Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 2) - Chapter 87 - Item Brokers

Xavier stood in the Tower of Champion’s Staging Room, the doors gone, the loot boxes waiting for their recipients to open them, the other three members of his party staring at him in anticipation.

He stared over at Howard. “I’m letting her come to Earth.” He paused. “Along with her party.”

“Are you insane?” Howard asked.

“That… doesn’t seem like a good idea,” Justin said.

“Let’s hear him out.” Siobhan stepped in front of them. “Xavier wouldn’t make a decision like this without having a good reason.” She looked at him. “You have a good reason, don’t you?”

It was the only way I could save Howard, Xavier wanted to say. It was the main reason he’d done it, after all, but they knew that. He could already see the guilt in Howard’s eyes. The man thought this was his fault, but Xavier knew better.

There were consequences of Xavier being who he was. Attention from powerful Denizens in the Greater Universe. Empress Larona, and now this mysterious ancestor of Adranial’s. Xavier had thought hard on this, and come to the conclusion that there simply couldn’t be any other explanation as to how Howard ended up in that arena with Adranial other than it having been set up.

Maybe he was stretching. Maybe it was more than a little self-centred to think in this way, but he was sure that it was the truth. Sure in his bones.

And so he told all of that to them. He knew that if he didn’t, Howard would bear the weight of all of this. Yes, he could have surrendered, but Xavier didn’t blame him in the slightest for what he’d done.

“You could have killed me,” Howard said at the end. “Perhaps you should have. This is dangerous, Xavier. You don’t know what they want.”

Xavier smiled. “Everything has been dangerous since the System integrated, I figured we might as well lean into it—the only way out is through, after all.”

The others wanted to keep talking about it, but Xavier stopped them. They had other things they needed to do.

Like open their loot boxes and spend their Participation Points.

Xavier walked over to his loot box and knelt in front of it, a motion that was giving him an intense feeling of Deja vu. He flipped off the latch and swung the lip open. His heartbeat quickened in the split second between the lid coming open and the notification appearing.

The last item he’d gained was a Portal Hub, something he imagined would come in very handy, so he was eager to find out what he received next. He knew he was lucky—knew he was getting better items than perhaps any other Champion on an equivalent floor, and he wanted to savour it.

You have gained 6 Mastery Points (E Grade).

You have gained 300,000 Lesser Spirit Coins.

You have received a Portal Block.

Xavier tilted his head to the side. The Mastery Points and spirit coins were another drop in the bucket, one he wasn’t concerned about quantifying at this stage, but the Portal Block was interesting.

A long iron rod with a spherical crystal top had materialised in his hand when the notification had appeared. He turned it around, examining it with his eyes before using his skill. It almost looked like some sort of weapon, though he doubted it would be a very effective one. The rod was about four feet long, the sphere at its head roughly the size of a large apple. At the other end was a spike.

Why do I get the feeling I’m supposed to jam this in the ground?

He used Identify on the item.

{Portal Block – Radius: 5 Miles – Upgradeable}

A Portal Block is an item which is defensive in nature, giving the user the ability to block all unauthorised portals within the defined radius.

Well, I can certainly see how that would come in handy.

It made him wonder if Queen Alastea had had one of these at her castle. The Endless Horde’s portals had been a fair distance away from the castle itself, which Xavier had always thought was so the enemy could amass their armies.

Why didn’t he ever wonder why the portals weren’t simply opened behind a fortress’s walls? Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to get through defences?

Xavier held the Portal Block in his hand, hefting it up and down. He was glad to have it, but its very existence made him worry. If something like this existed, and it was a difficult item for someone of a low level to acquire, that meant that right now the chances of their being any defences like it on Earth were slim to none.

I’m almost back there.

He found he was sick of thinking how close he was to returning to Earth. Even the hour and fifteen minutes or so they had remaining on the countdown timer was too long.

The others got basic items once more. Attribute Tokens and the like. They were getting more of those than he was, but it didn’t bother him—they needed it more than he did, after all. Besides, he could probably purchase them at a later date. He knew the number of attributes one could gain from tokens was limited as well.

