Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 21 - Well, This Isn’t Good - A Sacrificial Spell

[Author note: Bonus Chapter]

The Spirit of Protection is working its power through you. You have gained access to 5 limited use spells.

Bulwark - 6/6 uses remaining

A protective barrier against both physical and magical attacks that protects those within it.

Shield Wall - 6/6 uses remaining

A temporary barrier that will prevent enemy access. Typically used to block gates, hallways, or other passageways during combat.

Karma Armour - 6/6 uses remaining

This spell creates a glowing suit of armour around the user that reduces 75% of damage received and returns that damage to the enemy.

Saving Grace - 1/1 uses remaining

This spell prevents all damage on the user from a single attack, unless that attack is beyond the damage threshold.

Floating Shield - 20/20 uses remaining

This spell creates a glowing shield the user can control with their mind, able to block attacks. Multiple floating shields can be controlled at once, however this takes a mental toll on the user.

Time until spells become unavailable: 5 minutes

Xavier was glad to see that some things had changed. The spells were only available to him for five minutes, but that wouldn’t be an issue. That was about how long his cooldowns were blocked for, and a little time had already passed since he’d set off that trap.

He’d be able to use Time Alteration before losing access to these spells, meaning he wouldn’t lose access to those spells if time were stopped.

The first time he’d utilised these spells, he’d been given only three uses of most of them. That had doubled to six. Floating shield had only given him ten uses as well, while now he had twenty.

Saving Grace hadn’t changed, however. That was still only a single-use spell.

Xavier, having already turned in the air to face the Demon of the Depths, couldn’t help but give a manic grin.

He was still frantically dodging attacks and slicing off the tentacle-mouths limbs that were coming at him from literally every direction. His wings were riddled with holes where he’d take tremendous damage. Despite Body Cultivation and his ability to heal, the hits were beginning to really take their toll.

The ice-shards and ice-spears that were embedded into his wings were beginning to melt from his body heat, and water dripped from him like it might from a dog who’d just been swimming in the river.

Your health is at 50%.

Xavier gritted his teeth and cast Floating Shield—twenty times. Splitting his mind to control the different shields was a simple task these days. He could control that many portals, probably more, and they required significantly more concentration.

The shields hovered in the air around him. He could tell they were more powerful than they had been in the past—they were larger, thicker, and there was something more fierce about the way they glowed.

The strength of the spells the Spirit of Protection provided him with were influenced by Xavier’s Spirit attribute. And his Spirit attribute was still his most powerful.

The Floating Shields appeared all around him, blocking ice-shards, ice-spears, and stopping those damned tentacle-mouths from getting their grip on him.

It didn’t stop every attack—there were simply too many coming his way—and as tough as these things were, he knew they wouldn’t last forever.

But they gave him a certain amount of freedom to move that he’d lacked before. They also helped his health began to tick up instead of continue its downward fall.

Which was exactly what he’d wanted from the spell.

Next, Xavier cast Karma Armour. The spell blocked 75 percent of damage and pushed that back to the enemy—that amount of damage seemed insane to him. The last time he’d used this spell it had only been 50 percent.

The spell mustn’t last very long…

And he figured, once an enemy realised what the spell did, they would alter the way they attacked. The spell was also quite an obvious one, as a glowing suit of armour appeared over his normal armour the moment he’d cast it.

Bulwark and Shield Wall didn’t seem helpful to him in this moment, but he quickly queried the Spirit of Protection about Shield Wall.

Can Shield Wall be used in midair? Or does it have to be placed on solid ground?

Shield Wall can be placed anywhere, but it will only be able to cover a limited area.

And what about Bulwark?

Xavier had never seen that used in the air before.

Bulwark can also be used in the air.

That was good news on both fronts.

Xavier fought the Demon of the Depths, holding absolutely nothing back. As he fought, he considered exactly how he would deal with this enemy when he came here a second time, and in a way that didn’t rely on Soul Strike, if he could help it—else he would have to wait a long time for its cooldown each time he came here. That would make clearing the floor 1,000 times a far more arduous task.

The fight would go entirely different.

But to get there, he still had to survive this one.

