Xavier was surrounded by portals, an army amassed in front of him. He hadn’t moved from this one spot just outside the fortress of this alien world—this world of invaders who’d come to try and take Earth. Over a thousand of their soldiers lay dead on the ground from his initial attack, but his Soul Strike spell hadn’t taken down as many of them as he’d anticipated.
And now they were puncturing him with arrows.
He had about seven different arrows sticking out of him. He’d tried to summon his Portal Block item from out of his inventory and slam its spikes into the ground, but as fast as he was, he hadn’t been fast enough.
Which was something that took him by surprise.
Every time he slammed one of the spikes through the stone ground of the steps, it would be dislodged by an arrow coming through one of those bastard portals before he got the next one in.
Xavier swore under his breath. He cast Core Burn on one of the far-off enemies in the field. He still had control of the soldiers he’d taken over as he’d made his way through the fortress. With a mental command, he ordered them to attack their allies, hoping it would cause a distraction. Some chaos.
Coming here, he’d hoped he would find some sort of challenge. Hoped it wouldn’t be easy—but also that the threats he encountered here wouldn’t be enough to kill him.
It was a delicate balance.
This was certainly becoming more of a challenge than he’d anticipated.
He’d foolishly already harvested all the souls of the dead that he’d killed, which meant there were currently no souls that he could Soul Step to. When the Core Burn spell did its work, burning through the enemy soldier’s core that he’d used it on and killing him in the process, the skill gained another rank.
Core Burn has taken a step forward on the path!
Core Burn is now a Rank 11 spell.
One cannot walk backward on the path.
He Soul Stepped to the dead man. He took a stumbling step as he materialised on the other side, something entirely too undignified, and swiped his scythe-staff into the nearest enemy’s neck, taking off their head with ease.
I’ve got this, he told himself. I’ve been through worse. This is nothing. These people, this army, is weak compared to me.
He could still make his statement. Still deal with these enemies.
Not to mention retrieve the spikes from his Portal Block item, which were still back at the top of the steps.
As Xavier moved through the enemies, slashing his blade through necks, shoulders, bellies, and thighs, he yanked the arrows out of his body with his left hand. He didn’t often wield his scythe-staff one handed, and it was a strange sensation doing so.
His body had already healed around some of the arrows. Yanking them out was painful. He gritted his teeth through it, moving as fast as he could.
Then two things happened—first, those small, bastard portals started appearing around him again. Whoever was using them had taken slightly longer to find him than he’d expected they would, which he thought was a blessing until the second thing happened.
The connection he had to those he controlled disappeared. He’d been a moment away from casting Willpower Infusion for a second time, but now that would be futile.
Someone had just used an item to block his control.
Xavier swore again. This time, it wasn’t under his breath.
Items shouldn’t have so much power!
He knew his frustration was hypocritical, considering how much use he’d gotten out of his Portal Block and SCABA items, not to mention his Portal Stones and Communication Stones, but he didn’t care—those were items he used, so it didn’t count as too powerful.
He managed to catch more of the arrows with his Soul Block this time, but some still got through.
One of the arrows slammed into his left leg. His leg suddenly got incredibly cold and numb, difficult—if not impossible—for him to run on.
His leg buckled under his weight. God, no! It was some sort of freezing, immobilisation spell!
The spell didn’t last long, however. Xavier’s Willpower attribute was incredibly strong, and it was more than enough to keep the spell at bay—though apparently not strong enough to resist it completely. The spell had probably only immobilised him for a quarter of a second.
Still, it had been enough for three more of the same type of spelled arrows to puncture his body. The arm that he was holding Charon’s Scythe with went numb—fortunately the haft was clutched in a death grip, and it didn’t slip away from him. The second arrow struck his lower back. The third slammed into his other leg.
This simply won’t do.
The spells all dissipated at the same time. Xavier felt an intense anger. He’d been taken off guard. He’d come into this fight not knowing what kind of resistance to expect—he still didn’t. But he’d let the fact that someone had gotten in a few good hits knock him off his game.
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I need to change things up.
Xavier grinned. Soul Strike wasn’t his only area of effect spell, and the enemy was about to discover just how powerful he was.
Xavier cast Soul Shatter on one of the enemies near him. When he’d Soul Stepped to this area, he’d been in the middle of a massive cluster of enemies—both dead and alive. Now, those he hadn’t slain after teleporting over here, were quickly parting, trying to get away from him.
The man he cast the spell on had his soul explode. He screamed out in pain, but that scream didn’t last very long. It was cut off as shards of his soul slipped out and went in every direction.
Soul Shatter has reached Rank 26.
Xavier’s smile was sinister. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this part of himself—the part that relished in the fight. But he didn’t shy away from it. This was the part of him that would come in the most handy in the Greater Universe. This was the part of him that would save Earth.
The shards of soul didn’t cause physical damage, only soul damage. They slipped through the enemies’ defences around him, dealing damage to every one of them. These soldiers didn’t all die instantly like lesser enemies might, but the ones that had been injured enough by his Soul Strike did die.
He must have taken out another fifty enemies with that one spell alone, and weakened fifty more.
Heavy Telekinesis!
Thruuuuum!
