Xavier cursed himself a fool for letting that dark-haired murderer, Alistair Reed, get away.

He had underestimated the man. Since he’d returned to Earth—even long before then—he’d been facing challenges that he considered to be beneath him.

As arrogant as that sounded, it had been the truth.

Unfortunately, that had led him to not taking any threat seriously.

Xavier searched for Alistair Reed. He tried to go after the man. But he found no trail to follow. The dark-haired, dagger-wielding murderer was nowhere to be found. With the ability to not only teleport, but hide his aura, the man could be anywhere.

As Xavier searched for Alistair, he moved through a city that looked both familiar and foreign to him at the same time. It didn’t take him long to come across the bodies of the dead. He stopped in the middle of a large square as he stared at the injuries the slain had endured. It had been a camp full of humans. The way they had been killed—slashed and stabbed by a weapon that left darkly rotting wounds—he knew who’d done this.

The men and women he passed, ranging from teenagers to the grey-haired, were all wearing familiar gear. Basic gear—the stuff he and his party had received after being integrated into the System and choosing their classes.

Which meant that this had been a tutorial.

One woman was lying on her back, a look of wide-eyed terror frozen in her eyes. Xavier wasn’t usually one for slowing down. He’d left countless corpses behind himself, in his journey through the different floors, and when taking down enemy invaders since returning to Earth.

But this was different.

There wasn’t time to give these people a proper burial, but he felt a compulsion to kneel down by the woman and shut her eyes so they would no longer be frozen in fear.

“The man who did this will pay for his crimes, I promise.”

How naive Xavier had been, to think when he returned to Earth he would only find allies in those from his own world. How naive he had been to think that those able to help would also be willing.

Alistair Reed may have been killing invaders when they’d met, but the man killed indiscriminately. Not for Earth, but for himself.

Or, perhaps, for chaos…

Was this man what it looked like for someone to have chosen the third moral faction?

Xavier, with no way of knowing how to find the bastard responsible for all this carnage, decided he simply needed to move forward. Alistair didn’t know how much higher-level Xavier was. Hopefully, the man simply thought he was a bit stronger, and not leagues ahead.

He may want chaos, but would he doom Earth to get it?

Xavier didn’t know—he would find the man, and kill him for what he’d done. But the odds were that wouldn’t happen today.

He only had so much time out here before he had to return to camp. And before he did, he would have to provide Adranial with the coordinates for Earth.

And he needed to burn off the rage that he was feeling.

Xavier used the Basic Viewing Glass he’d taken from Commander Alden Trellot’s Storage Ring to locate the nearest portals. He swiftly took out three more invader camps, reaching Level 102 in the process, slowly filling out his quest log. Considering how many portals were in this city, it wasn’t lost on him that taking out four invader camps wasn’t even dealing with a quarter of the enemies that had taken a foothold here—but that seemed like a pretty good achievement given the time he’d been back on Earth.

Counting the two camps he’d taken out before making it to the city, Xavier had taken out a total of six. When he came upon the seventh camp, he couldn’t sense any of the invaders at all.

He’d been attracted by a portal at the bottom of a fifteen-storey apartment building. Though the place appeared to be deserted, with not a single aura in sight, Xavier wasn’t about to pass it by, nor was he about to close the portal from the outside to alert those within of his presence.

Since he’d inadvertently let Alistair Reed get away, he wasn’t about to underestimate another enemy, so he was approaching things a little more cautiously than before.

The portal appeared to be underground, down in the building’s parking lot.

Xavier made his way to the portal first. There was a good chance that the invaders had done something that allowed them to hide their auras within the building’s walls. Going to the portal first would mean none of them would be able to slip past him.

He found an entrance down to the basement, a stairwell that led from the street. It had been easy enough for him to break through the locked door and make his way down the concrete steps. After all the time he’d spent fighting on other worlds, in different landscapes—none of them feeling like modern Earth—being back in an Earth city again felt odd.

It felt wrong, seeing the strange and the familiar so firmly interlocked together.

The portal stood in the centre of the parking lot. The light bleeding off it illuminated a beat-up old Honda to its right, and a shiny new white Tesla to its left. Xavier had memories of wanting to drive a Tesla—wanting to own one. Looking at it now, he found he had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever.

The world had changed. His desires, his goals, were no longer the same.

The parking lot was far from deserted. There were several Denizens, all Elven, by the look of them, making their way back and forth to the portal down the basement parking lot’s ramp. They were directing carts through it, carts that appeared to be powered by some kind of magical motor. Xavier tilted his head to the side. He’d seen a few different marvels in his time since becoming a Denizen—flying ships being one of them—but this technology looked… almost Earth-like.