Xavier was strategic in his use of the Floating Shield, diverting those attacks that he didn’t wish to come his way, allowing the occasional ice-spear or ice-shard to hit him when his health had regenerated enough for his liking—but he could see that even with Karma Armour activated, the amount of damage done back to the Demon of the Depths appeared to be pitiful.

That meant he couldn’t simply lower the Floating Shields and let the thing do as much damage to him as possible so it could hurt itself. Even with 75 percent of damage being diverted, that would kill Xavier well before it killed the demon.

One by one, Xavier worked on severing all fifty of the tentacle-mouths. With Farscope, he watched the main body of his enemy very carefully, trying to see if there was any hint of it being able to grow back the tentacle-mouths like the Monstrosities had been able to do.

If it could grow them back, it was currently choosing not to.

Each tentacle-mouth he severed delivered a single percent of damage to the Demon of the Depths, but the damage was beginning to add up—Xavier was hurting it faster than it was able to heal.

Every time Xavier severed one of those tentacle-mouths, the enemy roared or squealed in pain. Slowly, Xavier was beginning to sense fear in the beast. And it should be afraid—it should remember just how much damage Xavier was able to inflict into it before with Soul Strike, and then the clever use of his Portal spell.

Xavier might never be able to get past the Demon of the Depths’ powerful mental barrier, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t weaken its resolve in some way.

After the final of the fifty different tentacle-mouths had been severed, Xavier cast Dominion of Fear.

The Demon of the Depths trembled. Fear wafted of it like smoke from a forest fire. For a moment, its attacks faltered, and it almost looked as though it were going to flee.

But it did not flee. Instead, it released a scream like nothing Xavier had ever heard.

The beast had slowly been regenerating health even as Xavier hurt it, which was why he’d only managed to get it down to 15 percent health. Still, he was astounded by his progress.

It won’t be long now. Even if it dies from a death of a thousand cuts, I will kill this thing.

Something flickered in Xavier’s mind, and he saw one of the Floating Shields blink out of existence as it was hit by a stream of ice-shards—there was always a constant stream of those bastard things, but this was the first time they’d taken out one of the shields.

Then another of the shields disappeared.

The Demon of the Depths seemed to renew its energy. It shifted forward in the air and released a screech of triumph.

More and more shields began to disappear.

As there were no more tentacle-mouths, Xavier switched weapons. He flew through the air. The beast was fast, but it struggled to change direction as swiftly as Xavier could, which was something he’d been strongly using to his advantage.

He flew to the other side of the beast, avoiding as many of the ice shards as he could. More and more of the Floating Shields were disappearing. He only had half of the damned things left, and something told him the rest would be destroyed just as fast.

The weapon he shifted the Lost Bone of a Dead God into was a bow. He summoned arrow after arrow into his hand. Bone arrows that he’d crafted from the corpses of the Amalgamons he’d slain. He could aim at the beast without looking at it. Not just because of his Farscope ability, but because it was so damned big. He was able to loose the arrows to the side while maintaining the direction of his flight, though he did it with some difficulty—he’d never thought to practice this particular technique.

It was, however, working.

He aimed the arrows at the mouths that were attached to the main body of the demon. Not a single one of them missed, and they did more damage than he’d expected—four arrows took out a whole percent of his enemy’s health.

That gave him even more ideas for how he would fight this thing the next time he was on this descent.

No time for those thoughts now.

As he weakened the Demon of the Depths ever more, Xavier was beginning to see the win. It was close. Real close. But the hairs on the back of his neck felt as though they were sticking up. He was dreading something—something unexpected, just like what the Demon of the Depths had pulled off the last time Xavier had thought he’d won his battle against it.

When he’d gotten the beast down to 5 percent health again, something happened. The entire body of the demon began to ripple like a dark pool of oil come to the boil. It was a disgusting sight.

Even as he watched whatever was about to happen, Xavier didn’t relent in his onslaught. The arrows were summoned, nocked, loosed, each one lodging deep into his prey.

But the damage… wasn’t happening. His arrows were hitting their target, but they were just being swallowed into that oozing, oily rippling skin. Whatever the Demon of the Depths was doing, it made it invulnerable to his attacks—at least his physical attacks.

