Free Tier - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 2 - Sword Mastery

“This is not how I prefer to fight, Xavier.” Romalda held her chin high as he stared at him. “I need to be able to cast my spells. Reanimate these corpses. Build my army.”

The E Grade necromancer was breathing heavily. Her staff was covered in demon blood, and she had a stricken expression on her face, somehow looking even more pale than usual.

Rhaalir stepped forward. “The necromancer is right. Without anything cooling down, I lack the power of the spells at my disposal.” The elven ghost spoke through the Spirit Golem in his usual monotone. He’d formed a staff in his hands which he’d been using to bludgeon enemies in melee—neither the necromancer nor the elf were melee fighters, but the time dilation field had forced them to use whatever options they had at their disposal.

Volkarin huffed smoke from his nostrils. “I do not see the issue.”

The dragon’s entire body was covered in black blood. He was by the wall, chomping down on a demon corpse. The squishy, slurp, slurp noise with the occasional crack of bone was becoming normal background noise by now.

“If you’re going to train with me, developing your physical combat capabilities is essential. Training the three of your is a tremendous sink on my time,” Xavier said. Romalda crossed her arms and opened her mouth, but he put a hand up to stall her words. “But training the three of you is also important to me. If it’s something I can make not take up time”—he motioned to the time dilation field—”then we can all make progress a lot more swiftly. And when you are all strong enough to assist me in a true battle, we can take advantage of time being frozen together.”

Rhaalir tapped his foot on the stone ground. “I can’t develop my physical combat capabilities. I only have access to the spells I possessed in life.” He stared at Xavier. “Do you wish to place a different spirit within this golem? I would understand.”

Xavier shook his head. “When the Spirit Golem is a high enough level, rotating different spirits into it is certainly something I’ll take advantage of. But you’re who I trust. Consider that Spirit Golem your property for the foreseeable future. We’ll figure out how to make your more effective in this type of combat.”

Rhaalir blinked, nodded, then went quiet. Without an expression to read, it was hard to know what he was thinking.

Every single Bladed Crawler in the First Descent was now dead. Xavier had wondered about that—this wasn’t a floor of the tower, or a dungeon.

How did these demons… Respawn?

He supposed he would find that out, later down the track, when it came time for him to farm the different descents. That might soon become a priority for him.

Xavier cancelled out the time dilation field.

His companions had already conquered the First Descent. One thing Volkarin had told him about the Hell Moons was that they got considerably more difficult as one went along. Xavier knew that the Second Descent wasn’t something his companions would be able to conquer quite so easily as they had this one—though he doubted any of them would have said this had been easy.

Romalda had been gathering many of the corpses of the Bladed Crawlers into her inventory as they’d all been fighting, while Volkarin had been doing a good job of consuming as many of them as possible.

Rhaalir didn’t have a Storage Ring, nor a dragon’s appetite—or, in fact, the ability to eat at all—and so he had simply been following behind the others during these moments.

They walked toward the next stairwell. Xavier could have left his time dilation field active—it wouldn’t have been beyond his ability to take the field down to the next descent with them. He could have carved a path straight to it and had a fraction of a second go by in this place.

But it seemed wise to let his companions restore their spells for what was to come next, and Romalda needed a chance to start gathering her undead army. Xavier hadn’t allowed her that chance when they’d first arrived, and he knew she had lots of corpses in her inventory to work with.

They waited on the steps of the tunnel that headed down to the next descent. Once all four of them were on the stairs, Xavier heard a chittering sound from somewhere behind them, and a skittering crack, crack, crack. He looked behind him with a frown. He was sure they had taken care of every single threat that had been in that place.

“The demons have respawned,” Volkarin growled.

Xavier blinked. “That didn’t take very long. How… How did that happen? With the assistance of the System?”

“The System has nothing to do with this place—other than handing out titles,” Romalda said. “I don’t know how they respawn. That knowledge was restricted where I came from.”

“Titles.” Xavier hadn’t fought at all on that descent. “Did you each gain a title?”

They looked at each other.

“Of course we did,” Rhaalir said. “You didn’t?”

Xavier stood from where he’d been sitting on the large set of steps. “No. I’ll be right back.” The moment his foot touched the top of the steps, the demons became louder, heading straight for him just as they had when they’d first stepped down into this place.

Looks like if you don’t have a way to teleport out of here, then you have to deal with each of the descents a second time on the way back out…

He imagined how difficult that might be if one were injured and thought it might be wise to ensure that his Portal spell actually worked in this place.

He cast Portal as the chittering Bladed Crawlers skittered toward him in a mass of sharp legs. These demons had spells, but they were all of a melee variety. That supposed that ranged Denizens might have an advantage against them, but they moved so swiftly it would be incredibly hard to ever actually use that advantage, as anyone who set foot on this descent would be quickly overwhelmed.

Xavier cancelled out his Portal spell—he’d only cast it as a test—and watched as the demons came toward him, wondering what his best course of action in killing them might be.

The most efficient way for him to kill all of these enemies would be using Soul Strike. He was sure he would be able to gather more souls than he needed to take out these enemies—it would be a net gain for his soulkeeping reserve and his use of Soul Harden.

But that seemed a little too easy. Besides, he wasn’t setting foot back on this floor simply for reasons of efficiency. The others hadn’t told him anything about extra titles for how swiftly one could deal with the descents—simply that there were titles for each of them.

Even then, if there were time records for the descents, with A Grades being able to set foot in this place… He doubted reaching the number one spot was something even possible for him at this stage.