It was what was piled inside the carts that Xavier found most interesting.

Phones. Monitors. TVs. Laptops. Routers. Car remotes. Tablets. Keyboards. Mice. And all manner of other tech. The invaders were scouring through Earth’s technology and taking it all through the portal. There were even a few weapons piled on in there—he spotted some handguns and rifles.

As far as Xavier knew, technology barely worked in this new reality. The battery on his laptop had died long ago, and the screen had been smashed to boot, and with it any chance of assessing all the writing he had on there. He’d given up hope on being able to recharge it when he returned to Earth.

Had he been wrong about technologies ineffectiveness?

He stayed hidden for a few moments longer, trying to discern more about the people he was observing.

Now that he was in the building, he was able to see their auras clearly. None of the elven Denizens appeared to be all that strong. The ones he could see down here were only Level 5—even lower than he’d expected.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

These people are doing what amounts to menial labour. Wouldn’t their efforts be better spent elsewhere?

The elves weren’t wearing traditional armour, either. They had on armour that looked more like something a member of SWAT might wear. Padded, dark armour that suited a modern world far more than it did a medieval one. It was a disconcerting picture.

And every now and then, the elves would touch their ears and speak a few words. The words weren’t something he could understand. That jolted and confused him for a moment. When he’d first encountered the goblins, back on his university campus, he hadn’t been able to understand them. Then later, he’d been able to understand everyone he’d encountered through the Tower of Champions.

When he returned to Earth, he’d assumed he wouldn’t be able to understand the invaders, as the Tower of Champions was no longer translating for him.

He’d been wrong—he could understand them perfectly. But perhaps the reason for that was because they wanted him to understand them. These elves, on the other hand, were talking to each other. It was all a little confusing.

They’re communicating with someone, but not through a Communication Stone.

He supposed it made sense that there would be other ways to communicate over long distances than just Communication Stones.

Are they using some form of radio? How did they manage to get it to work?

Xavier figured he wouldn’t get those questions answered by simply hiding behind a pillar in a parking lot and spying on these invaders. He had to speak with them, not that he’d had luck with that in the past.

They’ll probably have binding contracts that I’m unable to break, just like that commander.

But there was only one way to find out if that was true or not. Before stepping out from the pillar, Xavier put down the Subspace Communication Area Blackout Array, inserting the different rods into the ground where they were concealed from sight behind different pillars in the parking lot. He found it easy enough to push them through the concrete, and he could do it slow and even, so it didn’t make much sound. He left the portal open. While he was being cautious, it was difficult to send the message he wished if the portal was closed.

After putting down the Subspace Communication Area Blackout Array, Xavier watched the elves for a little while longer. He needed to ensure that whatever communicators they were currently using were actually affected. He didn’t know why he thought they wouldn’t be, but he also wanted to ensure he wasn’t making a crucial mistake in assuming they would be.

This didn’t take long for him to discover. One of the elves, a woman who’d just sent a cart through the portal, touched her ear and said a few words. Paused. Then frowned. She touched her ear again and repeated the same three-word phrase several times in a row.

Then, she began to look worried. She called over to another elf who was heading toward the portal with a cart full of CRTs—where the hell the elven man had found such old, bulky computer monitors, Xavier had no idea.

What in the world would they even want with those?

The other elf tried his own communicator. Soon, a small crowd had gathered by the portal, all of them with worried looks on their faces.

Xavier cast Willpower Infusion. Purple mist flooded into the room and locked onto everyone within in it in a second. The elves only had enough time to glance at the incoming mist and widen their eyes in fear before it took them over.

Xavier stepped out of the shadows. He could have killed everyone down here, but he realised he needed some leverage. Xavier controlled the people arrayed in front of him, making them walk ahead of him through to the stairwell that led up to the ground floor of the building. There was an elevator, but even if the thing worked, he figured it was a bad idea to use it. Besides, he had about a dozen of the invading elves in tow.

Twice now, Xavier had encountered an object with the ability to cut off his mental control over another. Such a device would have ruined him when he was fighting the Lord of the Endless Horde, yet among the different invaders it seemed almost common.

I still need to figure out a way to counter that damned device—to deactivate it.

Considering how much these elves appeared to covet technology, chances were one of them had such a thing in their Storage Rings.

