Xavier stepped into Hunter’s Home with a spring in his step, the Companion Cube swaying on his belt as he moved. He strode past the different Champions from different worlds and sectors and strode straight to the bar.

  Felicia placed a mug of coffee in front of him as he reached her. The barkeep looked him up and down. “Still alive, I see?”

  Xavier smiled. “Indeed.” He grabbed the mug gratefully and took a sip. “I defeated the Elemental Dragon.”

  Felicia blinked, surprise evident in her eyes. She stared at him. Shook her head. Sighed. “You’re insane, you know that?”

  Xavier grinned. “Aren’t you going to ask for proof?”

  “Any other Champion in this place and I would call what you said a bold-faced lie. But you aren’t a liar. You’re just absolutely insane.” Felicia ran a hand through her hair. She let out a small chuckle. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  Xavier raised an eyebrow at her. “Thanks?”

  The inclined her head, her forehead creased. She leant over the bar and created a privacy bubble around them. “I felt guilty,” she said.

  Xavier tilted his head to the side. “Guilty about what? The bets?”

  “No. Not the bets.” She bit her lip, then looked up at the ceiling. It was a look that he recognised. He had seen Sam, the barkeep back in the tavern at the bottom of the Tower of Champions, do that look countless times. “Looks like I’m allowed to tell you now.”

  His curiosity piqued. He leant forward on his stool, his mug of coffee forgotten on the bar. “Tell me what?”

  “The System sent me a message when you appeared here.” She tugged at a strand of her hair, then twirled it around her finger. A nervous habit he’d never seen her perform. “Actually, it’s sent me multiple messages. All of them about you.”

  Xavier stared at the woman, remaining quiet as he waited for her to elaborate.

  She sighed. “It wanted me to challenge you, so… I kept sending you off toward difficult things. Goading you to do the next thing, and the next thing. Because what are you going to do when the System sends you a personal command? I’m the custodian of this floor. I… I basically work for the System. Every time you left on one of those impossible quests, I didn’t thing you would return alive.” Felicia looked a little distraught as she spoke, and Xavier couldn’t help but realise the guilt she felt was rather genuine. Then, suddenly, she smiled. “But you survived every single one! Even that damned Elemental Dragon! And now you’re going to leave this floor, and the stress I feel every time I send you out there will finally disappear.”

  Xavier took everything the woman was saying in. Was he surprised that the System had been messaging this woman? He examined his feelings and found that he wasn’t.

  Xavier was quickly becoming used to the System meddling directly in his life—he wouldn’t be on the hundredth floor of the Tower of Champions so soon otherwise—though he hadn’t thought it had been using other people to do that. He couldn’t help but wonder if there were other Denizens out there that had gotten instructions from the System itself in regards to him, though he couldn’t imagine what those instructions might be.

  He shook away those thoughts for now. There was no use dwelling on them. The System could literally do whatever it liked. And as long as the System’s goal was making him face challenges to become as strong as possible… Well, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing in the grand scheme.

  “Don’t worry so much, Felicia,” Xavier said. “Whatever you might be thinking or feeling, you aren’t responsible for my actions. I have a habit of getting myself into trouble I shouldn’t be able to handle. I would have done these things without a hint of your influence.” He frowned, glanced around the tavern. “What you said about there being people after me?”

  Felicia shrugged, gave a shy smile. “A fabrication. The System seemed to think you were taking things too easy. It wanted to push you forward to face The Nightmare and the Elemental Dragon.”

  Xavier nodded. He supposed that made sense.

  “About the Elemental Dragon,” Xavier said. “I don’t have its corpse as proof of finishing the Hunt Quest, but I do have this…” He rested a hand on the Companion Cube. The tavern was a Safe Room. No harm would come to Volkarin if he summoned him out of the cube here.

  And so that was exactly what he did.

  Chaos ensued for a little while after that as half the Champions in the room burst from their seat at the sight of a beast inside of the tavern, though they quickly calmed down at a shout from Felicia, and once they noticed the beast was a Denizen’s companion.

  Xavier showed the barkeep the dragon companion, as proof he’d defeated the Elemental Dragon and obtained its egg. Then he settled what he owed her from all the bets she’d been putting through on his behalf. He’d taken this money from her in the past, but it had been a while, and it had become a hefty sum again.

