Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 7 - Stronger, Better

After six months inside that forest clearing near Collinsville, the breakthrough Xavier had been chasing finally came.

It was not earth-shattering. The clouds above did not part to allow the sun to bathe him in its warmth and light. The System did not suddenly announce he had achieved a great thing by providing him with a title for his efforts.

But it meant everything to Xavier as a trickle of Celestial Energy finally entered his body.

For the five months that he’d been alone in the clearing, much of that time he’d been without Celestial Energy completely. After the first ten days when the energy his old party had provided him had dissipated, he’d wanted to call them back. Wanted them to give him more.

As developed as his inner calm had become during that time, not having an ounce of energy within him made him feel like he’d been walking the desert without water for an eternity—even after only a single day had passed.

He did not give in to this desire.

The others had done their part. They’d shown that his body could take in Celestial Energy. Shown that he could still cycle it through his channels. He’d opened his pores and stretched the channels, expanding those thin tunnels until the energy could flow through every inch of him.

There was more work to be done there—work that he could do if they provided him with more energy—but doing that work now would merely be a diversion.

And so he’d kept pushing.

As each hour passed, he’d thought what he’d been doing wasn’t working. He’d opened his pores. He was no longer locked from energy.

Why would it not come to him? Why wouldn’t it even come naturally, as it should?

The answer to that soon became obvious.

His shattered cores were not helping to draw that energy in. It wasn’t only his locked pores he needed to contend with.

After the energy provided by his party had gone, that sense of being starved permeated his entire being, but with the power of his mind increasing with his progress rebuilding both his Split Mind skill and the rooms within his mind, he was able to push his concentration progressively harder.

His sense of energy slowly returned.

The first thing he’d sensed, which had knocked him right out of his meditative state, had been the aura of a beast nearby. To sense a beast’s aura meant that the beast was weak enough not to have the ability to veil their core.

Curious, Xavier had risen from where he sat and made his way to the beast. Xavier few over the trees and hovered down, landing lightly and without a sound, ten feet away. The beast prowled through the underbrush, sniffing the air. A big, black cat. A puma. The sight of it forced a chuckle from his mouth, making the cat startle and turn to him, momentarily frozen as it spotted him.

Xavier mind worked far faster than the low-level beast, and he was easily able to take the time to examine the weak aura before it had a chance to run or attack. Instantly, he could tell that though his sense had allowed him to feel the aura, it was nowhere near as strong as it should be. Even ten feet away the aura was dim to him—and not because of the beast’s level. If his concentration slipped, the aura flickered away, his sense once more going blind.

He scanned the beast, partly doing so because he hadn’t tested his ability to scan beasts since his cores had been shattered. There were so many possible gaps in his abilities, but he could only focus on them one at a time.

The notification came. His shoulders relaxed—he hadn’t even realised they’d been tense.

{Level 10 – Black Puma}

Xavier shook his head and smiled. He glanced up at the sky, as though looking at the System, and wondered if it was having a joke at his expense.

Level 10 Black Pumas were the main enemies on the first floor of the Tower of Champions, before facing the Puma Prime at the temple at the end of the path. For them to be the first thing he sensed as he rebuilt himself…

The chances seemed incredibly slim.

Xavier tilted his head to the side as he peered at the beast and its aura.

I suppose it’s time I test something.

It felt almost wrong, killing such a low-level beast, even if the thing sprang at him, attacking without care for its own life. Xavier didn’t draw his weapon, and he had no spells to cast. He simply grabbed the beast about the neck as it leapt toward him and crushed.

The beast died so fast Xavier doubted it felt any pain.

Xavier read the kill notification that appeared, but even before he saw it, he knew the test had failed.

You have defeated a Level 10 Black Puma!

You have gained 0 Mastery Points.

You have gained 0 Spirit Energy.

A Level 10 beast should have provided 1,000 F Grade Mastery Points and 1,000 F Grade Spirit Energy. For him, the Mastery Points likely would have been scaled down, throttled by the System, but he should have been provided with something, even for a kill with such a huge level discrepancy.

Neither the Mastery Points nor the Spirit Energy would have made any difference to him normally. The conversion of F Grade Spirit Energy to D Grade Spirit Energy would have meant he would have received a measly ten points of D Grade Spirit Energy.

But even those ten points would have been more than what he had right now.

Xavier didn’t let this moment dishearten him, however. If he could sense beast auras, that meant he was making progress. Besides, it was no surprise that he couldn’t receive Spirit Energy, considering his Spirit Core was shattered.

