Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 9 - Restoration

Xavier intended to maintain an illusion of being a swordsman, just one that could control time. He didn’t bother hiding his wings. He wouldn’t be the only dragonkin in the universe capable of time manipulation, he was sure of that.

And who would be looking for him out here? Pretending to only wield a sword would be enough. Though he wondered if he should simply reveal his mastery of other weapons, too. It wasn’t as though that was in any information packet, considering he’d only begun practicing in such a way since he’d come to Thazamar.

Xavier watched closely as they stepped onto the First Descent.

“Time for you to shine, Wings,” the elven woman said.

The skittering, chittering sound of hundreds of Bladed Crawlers heading their way filled the cavernous space. It had been months for him since the last time he’d set foot on this descent, yet the sound was unmistakable. “Wings?” he raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t learnt any of their names yet, and none of them had offered to share, nor asked his.

The elven woman shrugged, somehow making the motion look elegant. “Something tells me you don’t wish to divulge your name, considering that disguise you’re wearing.” She rapped a knuckle on his helmet, and it made a dull thud.

Xavier allowed the Bladed Crawlers to get closer and closer. The others didn’t so much as shift their stances. Clearly, they weren’t afraid of these little critters.

He cast Time Alteration at the very last moment.

The time dilation field was just large enough to encompass Xavier and the new party of Denizens around him. The Bladed Crawlers covered the walls, the floors, the ceiling—almost every inch in front of them just outside of the bubble.

The elven woman stepped to the edge of the time dilation field and looked out of it. “Impressive. It’s been some time since I’ve set foot in one of these.”

The demonkin mage with the white robes stepped forward. Her eyes flicked white again, the same way they had when she’d mentioned he was class grafted. “Time is not truly frozen.” The demonkin tilted her head to the side. “Though it is very close. Wings is strong in this spell.”

Xavier sighed. He supposed that nickname was going to stick with these people. “If we’re going to do this, I’m going to need something to call the four of you by.”

The elf and the dark paladin exchanged a glance. The dark paladin spoke first. “No harm.” He shrugged. “My name is Maricus.” He gestured to the elf. “Our esteemed party leader is Yarien.” He nodded at the two demonkin. “These two scoundrels are Avadon and Avadina.”

Xavier raised an eyebrow at the demonkin and their similar names.

“We’re twins,” the bow-wielding male, Avadon, said. “It’s a traditional naming convention for our people.”

“Now,” Maricus said, gripping his great sword and swinging it from one side of his body to the other. “Let’s get this party started.”

Yarien raised a hand. She turned her gaze on Xavier. “What kind of fighting capabilities do you have? It’s rare to see a time mage working alone. Or were you banking on encountering a party to latch-on to?”

Xavier blinked. “That’s very forward.”

“Yarien’s like that,” Maricus muttered. An errant glare from the elf made the man close his mouth instead of saying whatever it was he’d been ready to say next.

“Perhaps it’s better if I show you,” Xavier said.

He expanded the time dilation field to let a few hundred of the Bladed Crawlers in all at once. He wasn’t here to show off—he didn’t think he could show off around these people, if he was correct about their level of power.

Besides, these Bladed Crawlers were weak compared to what they would be fighting on the lower descent. He was sure that even the mages could one hit the enemies with their staves.

Xavier did decide, however, that there was no point restricting himself to the use of a sword when they already knew the swordsman class was a ruse.

So he expanded his wings, summoned Lost Bone of a Dead God to his hands, and got to work. The weapon shifted and changed as he fought, turning into whatever he needed it to on a whim. Fighting these Bladed Crawlers didn’t require any true finesse. The first time he’d fought them with melee alone and no Body Cultivation, he’d had to be on alert so they wouldn’t overwhelm him.

That wasn’t the case anymore. Not by a long shot.

He moved from one enemy to the next with a smoothness born of being tempered by a thousand clears of the Thirtieth Descent.

When the few hundred Bladed Crawlers that he let into the time dilation field were dead, Xavier turned to face the new party.

