Xavier, Volkarin, Rhaalir, and Romalda entered the First Descent of the Hell Moon Thazamar.

  Thazamar was the first of the Hell Moons of Demonica, three dungeon-like moons that lay on the other side of the universe to Earth.

  The moons inhabited one of the first sectors to have ever been integrated by the System. They were ancient—almost as ancient as Adranial’s ancestor.

  Stepping inside a place that had been around for a billions years was a surreal feeling. The rock walls looked no different to cave rock back in his own world, except for all the drawings and words that had been etched into them over time. Some faded, some starkly visible. All seemingly undecipherable to him. Leavings from Denizens who’d visited this place, or marks made by the demon inhabitants, Xavier didn’t know, and he didn’t care to pause to find out.

  Xavier had been on guard from the moment he stepped through the portal and arrived in this place. Thazamar, despite feeling like a dungeon or the Tower of Champions, didn’t follow the same rules. He wasn’t entering an instance, or an entirely new alternate universe created by the System. This was a living, evolving place, one where he might encounter anything—or anyone.

  Even A Grades could be lurking down here…

  Volkarin huffed a puff of smoke into the cavern. It was more than large enough to house the dragon. “I smell demons,” he growled, bending his legs and arching his back, his foreclaws digging into the stone ground.

  Romalda rolled her eyes, flicking her raven black hair behind her shoulder. “That’s because this place is filled with demons.”

  The reborn necromancer was flanked by her two undead bodyguards. Xavier knew she would have a hell of a lot more undead minions soon—she had gathered the corpses of those he’d killed when he’d recently faced a D Grade army on a frozen planet back in his sector, and they all awaited her use inside his Storage Ring.

  Xavier glanced at Volkarin. He had half a mind to put the dragon back into his Storage Ring as he worried about how vulnerable he was, but that wasn’t the plan. The first few descents of Thazamar were inhabited by lower grade enemies than Xavier was after—but they would be a perfect place for Volkarin, Romalda, and Rhaalir—the elven ghost piloting the Spirit Golem—to train.

  The Spirit Golem’s head turned left and right as though on a swivel, Rhaalir taking in everything in the cave.

  “Come on,” Xavier said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  The entrance was eerily deserted. He strained his ears but all he could hear was the lava flow outside, the gentle hiss as it burned whatever it encountered in its path—the moon was so hot that the lava didn’t cool as swiftly as it would back on Earth—and the sounds of their travel as their boots and paws and golem-feet treaded through this ancient place.

  Farther in the large cavern that was the entrance they came upon a tunnel. The tunnel was huge—broad and tall enough to fit a dragon three times the current size of Volkarin—and it descended downward, long steps carved straight into the stone.

  The tunnel was pitch black, and so they had to light the way. Xavier—as always—had Spiritual Trifecta cast upon himself, but the silvery glow that surrounded him didn’t reach all that far. His eyesight was enhanced enough that he could pierce the gloom, but it couldn’t pierce where there was no light. Not even with his Farscope.

  It made him think of the time he had entered the Stone Bear’s domain, though this blackness wasn’t so all-encompassing as that had been.

  Volkarin lit their way. Flames burst from his powerful maw, then swirled, gathering into a large ball of fire that hovered in the air above them, lighting their way.

  Xavier had other means to light his way if necessary for when he would be fighting on his own, items he’d picked up over time that he’d never had much use for.

  They didn’t hear a sound that couldn’t be attributed to them until Xavier’s boot touched the bottom of the stairs. Walking down those stairs, he couldn’t help but think of the fellowship travelling through the tunnels of Moria. His boot touching the ground seemed to be a signal to the demons nearby, like that shield dropped down the well.

  Strange, hoarse roars came from deep within the dark cavern at the bottom of the stairs. Something skittered along the cave walls. A lot of somethings. Xavier, despite himself, felt a small hint of fear. Something primal, he supposed. But it wasn’t the ancient, human fear of the dark, rooted in their psyche from the moment they were born.

  This was something deeper—this was a fear that came from his new race.

  I’m not human anymore.

  “They come,” Volkarin whispered.

  The hovering fireball suddenly enlarged and hovered farther forward down the cavern, its flames licking the air. The fireball grew so large it was able to illuminate even the far walls—and all the demons crawling toward them. They skittered along not only the walls, but the ceiling and floor as well.

  They looked like spiders. If spiders were as large as cars and had legs that resembled swords.

  Xavier scanned one of the demonic beasts, using his Identify skill.

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  {Bladed Crawler – Level 140}

  A Bladed Crawler is a demon born in darkness. They may resemble the humble spider, but unlike spiders they do not have eyes. They hunt through touch, sound, and echolocation, the chittering of their many legs clicking against the stones helping them “see” around them.

  Bulbous Crawlers are immune to fire.

  Immune to fire.

  Xavier supposed that tracked, considering the world in which the things lived.

  On closer inspection, he could see the differences between these beasts and the spiders he was familiar with. The lack of eyes was one thing, but it was the bulbous midsection that gave them away—it looked oddly deformed, and each one was unique to the other.

  The beast resembled a spider in the same way that a child’s drawing of one might, and instead of the usual eight legs, these had ten. The noise was cacophonous.

  Individually, these beasts were weak enough for Volkarin, Rhaalir, and Romalda to face alone. But with how many there were…

  His gaze took it all in. There weren’t merely dozens of these Bladed Crawlers—there were hundreds.

