Xavier Collins materialised in the middle of a long hallway, one that stretched farther than even his eye could see. The longer he looked down the hall, the more it looked like some sort of unlimited mirror illusion.

Though he was used to be being teleported by the System by now, and even travelled through his fair share of portals, it was still a little disorientating to be back here after all his time on Earth. He wasn’t unsteady on his feet, but he put his hand to the wall anyway.

Other people all along the seemingly infinite hallway appeared. These people appeared a split second or two after he did. Strange. Did the System teleport him faster than it teleported others? If so, he wondered why that might be, and came up with a few reasons—most of them to do with his superior stats and grade.

Xavier was E Grade. Not only that, he was the first among the people of Earth to reach this grade.

And he was a True Progenitor. Maybe even more than that, if the things that Adranial had told him were to be believed.

The first thing he noticed about the other people returning to the tower was the abundance of gaps. He tilted his head to the side, staring down the hall.

When Xavier had originally materialised in the tower, just after he’d completed his first quest, he had been the first human in his instance to arrive. The place had been completely deserted. He remembered training in the hallway, lifting a vending machine that he’d smuggled out of the cafeteria at his university—at his old university, he supposed—over his head to gain strength. He smirked at the memory.

But he couldn’t help but frown at the reason why there were gaps, and the fact that there were more gaps than there were people.

How many people have we already lost to the tower?

Xavier’s cohort had been five hundred people strong when he’d first arrived here. Something told him they’d be lucky if it was still half that. By the time most of the other Champions had arrived back on Earth, he was sure he’d gotten rid of the biggest dangers—that of the invaders from other worlds trying to enslave or wipe out his people—but it wasn’t Earth where the Champions would have been in danger.

It was the tower floors—especially that last floor, the melee. Countless Champions would have perished during that melee, or they might have even refused to participate and surrendered instead of fighting, which would mean they were sent to a different world and banned from returning to Earth for a hundred years.

Xavier shook his head. Millions upon millions of people had been lost to the integration. If he wished to mourn every loss, he would spend his life in a pit of misery and never get anything useful done.

He opened the door to his quarters and smiled. His room in the Tower of Champions didn’t have much. A bed. A writing desk. A trunk. It was small and sparse. He hadn’t spent much time sleeping here—he hadn’t spent much time sleeping since this had all started.

He closed the door, reminiscing about his rooms back on Earth, in Collinsville. There had been a lot of upgrades and advancements that he’d made to the Sanctuary Seed base that he’d barely experienced, but he’d left the base—the city—in a strong place for everyone that remained there.

“Xavier!” a perky voice with a slight Irish lilt called. He turned from his door and looked down the hall to see a beautiful redheaded woman striding toward him with a bright smile. Siobhan wore the white robes of a healer.

Her class was a powerful support class, though it had the ability to do damage in its own right. Her class was called Divine Beacon.

The woman was well on her way to E Grade—and by well on her way, she was already Level 99.

Siobhan, Howard, and Justin each wanted to gain a few more titles before they pushed to E Grade. Though Xavier had been proud of the people he’d powerlevelled to E Grade back on Earth, the classes they’d been offered hadn’t been as prestigious or powerful as he’d been hoping.

Getting them to E Grade that swiftly had been a necessity. He didn’t want that to happen to the other members of his party.

Xavier nodded his head at the woman. “Hey, Siobhan.” He stretched his arms, encompassing the tower. “So, how does it feel to be back?”

The woman let out a long sigh. She smiled. “Better than I thought now we know the Earth is safe.” She touched a necklace dangling from her neck. “That my little sister is safe.” She grasped the necklace a moment before tucking it into her robes.

Xavier smiled at the woman. He knew that for a long while, the others had held in their worry for their loved ones as well as they could. Since they were all found, families reunited and people brought to safety, there had been a lightness in the other three that he hadn’t seen before.

Their drive to improve hadn’t been diminished, but their worries had. Taking some of that stress away from them had only made it easier for them to focus on what was important—gaining power so that the ones they cared about always remained safe.

It didn’t take long for Howard and Justin to find him, too. Howard’s class was a Shield Sentinel—a tank—and Justin’s was an Airborne Duellist, a fighter with the ability of winged flight. Neither of them had upgraded their weapons or armour in the time while they were back on Earth, despite the fact that they could have afforded to, and even eventually gained access to the System Shop at Collinsville. They each figured there was no reason to upgrade until they got to E Grade.

Xavier definitely saw the logic in that. It had been some time since he’d gotten new robes and a new scythe-staff himself. Honestly, he was getting to the point where he worried if he swung the damned thing too hard it might break.

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Fortunately, that hadn’t happened yet.

Still, it was about time he got something new.

Howard rubbed his hands together. “So, should we head down to the tavern? See how Sam is doing?”

Sam…

Xavier had thought about the barkeep a few times in the last few weeks. His original plan had been to get the man to come to Earth, to have him protect it while he wasn’t able to be there. He’d held onto that plan for a good while, thinking he would try to execute on it before returning here, but there had been no way for him to actually contact the man—and by the time he was ready to return to the Tower of Champions, he realised that initial plan? It was no longer necessary.

Besides, he liked seeing Sam in the tavern. It wouldn’t be the same without him.

Justin frowned. “Do we have time for that? Shouldn’t we get straight onto the next floor? Make sure we’re the first to pass it?”

Howard rested a meaty hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Justin, do you really think anyone’s going to catch up to our man here?” He flicked his gaze over at Xavier with a nod.

“I suppose not,” Justin muttered. He looked a little disappointed. He must have been eager to keep going through the floors of the tower.