He’d returned to that clearing, once more sitting cross-legged on the ground. As he did, he’d concentrated not on cultivating, but on his spiritual sense—his Aura Sight, as Sam had first called it.

Xavier hadn’t gained the ability to sense auras until he’d discovered his Spirit Core for the first time. Having the ability to do so meant that even though the core was shattered, it was still there, and it still held some power.

Aura Sight wasn’t actually a skill. At least, he’d never received a Skill Quest for it. It was more like an expansion of one’s natural senses—a sixth sense.

Once he’d sensed that first aura and actively worked on improving the ability, it was like a catalyst. His ability to sense outside himself and inside himself improved with each day, even if it improved at a crawl. The auras of the low-level beasts in the forest around him lit up like beacons. There were far more around than he’d expected.

When three months had passed in that clearing, he could once again sense the ambient Celestial Energy that permeated the universe, the energy that was all around him, even if it wasn’t as thick on Earth as many other worlds he’d been to.

Two months after that, he’d finally been able to feel the shattered cores inside his body—the ones that he’d previously discovered, at least.

With all the progress he was making, it still came as a shock when he finally succeeded at cultivating that first trickle of Celestial Energy.

Xavier opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled. He still had so far to go, and more time had passed than he’d ever thought would as he pursued this goal. With the three months he’d spent in that coma, and the six months in the clearing, more than nine months had gone by since his cores had shattered.

And they weren’t rebuilt yet. He wasn’t anywhere near where he’d been before this happened.

The deadline of the World Destroyer’s passage into the Silver River sector was coming frighteningly close with the passing of each day.

Xavier smothered thoughts of deadlines and sector-ending threats and instead basked in the joy of what he’d just done.

Though he called it a breakthrough, it wasn’t some sudden jump. A eureka moment hadn’t come to him in a flash, making him think differently and solve his problem. He’d only gotten here through sheer force of will and dogged determination.

Getting to this point had been the complete antithesis to how he’d progressed in the past. He hadn’t done it with spells provided by the System. Hadn’t done it with skills helping to guide his actions. He had to claw his way back here. All the instincts, the pathways that he’d possessed before, had been broken.

As he sat there, feeling the trickle of Celestial Energy as it cycled through his channels, he wondered if this was what it had been like for people before the System.

Had they needed to fight this hard to gain this much?

Xavier didn’t let himself bask in his accomplishment for long. After a short time, he closed his eyes and returned to his task.

Bit by bit, the trickle of energy turned into a flood.

~

A week after Xavier broke through and cultivated once more, he hovered above the clearing drawing runes in the air. Once he had the ability to cultivate energy, it wasn’t long before he regained the ability to push it into his stylus.

Xavier was not blind to the dangers of what he was doing, but he also couldn’t wait any longer. Without the ability to at least cast his spells in this way, while he wasn’t completely powerless, he knew it would take him too long to get where he needed to go.

He was making progress, and he was more confident than ever that he would be able to get everything back that he once had, and more—as he relearnt and remastered his skills and ability to cultivate, there was a part of him that knew this was different to the first time. He’d always had a strong foundation, one built brick by brick through all the accomplishments and training and breakthroughs.

But the first foundation he’d possessed had been built by bricks that though they seemed solid, turned out to be too brittle for the power he ended up wielding. This new foundation he was building felt different. Stronger. If the first foundation had been built with bricks of stone, this one was being built by solid metal and was twice as thick.

Every time he rebuilt a skill, one technique at a time, he wasn’t placing brick after brick into that foundation. He was pouring liquid metal into the mould of the foundation that had been there before.

But he simply wasn’t doing it fast enough.

When he’d begun drawing the runes, he was struck by a harsh realisation. Though he’d been showing his old party members how to draw runes, it was only when he’d come to draw this spell pattern that he’d fully realised his deficiencies. Like with everything else, drawing runes no longer came as naturally as it once did.

Soon, it will come more naturally than ever before. The foundation will be stronger, better.

The spell pattern he was working on wasn’t the one he wanted to use first, but it was the one he had the most experience with. From all he’d been through, he came to the process with a healthy dose of caution.

Without a time dilation field to practice in, the time it took for him to regain his proficiency and actually draw the spell pattern was agonisingly long, but Xavier persisted.

He always persisted.

In the end, it had taken him less time than he’d expected to perfect the spell pattern, but still more than he liked. After he’d dedicated an entire week to it, ceasing all his other training, it was finally done.

