Xavier hovered in the air above the battlefield on the side of the Dark Mountains. Below him, thousands of infected beasts swarmed toward their position. Hundreds of his soul puppets were putting up an admirable defence. Volkarin swooped beside them, launching a stream of fire and ice from his massive maw down at the infected beasts.

  Xavier’s attention was on the grotesque demonic beast that was The Nightmare. Its stitched together wings beat hard as it kept up that massive body, the writhing beasts and Denizens moaning and screaming and wallowing in agony beneath its tarpit skin.

  Time to take down this bastard of a demon.

  Xavier grinned as he summoned a portal into existence. He soared through and appeared on the other side of the demonic beast, behind one of its weird, stitched-on heads. He slashed downward with his claws, which were reinforced by the power of his Body Cultivation spell and his soul bound weapon, Lost Bone of a Dead God.

  Celestial Energy coursed through him and pooled in his claws, detonating the moment they impacted his enemy. The head he attacked was the solitary owl head. Xavier had thought he would simply cut wounds through it, but the entire head exploded at his touch.

  The Nightmare reared. Black ooze burst from the head like it had been inside a ballon. The oozing, tar-like substance shot at Xavier from every direction. It swirled through the air as though it had a mind of its own.

  Of course it bloody well has a mind of its own—it’s The Nightmare!

  Xavier hadn’t known the black substance could fly.

  He flipped in the air and made it back through the portal in an instant. The black, oozing substance followed through the portal, moving surprisingly fast. Xavier knew he could protect himself from it, but he sensed that whatever this was it was more potent than any of the other substance he had encountered in the past.

  The instant he could, he cut off the portal. It disappeared in the air, stopping more of the oozing substance from making its way through. The substance that had made it through suddenly stopped twirling and flying through the air.

  It dropped straight to the ground.

  Xavier soared around the area, keeping an eye on that substance. When it reached the ground; he saw it crawl along the dirt just like the other black ooze that he’d been eliminating since this fight began.

  But it could no longer fly.

  It’s been cut off from the larger whole, but can still be controlled…

  Xavier swooped through one portal after another, summoning them to life as swiftly as he was able. He was never in the same place for long, always moving, always clawing at The Nightmare, exploding bits of its body away, fleeing as more black ooze came at him.

  Slowly, bit by bit, he was taking apart the massive, grotesque body of the demon. Three of its four stitched-on heads exploded at the might of his slashing claws. He’d cut several holes through the demonic beast’s wings, making it difficult for the thing to fly until those holes were patched by black ooze.

  He would slash into its wings, a hole would appear and the huge beast would dip in the air before the black ooze rushed to the area and reinforced it, allowing the wings to become functional once more.

  That was something Xavier quickly realised—this beast couldn’t heal its body. It simply patched it. With each slash, each explosion of Body Cultivation, Xavier cut through and destroyed more of this beast’s terrifying flesh.

  Of course. It would need to find more beast parts to stitch back onto itself if it wanted to truly heal the wounds that I’m inflicting on it.

  And yet the beast didn’t seem harmed. It attacked him with the same ferocity as it had in the beginning. The amalgamation of stitched together body parts moved with a swiftness that Xavier couldn’t believe was possible. It did strange things to his mind, watching this thing move.

  Xavier’s evasion skill ranked up five times as he thought—an incredibly feat since reaching D Grade—and his Hover Dodge skill was always at the ready, though it moved up in rank only once.

  The more he cut into this beast and destroyed its flesh, the smaller it became.

  Volkarin, why isn’t this demon weakening as I destroy more of its body?

  The dragon spirit looked as though he had his hands full. He was dodging attacks through the air. The bulk of the infected beasts were targeting him with any ranged spells they had at their disposal, and even though each beast alone was considerably weaker than the dragon spirit, it was clearly beginning to take its toll.

  You should know, young dragonkin. How long have you been fighting this thing?

  The response sounded strained, yet at the same time Xavier could sense an evident thrill running through the dragon. It was enjoying this fight.

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  And, from the sounds of it, the dragon also seemed to know more about the demonic beast than it was letting on. Xavier supposed that made sense. He had summoned the Spirit of Vengeance here to fight by his side, not to glean information from him. That would be something he’d need to use Otherworldly Communion for, and he wouldn’t be able to use that for a good while.

  Unless I reached Level 203…

  And he was getting very close to doing just that.

  But he didn’t need to reach the next level to understand what the dragon spirit had been trying to tell him. All he needed to do was turn the problem around in his mind as he fought.

  Each time he destroyed a bit of this demonic beast, the tarlike, oozing substance would come to fill the gaps. It would also spring from the demon and fly through the air to try and attack him. When it did this, it was always connected to the larger whole…

  That was when something clicked for Xavier, and he felt like an absolute fool for not realising it before. It was something he should have already known—something he did already know.