To be fair, Xavier was eager too. He did want to visit Sam and update the man on how things had gone back down on Earth, and even in the melee—they hadn’t gotten a chance to talk after that—but the lure of the next floor called to him.

“We have to go down there,” Xavier said. “I told Adranial that’s where we would meet her.”

Howard’s expression soured. The man had been in a good mood a second before—one of the best Xavier had seen him in, except when he was around his family. It had been a nice sight.

“Adranial.” Howard shook his head. “Still can’t believe you let her come here.”

“Let her?” Siobhan raised an eyebrow. “Something tells me that woman does as she pleases. I don’t think Xavier would have been able to stop her short of killing her.”

Xavier turned away from them and started walking to the stairwell. “I didn’t want to stop her, Howard. We spoke about this. You know exactly how valuable having her in our cohort will be. She has information on the tower no one else will ever have access to.”

Howard grunted in dissatisfaction—Xavier had gotten a handle on reading the man’s grunts in the time they’d known each other. “I’m surprised she hasn’t weaselled her way into the party yet.”

“Wheedled,” Siobhan said. “Not weaselled.”

“I know what I said,” Howard grumbled.

“I’m not letting her into the party,” Xavier said. “Not unless one of you dies or decides to leave.” As he reached the stairwell, he glanced over his shoulder. “None of you plan on doing that anytime soon, do you?”

They all shook their heads.

“Good,” Xavier said. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

It turned out they weren’t the only ones who’d had the idea of going downstairs to the visit the tavern. There were a few other people on the stairs, some of them he didn’t recognise, others he did. He’d met a fair few people from his cohort the first time he’d been in the tower, but they hadn’t spent all of their time down in the tavern, and he was sure there were many people that were on the floors when they were down there.

He nodded at the few Champions he recognised that had made their way to Collinsville. He couldn’t help but note with a bit of pride how differently the people treated him now that they knew what he was capable of. No one was looking down at him, thinking he was some punk kid who didn’t know what he was talking about.

He was well beyond that. He didn’t need to punch anyone to the floor to prove himself—not anymore.

When he opened the doors to the tavern he found that the place was exactly as they’d left it. His gaze turned toward the man behind the bar, and he couldn’t help but smile.

Sam was running a rag over the long wooden counter, a counter which already looked pristine.

“Back so soon?” Sam said, raising an eyebrow as Xavier approached. “Didn’t think the tavern would be your first step on your return.”

Xavier rested his hand on the bar, then turned his head and gazed about. Adranial and her party hadn’t gotten here yet. “We’re meeting someone here.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “You? Meeting people? Looks like you’ve changed a bit since you’ve returned to Earth. I have to say, it’s good to see you after the, ah, melee. Sorry I couldn’t tell you much about that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “The rules being what they are.” Sam looked at Howard, Siobhan, and Justin as they walked up to the bar. “Good to see the rest of you are in one piece too. The usual for you all?”

“Better stick with coffee,” Xavier said. “It’s a little early to start drinking.”

Howard’s frown in response to Xavier’s words was profound, but the man didn’t argue, and he didn’t order a beer or whiskey, either. That was good to see.

“How were things… back on Earth?”

Xavier raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t heard?” He knew for a fact that information packets had made their way all around the Silver River sector about the things that he’d done to secure Earth’s safety—the lengths he’d gone to, killing D Grades on other planets to stop them from invading his own.

“Alas, no, I have remained here since you were gone.”

Xavier frowned. “Don’t you get to go home when there’s no one in the tower?”

Sam looked down. “Not much waiting for me back home. Besides, I like my solitude.”

Xavier tilted his head back, staring at the man, wondering what was lying behind those words.

For a moment, Sam looked as though he was in another world. It wasn’t a long moment. Soon, he flicked his gaze back up to Xavier, seemingly remembering he wasn’t alone in the tavern anymore. “Tell me what happened.”

Xavier gave him a rough overview of all that happened back on Earth. He was still surprised the man hadn’t heard about it, especially since he’d been tasked with watching over Xavier in the tower by the Empress Larona herself—the most powerful Denizen in the Silver River sector.

Sam’s eyes became progressively wide the longer Xavier spoke. There were a few things Xavier kept out of the recap, however, like the fact that the woman he was meeting here was the descendent of the most powerful and oldest Denizen in the entire Greater Universe.

That was something the man didn’t need to know. It was also something he didn’t think Adranial would appreciate him sharing. Something told him that Empress Larona, with her ability to see into the future, was already aware of who Adranial was, as their future had been linked from the moment Howard had his melee with her.

Our futures are linked?

He’d never actually thought of it that way, though he supposed it was true.

“You…” Sam shook his head. “You managed to do all that? I thought you were different, but…” The barkeep shut his eyes. It looked like he needed a moment to digest just how much Xavier had accomplished.

“Xavier Collins,” the voice came from behind him. A woman’s voice. It sounded casual, playful.

Xavier turned around and looked at the woman who’d given up her best memories of her home so that she could pledge allegiance and loyalty toward Earth in order to come here—to his instance in the Tower of Champions. “It’s time we talk about the next floor.”

Xavier hadn’t spoken to the woman much since she’d given up her memories. They were now locked away in his own mind—though he didn’t actually have access to them.

He was still surprised Adranial had entrusted them to him in the first place. The cynical part of him had simply assumed that the woman was trying to gain more of his trust with the gesture, but something like this… it wasn’t done lightly. Even if it had started that way, it still showed how much she believed in him.

He took in her form-fitting white robes. The mask she’d worn while fighting hung from her neck. She held herself a little differently. There was a glint in her eye that hadn’t been there before.

“Let’s talk about the eleventh floor,” Adranial said.