A wave of energy pulsed from him, pushing everyone and everything away. More kill notifications flooded in as those he’d weakened were pushed to the limit of their health. Arrows that had slipped through the portals were snapped and broken as they impacted the wave of telekinesis that sent them soaring off in different directions—the portals themselves, of course, had been unaffected.
Xavier, after having stumbled from those damn immobilising arrows, stood to his full height.
He panned his vision around the battlefield, in search of whoever was creating those portals. The area immediately around him had quietened now that he’d killed over a hundred of the enemies in the vicinity. He was looking for whoever was creating those damned portals. With the rate at which the arrows were coming through, often coming through at the exact same time, Xavier thought there must be several people utilising the portals.
I didn’t even know it was possible for a Denizen to cast portals like this.
The arrows didn’t stop coming.
Thunk.
One hit him in the leg. Another in the back. Xavier didn’t care. He let them come. The damned arrows hurt, but not enough to do him any serious damage.
Your health is at 80%.
Okay, so maybe if he left them completely unchecked, they would eventually chip away at his health entirely. But they were also helping his Physical Resistance skill finally gain some more ranks. It was difficult for him to rank up skills like that when facing inferior enemies.
Physical Resistance has reached Rank 69!
He let out a long breath. He couldn’t see the bastard portal maker, and too much time was passing. He’d let that teleporter go thinking he wouldn’t spend all that much more time here—thinking that one Soul Strike would have been enough to take all of these bastards out.
He’d been wrong.
A part of him was glad he’d been wrong—he liked the challenge, after all. But that didn’t mean he was a fool.
The longer he spent here, the more likely someone stronger would come along to deal with him—that’s why he’d put down the Subspace Communications Area Blackout Array in the first place. He’d known it wouldn’t completely stop word from getting out, but it would at least delay it. Xavier wondered who might turn up. He knew that the strongest Denizen in the entire sector was C Grade, but did that mean she was the only C Grade Denizen in the sector? He hadn’t actually confirmed that, had he? Which meant it was possible that this world housed other C Grades…
His mind worked a mile a minute, moving even faster than his body was. He cast Soul Shatter a second time. Heavy Telekinesis again. He grew tired of taking these arrows and utilised a skill he’d gained when he’d been fighting the Lord of the Endless Horde—Evasion. He’d grown a little sluggish with the skill, something he hadn’t even realised was possible. It took him a moment to get into a rhythm, but once he did, not a single one of those damned arrows was able to strike him. The more he dodged, the more arrows came, as though whoever was attacking him was growing frustrated.
It was easy enough to move through the battlefield now. He was glad he’d chosen the area of effect path for Soul Shatter. The spell had a cooldown just as long as Soul Strike, one that was purely dependant on how many souls he infused into it.
So Xavier never infused more than three or four souls into the spell, giving him the opportunity to cast it every few seconds. This created absolute chaos on the battlefield.
The enemy had no idea how to keep him at bay. No idea how to deal with someone like him.
It wasn’t long before the field was filled with dead, not a single soul surviving—literally. He stood in the middle of the field, breathing heavily. He may have been able to dodge those arrows once he got going, but it still took an immense amount of energy and concentration.
Though not a single soldier had survived the battle, the field strewn with corpses, the portals hadn’t disappeared.
Whoever was using them wasn’t on the field.
But they most surely must have been nearby.
Xavier stopped running. Stopped dodging. Stopped teleporting around the battlefield.
Thunk, thunk, thunk!
Arrow after arrow sunk into his body, causing him to hiss in pain. His health had shot back up to 90 percent as he’d been dodging the attacks, so he knew he wasn’t in any real danger. He needed to focus. Needed to identify where those arrows were coming from.
A part of him told him it was time to retreat. That he’d done more than enough here, and he could go home. Back to Earth. These invaders would have gotten the message. They would have seen what the True Progenitor from Earth was capable of doing. They would know that even if they sent E Grades through the portal to his world, it wouldn’t be enough to take him down. Wouldn’t be enough to kill him.
And if they pissed him off? If they sent E Grades to enslave or kill the local population, especially when he wasn’t there to defend them because he’d been pulled back to the Tower of Champions?
They would know he would find his vengeance.
Five years was a long time for a True Progenitor to grow strong. And he could hide on other planets, bide his time, grow his power, until he was ready, if he needed.
But this… didn’t feel like enough. He didn’t want to have to do this to every single world that was invading Earth. He had no idea how many worlds were even involved in this invasion, let alone if he could survive doing something like this on each one. They could be warned to expect an attack like this, then he might never be able to manage it.
No. He had to make a true impression.
Xavier focused on his hearing. On the sound of the arrows slipping through the portals. The whistle of their travel as they made their way to him. The thunk as they sunk into his skin. He became familiar with those sounds, then he pushed past them. Blocked those sounds out and focused on everything else he could hear in the area. The wind blew in from his right. It was a strong breeze. It flapped the robes of the dead sprawled around the field. Flapped their capes and cloaks. He pushed past that. His heart thumped in his chest. He stilled his breath, not wanting it to distract him.
He heard an exhalation from somewhere far away. And a slight twang—a bowstring being released, slipping through someone’s fingers.
There.
Xavier smiled. He opened his eyes. Looked up at the top of one of the fortresses.
He knew exactly where his quarry was.