Xavier stared at the title he’d just received. Only a moment ago, he’d successfully used Body Cultivation to strike mid-air—and he hadn’t lost any limbs doing it—gaining him Rank 40 in the spell.

  Title Unlocked!

  Revive a Lost Art: You have taken the first step in mastering a spell that hasn’t been used in over one thousand billion years. Though this spell has been used in the Greater Universe before, it hasn’t been used since the System was young.

  You have received +25% to all stats.

  Xavier’s eyes widened as he finished reading the title.

  Body Cultivation hasn’t been used in… one thousand billion years!? He didn’t even know how to imagine that amount of time. It was staggering. How many universes had been born and died since someone had used this?

  And how could it be possible that no one else had?

  Xavier stared at the claw on his index finger for a long moment as realisations flooded into him.

  The older version of himself. The one that he’d met recently on one of the tower floors. That man had failed to save his own universe, and so he’d come in search of… himself, to deliver a warning.

  The fact that there had been a version of himself on one of the Tower of Champions floors meant that there were alternate universes out there from billions of years ago—before the birth of his own universe—where he, Xavier Collins, had existed.

  And there must have been an almost infinite number of those alternate universes, something that would always be difficult for him to imagine.

  But the System notification… it took that into account, didn’t it? It wasn’t only speaking of his universe, for his universe hadn’t been around long enough.

  This means… this means that I’m the only version of Xavier Collins to have ever even used this spell.

  That, he had to say, blew his mind a bit.

  He sat on the ground and contemplated this for a long moment.

  My path has already significantly diverged from that of the older version of myself. I must be doing things entirely differently to how he did them, and yet we must have started off exactly the same, if not only with slight differences.

  He looked up at the sky through the time dilation field and stared at the stars, then he closed his eyes.

  Thank you, he said, to that other version of himself.

  Meeting the man must have changed him more than he knew.

  Xavier opened his eyes and looked at his claw once more.

  This can’t be right, can it? How can no one in that long have ever done what I’ve just done? The odds of this not happening seem astronomically high! Someone must have stumbled on it by accident or on purpose, especially if spirits from the Otherworld know about it.

  For a moment, he tested something out. He deactivated the Body Cultivation spell—a spell, he’d found, that he could toggle on and off with no difficulty—and cultivated energy into himself in ways he already knew of.

  That energy tried to go straight into his Spirit Core, but Xavier stopped it. If it went into any one of his cores it would be turned into that kind of energy. That wasn’t what he wanted to do right now.

  He moved the energy around his body just as he had before when he’d had Body Cultivation active, and he tried to do what he’d done, pooling the energy into his claw.

  It didn’t work. It didn’t… do anything. It simply wouldn’t pool.

  He tried that for an entire hour before he stopped.

  Things might work fundamentally differently now that the System exists. The way the System governs the Greater Universe could have changed how the energies function. Or there’s something else I’m missing here.

  He knew that he wouldn’t be the first person to try and experiment and do something like this without actually having a spell for it. Not in the last thousand billion years. There were other forces at play preventing this from happening—perhaps it had to do with the restrictions put in place when one chose a class.

  One cannot walk backward on the path…

  This also must mean that the System simply didn’t offer the Body Cultivation spell to people. Why had that spirit he’d spoken to suggested it to him in the first place, if it hadn’t been used by anyone in so long?

  It felt like there was something else at work here.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  That was when he remembered the presence he’d felt, the one he’d all but blocked from his mind, when he’d advanced from E Grade to D Grade. There had been something there—something that wasn’t the System, for he knew what the System’s presence felt like by now.

  There had been something behind it.

  Xavier had tried not to think about that, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it was.

  Are my actions being guided? By more than just myself—and more than just the System? Is there someone or something out there, something beyond even the System, that is trying to influence me?

  The thought felt like an insane one, based on nothing but a mere feeling while his mind had been obliterated and put back together. For all he knew, he could have simply imagined that presence.

  But no, he didn’t think he’d imagined it.

  Even so… if there was something out there guiding him, what was he going to do about it? If it was something he could one day change, it certainly wasn’t something he could change right now. And as unlikely as him being the first person to use this spell in one thousand billions years seemed, there was no way that it couldn’t be true.

  The System itself had told him so, and if he didn’t believe what the System told him, then he wouldn’t be able to function at all.

  The System must not ever offer this spell—this path—to people naturally. There are likely other people in the Greater Universe who walk the Infinite Path, but… there are so many spell categories, and spending a Spell Credit is a dangerous thing. Maybe it is possible no one stumbled on this…

  Or maybe, until he searched for it, it was hidden.

  Xavier looked at his hands again, flexed his fingers.

  All of this… everything that he was thinking about… none of it mattered. Perhaps, in the grand scheme, there was some importance to it.

