Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 35 - Xavier Collins?

Xavier stared at the notification in slight shock.

The world you stand upon is in danger. A powerful entity is making its way here.

Here. To Earth. To his world.

An entity that will destroy the Earth…

Xavier looked up at the muted stars. Time was still stopped, the countdown ticking the seconds down to zero.

He had no doubt what that entity was. It must be the threat that was coming toward the Silver River sector.

There must be other Denizens in the Silver River sector who’ve experienced this floor before.

But there was no way of telling where this place was unless you knew it. It wasn’t as though the System said which sector the floors were on, let alone what world. And as the world had only recently been integrated, and only a few Denizens had set foot here—none of them powerful enough to have reached the eightieth floor of the tower…

Of course none of them would have been able to put two-and-two together.

Before the timer reached zero, Xavier looked up at the sky. The System had sent him here. This was why it had let him do the floors it had made him skip before.

Wasn’t it?

If it isn’t, then it’s a damned massive coincidence.

Xavier released a long breath. This was a floor that he could only do once, but there was no time limit. That was good. He’d been smashing through the floors at such an unimaginably fast rate that he hadn’t even stopped to test out his new Recursive Analysis spell.

He’d just wanted to get them all over and done with so he could move on through the higher floors of the Tower of Champions and come up against something challenging once more.

But this…

He rolled his head around his neck, cracking it, and mentally prepared himself, going through the few things he knew.

The entity was coming here, to Earth. This made all the beasts on the planet go berserk. He had to save as many people as he could—at least 10,000 to get to the next floor.

He turned his gaze to the left, where the Staging Room door was in a wall. This must be like the fifth floor. That floor, he’d only needed to clear five waves and help Queen Alastea evacuate her people. Then, he could leave through the Staging Room door whenever he was ready, and it would automatically complete the floor.

He tapped his foot on the ground.

Think outside the box…

Simply saving people wouldn’t be enough, here. Completing that objective would be easy—this floor was designed for someone a hell of a lot weaker than him to find challenging. He wanted to gain more from this floor than a simple title. But there was no way that he could do what he’d done on the fifth floor on the eightieth.

On the fifth floor he’d become progressively stronger until he’d advanced to the next grade—which at the time had been E Grade—then he’d killed the D Grade Lord of the Endless Horde.

Doing the same thing here would mean killing the entity that was coming to Earth… The same entity that could level an entire sector.

I’m not ready for that. I don’t know how to become ready for that, not during one floor of the tower!

But if the System had intended for him to wind up on this floor, then there must be something more that he could do than simply save more Denizens than other Champions. He could learn something from all this—learn something about the entity that was coming to destroy this world—his world, even if this wasn’t truly his world, as it was in another universe.

The timer reached zero. The world began to move forward again. Xavier didn’t know how long this floor would go for. He wanted to cast Time Alteration immediately and alter the flow at will while interacting with the floor, but he couldn’t risk the spell running out at an inopportune time.

For now, until he needed it, he could function without the spell.

Once the timer reached zero, the Denizens around him were finally revealed. The System had made it so nothing but the area he was in was visible. Now, the wind was blowing again, and noise flooded his senses as he watched thousands of Denizens scrambling. Behind him, at the base of the Eiffel Tower, were three massive portals.

Xavier had seen portals of this size—other than the ones he created himself—only once. Back on the fifth floor, the Endless Horde had streamed through portals that looked exactly like these.

Someone to his left screamed. Xavier looked over at the woman. She was clutching a small child in her arms. She wasn’t wearing any armour, only simple white mage robes—a healer, maybe. A support class, certainly.

I have to find out more about what’s going on here.

That was when he saw the beasts.

Xavier had fought many beasts while on Earth, but he’d never seen this many Earth beasts in the same place before. Every single one of the beasts was a mutated animal, grown large and powerful with the use of different energies and from gaining Mastery Points since the integration of the System. Hawks and eagles the size of small planes swooped down from on high, casting wind spells—tornadoes, blades, violent gusts—down at the frantic people below.

Dog-sized rats bounded around in packs, swarming anyone who got in their way, while bear-sized dogs ripped each other apart, their mouths frothing, their eyes blazing red.

Madness. They’re all afflicted by it.

Denizens were fighting a retreating battle as they made their way to the portals, protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves. Xavier didn’t recognise any of them—he didn’t know anyone this side of Earth.

He could feel their fear. All their fear. It was palpable. It lay heavy in the air like smog over a newly industrialised city.

Time to intervene.

These people might not be from his Earth, but Xavier always tried to spare innocents when he could—no matter what universe they came from.

He drew the Lost Bone of a Dead God from its scabbard and shifted it into a bow. He didn’t need to stop time to be fast enough to spare the Denizens he could see. He loosed arrow after arrow, his movements an absolute blur to anyone in the area observing him.

