Todd Herzman

Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 10 - [UNKNOWN]

Added 2025-07-30 19:00:07 +0000 UTC

Eleven years.

Xavier had aged eleven years since the System had been integrated, yet only a fraction of that time had actually passed.

After the time dilation field had abruptly shut down, Xavier drew another Time Alteration spell pattern and sat, cross-legged in the middle of the clearing with his eyes closed.

He hadn’t intended to spend so much time experiencing the changes his body had gone through before looking inward. He was still blown away by what had happened—by what he’d done.

Xavier was pleased. Hell, he was over the moon! The strength of his body, the swiftness of his movements, the grace of his strikes—it all felt so much more than it had ever been before.

His physical foundation was light years ahead of what it had been before his cores had shattered. If spells were taken out of the equation, he would be able to best his old self ten times out of ten.

But even taking all of that into account, he couldn’t help the state of shock that he was in.

A year and a half, gone by without me even noticing…

He couldn’t help but think that was a little worrying. What if he got so caught up in something, so focused, that it put him or someone else in danger?

Except, he’d known he was safe within the time dilation field. He didn’t think he would ever do anything like that under different circumstances. Would he?

He pushed his worries, as legitimate as they might by, away.

His body had undergone more changes than merely the physical ones.

For the first time since the impurities had been expelled from his body and he’d experienced what felt like an advancement, Xavier properly examined his inner self.

Instantly, he saw several changes.

Xavier had an intimate knowledge of his energy channels and the pores through which that energy entered and exited his body. Everything he’d gone through in this clearing had only made him even of an expert on the subject.

His energy channels were thicker. They were larger than he’d made them previously. Energy flowed through them with an ease he’d never felt, as though the walls of those channels were the smoothest surface in the universe. There didn’t appear to be any friction whatsoever.

All the impurities… Were they restricting the flow?

The energy was cycling through his body in a familiar pattern, but he could tell it wasn’t bolstering his muscles or anything else like he used to do with Body Cultivation. There had been a part of him that had momentarily worried he’d been boosting his body with Body Cultivation without even noticing, and that that was where all his gains in strength and speed had come from.

How he could have done that without noticing… Well, considering what else he’d done lately, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to his imagination.

But his muscles weren’t being boosted. Hell, even if they had been, he was stronger than he’d been before with Body Cultivation and Spiritual Trifecta boosting him. That was why he’d needed so much time to adjust to the way his body moved—though from reliving the memories of his training, he realised that wasn’t the only thing he’d been doing as he’d trained.

He’d been improving upon his fighting techniques. On… all of them.

Xavier observed the energy as it was turned into nutrients for his body and mind, dispelling his need to eat and sleep. The process looked so smooth and natural. It made him wonder if he would have been able to do it in the past had he known about it.

Maybe there is a spell or skill that allows someone to do this… Yet I’m able to do it without one…

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For a moment, he paused his observation of the energy flowing through his body and turned his senses toward his cores. A small part of his mind had been whispering to him that he should look at them since he’d experienced his faux-advancement—or whatever the hell it was—to see if there had been a change in them. Xavier had resisted. Ostensibly because there had been other things to attend to, but truthfully because it still hurt to put his attention on them.

As he looked now, he found that his cores remained shattered. They were in the exact same state they’d been in since the pressure of all those spell patterns being initiated had broken him.

Pulling his attention away from his shattered cores, he continued to follow the flow of Celestial Energy inside of his body. Though the pattern it was seemingly automatically cycling through him was familiar, there was something different about it. There were the obvious differences—that there was more energy cycling through him than he’d been able to hold in the past, that it was moving through him more smoothly than ever, and that some of that energy was being used to maintain him in place of other sources—but there was also a line of energy that was moving toward something deep within him that he was having trouble sensing.

Xavier’s eyes flicked open and widened as he realised this.

He’d felt this sensation before. Whenever he looked inside and followed a trickle of energy his body naturally cultivated toward a hidden part of him, it meant it was heading toward a core he’d yet to discover.

When he was F Grade, he’d discovered his Spirit Core—as all F Grades do—then later his Willpower Core, which had granted him Willpower Infusion. Willpower Infusion became crucial to his ultimate defeat of the Lord of the Endless Horde.

When he was E Grade, he’d discovered his Speed Core, which had granted him Time Alteration—he would forever be grateful that was the spell he’d gained, and not something as mundane as simply infusing Speed Energy into his body to increase the quickness of his movements.

