Xavier rose up from the ground. The battlefield around him was littered with thousands of dead. People he’d slain. And the four D Grades who’d been sent after him were his price.

I took vengeance for what they did, and now they’ll take vengeance for what I did, and so the cycle will continue.

Xavier gritted his teeth. The warhammer strike that he’d avoided cratered the ground where he’d just been. So far, he’d only been hit with one of these people’s strikes. The arrow that had gotten him in the back of the knee—and damn, it had hurt.

The arrow had taken away his ability to teleport. Taken away his ability travel through a portal. And, finally, it had taken away his ability to physically run from these bastards.

Xavier still had a little something up his sleeve, something he’d gained when he’d chosen his Otherworldly Reaper class, but he didn’t want to pull that card until he absolutely had to.

That will be my last resort.

The fight started in earnest, then.

Xavier split his mind.

It was a technique—a skill—he didn’t utilise enough, but one that was incredibly valuable. There were simply too many variables for him to focus on. The four enemies. The Soul Puppets in his control. The different spells he could bring to bear.

The moment he split his mind it was as though everything came into acute focus—on multiple fronts.

With Spiritual Trifecta constantly infusing his body, mind, and magic, and his Spirit attribute being insanely high, he knew he was capable of far more than he’d displayed.

I’ve been going about this fight all wrong.

Since he’d first been integrated by the System and gained his first class, he’d always taken the challenges set before him head on—even when the smart thing would have been to hold back.

He’d ran into that courtyard teeming with goblins.

He’d sprinted through the forest, killing one puma after another.

He’d thrown himself blade-first against the waves of the Endless Horde.

He couldn’t hope to survive this fight by going on the defensive, betraying every single one of his instincts that had gotten him this far in the first place.

A list of objectives entered his mind: disable the biggest nuisance first. Destroy the device. Don’t get hit by that leader’s atom-destroying spell.

Xavier went for all three of his objectives at once.

He might not be in a position to make it to the device, but he knew exactly where it was now. When he’d first stepped out of the fortress and laid eyes on the battlefield, there’d been a group of officers mulling around the edge of the soldiers sparring. It was one of those officers who’d been the first to attack him. One of the other officers must have put the device down after seeing what he was capable of with mind control.

Xavier simply hadn’t seen it because it had been put into the ground.

One part of his mind focused on this. If he destroyed or otherwise deactivated the device, it would unlock one of his strongest spells.

And so Xavier sent the Soul Puppets that were still standing after it. He didn’t have many still standing—maybe ten—but every time he raised one, his Soul Puppet spell had gained a rank, as though it were trying to catch up to his other spells. And with each rank that he’d gained, it had brought down the cooldown time.

Now, it had gotten all the way down to a single second.

He raised another Soul Puppet. A corpse that had been situated directly above the place he needed them to dig to find the device.

At the same time, so as not to drag his enemies’ attention toward what his Soul Puppets were doing, Xavier went after the archer.

The archer had taken out his ability to run away, but that didn’t mean Xavier couldn’t move.

The warhammer-wielder and the gladiator-girl were on him, up close. In the fraction of a second that his mind had turned, managing to come up with this plan, they’d both lunged toward him.

Xavier slammed his scythe-staff into gladiator-girl’s shoulder and cast Heavy Telekinesis, narrowly focused, at the tank. Xavier doubted the tank expected the telekinesis spell to be able to move him, but that didn’t matter to the spell.

It moved him all the same.

The tank went flying through the air for twenty, thirty, forty feet. The warrior would easily be able to eat any falling damage he took, but it was worth it to simply have him out of the way.

Gladiator-girl took the damage from his scythe-staff piercing her shoulder with a grunt. The blade sunk through her armour. Through her skin.

Even through her bone.

A part of Xavier—the better part of him, he was willing to admit—had fully expected his blade to glance off the woman’s armour.

Looks like I can damage these people. Which is good, considering even if I hadn’t decided to stay, I’m probably stuck here until either I’m dead, or all of them are.

And I’m not about to give up on Earth.

The woman, likely surprised by the ferocity of his attack, was sent off-balance. Xavier kicked her squarely in the chest. He didn’t stop to watch the woman fly backward. He was too busy throwing up Soul Blocks against the arrows and spells coming his way.