  Xavier had come here to train himself—in one of the deeper descents, where the demons he faced would be far more powerful than the ones before them now—but he didn’t want to lose out on the opportunity for the others to train. This, however, wasn’t a mess he would leave them in alone.

  He took a step forward. The noise his boots made on the stone—moments ago one of the only sounds he heard in this place—couldn’t be heard over the chittering, skittering demonic beasts.

  The hundreds of beasts surged forward at the sight of him moving toward them. Xavier smiled. They were nothing compared to him—nothing that he couldn’t handle.

  If they knew his true power, they wouldn’t be running toward him. They would be fleeing in the other direction.

  There was something intoxicating about that. He’d felt the same when he’d been standing in front of the D Grade army from two different worlds he’d recently faced.

  “What’s the plan, Xavier?” Romalda said. Her voice sounded even, strong. It showed no hint of the fear that he could so easily sense within her. The woman put on a good face.

  Xavier figured he would show instead of tell. He cast Time Alteration, creating the bubble around himself and his three companions, not spreading it out far enough for the demons to enter.

  The time dilation field snapped into being around them. The hundreds of demonic spiders froze. They resembled statues. Hundreds of statues built straight into the floor, walls, and ceiling of this ancient place.

  “Ah.” Romalda’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  Xavier smiled. “There’s a lot about me you are yet to know, Romalda.” He faced the demons again. “Your spells won’t cool down inside of the time dilation field, but I can expand the bubble slowly, bringing in a few of the demons at a time, and the three of you can kill them at your leisure.”

  Xavier turned and walked back over to the long steps. He sat on the third step from the bottom. “Are you three ready?”

  Volkarin, Rhaalir, and Romalda exchanged glances. Three once powerful Denizens, once more dwelling in the Mortal Realm, all through drastically different means.

  In that moment, Xavier saw a bond form. It may have been a reluctant one, but it was a bond, nonetheless.

  Xavier still wasn’t sure about each of these people—about who they had been in their original lives. Volkarin, a bloodthirsty dragon with an insatiable hunger.

  Rhaalir, an elf that thought a great deal about himself and seemingly little about humans. And finally Romalda, a former B Grade necromancer who was, for all intents and purposes, a terrible tyrant.

  Xavier had restored each of them to life, in varying ways. He’d secured Volkarin a true vessel and performed a ritual so the dragon could live within it. He’d contracted Rhaalir and given him enough Soul Energy to make him more solid in the Mortal Realm, even if he was still a spirit from the Otherworld. Then, he had given the elf a Spirit Golem.

  Then, most recently, he’d helped Romalda escape a dungeon that the System had reincarnated her into.

  These people—the dragon and the necromancer, at least—were monsters. Their morals didn’t align with what Xavier considered good.

  And yet, he had helped them, was still helping them, and intended to go on doing so for the foreseeable future.

  Each was an undeniably powerful resource for information, and each would soon no doubt be powerful in their own right—especially over the years Xavier knew he still had before he faced the ultimate threat that lay in his future—but was that the only reason he kept them around?

  Because they were assets?

  Or was it because their presence, the things they’d done, made him feel like less of the monster being thrust into the Greater Universe by the System had made him become? He wasn’t so bad compared with Volkarin or Romalda, after all. He was good even. Wasn’t he? Despite the countless people he’d killed…

  All of that has been necessary. And I’m still me. I’m still a protector.

  Xavier pushed those thoughts away as he expanded the time dilation field, letting a half-dozen of the demonic beasts enter.

  Chaos reigned within the bubble as Xavier’s E Grade companions fought the Bladed Crawlers. And, at the back of the bubble, breathing evenly and seemingly paying no attention to the fight, Xavier pulled out the book he’d been given by Elitsa Flian—a woman who’d ended up being the Empress Larona.

  He looked at the cover—An Inscriber’s Handbook, from F Grade to E Grade, by Elitsa Flian.

  Xavier split his mind, keeping part of his attention on the fight in case he had to intervene, and the rest of his attention on the book before him.

  He made himself read the book as slowly as he could, not merely digesting the information, but absorbing it, thinking about it. The handbook taught him about the different runes—not all of them. There were apparently countless thousands of different runes that could be used in the art of inscribing, and yet more that may remain unknown. The runes were strange. They weren’t a created language, at least according to the author.

  They were something that had been discovered. As though the universe itself had a programming language, and behind how it all worked were these runes.

  When Xavier had read that, his head had snapped up. His mind had turned.

  He’d wondered if that programming language—the way he had thought about it, though not quite the way the book had described it—was the language of the System. How it manipulated the universe.

  But that theory didn’t hold water as he kept reading. It turned out that this “language,” the runes, had been around before the System. There was evidence of it being used on planets before they were integrated. Xavier had known that powers, magic, energy, was prevalent around the universe well before the System ever arrived, even if it had been incredibly thin on Earth, thought it was something he rarely thought about.

  Still, the System might very well have utilised this language for its own causes…

  He tapped his fingers on the hardcover of the book as he thought about the possible consequences of there being an underlying language of the universe, and just what that could mean.

  Perhaps there was something to this art of inscribing after all.

  Xavier wondered if this would be the next path of power he ended up walking.

  As he raised his head from the book, the Bladed Crawlers he’d let enter the time dilation field had all been slain.

  Without hesitation—without giving his companions a moment to rest—Xavier expanded the bubble, and chaos ensured once more.

  Accidental Champion!

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