Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 71 - I’m Entering a New Realm of Power

Damnit.

Hovering inside that massive chamber on the Arakashinai home world, Xavier shut his eyes and sighed. The Arak flier, the builder drone that he’d been delving into the memories of, had just had its mind crushed by his “brilliant” new idea.

Xavier had thought his idea was perfect. In theory, it made a hell of a lot of sense. When he’d found out his mind had those different rooms, he’d created a mental apparition to help him navigate them.

Since he was already controlling the mind of the Arak drone through Willpower Energy, able to feel its mind and experience its memories—but all in a jumble—a solution had come to him.

Send his mental apparition inside the drone’s mind.

That way the drone’s mind would appear different to him. More orderly. He would be able to unlock and walk through the different rooms. He’d be able to track down the memory of where the queen was. Not only that, he might even be able to gain a tactical advantage through whatever other knowledge he attained from the memory.

At least, that was the theory. He never got a chance to test it out.

Instead, the moment he’d tried to conjure his mental apparition inside the Arak’s mind—splitting his own mind to do so, inhabiting the drone’s body like he’d done with other beings in the past—the drone’s mind had simply… Crumbled.

For the part of Xavier’s mind that had been inside that mind, it had been a very unpleasant experiencing. As though he’d suffered a mini death. He’d had to take a lot of long, slow breaths afterward, not having expected the shock.

The drone still lived—though Xavier wondered if the Arak drone’s existence could ever have ever really been called living. But now, it truly was an empty shell in every respect.

Xavier dropped the drone, letting go of its wing. It fell a few feet before it reached the bottom of his time dilation field’s barrier, where it froze, stuck in midair.

The Willpower Infusion spell he’d just used was on cooldown now. That meant he couldn’t use the spell again unless he cancelled Time Alteration or altered the flow of time. He refused to pursue either option. The moment he did that, the Arakashinai queen would likely notice the presence of one of its drones missing.

Something told Xavier the drones would never do this naturally. The queen would know it was foul play and would be alerted to his presence—even if he did manage to find somewhere to hide from the millions of eyes here.

No, Xavier needed another plan.

Staring down at the frozen Arak flier, he couldn’t let go of the plan he’d already concocted. Not because it was his only path forward. He doubted it would be difficult for him to search the city and find the queen. He could simply fly around and use the advantages of his Farscope ability. He’d never really needed to delve through the memories of the Arak drone in the first place.

Trying to do this, however, had pushed not only his Willpower attribute forward, gaining him 50 points he hadn’t expected, but it had also pushed Willpower Infusion up a rank—or, that would have happened, had he been the requisite grade to benefit from it. Now, that rank was waiting in reserve, and he would gain it the instant he advanced to C Grade.

Xavier was onto something. He could feel it. He was right on the cusp of learning something new, of pushing forward on one of his paths of power. He didn’t want to simply turn away from that.

But I can’t do anything about it without my Willpower Infusion spell, and I can’t allow it to cooldown…

Xavier blinked. Another idea striking him.

This one made him smile.

~

Xavier hovered inside his time dilation field, clutching the wing of another Arak flier. The time dilation field was significantly bigger than it had been when he’d last done this, as there was something he needed to account for.

A massive pattern of runes was suspended in the air in front of Xavier and the Arak flier hanging limp from his grip. This was a spell pattern he hadn’t drawn before, but it was one of the ones he was very familiar with, as he’d spent a lot of time examining it within his mind.

The pattern of runes was for his Willpower Infusion spell.

Unlike the other two spell patterns he’d drawn, this one had only taken him five attempts before he’d managed to get it perfect. The pattern, like many he’d examined, was in the shape of a circle.

The entire circle glowed with a brilliant light. He’d already initiated the rune—as Xavier worked more and more with these things, he decided he needed to change the language he used regarding them. First, he’d called initiating the pattern of runes—making the entire thing glow by pushing his will into the centre rune, becoming ready for use—activating it. But that only created a little bit of confusion within his mind.

The pattern glowing, initiated, Xavier looked down and saw the line of energy stretching from his chest that connected him to it.