Yarien had an eyebrow raised in obvious interest.

Maricus gave a delighted laugh. “That was actually amazing.”

Xavier looked at the man. “You sound surprised.”

The dark paladin shrugged. “I did not expect a mage to be able to wield weapons so effectively.”

“What makes you think I’m a mage?” Xavier asked. He was a mage—he was many things. He was simply curious.

Maricus frowned. “The… time dilation field.”

“He’s hybrid-class,” Yarien said. The elf looked him up and down again, a more appraising look than the first time. “Intriguing.”

“Definitely not D Grade, either,” Avadina said. “Not the way he moved.”

“Hmm,” Avadon said.

“Melee attacks are useful inside of the time dilation field,” Xavier told them. “On account of not being able to cooldown spells.”

Maricus grinned. Yarien raised an eyebrow. The demonkin twins had on blank expressions. Xavier realised he’d just explained something very basic to a party of Denizens who’d likely been alive before America was America. Hell, they might have been alive when the Roman Empire was still the strongest force on Earth.

“Indeed,” Yarien said. She glanced at Avadina, the demonkin mage. “Though we have a solution for such things that does not require such barbaric fighting.”

“Barbaric?” Maricus looked at his party leader, a little offended. “I thought you liked the way I fought.”

A small smile slipped onto Yarien’s lips, the first he’d seen. “For a non-mage. Though you have spells too, hmm?”

“Perhaps we should give Wings a demonstration of our prowess in return,” Avadon said. An arrow appeared as though from nowhere, summoned from his Storage Ring. He held it deftly in his hand and nocked it on the string with a smooth, swift movement.

Watching the archer do that made Xavier’s skills with the bow—that he’d been developing over the last thirty descents—seem incredibly meagre, and he hadn’t even loosed an arrow yet.

How did he move so damned fast?

“Can you expand the field to take in the entire descent?” Yarien asked.

Xavier could. Before coming to this place, that would have been a taxing feat to accomplish. It would have made the Time Alteration spell last a whole lot less with the strain of it.

But his Time Alteration spell had increased in strength tremendously since he’d arrived in this place, as he’d been taking full advantage of it in a way he hadn’t even known would be possible before coming here.

Those three years before the threat that could destroy the Silver River sector arrived were beginning to feel like they would be a long, long way away.

Xavier nodded and did as the elven woman bid. In a mere instant, every Bladed Crawler on the First Descent was heading their way. Xavier took a step back. He was used to staying out of fights while he watched his companions train, so this wasn’t a difficult thing to do.

“Avadon, would you like to take the honours?” Yarien asked. “Leave three alive.”

The demonkin archer stepped forwards. “Delighted to.” The arrow that was nocked on his bow glowed a fierce red. A spell. He drew the arrow back. He did it fast, but at the same time the movement looked graceful and unhurried.

Avadon loosed the arrow.

It soared through the air above the Bladed Crawlers. To Xavier’s eye, it didn’t look as though it would actually hit any of them.

When the arrow was roughly in the middle of the cavernous First Descent, it exploded. The single arrow turned into thousands of smaller arrows that shot every which way as though they were shrapnel.

At first, Xavier thought where the arrows went was completely random. That it was simply a devastating area of affect attack, much like his Soul Shatter spell, but couldn’t really be aimed. But that wasn’t the case—not a single one of those small arrows hit anything but a Bladed Crawler.

The precision of each and every one of the arrows was absolutely insane.

With the benefit of Xavier’s Farscope ability, he could see much of the descent, and he could examine it all incredibly swiftly. What he didn’t see was any arrow in the smooth stone floor. Nor in the walls. Not in the ceiling.

They’d all hit their marks.

Three Bladed Crawlers remained, just as Yarien had asked for. Yarien, Maricus, and Avadina didn’t move from where they stood. They let the Bladed Crawlers come to them—and one of them must have had a spell or skill to make the Bladed Crawlers move as they wished, for one Bladed Crawler came to each of them as though compelled.

