Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 15 - Amalgamon

A grin flitted onto Xavier’s face as he soared above the snowy terrain, ascending the sides of the massive mountain toward the high peaks where he’d spotted the tower.

He vividly remembered the last time he flew above a snowy mountain—it was back on the hundredth floor, when he’d been facing the Skeletal Dragon and the Elemental Dragon.

I wonder what it would be like fighting those beasts now. Would it still be such a close match?

Part of him wished he could go back, test himself against those beasts again, but even if he had that opportunity, he knew it was best to keep pushing forward.

The roars that he’d heard when he’d first arrived got louder. As he flew, he pinpointed the source of the noise and made his way toward it. Xavier had to be careful—the way power could jump forward on the different descents meant he had no idea how strong the enemy he would be facing here would be.

They can’t be that much more powerful, can they?

But with unexpectedly being teleported to another world, Xavier wasn’t going to take any chances.

He spotted something far below him. A dark shape against the white snow. Whatever it was, it was moving fast and heading in the direction of where he’d just arrived through the mists.

The beast was massive. It had six legs that worked in perfect synchronicity, making it able to speed along the snowy terrain with ease. Strange appendages came out of its back—they looked like tentacles, except for the fact that each of them had a small, circular mouth at their end with rows of teeth. The beast—the demon, for Xavier knew that was what it must be—had a head like that of a rhinoceros, with a large horn that jutted out from just above its three eyes.

Xavier wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen a beast as strange as this one.

As he was taking in the beast, it stuttered to a halt, sliding in the snow before stopping abruptly. The beast’s head snapped up and all three of its eyes locked on Xavier.

Must have heard the beat of my wings.

Xavier hovered in the air above the thing—there were more like it, coming down from the mountain at a tremendous speed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a beast move as fast as these ones did, except for maybe the Elemental Dragon.

Xavier scanned the demon.

{Amalgamon - Level 370}

This beast prefers cooler climates to that of its demonic brethren. It hunts in packs, each of its tentacles capable of not only draining the blood from their foes but the energy from their cores as well.

Be sure you never get surrounded by a pack of these demons.

Along with their physical fighting prowess, these demons can sometimes steal the spells from those they kill—which means you may never know just how one of them will fight.

Xavier took a moment to absorb the information before him.

Level 370… That was a jump of twenty levels between the different descents, making the enemies he was about to face significantly more powerful than the ones from the last floor.

Xavier frowned, again wondering where all these powerful demons could be coming from, though he knew they were teleported here from demonic worlds… But if this place had existed since before the System had integrated it, had the demons been transported from somewhere that had been integrated already?

They must have been—how could there be so many of them this powerful before the System had reached the demon worlds they came from?

That thought made his head spin a little, and the wheels were turning in his mind as a theory was beginning to form, though the theory felt incredibly outlandish, he thought there might just be a way to find out if it was true…

Later, when I’m not about to fight a pack of Amalgamons.

There were six of the beasts in total in the pack, more than the groups of Monstrosities he’d been fighting on the previous descent.

Xavier hovered in the air above them. His plan was to clear this descent a 1,000 times, just like the other thirty before it, though he’d yet to use his Time Alteration spell since coming here—he wanted to get a lay of the land first. See what the beasts here were capable of.

Something about the description worried him, however. If these demons were able to take the spells from those they killed, making the spells they possessed incredibly varied, did that mean every pack he fought would be different?

And as these demons didn’t technically “respawn” in the traditional sense, as the demons that he would fight when he came to this descent for a second time would be entirely different to the ones he was fighting now, did that mean he would be fighting demons with totally different spells?

As he hovered about the pack of Amalgamons, contemplating this problem, two of the demons leapt up into the air, their tentacle-mouths flailing. They weren’t flying, but damn could these beasts jump. He supposed that shouldn’t have been surprising.

One of the demons began shooting fire balls at Xavier—it was able to launch fireballs from each of its many tentacle-mouths. They soared through the air at him, and clearly had some sort of targeting ability, as when Xavier changed course in the air, the fireballs followed.

That Amalgamon wasn’t the only one of the pack launching attacks at Xavier. The second one that had leapt into the air cast blades of wind that slammed into him without him even being able to dodge the things. They hit him so fast that he felt them cut through the thick, leathery skin of his wings, allowing blood to drip down them.

The shock of being hit in the fight so fast made him dip a little in the air.

Xavier had already reinforced his body with Body Cultivation the moment he’d seen the demons loping along on the ground with their six legs, but even with those protections in place the wind-blades had managed to cut 5 percent of his health down.

Well, that’s not good.

These bastard things were strong. Stronger than he’d anticipated.

Xavier threw up Soul Block, stopping the fireballs from hitting him. He didn’t want to risk each of those little balls of fire—and there were fifteen of the damned things—being able to do him real damage.

He needed to approach this fight with caution.

Xavier might be trying to maximise the time he had in this place, and gain as many title clears as possible while in the time dilation field, but he’d known he wouldn’t be able to do that for every descent forever, or that he might have to build up to using the time dilation field like he had on the previous descent—even though he was considerably stronger than he had been when he’d first faced the Monstrosities.