  He had been too distracted by the sight of this massive, terrifying-looking demon to think straight…

  No, one part of his mind said, the part that had been split so that it could observe the fight. There’s more to it than that.

  His realisation was that the demon’s body? Harming it did nothing to hurt the demon itself, because the demon wasn’t the body—the demon was the ooze. And that was something he had already discovered as he’d fought it. He’d been working on destroying every ounce of the ooze that he could find.

  He’d even had a connection to the demon’s mind telling him that what he’d been doing had been working—that he’d been damaging The Nightmare.

  That was the whole reason the demonic beast had started to take him seriously. That was why the thing was here right now.

  And it was why the demon was exerting its influence on Xavier’s mind so subtly—yet strongly—that Xavier hadn’t even realised it was happening at all until now. The part of his mind that had been observing the battle had cottoned on to what was really happening.

  The moment the body of the demon had appeared, Xavier had stopped his eradication of the infected beasts down on the battlefield. He’d set his soul puppets and Volkarin against them, but he’d stopped fighting them himself—and his soul puppets could only hurt the infected beasts, and not the infection.

  Xavier had instantly turned around and focused all of his attention on the massive beast that was coming at him. And why shouldn’t he? He had scanned that thing—it was The Nightmare.

  But it wasn’t all of The Nightmare.

  The tar-like black ooze within that thing… it’s the brain. It’s the strongest part of the demon. When I cut off the black ooze from the main body with portals, it falls to the ground and acts just like what infects the beasts out here. Same with when that ooze drops off the body of the demon as it flies…

  The body of the demon had come here because what Xavier had been doing had been working.

  Xavier soared through the air, dodging the black ooze as it flew for him, flying through a portal he’d just created to make some distance between himself and the main body of the demon.

  He needed to change his approach once more if he was going to have a chance at defeating this thing. As he flew, he reinforced the mental blocks that protected his mind, not having even realised that they’d been affected until now.

  The System’s description did mention this thing’s psychic abilities. I should have taken it more seriously.

  As Xavier reinforced the defences protecting his mind from mental attacks, that was when he truly felt The Nightmare’s presence. It cried out in frustration and knocked upon the wall of his mind with so much force that Xavier had to resist it with every single ounce of his being. He’d never before felt a mind so vast, so powerful. He had thought that when he’d been connected to The Nightmare’s mind that he’d known the strength of it, but clearly, he had been wrong.

  This was the strength of it when it was turned toward a purpose, not simply when it lay idle.

  So strong was this demon’s mental attack that simply in the defending from it, Xavier lost consciousness.

  When he came to, he had no idea how much time had passed. It took him a fraction of a second to gain his bearings.

  He was falling. Wind whipped through his hair. His wings weren’t straight, and he was tumbling around, over and over. The battlefield on the ground and the blacked-out sky above flashed before him in quick succession.

  Only a moment must have passed with him unconscious if he hadn’t hit the ground yet. But a moment was a very long time in a fight like this. He could feel that half of his soul puppets had been defeated.

  The Spirit of Vengeance, the dragon Volkarin, was being harried by even more infected beasts than before, barely able to defend itself with all the attacks it needed to avoid—attacks that were strong enough to harm a spirit.

  Xavier probed his mind and found that it was no longer split into multiple parts. The mental attack he’d taken from his enemy had forced his mind back into a whole. And as his consciousness was whole again, his awareness was less than it had been before.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Black ooze swarmed and swam around him in the air as he fell, like ribbons twirling around a dancer, except these ribbons clung to his skin and crawled along it.

  As the black ooze touched him the strength of the demon’s mental attacks increased tenfold. It was all Xavier could do to protect himself from them.

  The demon’s will tried to exert itself on him. It wished him to become one with it. It offered him gifts. Of eternal life. Of peace. Of never having to fight again. It offered him power. Greatness. To become part of something bigger than himself.

  Xavier didn’t want any of it, and yet he could feel his mind succumbing to The Nightmare’s relentless attacks. His body was no longer responding to his own will. He tried to extend his wings, to catch himself in the air, to stop himself from falling. He commanded them to move but they did not.

  He tried to cast a portal spell, so he might fall through it and appear somewhere else.

  But he could not.

  He could not do anything.

  He kept on falling, the ground growing larger and larger, the black ooze crawling on his skin more and more.

  I know how to fight off this ooze.

  The thought was a weak one, for all of him was weak right now.

  I don’t need to succumb.

  Body Cultivation. If he pooled Celestial Essence around his entire body he would be able to dispel the ooze. The demon’s attack wouldn’t be entirely thwarted, for it did not need to touch him to harm him, but it would be dulled.

  And that would be enough.

  Xavier willed what he wished to happen, trying to activate Body Cultivation, willing the essence to enter himself.

  Before he knew if he would be able to, he slammed straight into the ground.

  Accidental Champion!

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