The Willpower Infusion spell pattern hovered in the air.

Xavier couldn’t see the entirety of the pattern from where he hovered. He was about to fly a little higher to get a good look at it when he remembered the red Farscope lens that was still in his right, non-dominant eye. He had been so singular focused that he hadn’t even thought about the lens since he’d first realised it was no longer working. He also hadn’t tried to use his Storage Ring, despite the fact that he was once again able to draw in Celestial Energy.

I never had to feed energy into it when I first put it on…

The draw of energy had been so minute that it could have only been noticed if he went looking for it.

The problem was, even with Celestial Energy cycling through his channels, the vast majority of items required Spirit Energy from the user to function, not Celestial Energy, as Spirit Energy was the one energy source every Denizen started with at F Grade.

Though he wished to have the ability back, to see the spell pattern in its entirety even this close, he was glad it hadn’t hindered him while drawing the pattern. His focus had been so acute on each curve and line of the individual runes, making one after the other perfect, that he hadn’t even thought to look at the whole pattern until he’d completed it.

With instincts born from all his previous practice, he knew the spell pattern had been drawn perfectly.

As his thoughts diverged, the pattern in front of him flickered to life, attaining a brilliant white glow and snapping him out of his reverie. Xavier’s eyes widened at the sight and he flapped his wings, soaring upward through the open canopy above the forest clearing.

From where he hovered, his large black wings flapping lazily in the air, he gazed down at the glowing spell pattern. Then his gaze turned downward, to the strand of energy that stretched from his chest all the way to the pattern. The sight made a smile burst onto his face, and he threw his head back in a laugh.

The strand of energy was dimmer than he’d remembered, as though the connection between him and the pattern was weaker than it used to be. Either that, or it was his senses that were weaker.

That didn’t matter. He’d done it. He’d funnelled Celestial Energy through his stylus and drawn the spell pattern. It glowed, meaning it was active and ready for him to initiate.

So far, every step was working just as it should.

Now, he just needed to test the spell pattern itself.

Before he did that, however, he twisted in the air until his body was upside down, curling his wings around him in a swift dive. As he neared the ground his snapped his wings out to slow his fall, then he alighted on the grass in front of the pattern as softly as a feather touching down.

In one swift, graceful movement, he lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position and shut his eyes.

He examined every inch of him, searching for any signs of pressure on himself. He’d never sensed pressure from having a spell pattern active until he’d had well over a hundred of them active at once, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Besides, in his current condition there was every chance that he was even more susceptible to the pressure.

He forced himself to search for an hour, but when that hour had passed and he’d felt no hint of the pressure, he opened his eyes and smiled. This smile was softer than the last one. Calmer.

Xavier sensed the aura of a weak, low-level beast several miles away in the forest. He flew toward the beast, snatching the Level 8 Metal Tusked Boar by one of its tusks and brought it straight back to the clearing.

Holding the beast still in front of the glowing runes, Xavier initiated the Willpower Infusion spell pattern.

The moment of truth.

His mind spewed forth many reasons why this wouldn’t work. One of those reasons was that the spell required Willpower Energy, and with Xavier’s shattered core, he didn’t possess any. Or if he did, it was so miniscule that it appeared as 0/0 on his stat sheet.

But he shouldn’t need Willpower Energy. He didn’t need to feed his own energy into the runes. The universe would provide that energy. The only time that didn’t work was when it came to souls.

Xavier stared up at the pattern. He didn’t wish or beg for it to work; he held his breath and waited.

It took a mere fraction of a fraction of a second for the spell pattern’s glow to turn from white to purple, but to Xavier it felt longer than the time he’d been training in this clearing.

The spell pattern washed the grass and trees in a purple light that to his eyes, in that moment, was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

The Celestial Energy Xavier had used to draw the spell pattern with had converted to Willpower Energy as it had been initiated.

Mist flowed from the spell pattern. With the strand of energy stretched from his chest to the pattern, Xavier took control of that energy. He’d worried about this part. Back on the Arakashinai home world, he’d done this a thousand times to increase his control over this spell pattern. Like with everything else, he dreaded finding out that his control was gone and that it would be one more thing he’d need to add to his list to rebuild.

To his utter surprise, however, his control over the pattern hadn’t diminished in the slightest. If anything, it felt… Stronger.

Much stronger.

The mist flowed straight to the boar. It stopped struggling in his grasp.

The beast, like the pattern, was under his command.