Xavier watched in mute fascination as they each disposed of the crawlers with a single hit from their weapons. Yarien, with her blood red robes, summoned a staff to her hands. She bonked the Bladed Crawler on the head, and it crumpled before her as though its body was as weak as a normal spider back on pre-integration Earth. Maricus bisected one in twain, a wide grin on his face. Avadina did just as Yarien had, hitting one of them with her staff, not bothering with a offensive spell—assuming she had one, dressed as a healer as she was.

Avadon turned to Xavier.

“Impressive,” Xavier said. “But now that spell won’t cooldown unless I move forward time within the field.”

Xavier didn’t allow himself to be too impressed. He had a spell that could clear the entire descent just as fast as the one this demonkin had performed—though it did take a while for that spell to reach the end of its cooldown, and he would need to restore the souls it took to use as well.

“As Yarien said, we have a solution for that,” Avadina remarked. Her staff glowed a pure white. A ball of light shot from her staff and entered Avadon.

Avadon released a breath. “Cooldown restored.”

Xavier raised an eyebrow at the two demonkin. “Just like that?”

Avadina nodded. “Just like that.”

“How many times can you do that?”

Avadina looked to Yarien, as though for permission to say more. The woman inclined her head slightly. “As many times as we need. Yarien and I have spells and skills that work in tandem to affect cooldowns. A… way to restore things if necessary. Though it comes at a cost.”

The way the woman spoke, Xavier didn’t think it wise to ask what that cost was. He found it interesting that their spells worked in tandem—the red robed woman with the runes swirling about that signified things like sacrifice and blood—and the white robed healer. What spells of theirs would work well together?

Cooldown restoration at will. Now what would be a powerful ability to wield.

Xavier wondered if he would one day be able to add something like that to his arsenal. It would be a good addition to his bag of tricks—and that was an understatement.

He had often thought that the spells and abilities he possessed—the different paths to power that he walked—gave him a totally unfair advantage. But it was foolish to think that there weren’t others out there with possibly equal, though different, unfair advantages.

Especially when one took into account how many of them worked in a team. Or even in armies.

The Greater Universe was an old and vast place, after all.

“Speaking of restoration, shall we restore the floor?” Yarien asked. “Will you need to alter your time dilation field in any way once we step off the descent for the demons to respawn?”

Xavier shook his head. “No. The respawning is instantaneous. It’s quite remarkable, actually. As slow as time moves out there, the Hell Moon is still fast enough to discern when I step off the descent with the time dilation field active.”

Yarien smiled again. “I think it was a good decision, taking you with us. You truly don’t wish for any sort of payment?”

“Having your company is payment enough,” Xavier said.

“Oh ho.” Maricus grinned. “I think the time mercenary likes you.”

“Time mercenary,” Xavier muttered. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

Maricus blinked. “Time mages are incredibly sought after party members, though incredibly expensive. Usually they hire out their abilities for an exorbitant fee.”

Xavier hadn’t considered that, though it made complete sense. “I suppose if I’m ever in need of a lot of money fast…” He trailed off, a grin slipping onto his lips.

He actually already had a way of making money. One that he could see being very effective in the future. And that wasn’t simply using his Spirit Energy to create Spirit Coins—though with the way he could slow time, that was something that worked fairly well for him.

No, this was something that he’d been working on while in the time dilation field over the time he’d spent here at the Hell Moon.

He’d been working on writing a story—one much like the one he’d been reading, He Who Fights With Beasts. The story he decided to write turned out to be… Somewhat autobiographical in nature, though with the locations and names changed considerably, as well as the nature of the abilities he used.

He didn’t want to give out any secrets of his powers, after all.

He fully intended to publish it through the System Shop the next moment he could—he’d ended up naming the story after his class, The Wayfarer of the Infinite Path.

“All right.” Maricus rested his great sword on his shoulder. “Only 999 more times until we get the title for the First Descent.”