Initially, he’d been concerned that using Soul Block on D Grade attacks wouldn’t be strong enough. He’d only infused maybe fifty souls into each of them, and even then, that felt like it was eating into his reserves too much.

I really need to keep upping that reserve.

Xavier smiled. Well, this would be the perfect opportunity to make his soul spells rank up.

Maybe I should have stepped through the first portal I came across when returning to Earth.

He was starting to have a little fun with this. He went straight for the archer now, who was standing about six feet away from the silver-robed man. The look of naked rage with still etched into the woman’s face, but with the rage he saw something else—intense frustration.

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Something told him they’d figured he would be dead by now, and the fact that he was still breathing was making every single one of these D Grades become increasingly nervous.

That serene look on the silver-robed mage’s face was gone as well. Instead, his forehead was creased as though in slight concentration.

But Xavier knew better. The man had a bad poker face.

I’m pissing him off, too.

Xavier wondered if pissing off several D Grade Denizens was the best plan that he’d ever come up with, but considering how well pissing off the Lord of the Endless Horde had gone, he put it in the win column and moved on.

The ferocity of the spells and arrows coming for him seemed to double down. The arrows were almost making it through his soul blocks, and he had to throw a few more souls into them so that they could cope.

Constantly, every single second, Xavier was pulling in more souls from the corpses around him, but this battle was moving faster than those seconds could pass, and he knew that he was depleting his reserves faster than he could replenish them.

That’s going to be a problem.

He was two steps away from making it to the archer. With all the Soul Blocks he’d used to allow him to run toward her in a straight line—and compared to what he’d been capable of before he’d taken an arrow to the knee, what he was doing could barely be called a run, even if the wound had already healed, it had healed around the arrow, and he didn’t know when he’d get a chance to yank the damned thing out —he’d consumed maybe five hundred of his soul keeping reserve just making it to the woman.

So much for saving up.

The whole point of him not using Soul Strike yet was to keep his reserve ready.

But now that he was in range, he hit her with Core Burn and Spirit Break for a second time. Then he cast Soul Shatter as well for good measure. She took the pain well. Maybe she’d been expecting it.

But those spells weren’t supposed to be all the damage he could do. Now that he knew that his blade was enough to pierce their skin, he wanted to take full advantage of that.

The spells had done more than enough to distract her. To stop her from being able to dodge, block, or otherwise avoid his physical strike.

He slashed straight at the woman’s left wrist, of the hand that held her bow.

Xavier wasn’t a melee fighter. Not primarily. But he knew how much damage his scythe could do after striking gladiator-girl.

The blade sliced straight through the bone. The woman’s hand slid off her wrist, and with it her bow tumbled down to the ground. The woman’s eyes widened. Chances were she’d be able to grow the limb back.

But he wasn’t going to let her have the chance.

That’s the nuisance disabled.

At the same time, his other two objectives had been completed. He felt a weight lift off his mind as one of his Soul Puppets grabbed onto the device that had been buried into the ground, the one that stopped him from being able to use Willpower Infusion. He didn’t know if the weight had been real, but it certainly felt that way.

Gone are the shackles these people tried to place on my power.

The last objective of avoiding the silver-robed man’s spells had been achieved too, even if it had been at the expense of many of the souls in his reserve, at least he still had his life.

Now a new objective came to him.

Kill them all.

He turned to face the silver-robed man.

The archer, having just lost her hand, was stumbling backward, eyes wide, face pale, clearly in shock.

The thud of the tank’s boots and the softer sound of the gladiator’s shoes sounded behind him, growing nearer and nearer.

The silver-robed man’s forehead was no longer creased in slight concentration. Finally, the man looked angry.

And perhaps a little afraid.

I’m going to make my statement after all.

Xavier cast Willpower Infusion. It felt liberating, being able to do it at all. His mind was finally free—free to influence its will upon others.

Tendrils of purple mist poured free from his scythe-staff like fingers stretching toward an enemy, ready to grab their neck. The tendrils leapt into four different directions.

The whisps of purple mist reached their targets. He felt their mental blocks. They were powerful. Stronger, even, than the Lord of the Endless Horde’s mental block had been. But it wouldn’t be enough to stop him. He knew that instantly. He could feel cracks in the blocks. Minute gaps that he doubted anyone less skilled would be able to see.

