of universes. There may very well have been more universes without the System than with it.

There still may be, for all he knew—after all, if the System moved to every universe after its creation, how could other System have been made?

Xavier sat with these thoughts as he waited for the new notification to load. As always, such things were a difficult thing for him to fathom—and impossible for him to fathom in their entirety. So, he worked from what he could glean from the strange notification he’d received.

This tells me that there is at least one other universe out there with a System with a competing origin, and even a different “language.” I’m not sure if the language it refers to is runes, the supposed language of the universe. Perhaps there is a different underlying way that those runes are “written” for each System, or maybe the universe is so different that runes don’t govern it at all…

Either way, the impurities I expelled from my body and channels, the strange, faux-advancements I experienced, and the odd core I discovered… Such things haven’t happened here before. Not only here, in my universe, but in all of the universes my version of the System governs.

But how could that be possible? How could I have achieved something so different, so unique, as to accomplish that? The impurities I expelled… I’ve read about that concept in this universe, in the fiction and mythology of Earth. Surely, another world out there must have the same ideas.

Another Xavier out there would have read those books, too.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine someone else looking for those things inside of them, or discovering them by chance as I did…

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he repeatedly tapped a finger on his chin.

All I needed to discover them was a powerful spiritual sense, especially one finely attuned to the inner working of my own body. My spiritual sense can’t possibly be the most powerful in this universe, let alone countless others. There must be another reason for what I accomplished. Especially since this isn’t supposed to be “compatible” with my universe at all.

He pondered the word “compatible.” It suggested that what he did shouldn’t even be possible at all.

And yet, he’d done it.

If he followed that line of thought, assuming what he’d done shouldn’t have been possible in this universe or any other universe his System Version governed, it was easy to imagine no one else had done it. For them, it would have been literally impossible.

So how in the hell had he managed to do it?

If it isn’t possible in this universe, then the only way it could become possible is if there was something outside of this universe pushing its influence into it. Or, somehow, the barriers or shields or walls or whatever they might be called that contained this universe opened long enough to let something in…

Xavier’s eyes widened when his mind took him to that place. He knew it was possible for the walls of reality to crumble, creating holes. And he knew it was possible for something outside a universe to enter through those holes.

He had faced a Void Being, if only briefly, before. And there were other, untold threats out there too. The universe-ending threat that he wished to defeat in the far distant future was one of those threats that came from beyond—at least, that was what he’d gathered from all he’d learnt.

Xavier frowned. Void Beings weren’t the only beings out there able to move from one universe to another. The System obviously did, and so did the spirits from the Otherworld.

The Otherworld…

What he knew of that place must be wrong. The Otherworld was a place outside his universe. Spirits from universes long dead resided within it.

But… Those spirits must all be governed by the same System Version if they’re able to come here. Otherwise, they too would be “incompatible.”

Perhaps there isn’t only one Otherworld out there like I thought…

Xavier pulled his mind back to the outside influence his train of thought had brought him to. He knew that playing with time—with different unfoldings—with the help of the Spirit of Time was something that could crumble the walls of reality, allowing something else to enter. But he doubted what was happening to him now had its root back when he’d faced the Elemental Dragon.

Time Alteration doesn’t have those same problems, so that couldn’t have caused something like this.

He’d used the Spirit of Time on several occasions. Most recently, he’d used her abilities on the eightieth floor, against that universe’s iteration of the World Destroyer and its Soul Amalgamation.

Xavier shook his head. He was not the only Denizen to have access to such an ability in the countless universes his System Version governed.

No. Something else must have happened. Something significant.

Something unique.

And to his mind, it was obvious when that thing must have happened. He looked down at himself, then peered inward, seeing his shattered cores. Closing his eyes, he conjured a ghost of the pressure he’d felt when he’d killed the B Grade Arakashinai Queen on her home world.

That, too, had happened in an alternate universe, on the one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth floor of the Tower of Champions.