The arrows, he was sure, flew faster than any of the eyes in the area could see. The runes he had etched into the bone arrows made the beasts explode in fire and crackle with lightning as they hit. Heads exploded. Bodies were utterly destroyed. Every one of the beasts died to a single attack.

The enemy beasts were, to his surprise, mostly D Grade. He hadn’t known there were so many D Grade beasts on Earth. 

There aren’t. Not yet at least. This isn’t my time.

It couldn’t have been—not if the sector-destroying entity was almost here. But something told him this wasn’t merely three years on from his time. Many of the Denizens around him, the ones protecting those who were fleeing, were also D Grades.

Xavier couldn’t imagine there would be a great many D Grades on Earth in three years from now.

In barely a moment, every beast in the area was dead. People were still running through the portals. Most of the Denizens hadn’t even noticed him. But there were a few whose gazes locked on him.

A tall man wearing the armour of a tank bounded toward him, a tower shield in one hand, a massive flail in the other.

He looked Xavier up and down. “…Xavier Collins?”

Xavier blinked. He looked at the man in front of him anew, but still didn’t recognise him. “You know my name?”

The tank’s eyes widened. “You are him. But you should be…” He trailed off when he noticed Xavier’s wings. That stopped him short, and it was clear the man’s mind was turning. “I’ll be damned. You’re not him. You’re… You’re the Champion we summoned!”

Xavier took a moment to let the shock he was feeling settle, without showing any outward reaction. His mind worked, making connections.

This man had thought he was the version of Xavier Collins that come from this universe. Which meant on this version of Earth, Xavier had survived—and, apparently, he didn’t have wings. But he clearly hadn’t defeated the sector-destroying entity that was prophesised to destroy Silver River.

Xavier cast Time Alteration. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to talk to this person, and he didn’t want to feel rushed. Didn’t want to worry about the beasts that would no doubt flood the area anew.

The man blinked as time froze outside of the time dilation field Xavier had created. He glanced around at the Denizens; their bodies had grown completely still. Not even the portals shimmered.

“Don’t be alarmed. I’ve frozen time.”

“You… You can freeze time?” The man’s shield and helmet disappeared into his Storage Ring. His face was drenched in sweat, his black hair sticking to his forehead. “I thought you just reaped souls!”

“I can. Tell me, what’s happening here?”

Reaped souls… I guess I still chose the Soul Reaper class in this universe. But other things are certainly different.

The man stared at Xavier, clearly confused. “You don’t know?”

Xavier looked at the sky. At the muted stars. At the portals. “I know what I see, and what the System has told me. You obviously know who I am.”

“I know who you are in this universe,” the man muttered. “God, I never imagined you would end up being the Champion we summoned. But I’m glad you’re here. In any universe, I have to believe you’re powerful. And considering what you’ve just done…”

“How many years has it been since the System integrated Earth?”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “It’s been… Twenty years. God, it feels like longer than that.”

Xavier rocked back on his heels. Twenty years. The Xavier of this world had twenty years, and still they were evacuating.

But something told Xavier they wouldn’t be able to get very far. He doubted those portals lead to an entirely different sector.

“The threat couldn’t be defeated?”

The man’s eyes became sad. His gaze flicked to the ground. “You fought it, with your party. With an army. You were the only one who survived—the only one who made it back.” His gaze turned skyward. “You’re out there, right now, in the void of space. Holding it off…” He shook his head and didn’t lock eyes with Xavier. “But we all know it’s a suicide mission. A stopgap.”

“I won’t survive,” Xavier replied.

“No.” The man frowned, looking Xavier up and down again. “How long has it been for you? I’m not surprised to see you summoned without a party.”

Xavier ran a hand through his hair. Honestly, he was having trouble keeping track of time, with all the freezing of it he’d done. He’d spent a few weeks in the tower, then a couple months back on Earth, then a little longer in the tower again, then four months…

“It hasn’t even been a year.”

The man whistled. “Not even a year? Wait, that… That can’t be right.” His eyes glazed over. “D Grade… You’re not a swordsman class, are you?” He looked at the bow in Xavier’s hand.

Xavier smiled weakly. “No, I’m not.”

“But you’re actually D Grade?”

“I am.” There was no point hiding anything from these people. People from another universe. People he would never encounter again.

People who likely wouldn’t survive, even if he did get them through that portal.

“How powerful am I here?”

“Very,” the man said. “Just… Not powerful enough. You’re C Grade—you became C Grade a year ago. And god, you’re strong even for C Grade. We all thought it would be enough. The Empress Larona, her prophecy… It pointed toward you.” The man’s voice was beginning to shake. His fist clenched around the flail that was still in his hand. Xavier could sense a bit of anger and resentment there—that he had failed. That the world was ending.

That there was nothing to be done.