He wanted to see just how much physical damage he was able to do to these demons before he took on an entire pack with Time Alteration cast.

But first, he wanted to kill five of the demons, so he could fight the last one-on-one.

Xavier dipped and dived through the air, dodging the different spells that were launched at him from down below. He grinned as he flew—it was time to show these demons he wasn’t just target practice.

He cast Soul Shatter on one of the demons that had leapt in the air. Without wings, or any other ability to control themselves in the air, the demon was simply falling back down to the snow-laden ground.

The spell slammed into the beast, shattering its soul. Soul shards burst from within it, flying through the other demon that had leapt into the air, and hitting two of the ones down on the ground. There were several skills Xavier had managed to rank up in his time through the descents that weren’t just his fighting skills—one of them came in particularly handy.

Health Seer.

He’d gotten it quite high up in the ranks, though he hadn’t been using it as diligently as he perhaps should have. Still, Health Seer was one of his strongest ranked skills at Rank 140.

And, though Xavier hadn’t expected it to, it worked incredibly well even on enemies that were a higher level than him. Just like on lower-level beasts, when Xavier used the skill, he could make a health bar appear over the heads of these C Grade, Level 370 Amalgamons.

But the health bar only appeared once he’d caused them some damage.

He grinned evermore as he saw the amount of damage he’d dealt the C Grade enemy. Its health had gone down a whopping 25 percent.

While that might not seem like a great deal, as in descents past he’d been able to use a single spell to kill all of the enemies, his ability to do that had quickly diminished as the enemies started becoming C Grade. He’d still been taking turns clearing the descents for the 1,000 clear with the C Grade party he’d been training with, but he’d taken a lot longer to do it than they had.

That was only fair, considering how much more powerful they all were than he was.

Soul Shatter did 10 percent damage to the other demons that it hit. Xavier hadn’t spent any time ranking up the spell, but he imagined it must be much stronger now that he’d gained all of those 1,000 clear titles.

Still, he had to remember that these enemies were well over a hundred levels higher than him. Not only that, but these C Grades also weren’t as weak as the C Grades he’d been encountering on the hundredth floor. They may be nowhere near as powerful as the C Grades he’d just been fighting alongside, but he knew that beasts tended to be far weaker than their Denizen counterparts.

Xavier cast several more spells, getting a feel for the effect he could have on these enemies. Spirit Break slammed into the first demon, the one he’d struck with Soul Shatter. He could see the pain it caused the thing—both mental and physical—and that was when Xavier sensed the first hint of fear from one of these beasts.

That hint of fear didn’t make the demon relent, however. It continued sending fireballs up at Xavier.

Xavier figured it was time to use the enemy’s attacks against them.

He cast Portal, creating several different portals in the air around him, using each of them as shields to catch the demons’ spells. The fireballs, even though they specifically followed him in the air, still harmed the demon that had launched them when they flowed out of a portal an inch away from massive, three-eyed head.

The demon got hit by thirteen fireballs all at once, doing enough damage to cause its death.

A kill notification swam into Xavier’s vision. He dismissed it instantly as he continued to fight. The wheels were once again turning in his mind as an idea occurred to him—something to do with his portals—he split his mind and had one part working on the thought while the battle raged on.

Xavier cast Soul Puppet on the deceased demon, and had it attack the other members of its pack the moment it was up. He then was able to sense more fear. One of their number was already dead, and that demon was attacking them.

He found he was enjoying himself—after countless hours spent clearing descent after descent, the majority of the time simply watching other people fight instead of fighting himself… It was nice to fall back into the thrill of battle. To be up against enemies he’d never encountered before—enemies he hadn’t fought or killed thousands of times already.

The demons became reluctant to launch more spells at him, so Xavier flipped one of the portals in the air and grabbed one of the demon’s heads. He pulled the demon through the portal.

The bastard thing was strong, but Xavier was able to wrench its head into the portal.

He cut the portal, which should have forced it closed, but as often happened with strong beings was that the portal refused to close around their head.

That didn’t stop it from doing damage, however—which was something he’d never managed to observe in the past, but as his Health Seer skill was active and strong enough to see this demon’s health, he saw it this time.

The portal wouldn’t close with the demon’s head stuck through it, but it was causing the Level 370 Amalgamon 1 percent of damage every second that it remained in there.

Xavier’s eyebrows rose at this revelation.

Well, I can definitely use this in the future.

It wasn’t even the idea he’d had for his Portal spell—this was just a bonus.

The portal had shrunk until it was like a collar around the demon’s neck. Xavier turned and shoved his arms through another of the portals, repeating the act again and again until four of the remaining five Amalgamons were trapped in the portals.

If left alone, they didn’t stay in the portals long—they were able to wrench themselves out of them eventually. But by the time they did, their health had dipped considerably.

Xavier killed three of them while they were trapped.

When five of the six Level 370 Amalgamons lay dead on the ground, Xavier landed softly on the snow and stood across from the remaining one.

It was time to test his physical damage against one of these things.

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