And finally as a D Grade, he’d discovered his Intelligence Core, which had granted him the spell Recursive Analysis. Yet another spell that had treated him well.

The spells he’d gained from his discovered cores had helped mould him into the type of fighter he was today.

But how could he be about to discover another core?

Xavier still had two cores that remained undiscovered. His Strength Core and his Toughness Core. But the consensus was that all of his cores had been shattered. Of course, that had never been explicitly said. Adranial had been able to see only the cores Xavier had discovered and strengthened, not the ones still remaining hidden within him.

It could very well be that only four of his six cores were shattered.

“Only.” As if that wasn’t a big enough problem on its own.

Even if the final two remained intact, there should be no way for him to discover one of them until he reached C Grade, then the final one when he was B Grade.

That was how advancement worked—a Denizen couldn’t advance until they’d uncovered another of their Attribute Cores and had reached the requisite level.

Has my faux-advancement changed all that?

His stat sheet told him he was still D Grade, and that he hadn’t gained a single level. Uncovering another core should have been… Well, the familiar word, “impossible,” came to mind.

Xavier shut his eyes once more and recommenced following that strand of Celestial Energy, eager to see where it ended up. It went somewhere that appeared dark to his spiritual sense. As he had in the past, he heavily focused his spiritual sense on that area, trying to pierce whatever veil hid him from what could only be another of his cores.

As his focus intensified on that spot, the dark spot slowly brightened until it was merely misty, though still impossible to see through. Bit by bit, whatever was in that area was revealed.

To Xavier’s intense surprise and delight, what was ultimately revealed was a core. At least, that was exactly what it felt like.

A heavy ball of condensed energy that, now discovered, was like a bright beacon within him. And to his senses, the core didn’t look damaged in the least.

Except it felt utterly dissimilar to the cores he’d discovered in the past.

The first oddity was that it was larger. Larger, even, then his highly developed cores. Not only that, the colour of the core didn’t correspond with any of the six energy types of Attribute Cores.

In fact, it didn’t really feel as though it had a colour at all. It emitted light, and that light appeared white, but peering past that he found the energy inside the core was more translucent than anything else.

Xavier tilted his head to the side, confused by his new discovery.

A notification had popped up the instant he’d discovered the core, but he’d waved it away before reading it, trying to discern what he could from his own inspection.

This isn’t my core for Strength or Toughness.

The thought came to him with a certain level of conviction. This wasn’t one of his as yet undiscovered cores. He didn’t need to check the notification to know that.

This was something altogether different.

In all his research, questions, and reading about the Greater universe, he’d never heard of any other type of core.

He watched the core draw in Celestial Energy and convert it into whatever the translucent energy within the core was. It wasn’t taking in a lot, and none of that energy was coming back out of the core. It just kept filling it up, making it expand further.

Though the amount of energy it took in was merely a trickle, this process had been happening for nineteen months now as he’d been in the training trance. The automatic, slow cultivation of the energy had had a lot of time to accumulate.

What in the Greater Universe is this?

The core felt powerful. More powerful than his other cores had felt when they’d been intact. But he definitely didn’t understand what it was.

For a long time, Xavier simply observed the core as it functioned without needing any direction from him. He tried to get a feel for the energy inside of it. Though he’d never encountered the energy before, it did feel somewhat familiar.

It felt like Celestial Energy… but clearly wasn’t. It took vast amounts of converted Celestial Energy to produce whatever energy permeated the inside of that core.

It’s more concentrated. Pure.

After perhaps an hour had passed in his state of observation, Xavier pulled his attention away from the strange core. The notification that had popped up when he’d discovered the core awaited, and though he’d wanted to examine the core without any knowledge of what it was first, he felt a giddy excitement at finally opening it.

It wasn’t the only notification that awaited him. There were many that he’d dismissed as he’d trained. He was now looking forward to reading every single one of them.

Though Xavier had made a mission for himself to one day take down the System for the uncaring destruction it had wrought on an untold number of innocents beings in a perhaps infinite number of alternate universes, he knew he was still incredibly reliant on the information it provided him.

He opened the notification about the newly discovered core.

You have discovered your [UNKNOWN] Core—

ERROR.

[UNKNOWN] Core is incompatible with current incarnation of Universe Iteration [REDACTED] and System Version [REDACTED].

Fetching information…

ERROR.

System Permissions insufficient.

Obtaining permissions…

ERROR.

System Permissions denied.

System Version [REDACTED] incompatible with System Version [UNKNOWN]. Systems are from two diverging Multiverse Streams.

Forcing permissions…