That’s part of the reason why Xavier hadn’t just killed these elves. He wanted to draw out anyone who might possess such a device, that way, he would be able to ask them questions of it—questions his Identify spell hadn’t been able to answer.

Whoever is in charge of these people isn’t going to be down here. They’ll be farther up the building. And it’s those in charge who are likely to have the best items.

On the ground floor, Xavier found… more elves. They’d barricaded the entire apartment building, boarding up the windows and doors with what looked like ordinary wood, but on close inspection was some sort of enchanted wood that gave extra defensive properties—and also enabled the building to be blocked from their auras being visible.

If it wasn’t for that Basic Viewing Glass I took from Commander Alden Trellot, I wouldn’t have been able to find this place at all. They would have been completely invisible to my senses.

The defences even muffled sound, so the only way he would have found them would have been stumbling onto them.

What Xavier was glad for was the fact that he found no sign of any slaves being within the apartment building—though he was beginning to think of the place as more of a compound. An invader compound—yes, that sounded about right. He marked it, and the portal, on his mini-map, to remind him in future of the places that he’d already covered.

Xavier went room to room, to ensure he found everyone on the floor. Like in the parking lot below, he didn’t kill any of these elves. He hadn’t encountered any that were above Level 7. They were incredibly easy for him to control with his Willpower Infusion spell. From the parking lot and the ground floor alone, he had about two hundred of the elves under his mental command.

He didn’t encounter any resistance—there wasn’t any resistance these people were able to give.

Xavier pushed up through the floors. He almost felt guilty for how easy this was.

It felt like moving up in floors in the tower. When he finally made it to the top floor of the apartment building, he’d lost count of the number of minds within his control, but he knew it must be at least fifteen hundred—the largest invasion force he’d come across yet, and they were all holed up in the same building.

They probably have some people outside, right? Otherwise how else would they be getting all of this tech?

What he’d noticed as he’d gone through the various different rooms, controlling more and more of them, was the fact that all the technology in the place had been taken away. There were no computers on desks, no TVs in living rooms. Even the air-conditioning units, microwaves, and fridges had been taken away.

He was also a little confused by the fact that they’d been using carts and not Storage Rings, then he’d noticed that none of the elves he encountered actually possessed Storage Rings, perhaps because they were all low level and couldn’t afford one.

The final of the invader’s compound was a penthouse suite turned throne room. An elven man had converted it into his own idea of luxury, and was lounging on a couch in the middle of the expansive space with three scantily clad elven women doting on him, one was bringing him food, another massaging his shoulders, and the third was even playing some sort of violin-like instrument and singing a hauntingly beautiful song.

It looked like some teenage boy’s fantasy.

Xavier didn’t use Willpower Infusion on this man, but he did use it on the women. It took the man a moment to realise what was going on. Apparently, he hadn’t noticed Xavier enter. When he did, he stood up and raised his hands, fear in his eyes.

The elven man had on rich-looking robes of gold, which looked rather different to what everyone else around him was wearing. He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but he was wearing three Storage Rings on his fingers. He had long, blond hair that flowed down his shoulders.

He pointed at Xavier with wide eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

Xavier flicked his staff. The crystal glowed. His Heavy Telekinesis spell wasn’t the most accurate, by nature, but he’d gotten a lot better at targeting smaller objects. At first those small objects had been necks.

These would be the smallest objects he’d ever targeted.

The Storage Rings flew straight off of the man’s fingers and into Xavier’s hand. He caught them smoothly in the air, then deposited them into a pocket of his robes. There was a series of cracks as this happened.

He’d unintentionally broken the man’s fingers.

“No Mental Defence Arrays for you,” Xavier muttered.

“Mental Defence Array?” The elven man blinked, then looked around him. “You’re… you’re controlling my people?”

Xavier made the fifteen hundred elves he controlled enter the penthouse suite one by one. Or, at least, he made a few hundred of them enter. The suite was large, but it would be far too crowded it he made everyone enter.

“Yes,” Xavier said. “Every single one of them.” He took a step forward and tilted his head to the side as he peered at the elven man. “Do you have a binding contract on yourself that stops you from answering my questions?”

The elf swallowed. He looked at the women beside him, but they weren’t about to offer help—they were standing stock still, controlled by Xavier’s spell. He looked at the other elves Xavier had made enter.

There was no help in sight for him.

Finally, he looked Xavier in the eye, and released a long sigh. “I have no binding contract.” He hung his head. “Please… please don’t hurt my people. I’ll do anything you wish.”

Xavier smiled.

Finally, I’ve found someone who might be able to answer my questions.