There was still a few minutes until the cooldown on his Time Alteration spell reached its end, and he wanted to give the others a chance for their spells to reach the ends of their cooldowns before they took on the Second Descent.

Xavier released a breath. He looked down at the sword at his hip—his soul bound weapon that could transform into anything he wished. Right now, he was in the guise of a swordsman, but if he were honest… Well, he’d never actually used a sword before.

It might be a little difficult to pretend to be something he wasn’t if he couldn’t even hold the damned thing properly.

I guess it’s time for me to learn a few new skills.

Xavier grinned as he drew the sword. Wielding a scythe-staff was admittedly more badass and unique than a run-of-the-mill sword, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a certain romance when it came to swords.

They were the primary weapon for just about every fantasy character he’d read about.

He felt giddy and excited as he held the sword in his hands. He’d made the Lost Bone of a Dead God take on the shape of a hand-and-a-half sword. It made sense to wield the thing two-handed, instead of using a shield. That was what he was used to doing with his scythe-staff, after all. The sword was heavy—damned heavy—but with his amount of Strength he was able to wield it with incredible ease.

Xavier assumed a fighting stance, though he honestly didn’t even know how to stand properly with this thing. He had Physical Damage skills, but his weapon skills didn’t extend to swords.

Not yet anyway.

The demons surrounded him. They were everywhere he looked, and without a spell to keep them frozen in time, the entire swarm of Bladed Crawlers could come at him at once.

Xavier cycled Celestial Energy through his body as a defence against these beasts. He could have cycled it through his sword for attacks, but he wanted to see what his raw damage with this weapon was like.

Holding the sword felt a little awkward, and swinging it felt no less awkward. But Xavier had no trouble cutting through these things. A single stab from his weapon was more than enough to deal with them.

Black blood splattered onto his helm, then sluiced straight off as the helm prevented anything from sticking to it, helping it remain shiny the entire time.

Xavier felt clumsy, like he was wielding a club instead of a sword. His body didn’t move in the right way for this kind of combat, but it didn’t take long for a Skill Quest to pop up in his vision, alerting him of the fact that he would need to kill one hundred enemies with a sword before he gained Sword Mastery Rank 1.

It didn’t take him very long to gain the skill. When he did, he felt something shift within him instantly. He remembered feeling something similar when he’d gained Staff Mastery, then Scythe-Staff Mastery. As though the blueprint, the techniques, of how to fight with this weapon had been downloaded into his brain.

He supposed that was exactly how the System worked for these kinds of things.

Not a benefit they would have had before the System came about.

Though as he had learnt, Rank 1 in any skill like this—or any skill in general, for that matter—only gave a Denizen the very basic movements.

He knew that Denizens from integrated worlds tended to practice with their weapons of choice long before they were integrated into the System, so that when it came time to finally wield a sword in true combat they already knew how.

The System would often give them several ranks in their weapon mastery skill on their first display of proficiency.

Even so, without any prior practice with the weapon, his stance improved tenfold simply because of the rank he’d gained. His left hand inched downward on the hilt, while his right hand inched up. His swings became more graceful and confident. He found himself slashing, rather than stabbing, and no longer did he feel like an awkward cave man wielding a club to bludgeon his enemies—something he’d done when he’d first came up against goblins while wielding a staff.

Sword Mastery has reached Rank 2!

…

Sword Mastery has reached Rank 8!

…

Sword Mastery has reached Rank 14!

When the last of the Bladed Crawlers lay dead on the ground, Xavier was breathing heavily. Though each of these enemies was considerably weaker than him, there had been so damned many of them.

They didn’t do an awful lot of damage, and he knew that even without the added defence of his Body Cultivation skill he wouldn’t have had to resort to killing these Level 140 demons in a different way.

Still, this new way of moving his body had tested his muscles in unfamiliar ways.

He released a long breath as he bisected the final Bladed Crawler with his blade. The beast fell either side of him in two large halves. A sudden quiet descended upon the area round him.

Xavier looked down at his sword, half-expecting it to be covered in black blood. But of course he knew better. It was still just as pristine as it ever was. He was glad he didn’t have to tediously clean it after every use before putting it back in its scabbard.

On the next floor, once his companions had cleared it, he thought he might incorporate his dragon wings into the melee combat. With his class—Wayfarer of the Infinite Path—he could learn any skill, any spell. Become proficient in any weapon he wished.

Walk down any path of power he wished.

Idly, he wondered if the sword was worth pursuing seriously. The scythe-staff was a powerful weapon, but it was a weapon he’d used simply because it came with being a reaper.

Xavier was far more than a mere reaper these days.

Besides, he didn’t even use the scythe-staff in melee combat anymore—nowadays he almost exclusively used his claws. But his claws didn’t have the kind of reach that a scythe-staff or a sword possessed.

Xavier examined his sword once more. The Lost Bone of a Dead God. His soul bound weapon that could transform into anything he wished it to be. It could be a scythe-staff or a sword. It could meld into his flesh and strengthen his claws.

He’d gotten so good at making it change form that he could turn it into a scythe-staff—where it better reinforced the power of his spells—from one slash of his claws to the next.

Xavier sheathed the blade in a surprisingly smooth movement—apparently something gifted to him by his now Rank 14 Sword Mastery skill—and walked back to the others sitting over by the stairs.

As he walked over to his companions, he contemplated what other weapons it might be wise for him to learn to use, and just how he could better incorporate his ability to learn any skill—along with his soul bound weapon’s ability to transform into any weapon—into combat.

It was when he stepped back onto the stairs toward the Second Descent that a notification popped into his vision.

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