There were only a few spells left that he hadn’t cast yet. Heavy Telekinesis was one of them, but he didn’t see how it would help him right now. And he’d only be able to cast it once.

Despite all that had happened since he’d tripped that trap, only two damned minutes of the five minutes had passed. He and the demon simply moved too swiftly.

This fight is going to be over before I can use my spells again.

Xavier could use Time Prison. But with an enemy this strong… He doubted it would make the thing freeze long enough for the cooldown lock to run out. That spell, he was saving for an emergency.

He didn’t know if this qualified.

The mouths he’d been loosing his arrows at began to move along the surface of the Demon of the Depths’ skin, making Xavier’s eyes widen at the very sight. He hadn’t realised it could do that.

They were moving closer together…

Oh, god. They were forming into one giant mouth!

When the rippling finally stopped, the Demon of the Depths hovered in the air, flapping its massive wings. The mouth faced directly at Xavier.

And it began to take on a sinister red glow.

Oh, shi-

A beam of energy shot from that mouth.

There was no time to move—no way that he could dodge this. The beam was too wide.

Xavier cast several spells all at once. The moment he’d used Soul Strike, he’d reaped the souls of the dead Amalgamons that he’d killed when he’d reached the mountain’s peak. He used every single one of those souls in Soul Block.

He also cast Bulwark, Shield Wall, and Saving Grace, three of the five spells offered to him by the Spirit of Protection.

Whatever this spell was, Xavier had no doubt that it was powerful, and while Karma Armour was still active, Xavier didn’t think it would be enough to save him.

First, the spell slammed into the remaining Floating Shields Xavier still had active. The Floating Shields, however, didn’t do a damned thing. They were completely and utterly destroyed.

After that, the beam of energy slammed into the Shield Wall Xavier had materialised. That, too, was utterly destroyed. It seemed to make the beam pause, but only for a fraction of a second before the Shield Wall disappeared.

Next, the beam hit the Bulwark spell. A shield of energy that surrounded Xavier in a complete sphere.

This took longer for the beam to penetrate. For a moment, Xavier considered fleeing from the beam—but he couldn’t bring the Bulwark spell with him. The moment he left the sphere, the Demon of the Depths could just angle the beam toward him.

So he held his ground.

Bulwark burst, the sphere disappearing with a pop, only for the beam to continue on, hitting the soul apparitions that had appeared when Xavier cast Soul Block.

The beam cut straight through Xavier’s soul apparitions, something Xavier honestly hadn’t expected—he’d thought over two hundred souls would be a good enough defence against this thing, especially with his strong Spirit attribute.

What in the world is this beam even made of?

It cut through yet another of Xavier’s defences. Saving Grace activated, a brilliant white light enveloping him in its protection.

Look.

The Spirit of Protection spoke in Xavier’s mind. The spirit hadn’t spoken since time had started moving forward again and he’d began utilising its spell in the fight. Now, the ethereal form of the full-plate armoured man hovered in the air beside him, pointing at the enemy.

Its health.

For a moment, a part of Xavier wondered how the Spirit of Protection could even see the enemy’s health. Then he remembered what the spirit had told him when he’d been summoned back in that cave the day he’d been fighting the Stone Bear—he could use Xavier’s senses and perception to keep watch, but he could not join the fight himself.

Xavier homed in on what the spirit was trying to point out. The demon’s health had hit 5 percent just before this had happened, then it had become invulnerable. Xavier had a part of his mind constantly paying attention to the demon’s health, so all he needed to do was focus his main attention on that.

Its health is… dropping.

A sacrificial spell. Its calling on a deity. That is how it’s so powerful. The demon isn’t only giving up its health, its giving everything. Mind, body, soul—all to this attack. Soon, it will be dead. I do not know if it will be soon enough, however.

The exchange happened swiftly. So fast that Xavier was only able to perceive it because of his enhanced perception of time, what with how quickly his mind moved.

Xavier knew what the Spirit of Protection was saying was important, but right now he couldn’t focus on the implications of it.

Saving Grace was overwhelmed. The attack slammed into Xavier’s Karma Armour—the armour only saved him from taking 25 percent of the damage.

The rest, he felt.