The door Empress Larona stepped through opened onto a long hallway filled with doors on either side. She stepped swiftly down the hallway with a graceful stride. Xavier followed behind, glancing at the different doors as they passed them.

  None of the doors had any markings on them, saying what might be inside. A closed door, a secret behind it—Xavier had the intense desire to open every single one to peek at what might be there.

  The empress stopped at a door roughly halfway down the corridor and opened it without hesitation. What met them on the other side appeared to be some kind of workshop. A massive table sat in the middle of the room with lots of different implements Xavier couldn’t identify strewn atop it. There were a myriad of different materials, along with dozens of kinds of equipment just sitting around the room—armour, robes, staves, spears, swords.

  And there were the strange wands—or styluses, he supposed—that she’d pulled out back in the shop when he’d first visited.

  “My workroom.” Empress Larona gestured to a space on the worktable that was bare. “Place the remains here,” she said in a cool, detached voice as she rolled up the sleeves of her robe.

  Xavier raised an eyebrow at the woman but did as he was told. He suddenly felt a weight of guilt that he hadn’t before at what he’d done to the man. A man whom he hadn’t even learnt the name of.

  Empress Larona peered at him with a curious expression as he summoned the corpse of the swordsman to lay on the place she’d indicated. “You still feel.”

  Xavier frowned. “Of course I do.”

  The empress inclined her head. “Of course,” she said in an odd tone.

  Xavier wondered for a moment… This woman had been tracking his various fates since before he was born—that was what she’d told him. She should know he still felt, shouldn’t she? That he still cared?

  Unless that’s not always the case. Unless, sometimes, I throw out all the morals I still have that remain.

  The empress turned her attention to the swordsman’s corpse. She leant forward over the table and inspected it. “Interesting,” she muttered, picking up the man’s arm then let it drop back to the table with a thud. Her eyes glazed over for the merest of moments until she nodded knowingly. “Yes. This will do nicely.”

  Xavier folded his hands behind his back, wondering how this would work. Alexic hadn’t told him all the particulars. He wasn’t really sure what to expect from all of this. He still didn’t like the idea of hiding, but it felt far better to hide now than to deal with his enemies through the help of those far more powerful than himself.

  “So, how does this work?” Xavier asked, feeling a little awkward just standing behind the empress with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs.

  Empress Larona, who had been leaning over the body of the swordsman, straightened and peered back at Xavier. “You didn’t read the book I gave you, did you?”

  Xavier opened his mouth, about to say that he had, when he realised the woman wasn’t talking about He Who Fights With Beasts, but rather the book she’d gifted him—An Inscriber’s Handbook, from F Grade to E Grade, by Elitsa Flian. “No,” he replied. “I had been meaning to.”

  That wasn’t a lie. He had intended to read the book, to sate his curiosity, but he’d gotten a little addicted to reading the Pantaloon serial and kept putting it off.

  The woman smiled at him knowingly. “Indeed. Well, it is always better to see something demonstrated in front of you than to merely read about it. The art of inscription is one that can benefit any Denizen, if they’re willing to learn. Learning it has helped me further my path in ways I would never have expected.”

  She turned back to face the corpse.

  Xavier took a step forward, to get a better look at what was happening on the worktable, even if he wasn’t sure he wished to see it. He supposed it would be a bit foolish to be squeamish now, after all the things that he’d done. He’d ripped into his enemies with his bare hands and dismantled countless different beasts.

  Surely he could watch this procedure.

  “You aren’t going to… flay his skin, are you?” Xavier asked with a raised eyebrow.

  The empress chuckled. “Nothing so barbaric.”

  Something appeared in her hand. A stylus. It wasn’t the same one that she’d used in the bookstore, when he had first met the woman as Elitsa. This one was clearly of a higher grade, even if Xavier couldn’t identify it while it was in the woman’s hands. It had a crystal embedded at the bottom in a claw setting, like the pommel of a sword or the head of a cane. Runes shifted and glowed on the surface of the stylus—which appeared to be made of some sort of metal—moving around as though they were alive.

  “I must take something from this man, but it isn’t anything physical. It will not require the sharp edge of a scalpel to pull out.”

  “Must you take something from his cores?” Xavier asked. The man’s energies would no longer be in his body, now that he was dead, so he wasn’t sure how that would work—besides, Xavier had drained the man before his death.

  “Nothing so mundane as that.” She turned back to face him and smiled. “I must take his soul.”

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  Xavier blinked. On instinct, he hadn’t reaped the swordsman’s soul. At the time, he’d simply not wanted to tamper with the body. He didn’t know what would be needed, but he hadn’t thought it would be his soul.

  “You are rather familiar with taking souls, are you not?”

  Xavier inclined his head. He took another step forward. Inscribing had only ever briefly intrigued him in the past. Now, his curiosity was truly piqued.

  He’d never seen anyone else take someone’s soul before.

  “How do you do it? How do you reap the soul? Do you have a spell?”

  The empress smiled knowingly. “Ah. The soul. That has garnered your interest. I thought it might. That was why I handed you that book—there is mention of a procedure like this within its pages.” She stood straight and raised her stylus-arm. It definitely looked like she was wielding a wand. She wouldn’t be out of place in a Harry Potter movie.

  “Inscribing isn’t about spells, not entirely, anyway—it is about rituals. Not the type that you perform, nothing to do with the Otherworld. These are rituals that involve deep energies of the universe, capturing power that is already there, and turning it toward one’s own end—much as anything else a Denizen does. Though many Inscribers don’t quite see it this way. They imagine the art of inscribing is about the skills they gain, missing the connection to rituals altogether.”

