Xavier stood at the edge of his time dilation field. The corpse of an Infected Alpha Wolven was at his back. Parts of his skin were black where The Nightmare had tried to infect him.

  At his feet, a bubble of black ooze crawled toward him. It followed him—and it was under his control.

  Xavier pushed the time dilation field forward until it consumed one of the wolven in front of him. A moment ago, the wolven had been frozen in time. Now, it bounded toward him, lips pulled back in the same silent snarl the alpha had worn before it had succumbed to death at Xavier’s hand.

  The moment the Infected Wolven had touched the edge of the time dilation field and began moving, Xavier’s mind expanded into the beast. Almost every single beast on this entire mountain was infected by The Nightmare, and now that Xavier controlled a portion of it, he was able to enter the minds of other beasts that The Nightmare controlled.

  He couldn’t connect to the other beasts outside of the time dilation field, and that, right now, was a good thing. But when one entered his field?

  Connecting became easy, and the substance within the beast lost its own connection to the rest of The Nightmare, which meant it was almost powerless compared to Xavier.

  Xavier willed a thought.

  Stop, he commanded.

  The Infected Wolven halted its attack against Xavier. It skidded in the dirt, came to a stop, then suddenly became placid. It just stood there, its head slowly turning to gaze at the dead Infected Alpha Wolven nearby.

  Xavier crouched in front of the wolven and stared into its dark eyes.

  He tilted his head to the side and examined it. Then he stood and took a step back. He was about to do something he had never done before.

  When he had saved Liana from The Nightmare, he’d simply instructed it to stop attacking her, and so it had. But this wolven had been infected who knew how long.

  And he was about to pull the infection out.

  Xavier inclined his head and willed the dark substance to retreat from the wolf. As he did, he felt a slight amount of resistance. Something far away, trying to connect, trying to stop what was happening—but it wasn’t able to. What was happening inside the time dilation field was happening too fast for even a C Grade Entity to feel.

  Though the fact that it was trying to connect at all made Xavier worry.

  The black substance oozed out of the wolven. Its fur slowly turned back to its normal colour. The beast started to become aware once more. After a moment, it was itself again.

  It saw the dead alpha, saw Xavier, then it leapt straight at him with a loud, furious snarl.

  Xavier stepped to the side, slash out with the claws of his right hand, holding his staff in his left hand, and tore out the beast’s throat. The wolven died before it hit the ground.

  Xavier commanded the black substance to pool into the middle of the time dilation field. He knelt by the pool and stared at it. He didn’t cast Soul Harvest—not yet. There was no point casting it now, as he wouldn’t be able to cooldown the spell.

  The first part of his plan seemed as though it could work. Now, he just had to make sure that the second part of his plan could work.

  Xavier was warry of using his spells on the black substance, as if he continued on as he was, fighting inside of the time dilation field, none of the spells would be able to reach the end of their cooldown.

  Xavier brandished his scythe-staff and slammed it down into the middle of the pooling, oozing black substance.

  It splashed up as though he’d hit a puddle, and he could feel that he still had control over the exact same amount, meaning none of the entity had died.

  Xavier stepped back and sighed.

  Then, he willed a single word, targeting only that substance that lay inside of the pool.

  Die, he thought.

  And the substance died.

  Xavier raised his chin, feeling pride surge within his chest.

  He had never simply willed something to die before. He had willed enemies to kill themselves, but this? This was something he hadn’t known was in his power.

  And that wasn’t the only thing he was proud of—he had just killed a portion of The Nightmare.

  Willpower Infusion has taken a step forward on the path!

  Willpower Infusion is now a Rank 115 spell.

  One cannot walk backward on the path.

  “Huh,” Xavier said.

  He hadn’t expected to gain a rank in Willpower Infusion. In anticipation of his fight with The Nightmare, Xavier had been pushing forward his usage of the spell over the last few months, trying to push it as far as he could. He had gained fourteen ranks, something which he’d felt proud of, as gaining ranks since he’d reached D Grade was far harder than it had ever been.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  But to gain a rank so easily here?

  I used the spell in a different way. That must have been why.

  Xavier watched with fascination as the black substance dissipated into nothing, burning into the air until there was nothing left of it except that which was on his own skin—he needed to keep some of it alive. He couldn’t cast Willpower Infusion again while inside this field.

  He turned and faced the edge of the time dilation field once more, looking out at the wolven beyond. He took a deep breath, then released it slowly.

  The second part of his plan had worked. The plan was a long and tedious one. Push the time dilation field forward until he consumed another of the infected beasts. Kill every ounce of the black substance that effected the beast—along with the beast for good measure—then rinse and repeat.

  All he had to do was push the time dilation field around the entirety of the Dark Mountains, and kill every speck of the black substance that he could find.

  Yes… that was all he had to do. How hard could it be?

  His gaze moved away from the frozen wolven just beyond the edge of the field’s barrier to the trees that were also infected. To the grass that was infected. To the random specks of blackness he saw in the dirt, that if a Champion was not careful might be stepped on by accident.

  This was an insidious demonic beast, and his task was not an easy one, and his plan wasn’t something he could perform swiftly.

  He would need to be patient. More patient than he’d ever been before.