  But in this moment, Xavier had a job to do, and he couldn’t lose sight of that.

  He looked out at the C Grade Rock Worms and couldn’t help but notice something—they had moved. For a long while, as he’d focused, thought, and practised with this new spell, he hadn’t been paying close attention to the battlefield.

  Why would he, when he was safe inside his time bubble?

  But the Infected Rock Worms had most definitely gotten closer. Significantly closer. One of them was a few feet away.

  Sometimes he forgot just how fast C Grades could move.

  Xavier was about to move his time dilation field out of this beast’s trajectory when he noticed something—there was a presence out there. One he recognised well.

  The Nightmare.

  The moment he tried to move his time bubble, Xavier could feel the pressure from the C Grade demon. Somehow, the demon had adapted even further, and even though Xavier no longer had a connection to it, it was able to affect the Time Alteration spell.

  It was locking it in place, preventing Xavier from moving it. And there was something else, too—the Time Alteration spell was degrading at a faster rate than it should have.

  Xavier should have been able to hold this spell in place for weeks if he wasn’t altering it too much by making it bigger or smaller, moving it to different places, or changing the speed and direction time moved.

  He had been within that bubble for close to six hours by this point, and yet it felt like…

  The spell’s going to fail in less than half an hour. That shouldn’t even be possible!

  And before that happened, the first of the four Infected Rock Worms was going to reach it. The second it touched the bubble, it would move at the same speed as Xavier.

  There wasn’t time to contemplate his navel and think about the truths of the universe and how they pertain to him.

  Xaiver had to learn how to use this spell now.

  He released a long breath and focused. He had gotten the spell to Rank 40. He’d already used it successfully once.

  All he needed to do was recreate that.

  And learn how to do it during battle… and not melt any of my limbs in the process.

  That should be easy enough, right?

  Xavier split his mind into multiple parts, making sure that the different parts communicated with one another effectively. He activated the Body Cultivation spell once more and drew energy into his body. This time, he was able to control how much he brought in. He still brought in far more than he thought would be wise to use in a single attack, especially after what had happened to his hand…

  I haven’t got four hours in here to heal my hand up a second time, so I guess I’ll just have to make sure I don’t mess this up.

  As he didn’t have much time to waste, Xavier used five times as much energy as he had the first time.

  He sliced at the air. The explosion of energy was even more powerful than it had been before, and it all came from a single one of his claws.

  Let’s see what I can do.

  Now that Xavier had a working understanding of the Body Cultivation spell, he could train with it more effectively, even if he didn’t have much time to do that in.

  And for the next little while, that was all he did.

  Right up until the first of the C Grade Infected Rock Worms finally reached the time dilation field.

  When the beast was a mere inch away, Xavier reviewed what his next step would be. Would he fight this Infected Rock Worm inside of the time dilation field, or would he drop the field altogether so his might would be combined with that of Volkarin’s?

  Xavier didn’t drop the field. It would be foolish to face every single enemy out there all at once.

  Besides, he had a plan.

  The instant the Infected Rock Worm’s head reached the bubble, the rest of its body began to move at lightning speed. It burst into the time dilation field and made its way for him, all the while throwing up boulders and trying to contort the very earth to do its bidding—Xavier could feel the ground beneath him trying to swallow him whole and lock him in place.

  It wasn’t something that he let happen. He’d been buried before. There was no way he was going to go through that again.

  He leapt up into the air and extended his wings. The time bubble wasn’t very large. He wished he’d made it bigger, but he couldn’t have anticipated what The Nightmare had done.

  Xavier cast Soul Shatter on the Infected Rock Worm. He followed this up with Core Burn, hoping the first spell would have been enough to soften it. If he’d used Core Burn on the beast while it had been outside of the time dilation field, he knew it wouldn’t have actually worked, not with how strong The Nightmare’s hivemind was.

  But in here, the entity wasn’t connected. It was significantly weaker. Xavier had a good feeling that Core Burn would be effective.

  And yet, it did absolutely nothing. Xavier came up against a mind that was incredibly strong. He’d faced C Grade minds before, and as a D Grade, he’d been able to push through them at times.

  But this was like…

  The Nightmare is connecting to that beast! It’s powerful enough to breakthrough the time lag!

  The Soul Shatter spell he’d used had injured the Infected Rock Worm, but Xaiver had never had a fight with a C Grade in such an enclosed space before. He also couldn’t cooldown his spells in here.

  It could be that bringing this thing into the time bubble had been a mistake.

  I guess there’s one way to find out.

  He’d had less than half an hour of proper practice with the Body Cultivation spell, but in that time, he’d been able to learn more than he’d imagined.

  It was time to put it to the test.

  Accidental Champion!

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