Xavier had tried not to think about what had happened to him—about what he’d done to himself. Had tried not to relive the experience he’d gone through. The pressure had been so intense, so… Agonising. And the mistake he’d made to get him there still made him feel things he didn’t want to let take control of him—that he couldn’t let take control of him.

But he also knew that when he’d been going through it, the only thing in his mind other than the pressure and pain had been the sheer, unstoppable will to complete the task before him and initiate every single one of those spell patterns so he could send a million soul apparitions at the Arakashinai Queen before the time dilation field finally ended.

What else could have happened while he was going through all that? From reliving his memories of training for the last year and seven months, he knew he could attain a state of utter focus that blinded him to everything but what he was pointed toward.

And so, Xavier forced himself to relive the memory. Forced himself to feel everything that had happened.

His mind tried to recoil as he retrieved the memory. He didn’t let it. He sat there, as his mental apparition, in that central room of his mind and attained a perfect state of inner calm. When the memory came before him, he dove in. In this state of calm, he still felt the pain, still felt the pressure, but he didn’t let it consume him. Instead, as it washed over him, he experienced it with a detached sort of curiosity, one that allowed him to see the sensations as something that wasn’t him, but rather, was something that stood apart.

Xavier turned that detached curiosity toward everything else in the memory.

Before him in the chamber were a hundred spell patterns, with a hundred strands jutting from his chest connecting him to them. Two hundred more strands jutting from his chest curled around and went back through the tunnel toward the city beyond, where the rest of the active spell patterns in his control hovered in the air above several million Arak drones.

One thing he noticed was that the strands of energy didn’t travel through the tunnel, the way Xavier had flown to get to this place, but rather they went straight through the solid rock of the underground complex.

The pressure and pain pushing down on him was already strong before any of the patterns had been initiated. So strong that he struggled to imagine why he’d gone through with this. Though it was easiest, in hindsight, to see the folly of one’s actions.

And from what all Xavier had gained so far, even though there were still things lost to him, he wasn’t sure this was an action he would go back and change…

But those considerations, those thoughts, were not a part of Xavier’s calm, detached mind as he relived the memory. He observed the thoughts that had played in his past version’s mind. Felt all the stimuli that came toward him.

And he looked at the spell patterns as they were initiated.

Spell patterns were drawn from thousands of runes. Powering a rune was akin to activating a ritual, a ritual that drew energy from the universe itself. The amount of energy that could be drawn from the universe was capped by the grade and power of the one controlling the runes.

In that chamber, while inside a time dilation field, Xavier drew the power of three hundred different spell patterns containing thousands of different runes, rapidly initiating those patterns one after the other.

Xavier examined the pressure that built and built and built upon him as each of the spell patterns were initiated. He had assumed the pressure he’d experienced was because he couldn’t handle holding this many spell patterns active at the same time, and that when he’d initiate them that pressure would lift.

Instead, the pressure had mounted, intensifying with each initiation, ultimately shattering his cores, damaging his mind, and harming his soul.

But that meant the pressure wasn’t because of Xavier holding control over too many spell patterns. How could it be, if that pressure continued when one of those patterns was no longer in existence?

Initiating a pattern made that pattern disappear once its task was performed.

The pressure came for another reason.

Xavier split his mind into several parts. The calm, detached part of him continued the work of the observer while the other parts worked on different theories from the information that observer gleaned.

If this was the moment something outside this particular universe was brought into it to influence Xavier in such a way that he became capable of something that should be incompatible in his little corner of the multiverse, then it must have something to do with the way the spell patterns drew energy from the universe.

But that didn’t seem like the answer. While inside the very same time dilation field, Xavier had drawn, activated, and initiated over a thousand spell patterns before these three hundred, creating a graveyard of mindless drones beneath him back in the first Arak city he’d entered on this world.

If simply drawing a certain concentrated amount of energy from the universe caused its walls to rupture, then wouldn’t it have ruptured back then?

Yet the pressure hadn’t been there.