Xavier had drawn that pattern of runes in a large space near the ceiling of the underground Arakashinai city. There was plenty of free airspace up there, so it hadn’t been difficult to find an area to work with. Then, he’d flown around, grabbed an Arak flier drone, and brought it back here.

Now was the moment of truth—it was time to activate the spell pattern.

He was still a little unsure of how this would work. The Untethered spell had affected everything, but he’d commanded it to target an entire area, and it ended up affecting him, too. That was the only experience he’d had activating one of these things.

Now, he only wanted to aim at a single target.

If the spell pattern didn’t end up working as he thought it would, he was assured in the knowledge that he was in a very safe space, the only other presence here one that possessed a very weak mind. Though that weak mind the Arak drone had was another thing he worried about.

Xavier had needed to be incredibly gentle when he’d taken control of the last drone, lest its mind crumble under his will. Ultimately, even though he’d managed to access the creature’s mind, it had crumbled.

Well, no point thinking on it any longer. Here goes nothing.

Xavier activated the Willpower Infusion pattern of runes. The pattern glowed even more brightly than before, its colour turning purple before his eyes. The glow didn’t stretch farther than his time dilation field, else it might have washed across the entire city.

As he activated the pattern, Xavier did it with a tremendous amount of care. Far more than he’d had when he’d activated the Untethered pattern—of course, he had been going for sheer brute force when he’d done that. He didn’t want to push all his power through this pattern. He needed better, more accurate control.

He felt that control coming to the fore. Felt like he had more than last time. Purple mist began to flow out—not from Xavier, but from the pattern itself. Which he found was a very strange thing to behold.

But he could control the flow of that mist.

Xavier sent the mist toward the Arak drone. Once he had, he immediately tried to pull it back. The mist flowed far faster, and far more potently, than he wished.

It was too late. The purple mist flowed into the Arak drone. Xavier, having been able to find the weak mind within the first drone, now knew exactly how to target it. All that energy flowed straight to it. He felt an awareness of the drone’s mind for a fraction of a second before it crumbled into nothing.

A sigh, a muttered curse, a spell pattern flickering back out of existence, and Xavier had yet another useless, empty shell clutched in his hand. He released the drone, watched it fall.

Are you sure this path is worth pursuing? Bones asked. There are other ways to achieve what you need.

Xavier creased his forehead. It’s more than worth it.

He didn’t relent. What he’d wished to do hadn’t worked—but, at the same time, it had worked. The Willpower Infusion spell pattern had activated and went to the target he wished it to go to. Nothing unusual or unexpected had gone wrong. The only issue was his control.

Xavier couldn’t control the pattern of runes with the same level of precision that he could control spells that came from him. But he could control it—and better than the first time he’d used one of these patterns. He’d already fully intended to learn how to control these patterns in the future, knowing how much of an advantage it could be to be able to double-stack his spells.

Being able to use them without having to worry about a cooldown, however? That had been something he hadn’t even considered until now.

I just need to keep walking down this path.

If other Denizens, ones who lacked the ability to alter time, were to attempt what he was trying to master, it simply wouldn’t work for them in the same way. They would be able to create spell patterns—he knew he wasn’t unique in having the ability to learn how to do that—but drawing those patterns took a very, very long time.

Inscribing single runes or a few different runes was already something inscribers struggled to do in the middle of a fight. They needed to be incredibly swift, protected by their allies, or they needed to prepare a battlefield prior to a fight going down.

If they needed to draw a spell pattern? Even if they mastered a pattern and did it as fast as they could, Xavier expected it would still take a long time. Drawing thousands of runes in specific places to form an intricate pattern wasn’t a swift process no matter how much practice one had at it.

But for Xavier, he could simply draw these patterns while time was frozen.

I’m entering a new realm of power, pursuing this. I can feel it.

Xavier’s other concerns slipped away as he worked. He no longer worried about where the Arakashinai queen was in this underground city. He no longer concerned himself with how powerful she might be, or how difficult the fight might become. He didn’t think about what he planned to do when he left the tower—clear the Hell Moons, kill the B Grade Collector, secure the territory he would need to prepare for his fight against the World Destroyer.