All he need do was apply the correct pressure, then he would be able to break those blocks into dust and grasp their minds.

He hadn’t been able to control the Lord of the Endless Horde for a great deal of time, but Xavier had grown in power since then.

Considerably.

As though he were wielding a hammer and chisel, Xavier slammed his mind into the cracks he sensed in each of the blocks. The small, structural weaknesses that would make an entire wall fall with just one swing.

Just one hit.

Gladiator-girl was the first block he smashed through, the first mind his power—his control—clung to. Though he’d been able to break through her block, he felt as though the control he had over her was tenuous at best. His forehead creased as the next block was overcome, his control over the tank solidifying. Stronger than the control on the woman.

He broke through the mind of the archer next. Her mind, out of all four of them, was the one with the most fractures. It was more like a cracked pane of glass than it was a block, with hairline fractures spreading out from a point of trauma. Trauma he knew he’d been responsible for.

Taking control of her was the easiest, but her mind was volatile. It might be difficult to hold that control. He knew that, at the level these people were at, even with the amount of Willpower he possessed, he would be lucky to hold them for a few seconds each—especially when he was trying to hold them all at once.

It be enough—it has to be enough.

Finally, he came up against the silver-robed man’s mental defences. Unlike the others, this man’s were formidable. The cracks and fissures that Xavier had felt in the minds of his comrades weren’t there in this man’s mental barrier. It was as solid as a sheer stone wall.

All walls can be broken.

Xavier pushed his mind against the mental barrier with all of his might, bringing to bear every single ounce of his concentration and focus. If he didn’t break through the mental barrier now that the whisp of Willpower Essence had seeped into the man’s body, he would need to cast the spell a second time to attempt it.

Which meant he might lose control of the others before gaining control of this man.

Xavier stopped what he was doing.

Maybe I don’t need to gain control of him.

Time had almost seemed to stop as he’d come upon the four mental barriers these D Grade Denizens possessed.

As it continued to flow the expressions on the three Denizens he now influenced shifted. The anger and pain on the archer’s face seeped away. The gladiator-girl and the hammer-wielding tank no longer looked so serous as they had but a fraction of a second before.

The silver-robed mage, on the other hand, widened his eyes. Was his rate of perception so swift that he’d been able to register exactly what had just happened, and the consequences of that?

Kill him! Xavier mentally yelled the command, pushing the minds he controlled. All of their attention turned toward the silver-robed man.

A calm settled on Xavier. For the first time since the battle had begun, since these D Grades had appeared, he felt as though he had some semblance of control back.

The skin around the silver-robed man’s eyes crinkled as his face reddened in rage. His staff tilted forward, aimed at Xavier. This time, he didn’t bother casting Soul Block.

Countless times since the fight began, he’d seen what this man’s spell could do. He’d seen it dust the atoms of his Soul Puppets. Seen it leave craters in the ground that had almost been Xavier as he’d dodged away from the spell’s power.

He can aim the spell at a location, not an individual, and the spell will still continue to happen even if its target is no longer there.

All he needed to do was shift who the target was.

The gladiator-girl was right beside him, sprinting past him toward the silver-robed man as Xavier had commanded her to do.

Xavier changed his command.

The woman shifted directions, her feet moving faster than any athlete back on pre-integration Earth would even be able to perceive, let alone recreate.

In the time it took for the man’s spell to be cast, she’d pushed Xavier out of the way and was now in the spell’s path.

The silver-robed man had only enough time to utter a single word as the damage was done: “No!”

The spell didn’t turn her to dust, not like it had turned Xavier’s soul puppets to dust. It must not be an all-powerful spell—no spell was.

But it did leave a crater in the woman’s chest, right where her heart was. It took away her armour, her skin, her muscle, sinew, and bone, exposing the inside of her body for all to see.

As the light left her eyes and her body sagged, something told Xavier regrowing a heart wasn’t an option like regrowing a hand might be.

Willpower Infusion has taken a step forward on the path!

Willpower Infusion is now a Rank 68 spell.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

One down, four to go.

“No!” the silver-robed man yelled in outrage, an outstretched hand reaching toward the fallen woman. “Ayanna!” The man’s fingers curled into a fist, his gaze turning to Xavier. “You will pay for this!”