  Finally, he obtained the reward for completing the Elemental Dragon’s Hunt Quest, sure that it would be something special.

  As he was given the options, Felicia had paused with a frown. “Well, this is different. The System is saying you have the normal choices, or a loot box.”

  Xavier blinked. “It’s offering me a loot box? What’s inside of it?”

  She shook her head. “I have absolutely no idea. You can receive it now, but it says you aren’t able to open it while this floor is still available for you to enter. All my time behind this bar, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  Xavier looked up at the ceiling, as though looking at the System itself. What are you up to? he wondered. It didn’t take him long to come to a decision. He’d thought he’d known what he would choose when coming for this reward, but this…

  How could he pass up this loot box?

  Anything could be inside that thing. And if this was a unique reward… Well, he basically had to take it.

  “Give me the loot box.”

  ~

  It felt strange being back in the Staging Room. Whenever he left the hundredth floor through the exit back to this room, it came up with a notification asking if he wished to complete the floor—at least, it had after he had completed the required ten Hunt Quests, which he had accomplished long ago.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Yet barely any time had actually passed in his own universe. He could do the math, but if he were honest, he’d lost track of the days somewhere. He would find out soon enough.

  The loot box from the System sat inside his inventory. The moment he’d received it he’d looked at its description, only to find that he couldn’t open the box for ten whole hours after he left the hundredth floor.

  That was just rude, System. Xavier had no idea what the reasoning was, but hey, you can’t fight the System.

  Or, well, maybe you could, but it didn’t seem particularly wise.

  He’d received a few titles when he’d finished the floor. Nothing terribly amazing. Though he had gotten a title for soloing the hundredth floor, and the stats he’d gotten from the titles were much higher than he’d gotten for the floors he’d completed previously.

  There was no leader board for the floor. No record to defeat. Which was a shame. But, he supposed he mustn’t be the first Denizen in the Greater Universe to defeat the Elemental Dragon solo. If he had been, he would have gotten a title for that when the Elemental Dragon had died.

  He rubbed his hands together, feeling more excited than he ever had to be back at the tower. That floor had felt like it had lasted forever. And he supposed in a way it had. He’d spent more time on that floor than he had between being integrated into the System and entering it.

  That was a strange realisation.

  And, while he had been moving forward, the Earth and his old party members—not to mention people like Adranial—had been essentially standing still.

  He couldn’t imagine anything of significance had happened back on Earth while he was gone.

  The moment he’d completed the floor a notification had appeared.

  You have completed the fifth section of the Tower of Champions! You may return to your world now, or any time in the next 24 hours. If you do not return to your world during this time, you must continue through to the next floor of the tower immediately.

  If you choose to return to your world, you must remain there for six months before returning to the tower.

  Xavier had raised his eyebrows as the System notification.

  The last time he’d completed a section of the Tower of Champions he’d been automatically returned to Earth without being able to return to the Staging Room at all. This was rather different.

  As much as he wanted to continue through the tower floors, to discover what the next ones held, he wondered if returning to Earth—and the Silver River sector—should be his next move.

  Six months felt like a long time to be away from the tower, but who knew how long it would take him to return back to Earth if he didn’t take this opportunity now? Besides, what if the System randomly threw him up to the two hundredth floor without him having any say?

  There didn’t seem to be any guarantee that the System would stop messing with him.

  At least he would have time to open the loot box before he had to make this decision. Right now, he wasn’t really sure what he would do.

  But he did know that he wanted to see his party. He didn’t know what the chances were that they were down in the tavern and not on one of the tower floors, but he wanted to find out. He also wanted to see Sam. He didn’t know if he would tell Sam how powerful he had become—that he had been able to defeat a high-level C Grade beast.

  That would certainly blow the barkeep’s mind, especially since he’d only been E Grade when he’d left the tavern.

  He touched a hand to the Companion Cube hanging from his belt and wondered if he should let Volkarin loose. There wouldn’t be any threats toward him in this place. Though, Xavier had been able to strike someone down in the tavern—that belligerent man who’d talked crap back to him when he’d been trying to share information about the tower floors. It could be possible that someone might hurt the dragon. But who would want to?

  Maybe I’ll see who’s in the tavern first.