  “One step at a time,” Xavier told himself.

  If this was what he needed to do, then this was what he was going to do. There might be other ways for him to face The Nightmare. He could drop the time dilation field completely and have a battle of wills with it. Mind against mind. He was far more powerful than he had been in the past. He might very well be strong enough to take this thing on.

  To will its death on a grand scale.

  But that wasn’t something that he wanted to risk. Xavier had seen what happened to him when he took on one risk too many when he’d observed the other versions of him fight the Fetid Forest Troll.

  He died.

  Then, he had seen what had happened when he approached the fight with utmost clarity and care.

  Fighting against the exact same beast, he hadn’t gained a single scratch.

  I’m powerful enough to kill this thing, and I’m going to do it as perfectly as I can.

  And so Xavier continued to push the time dilation field farther and farther up the mountain. He reshaped it in a dozen different ways. He flew into the air on his majestic black wings and carved a path through the sky until he reached the Infected Giant Owls. He carved a path to every single tree that he could see.

  On every step of the way, he commanded the black substance—parts of The Nightmare—to die.

  As Xavier made his way up the Dark Mountains in a crisscross pattern, he was beginning to encounter an issue.

  The Nightmare had become aware of him.

  By his reckoning, Xavier had covered a tenth of the mountain. He’d slain hundreds of beasts. Moved his time dilation field miles across the foot of the mountain, slowly making his way up the side of it.

  Since the first instance that he’d taken control of this beast that night, he had felt the larger part of the entity trying to connect with him. But it hadn’t been a threat. Time outside of his field was moving too slow for it to do anything.

  But the longer that Xavier maintained the time dilation field—something he needed to do for a long time—the more time passed outside of it, even if that was only mere fractions of a second.

  Those fractions would add up, and the response time of a C Grade entity such as this was incredible.

  Now that the entity had become aware of him, Xavier knew that he couldn’t drop the field. This was nothing like the first time he’d encountered this thing. Back then, he hadn’t harmed The Nightmare. All he’d done was invade its mind and made it stop attacking him, then after that, made it stop attacking Liana.

  Now that it was aware of him and Xavier had damaged it, he knew the full force of its power would bear down on him.

  Even within the field, he could feel its mind bearing down on him. He didn’t know how it was managing to breach the time dilation field, but he could feel it slowly adapting. As though the farther he moved around the mountain, and the more of the substance he killed, the more his enemy was able to speed up its consciousness to try and combat what he was doing.

  He could also feel the pain it was in. Xavier wasn’t sure how such an interconnected entity felt pain, but this thing was. With every bit of the substance he willed to die, the larger entity become more and more damaged.

  Xavier’s plan was working, just as he’d hoped. He just didn’t know how long he would be able to keep it going.

  “I need to keep it going forever,” he muttered to himself. “If I don’t…” He left the rest unsaid.

  He knew what would happen. He could feel the power this thing possessed, even after Xavier had eradicated a tenth of it.

  As Xavier moved across the mountain, hours passed inside the time dilation field for him. He had a few different minds split up in his head to focus on other solutions to this problem.

  So far, he struggled to find any. Without knowing how powerful his enemy was, knowing his options first… it felt impossible.

  Though there was one part of him that insisted that if things became more dire, he could always summon the Spirit of Time. He’d told himself that he wouldn’t do that until he faced the C Grade Elemental Dragon, but perhaps it would become necessary soon enough.

  But that wasn’t the course of action he wanted to take. He needed to get off this floor, and he wasn’t going to do it without that egg. He had no pretentions that he would be powerful enough to take down the dragon without using the Spirit of Time’s power to see alternate versions of his own future.

  He might be arrogant, but he wasn’t a fool.

  Besides, every ounce of arrogance he possessed he’d earned. That made him grin to himself. God, he sounded like a dickhead sometimes.

  The Spirit of Time was an option, it simply wasn’t one he wished to use.

  He tried to think of other ways. He could already feel the strain of the Time Alteration spell. He had never moved this far while in it—never altered it so heavily. Xavier had incredibly powerful spells. He could summon portals into life. He could call forth the souls from his reserve into deadly apparitions. He could burn through an enemy’s core. And with his newfound claws, he could rip through armour and flesh as though it weren’t even there.

  He possessed tremendous powers, but The Nightmare appeared to be immune to almost all of them. When he had used Soul Shatter on that first enemy, the Infected Alpha Wolven, it hadn’t actually done anything to parts of the Nightmare that resided within it.

  That only means its resistant to soul damage, not that it’s resistant to all damage.

  That thought sparked something—if the oozing blackness was The Nightmare, and those parts of it were immune to soul damage.

  Did that mean the demon didn’t have a soul?

  In plenty of fiction and myths back home, demons don’t have souls. It would make some kind of sense if that were the case…

  Xavier stopped in his tracks. He’d just killed one of the Infected Giant Owl Beasts high up in the sky and eradicated the oozing black substance that came out of it. He hovered there, his large black wings flapping to keep him within the bounds of the time dilation field.

  He’d just heard a whisper in his mind. A thought that wasn’t his own. It was faint…

  He tried listening for it again.

  Resist no longer. We can give you peace.

  Accidental Champion!

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