Or, one day, save the universe from what would be its ultimate end, and take down the System.

Not a single one of these things entered his mind. The only thing that occupied his thoughts was the pattern he was drawing and the control he had over it when it activated.

Now Xavier had mastered drawing Willpower Infusion spell pattern, it only took him a single attempt to draw it again. He initiated the pattern, found another drone, then activated it.

The drone’s mind crumbled.

Xavier drew the pattern again. Grabbed another drone. Activated the rune.

The drone’s mind crumbled.

Over and over, Xavier worked. As he did, he felt himself becoming more and more adept at drawing the patterns. His stylus moved with a precision and grace that he’d never realised was possible. A few notifications swept into his vision as he worked, but he was too focused on his task and ignored them.

Each time Xavier activated the spell pattern, he worked on his control over it. This was a far more difficult process than he’d imagined—far more difficult than drawing the spell patterns had been.

It took him a long time to realise why.

After his one hundredth attempt, Xavier forced himself to take a break. His mind was racing with everything he’d been doing. Racing with how he could improve. He felt improvements, each time he activated the spell pattern. But each of those improvements was so minor that it didn’t make a measurable difference toward his particular goal.

If the minds of these drones weren’t so weak, this would have worked ages ago… I already know I can use these patterns toward the ends I need them for.

But that wasn’t enough for him.

Controlling a drone’s mind wasn’t something that even mattered to Xavier. Well, it mattered, but it wasn’t the entire point of this exercise. The drones’ weak minds was simply the perfect thing for him to test his control over the patterns, as he knew he would need to have almost complete control to manage it without crumbling those minds.

He flew down to the roof of a nearby building and alighted on the stones. Producing his comfortable armchair from his Storage Ring, along with a mug of coffee, and another paperback book—this one was The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, something he hadn’t read in a good long while—Xavier purged his mind of all thoughts regarding his current task and simply focused on once more achieving a state of calm relaxation.

When he finally came back to the task, his mind made connections it hadn’t before, and something occurred to Xavier. The control he was exerting on the pattern of runes wasn’t only on the pattern of runes—it was on the universe itself, for that was where the power was coming from.

That didn’t immediately explain all the reasons why it was so difficult. Xavier exerted his control over the universe with almost everything he did. That was what his spells were. Patterns written in the language of the universe.

But it was his connection to his own spells, versus the connection he had to the spell patterns he drew outside his mind, that made that control so much more difficult.

Xavier had been so focused on controlling the pattern, taking that control, that he’d been brute-forcing this entire process. He’d been pushing all of his concentration and focus and energy toward this.

He’d been pushing too hard.

When he cast a spell, and had complete control over it, it wasn’t a matter of exerting every ounce of his will toward making it do what he wanted. It was more subtle than that. The process had simply become so natural that Xavier had trouble making those connections.

So, Xavier tried again.

He drew the pattern and activated it. He snatched an Arak flier from the air and brought it back with him. Then, he initiated the spell pattern.

The drone’s mind crumbled.

But… Xavier’s control over the pattern had been better—significantly better. He’d made a breakthrough with the process that he hadn’t before.

He kept at it.

Below him in the air where he drew the patterns, a graveyard of Arak fliers was frozen midfall—though he supposed it wasn’t really a graveyard, as the drones still lived. Still, there were so many of them that they were beginning to stack on top of one another. At one point, Xavier had to move upward, lest the stack of insectoid corpses get in the way of the patterns.

For a time, there had been a part of him that worried he was harming too many of the drones, and that his actions would ultimately lead to the floor being cleared before he wished. But he’d been careful in which drones he selected—they had only ever been the builder drones—and he doubted what he feared would ever come to pass.

One-thousand-and-twenty-four times a drone’s mind crumbled.

On his one-thousand-and-twenty-fifth attempt, Xavier was able to control the spell pattern with enough ease and precision that he once more secured control over another Arak drone mind.