  ~

  The tavern was exactly how Xavier remembered it.

  Sam stood behind the heavily polished bar, cleaning a mug with a rag, his gaze moving from one Champion to the next. Candles flickered on the different tables, and fires burned in multiple hearths. This tavern was large enough to accommodate the entire, five-hundred strong cohort of Champions Xavier was a part of.

  Though he didn’t think even half that number were still alive.

  A few people recognised him as he stepped into the tavern. They raised their drinks his way, knowing who he was, and what he’d done for Earth. Xavier nodded at their gestures and surveyed the room, looking for the people he wanted to see.

  Adranial and her party weren’t currently in attendance. Xavier wasn’t sure how he felt about the woman now. She had insinuated her way into his life, onto his planet. She’d threatened her way to getting there, and now she was in the same Tower of Champions as him, all because that was what her ancestor wanted of her.

  She’d helped him, that was true, but the System had since told him that he wasn’t allowed to garner information about further floors in the tower from outside sources. To keep the floors as challenging as possible, it forced him to go onto each one of them blind.

  Perhaps Xavier should have been frustrated by this. The System had made things rather difficult for him, after all. He could have died on the hundredth floor.

  But he couldn’t argue with the results. There was no way he would already be D Grade by now, or have been able to become as strong as he had, if he hadn’t been pushed so hard so fast.

  Considering he couldn’t gain information about further floors of the tower, he’d kept the fact that he’d been sent to the hundredth floor a secret from the woman. Her ancestor, however, might have discovered on his own, given the fact that he was able to observe Xavier inside the tower.

  Though I don’t recall feeling his presence…

  When Xavier found there was no sign of his party either, he walked straight up to the bar. Sam was peering at him curiously.

  “You’re alive,” Sam said.

  Xavier chuckled. “I am.”

  “The…” The barkeep glanced around. He coughed. “The floor you went to. How did you go?” The man had a burning curiosity.

  Sam was one of the few people who knew what the System had done. Xavier had spoken to him about the Voice of the System that had visited him, though the barkeep hadn’t known anything about it.

  Xavier glanced around the tavern again. He’d not bothered to hide his power from the people of Earth in the past. He hadn’t told Adranial about what had happened to him, but…

  Did he really need to hide it? So what if she knew? So what if the entire Silver River sector knew? Xavier was confident of his power. He saw little threat in the other worlds, and there was still a few years before the restrictions of Earth were taken away.

  Not that those restrictions would even matter once he returned to Earth. D Grades one above his level would be able to come to Earth and wreak havoc if they so wished.

  And suffer the consequences for doing so.

  Perhaps there were people out there in the Greater Universe that he needed to fear. People whom he wouldn’t wish to know about his level of power. But he didn’t know how to hide what he was. Xavier looked over at Sam, feeling confident in his choice. He hadn’t hid his power from the other Champions on the hundredth floor. Soon enough, word of what he’d done would spread no matter what he said in this moment.

  “I advanced to D Grade, completed the hundredth floor, and killed a Level 385 C Grade beast while I was there.” Xavier gave the man a little grin.

  Sam just stared back at him, slack jawed, his mouth falling open. It took him a moment to form words. “I…” He swallowed. “I’ve never known you to lie, Xavier, but—are you perhaps playing some sort of joke on me?”

  Xavier shook his head slowly. “I’ll do a truth contract with you, if you wish.”

  The barkeep shook his head and shut his eyes. His forehead creased deeply. “No. Somehow… As insane as that sounds, I actually believe you.”

  “Oh, and, uh, there’s one other thing…” His wings had been retracted when he’d entered the tavern. He rarely retracted them in full—he could retract them into his back, making them invisible to the naked eye—as he felt oddly comforted having them out, but it helped when walking around cramped areas.

  No one stood beside him on either side in front of the bar. Xavier extended his large black dragon wings in full in an instant. With the dark robes and the huge wings he struck quite the terrifying figure, he was sure.

  “I also became a dragonkin.”

  Sam’s shock was palpable. “You became a… a dragonkin?”

  “Xavier?”

  It was a woman’s voice, and it came from behind him, by the tavern’s entrance. Xavier had noticed her and the two men she was with his Farscope ability the moment they’d walked in.

  He smiled and turned to face the members of his old party.

  Accidental Champion!

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