  Xavier tilted his head to the side. “You talk about Inscribers as though they aren’t a class?”

  “Oh, they are a class, but they are also a profession, much like writing. One can embrace it as an entire path, or one can walk other paths while still exploring it. You should know—not everything is so black and white as it might first seem. The System may not allow one to walk backward on the path, but it says nothing of detours.”

  She made a few intricate waves with the stylus. She was drawing runes into the air. They appeared and disappeared with alacrity, so swiftly even he had trouble seeing them. The woman moved considerably faster than he had expected.

  A True C Grade. Not like anyone, or anything, I’ve faced before.

  He tried to imagine what kind of ritual this woman might be performing. He had a rather strong Ritual skill, at least for his level, and yet he’d never seen anything like this before.

  Xavier had known there were other types of rituals that one could perform, but it hadn’t been something he’d wished to pursue in the past. Now, he wondered if he might have to rethink that.

  He peered closely at the swordsman’s corpse as a ball of light began to emerge from within it. His eyes widened at the sight of the soul.

  “I thought you might be able to see it,” the empress said.

  The soul didn’t enter the woman, as the souls that Xavier reaped entered him. Rather, it entered her stylus. The stylus took on an amazingly bright glow, but only for a second—as though it was registering the soul’s acquisition.

  “That was the easy part.” The empress turned to face him. “A soul, as you know, contains much of the person who once held it. Other than being a source of raw power, it contains their memories, if one only knows how to access them. It contains remnants of their power. And it contains remnants of what they once were—their class. For a Denizen’s abilities become imprinted onto their soul even in death. Though the fresher the soul, the more likely this procedure is successful. That means we must move quickly.”

  “This sounds more like a soul grafting,” Xavier muttered. Something like that… He imagined it would have unforeseen consequences.

  Empress Larona shook her head. “Soul Grafting is possible, but a very different process, one often performed on the undead, not on a living host. Not unless you want to be fighting another entity for dominance over your own body.” She waved a hand. “It isn’t something I have delved into. Class Grafting, though complex, is a much simpler procedure. It will not affect your skill or your spells. You will not have access to anything the class had available, but you will be able to see detailed information about it—the name of the class, and the spells the deceased once held.”

  Xavier made a hmm sound. That was interesting. He hadn’t anticipated the ability to see the spells the man once held. “And this will make it appear as though I am this class? And the level the man was in life?”

  Empress Larona nodded. “Indeed.”

  Xavier cocked his head. “That’s how you appeared as an E Grade Inscriber.”

  “Of course. Don’t worry, the woman I killed for that Class Grafting…” Her eyes got a faraway look in them. Something cold seemed to overtake her. “She deserved such a fate, after what she planned to do.”

  “Planned?” It only took a moment. “You killed her for something she had yet to do? Something you had seen in a vision? I thought you said the future was always shifting.”

  “Oh, the future constantly shifts, Xavier Collins, but as I have said, there are some things that are far more solid than others. This was one of those things. It is not the first time I have meted out justice upon someone who is yet to commit a crime.” She raised her chin, almost in challenge. “I govern the worlds under my rule however I see fit.”

  Xavier didn’t mean to offend the woman. “As is your right.”

  Empress Larona nodded sharply in reply.

  He wondered if he would do the same as she did, if he were in her position. It seemed very… Dystopian, to persecute people of crimes they were yet to actually do, but perhaps she rid the galaxy of some truly terrible people in the process.

  Xavier found it interesting how the woman spoke of governing. She was a tyrant. Judge, jury, and executioner. But of course she was. The Greater Universe was a place where power was everything.

  Might may not make right, but it sure as hell is hard to argue with.

  That was one of the things that made him worry about ruling himself. About expanding his sphere of influence. The only right to it he had was the power he possessed.

  It wasn’t as though he actually knew how to rule.

  Xavier frowned as something occurred to him. “This Class Grafting… Are you able to toggle it on and off?”

  The empress smiled, the coldness that had been in her voice a mere moment ago warming as though it hadn’t been there in the first place. “Yes, you will. In fact. You can even hold different Class Grafts.” She paused. “Scan me again.”

  Xavier did as the woman asked.

  {Level 254 - Elven Oracle}

  Xavier blinked. Elven Oracle?

  The woman’s appearance shifted again. Gone was the raven black hair that had draped down her shoulders. Now, she had silver hair braided into a crown, and her features were sharper—her ears were sharper too.

  “It pays to have many guises,” the empress said.

  “The Class Grafting doesn’t change my appearance though, does it?”

  “Correct. That I owe to an item.” She raised her right arm and pulled down her sleeve, revealing a golden bracelet with a ruby set into it. “This has an imbued ability. Glamour. It’s a C Grade item. Hard for any in this sector to pierce.”

  Xavier stared at the bracelet. Though it wasn’t his style, he coveted its imbued ability. Being able to hide himself from scans was one thing, but changing his appearance…

  “You don’t happen to have a spare?”

  Empress Larona gave him a cheeky grin. In her elven guise he couldn’t help but be reminded of the women that tended to hang around Famarial…

  Xavier prevented his mind from drifting.

  “I thought you didn’t wish for my protection, Xavier Collins?” the empress said.

  “Of course not,” Xavier muttered.

  The empress waved her stylus. “Now, let’s get on with this.”

  Accidental Champion!

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