Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 17 - Talk About Overpowered

Xavier stood on a frozen tundra beneath a massive, tall mountain.

Roars sounded in the distance. Roars he’d become familiar with.

He faced the direction the noise came from. Far ahead, he could see dark shapes on the pure snow. Drifts of white dust were kicked up by the many hooves of the stampeding Amalgamons that hurtled toward him as fast as their six legs could take them.

Xavier’s health was slowly ticking up. A little too slowly. At the speed which those demons were running, his health wouldn’t reach 100 percent before they got to him. But that wasn’t something he was concerned about.

He had some ideas to test.

After being hit by that Amalgamon’s debuff—a debuff that had lasted after its death—Xavier was now able to cast spells again as it had worn off. He cast Body Cultivation, and Celestial Energy flowed through him, strengthening every part of him as he watched the demons getting closer and closer, looking for any spells they might cast, for he had no idea what this group might have instore for him.

He was itching for a fight. Even after he’d been as close to death as he had, the thrill of the challenge was still with him, and he couldn’t help but grin at the sight of the demons coming for him.

Xavier had already taken out one group—he could take out another.

And he would it do it far more efficiently than the first.

He still held Lost Bone of a Dead God in his left hand, an arrow nocked at the string. As the beasts came near enough for his liking, Xavier cast Time Alteration for the first time since coming to the Thirty-First Descent of the Hell Moon Thazamar.

Not that I’m even on the Hell Moon anymore. In fact, I’ve got no idea where in the Greater Universe I am.

Body Cultivation and Time Alteration weren’t the only spells he cast.

Xavier cast Portal. He created six portals. One portal for each of the enemies that he faced. This wasn’t exactly what he’d been intending to test when the wheels in his mind had turned during the last fight, but it was close.

He could use his Portal spell in many ways. For travelling swiftly around a battlefield—or far larger distances than that—and for defence and offence.

The thing he’d wondered about was just how long he could maintain his portal spell. If he ever got to the point where he could maintain a portal indefinitely, he would be able to use it and manipulate it while inside of a time dilation field, without having to worry about the spell’s cooldown, as he would only need to cast it once.

That would make him incredibly more adaptable while time was practically frozen around him. He would have a shield. He would have a way of redirecting enemy spells. And he would have a way of teleporting from one side of the time dilation field to the other.

That wasn’t what he was doing in this moment, however. He’d created six small portals. He’d seen something like this done before, though back then he’d been the target.

Each of the portals’ twins he intended to appear directly in front of the heads of his enemies.

Xavier watched. The portals didn’t appear. Time was moving far too slowly outside of the time dilation field for that. So he manipulated the time dilation field very slightly to make them appear. The demons moved ever so slightly forward, but not far enough to make a big difference.

Xavier slowed time outside the barrier to as much of a crawl as he could once more. With the arrow still nocked on his bow string, he pulled it back and loosed it through one of the portals, directly at his enemy’s head.

Then he summoned another arrow to his hand and repeated the process.

Xavier, having used the Health Seer skill, knew exactly how much his unenhanced arrows did in damage to these things. He wasn’t sure how much more damage infusing Celestial Energy into them with Body Cultivation did, but he knew it would be more than enough.

He loosed thirty Celestial Energy infused bone arrows through each of the six portals, then Xavier sat down and meditated for a little while, allowing his health to go back up to full.

When his health reached 100 percent, he stood.

He shook his head as he looked at what he was about to do. The arrows had entered the portals inside of the time dilation field, but they hadn’t yet exited the portals that were outside of the barrier. Time was simply moving too slow out there for that.

This isn’t really going to work, is it?

Xavier knew that the different paths to power that he possessed made him overpowered. He’d been feeling overpowered for a very long time, and it wasn’t something that he shied away from—he embraced it.

But if this worked… Well, he felt as though he would be taking him being overpowered to the next level.

Xavier stepped forward, straight to the edge of the time dilation field. Then he began to carve it toward the direction of the demons. When he reached the first demon, he made the field encompass it.

The Amalgamon’s three eyes widened—that was about all it had time to do before thirty arrows soared through the portal right beside its head and lodged in deep.

A kill notification sprang up in Xavier’s vision. The Amalgamon was pin-cushioned by all of the arrows. It collapsed to the ground, its black blood searing the snow around it, making a sharp hissing noise.

Xavier blinked. He stepped over to the dead C Grade demon. A Level 370 beast, something that was a much higher level than himself—well over 100 levels higher—and he’d killed it without any trouble whatsoever.

He tapped the corpse with his boot, tilting his head to the side, then squatted down to examine it. He shifted Lost Bone of a Dead God into a scalpel and began to cut down the line of the skin to expose the bone of one of its legs.

It was about time he made some better arrows.

The other five Amalgamons all died in the same way. He moved the time dilation field to encompass them. The arrows came through the portal, slamming into the demons’ heads.