They must have had a nice boost from that last floor, gaining the solo title. Not to mention that milestone title. Everyone who gets through the tenth floor will get that.

His forehead creased, thinking of that. Was he annoyed that he didn’t get any unique titles from that floor? As if he wasn’t spoiled for titles as it was? He shook his head and chuckled.

Yep. I’ve definitely been spoiled.

He couldn’t wait to get back to Earth. He was curious to find out what normal titles there were for him to get, or if there would be titles for taking out invaders. What if there were invasion generals? Would he get something special for being the first on Earth to take one out?

I’m getting ahead of myself.

“So,” Xavier said, looking over at the others. “How do we spend these Participation Points, and what exactly do we get for them?” He blinked. “You know what, I forgot to ask—how many do each of you have?”

Justin rubbed the back of his neck and looked sheepishly down. “I got about sixty-five.”

“Sixty-five?” Xavier raised an eyebrow. “That’s pretty good… wait, weren’t you just chatting up a girl?”

“I wasn’t chatting up—I mean, okay, maybe a little.” The teenager’s face flushed beet-red. “But… I also had to kill someone.”

“You did?” Siobhan blinked.

Justin shrugged. “Kill or be killed.”

Xavier frowned. There wasn’t a hint of emotion in Justin’s voice. Though, if Xavier had to kill someone on his floor, he supposed there’d be no reason in regretting it. He was standing there looking out from an incredibly privileged position. He was strong enough that restraining the others in his arena didn’t risk his own life. If there’d been a chance of them hurting him, or the System had required it, he would have killed everyone in that arena.

This new reality has certainly changed me. How many thousands of people did I kill when facing the Endless Horde? Would it really have been any different?

Howard cleared his throat. “I only got twenty-five points. I fought one man—a boy, really. No offense, Justin, but sixteen… just feels so young to me. Though I did not kill him. Then that Adranial… well, I guess the System doesn’t look too kindly on the type of failure I experienced.”

“It’s not your fault who you came up against,” Xavier said, “or that you weren’t strong enough to fight them.”

“No,” Siobhan said, a little strongly. “It is his fault. It’s all our faults.”

Everyone looked at her.

The skin around her eyes wrinkled. “We’ve been lucky, riding on your coat tails, Xavier. Very lucky. You’ve been able to carry us through nine floors. But you can’t carry us forever. That floor… that proved it. I only survived out of sheer luck, because of the people I was matched up with. Something like this… it can’t happen again. We need to be stronger. You won’t always be there to protect us. If this floor taught us anything, it was surely that.”

Xavier nodded. “I know.” He looked at each of them. “I’ve been taking the lead, and I haven’t been doing it perfectly. I haven’t been taking the three of you into consideration enough, despite all the help you’ve given me. That’s going to change from now on.”

“Should we… split the party?” Justin asked. “When we return here for the eleventh floor? I mean, Xavier doesn’t really need us, does he?”

“No,” Xavier said. “We’re not going to split the party. The three of you can still benefit from the first-clear title. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be doing things in the same way as before.” He paused. “How many points did you get, Siobhan?”

“Ninety,” Siobhan stated.

The others all looked at her. Xavier couldn’t help but be a little stunned. “Ninety? That’s… amazing. How’d you manage that?”

“I… healed one of the other Champions there. Kept her alive. Helped them take out this mage who…” She shook her head, her hair falling into her eyes, then tucked it back behind her ear. “I guess the System has a different idea of participation than we might have thought.”

Xavier nodded. He couldn’t help but be surprised by how well she’d done, which he supposed wasn’t fair. But, out of all his party members, she’d been the one he was worried about the most.

And I was worried about Howard the least…

“I received one hundred Participation Points,” Xavier said.

Justin chuckled. “Well, of course you did. You’re Xavier.”

Xavier smirked at that. None of them looked surprised—they had surely been expecting that eventuality. He rubbed his hands together. “All right. Let’s figure this out.” He walked over to the pedestal that held the System Shop’s terminal, figuring this must be where they’d be spending their points.

