Xavier materialised on the nineteenth floor of the Tower of Champions. He was standing in a dark cave. A fire was burning nearby, the flames making shadows dance on the jagged rock walls. The place smelled damp, and Xavier sensed that there was an open body of water somewhere nearby.

A man sat by the fire. He looked old. His face was deeply lined, the wrinkles cut into him as though by a knife, or like creases in a thin piece of paper.

“Champion,” the man said. He tilted his head up to look at Xavier. He frowned. This only served to accentuate the man’s wrinkles, making him look another decade older.

He looks like he’s a hundred years old, but in the Greater Universe, that could mean anything.

“You came alone?” the wrinkled man asked.

Xavier glanced up and down the length of the cavern. There were two exits. One on either side of the room he found himself in. One, he could tell, was where the open body of water was—some underground river or lake? The other, he didn’t have a clue on. He could see with his Farscope only a hundred metres around himself. It was helpful, but not at a distance.

Maybe I should have asked Adranial about this floor…

He had no idea what was going on.

“I came alone,” Xavier said, answering the man’s question.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Come sit by the fire.”

Xavier hesitated. Usually, this would be about when he would start fighting enemies. He couldn’t see any doors—exits that would allow him to get back to the Staging Room. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, however. The exit door was often hidden away somewhere out of sight. The cavern he was in was definitely not a safe room. Xavier had gotten used to the feeling of being in a safe room. Like there was static in the air. It had taken him a little while to realise that, but once he had, it was unmistakable when he was standing inside of one.

And he most definitely wasn’t standing inside of one now.

Xavier stepped forward and sat by the fire. He didn’t see the harm in it, after all.

He did, however, decide that it might be wise to use his Identify skill on the man. He focused on the old man and activated Identify.

Nothing happened.

Well, something happened. He felt something block him from doing it. A mental block, telling him that the skill was inadequate.

Xavier didn’t like that. A sudden chill ran up his spine. He’d stopped walking, standing a foot away from the fire.

“Aren’t you going to sit?” the man asked. “Not afraid of an old man, are you?”

“Of course not.” Xavier sat. It didn’t much matter what level this man was. If he was a foe and not a friend, he would be easy for Xavier to deal with.

The man smirked. “Assessing my level of threat, then dismissing it. That’s a dangerous thing to do, you know.”

“Are you the one who summoned Champions to this place?” Xavier asked. An old man sitting by a fire in a cave, trying to sound as though he were wise. Xavier suddenly felt like he was in a story. If he was, the man would be one of two things—a wise old warrior who would become someone’s mentor, or an evil dark wizard pretending to be nothing more than a helpful, kind old man.

Or he could just be some elderly, crazy hermit who hasn’t seen the light of day for decades—his skin was rather pale, after all.

The man held a stick. He pushed a log around in the fire. The fire sparked. “I am.”

“Why?”

The man glanced up at him. There was something in his eyes. Something like a deep sadness. “There is a monster.” He looked over at the tunnel that led to the open body of water. “It’s been terrorising the locals. There’s a river that runs through these caves. It surfaces a few miles away, but this… this is the monster’s lair. I summoned Champions here to deal with it.”

Xavier narrowed his eyes. The man was lying.

Xavier wasn’t sure how he could tell. And it wasn’t that he was lying about the monster. No, the monster was real.

The man was lying about the reason he’d summoned Champions to this place. Or, in this case, a single Champion, as Xavier had come alone.

Does it matter why he’s lying?

Xavier hadn’t come here to clear the floor. Not right away, at least. He had come here because he wanted to cultivate Celestial Energy, and the stuff was thick in the air here.

But something strange was happening. Something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Why are you lying?” Xavier asked.

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“I’ve been accused of many things in my long life,” the man said. “Lying is seldom one of them. Why would I lie to you?” With the stick he’d been pushing logs around the fire with, he motioned down the tunnel. “The monster is there. You’ll find it easily enough.”

Xavier narrowed his eyes. He didn’t bother trying to use Identify on the man again. Clearly, this man had an item that could block it—it was unlikely that he had a spell that could block it, as Xavier should be powerful enough to get past it. Though that was a definite possibility.