Besides, while the amount of energy Xavier had drawn from the universe had been incredibly large for someone of his level and rank, he couldn’t imagine it would be a stretch for true a B Grade or even an average A Grade Denizen. There were Denizens out there with the ability to destroy worlds with a thought—or so he’d been told. What he’d done was no doubt powerful, but it was nothing like that. They may not use drawn spell patterns to achieve their feats, but Xavier was sure there were A Grade Inscribers out there drawing more energy using single runes from the universe than he did with thousands.

So, he looked for the differences.

The first difference was he hadn’t held those thousand patterns all at once. But there were other differences. The biggest difference were the souls he’d used.

Souls…

Souls, spirits, had the ability to move through different universes. A soul that wasn’t gathered up into by a reaper like him was free to move on. He’d heard of things like reincarnation, though he didn’t know the truth of it. But he also knew those souls sometimes made their way to the Otherworld, where they could be brought to other universes by Otherworldly Summoners.

Xavier had sent a million soul apparitions at the Arakashinai Queen.

That number was significant. He knew that his soulkeeping reserve of just over ten thousand was powerful, but there would be A Grade Denizens of the Reaper line out there with far larger reserves than his own.

But… Would they be one hundred times larger? Or would each soul they used simply pack more punch?

He didn’t have the answer to that, but it made him wonder.

The energy he’d drawn from the universe, and the number of souls he’d harnessed and destroyed in the attack against the B Grade insectoid Denizen, along with the amount of energy he’d drawn from the universe, all combined with the weight of the pressure that was on Xavier that injured every part of him—mind, body, soul, cores, energy channels…

Could the energy drawn from that spot have made the universe’s walls slightly thinner, weaker? Could the concentration of souls dying—entities that could under some circumstances transcend the universe they were born to—have then punched through that wall?

Allowing something from outside that universe to come in?

And I, being as vulnerable as I was, could have brought whatever leaked into the universe into me…

Despite the state of perfect calm the observer part of his mind was currently experiencing, the part of his mind that had gone down this particular train of thought panicked, wondering if he had somehow been the victim of a Void Being.

That worry was quickly discarded as the rest of the memory played out.

Even as Xavier slipped into unconsciousness in the Arakashinai Queen’s chamber, the observer part of him could still feel what was happening. It was strange, that these things had been captured by Xavier’s mind, and yet until he intentionally sought it out, he hadn’t even known he’d experienced them.

Xavier felt his cores shattered. Felt his soul crack and leak. Felt his channels shrivel and shrink. Felt his mind crumble under the weight of all that pressure.

Even his bones fractured from the pressure pushing down on him. He hadn’t known that had happened. They must have healed in the three-month coma that had followed.

Reexperiencing the agony of being broken apart knocked Xavier out of that once perfect state of calm and threatened to shove him out of the memory completely.

Desperately, Xavier clung to the rest of the memory, even as he felt everything crumble. He managed to hang on.

Barely.

Just as he thought it was all about to be over, as the pressure had lifted, and everything that could be shattered had been shattered, he felt a whisp of something enter him. A hint of unknown energy. With all his will, the memory slipping away, Xavier followed that unknown energy through his body.

The amount of energy was so small he didn’t know how to quantify it. It didn’t feel as large as a single point of F Grade Celestial Energy. No, it was more like… a millionth the size of that.

Xavier wasn’t sure how he felt it at all. In the memory, with everything shattered, his spiritual sense should have been shattered too.

Yet he felt whatever this was slither through his shrivelled channels. The only reason the energy could fit through the channels at all was because of how small it was.

It must be as small as an atom. Smaller, even. Subatomic.

That small dot of unknown energy settled somewhere deep within him before it disappeared from his sight, and Xavier was finally drawn out of the memory and back into the clearing where he’d been sitting.

As he opened his eyes, breathing heavily from the experience of the memory, he found a notification waiting for him. The notification that the System had been loading.

He caught his breath, then glued his eyes to the text that had appeared.