When he accessed the interface, a notification popped up.

Congratulations on completing the tenth floor of the Tower of Champions! You have acquired your first Participation Points. Every item you look at will now have its value in both spirit coins and Participation Points.

That sounds promising.

The last item they’d been looking for in the System Shop had been something that blocked an enemy’s ability to communicate. Sam had informed him of the item’s existence, but unfortunately he hadn’t told him what the item was, which made finding it very difficult.

I wish I could access some sort of item broker, or research assistant… someone that can help me find the things that I need. An item broker would be good, if such a thing exists—they would be able to search the shop for me. Something tells me items appear and disappear from the shop all the time, what with trillions of people having access to it.

He tapped the base of the pedestal with his fingers and frowned.

Maybe I can already access this?

He searched the System Shop for the word “broker” in hopes that he was right. He pumped his fist into the air as he saw the top results.

“Yes!” he exclaimed. The others raised their eyebrows at him. Siobhan opened her mouth, as though about to ask a question, Xavier waved her off, stuck in focus mode.

He felt a little foolish, not having looked for this before, but it was difficult to know what he didn’t know. For instance, he hadn’t even realised there was a category for services in the store.

There weren’t as many options as he might have assumed an entire universe worth of Denizens would have, but when he prompted the System for more information it told him that services could only be bought from the nearest four planets because he was from a planet still experiencing its first five years post integration.

He blinked. Nearest four planets… There were five different worlds—including Earth—competing in this instance of the Tower of Champions. It was those other worlds’ Champions he had to keep ahead of to gain first-clear titles, and who knew what else later down the track. They were worlds that were within his sector.

It makes sense that they would be the closest worlds, which means I can only purchase services from those worlds that we’re competing against.

It made him wonder if the worlds he competed against were also those that were invading his planet.

Would they even want to sell their services to me?

There were different tiers of Item Brokers, and most of them had unique specialties—weapons and armour acquisition, defensive item acquisition, base building acquisition, different resources, even down to special types of crafting items, and so on—he wasn’t exactly sure what category the item he wanted would be in.

Security? Espionage?

Some of the Item Brokers had general as their specialisation, which he found rather humorous. Specialising in generalising always sounded like some sort of oxymoron. He selected Tier 1, General Item Brokers, and gawked momentarily at the price of their services.

“Are you kidding me?” he muttered. Just to have them search for an item it would cost a minimum of 1,000,000 Minor Spirit Coins. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford that sum—he certainly could—but it seemed like an exorbitant amount of money just for someone to locate an item and buy it on your behalf, not even including the price of the item itself.

And that it was in Minor Spirit Coins and not Lesser Spirit Coins made him wonder if someone under E Grade would even be able to use this service. That would be a hell of a lot of Lesser Spirit Coins…

That’s just ridiculous… but, then again, I’ve no idea how to find this item myself.

He bit his lip and continued tapping his fingers against the pedestal, something that the other Champions kept giving him slightly frustrated glances at.

They can deal with it.

He sighed and selected the services of one of the cheaper Item Brokers. A menu of selections came up, showing him different time frames for item acquisition.

The first few time frames were in the span of years, though they did specify that items could be found before the end of the time allocation depending upon the work load of the Item Broker—which hadn’t been given a name by the System, only a seemingly randomly generated signifier of R2D25E.

Would people really select the century options? A hundred years seems like a long time to wait for someone to find you an item, even if some Denizens’ lifespans are unimaginably long… right?

Though the price for the Item Broker had initially said 1,000,000 Minor Spirit Coins, it appeared that was for the one-week delivery. There were significant discounts for longer periods of time.

But for shorter periods, like the hour timeframe Xavier had been hoping for, there were high mark-ups.

“Ten million Minor Spirit Coins?” Xavier swore under his breath. It looked as though he wouldn’t be able to get this item before returning to Earth, and that was before he even knew how much the item cost!

I only have about 5,000,000 Minor Spirit Coins left after handing over so many to Sam to help fill out those contracts…

Then he looked at how many Participation Points he’d need for the service, and his jaw dropped.

He only needed fifty.