Then the kill notifications came.

Xavier breathed in the chill air of this strange ice world, wondering how it was that he’d become so powerful. He’d always known the Time Alteration spell was just… A total cheat, but he was surprised that he was still finding ways to make it even more powerful.

It made him wonder just how strong of an enemy he might be able to take with this kind of tactic.

Would he be able to kill a B Grade like this?

That seems like it would be too easy.

Higher grade, more powerful enemies surely must have safeguards against the very thing that he just did. What was stopping a group of Denizens from partying together, with each of their skills and spells making for similar possibilities as the ones Xavier was able to perform himself?

There were safeguards against mental control. That he’d seen several times. Surely there were safeguards against people manipulating time—or against time mercenaries, as the party of True C Grades had called them.

As powerful as this tactic is, I mustn’t grow complacent.

He’d encountered enemies that had been able to move faster than he’d expected. The Magma Bull had been able to move fast enough that Xavier had perceived its travel even from inside the time dilation field. The Nightmare had adapted to it, not only had its mind gotten faster because of it, it had degraded Xavier’s field faster than should have been possible.

There might even be enemies out there that can burst the time dilation bubble completely, or manipulate the flow of its time, or manipulate time themselves…

Still, even with those cautioning thoughts in his mind, Xavier felt more than a little ecstatic about what he’d just managed to do. Looking down at the bow in his hand, it felt as though it had taken on a new level of power in his eyes.

Xavier moved forward through the Thirty-First Descent, carving his time dilation field along with him. He expanded his wings and leapt high into the air. With the time dilation field active, the demons wouldn’t be coming to him anymore—he would need to take the fight to them.

It didn’t take him long to make out more dark shapes. These ones were farther up the mountainside. The terrain was steep, but the six-legged beasts seemed to be able to take the steep slopes of the mountain perfectly well.

Xavier took his portals along with him as he went. He’d created six of the portals. There was a toll for keeping a portal open, both a toll on his energies, and a toll on his mind. The longer the portal was open, the more concentration it required for him.

That level of concentration differed depending on the size of the portal. These portals were all relatively small—he’d only needed them to be large enough to loose the arrows through them.

Still, as there were six, it was six times the toll of one small portal.

It was something he needed to train. Something he needed to adapt to. The concentration would take a little while to take its toll, but he’d practiced keeping his portals open for long periods of time before.

The pressure the concentration took to maintain was something cumulative—much like the damage over time effect these demons had with their needle-sharp mouths. The longer the portals were active, the harder and harder they become to keep active.

Xavier didn’t know if they could be kept active indefinitely or not, but he wanted to try. This was another thing he didn’t wish to ask anyone for advice on. He didn’t want to use Otherworldly Communion only to have a spirit tell him that it was impossible—it was a lot easier to conquer something most people considered “impossible” if you didn’t believe it was impossible yourself.

That was something Xavier had been using to his advantage for a while, and he wasn’t about to stop now.

Moving a portal around, or changing its shape, made them harder to maintain as well—and that’s exactly what Xavier intended to do with them.

Xavier flew through the air, carving his time dilation field with him as he soared. That was something that had taken a long time to learn. When he’d first started moving the time dilation field—originally all the way back when he was facing that Stone Bear in its dark cave—moving it had taken a huge amount of energy and concentration, and it certainly hadn’t been something he could do fast.

The fact he could make it move with him as he flew…

He swooped down toward the six Amalgamons. The portals weren’t strictly necessary for this particular tactic to work. He could loose the arrows from inside the time dilation field easily enough, then move the time dilation field closer to the enemy and have every arrow hit at once without using a portal at all.

The portals were a safeguard of a different kind—he wanted another weapon he could use while time was frozen outside, and he’d proven time and time again that the portals were an exceedingly powerful tool. Both for offence and defence.

If he had constant access to them even while inside the field, that would make a massive difference to his fighting ability.

Xavier wondered if anyone else in the Graeter Universe had done what he was doing. If he succeeded training in this fashion—which he had been for some time now in the different descents on the Hell Moon—he would be able to move through the levels with time barely passing around him. It wouldn’t be “powerlevelling” in the traditional sense, as he wouldn’t be using the help of others.

It would all be by his own efforts.

Xavier tested the tactic out without using his portals. He loosed the arrows, one by one, while soaring through the air, down at the six different Amalgamons.

Then he carved his time dilation field straight at them.

The kill notifications swept into his vision once more.

Xavier grinned. Part of him couldn’t believe how damned easy this was! It wasn’t a challenge—and Xaiver knew he needed to challenge himself—but that didn’t matter right now.

He’d uncovered an incredibly strong tactic to use against his enemies.

Suddenly, getting 1,000 clears on the Thirty-First Descent was feeling very, very easy.