“I didn’t say you were lying about the monster,” Xavier said.

The man smiled. It looked a little sinister.

Maybe he is an evil wizard.

Xavier didn’t move from where he was sitting. He wanted to see this thing through. He pushed on. “You’re strong enough to deal with the monster on your own, aren’t you?”

The man sighed. He nodded slightly. Opened his hands and shrugged. “You got me.” He tilted his head to the side again. It was a familiar gesture, one Xavier had performed hundreds of times. “And now why did you know I was lying, Champion?”

Xavier shook his head. “I’m not sure how I knew.”

“You don’t have some sort of skill or spell for detecting lies, do you?”

Xavier shook his head again. This was very strange. The lies Xavier could sense from the man… how was he even able to? And if what he’d felt was correct, this man had been the one to summon Champions here, which meant Xavier doubted he was supposed to actually fight him. He had just summoned Champions here for an unknown reason.

“What’s going on here?” Xavier asked.

“The Tower of Champions is a very strange thing, isn’t it? Every single floor is a gateway to not just another world, but another universe. Don’t you find that just absolutely fascinating?”

“Yes. I do, as a matter of fact. But I’m not sure what that has to do with why I’m here.”

The man stared Xavier in the eye. “It has everything to do with why you’re here, and if you would look at me a moment longer, and I mean really look, I think some ideas would come to you rather rapidly.”

Xavier blinked. He did as the man said. Though the man had lied to him, he didn’t sense any ill intent. He wasn’t sure why he could suddenly sense someone’s lies or their intent. A part of him wondered if it was an evolution of his power—but he didn’t think that was it. He narrowed his eyes and looked intently at the strange man in front of him. As he stared, he contemplated what the man had said, bringing up the fact that the Tower of Champions was a gateway to alternate universes… then it clicked.

“No,” Xavier breathed. “It can’t be.”

The man smiled. Chuckled. “Oh, but it can.” The man breathed in deeply, then exhaled slowly. As he did, the air about him shivered.

Xavier felt a crackle of power in the air.

The man’s visage shifted. Became younger. Significantly younger. Someone who’d looked to be over a hundred years old—by the way people used to age pre-integration—suddenly looked to be in their late forties.

The man’s shoulders filled out. The old, ratty robes he’d been wearing turned into thick, dark robes that radiated a strange power.

And his right eye turned a familiar red.

The Farscope.

Though the man looked significantly younger than he had a moment ago, his actual features didn’t change. And even though he looked more youthful, Xavier got the impression that this man was the oldest person Xavier had ever met.

He was also himself.

At least, a different version of himself.

“You’re me,” Xavier said, his mouth falling open.

He had thought about this being possible, of course. Thought about the possibility of meeting himself, or someone else he knew. In fact, Xavier had already encountered someone in the tower that he had met before in his own universe.

The Great Romalda Heralda.

But even though he had thought it was possible that he might meet himself, he never thought that it would be probable.

The man who was another version of Xavier Collins raised his chin. “I am and I am not you. Our paths will have diverged significantly. There are universes that are more similar than others, but those universes never touch—at least to my knowledge.” The man—Xavier, but not Xavier—opened his hands. “I summoned Champions to this world, knowing the consequences. I had to… get creative to make the System do this for me. Normally, it would not allow someone who could solve a problem on their own to summon Champions.” He shrugged. “But, as you have no doubt already learnt in some capacity, there are ways to get around the System.

“Because I summoned a Champion, I have now created a near infinite number of alternate universes branching off from the moment a Champion is summoned. It’s only dumb luck that I am even encountering you. There will be billions of iterations of myself that have spoken to, and will speak, to other Champions, as the old man you just saw before you.”

Xavier blinked. Put a hand to his head. Shook his head. “This is a lot to process.”

The other man chuckled. “Oh, I can imagine. It’s not exactly an easy thing for me, either, seeing myself. A younger me. A different me. And this is exactly what I was hoping for. Your Tower of Champions will be different to my tower, however—I’m sure you would have already gathered that.”

Xavier nodded slowly. His mind was turning incredibly fast, yet at the same time it felt slow, sluggish, as he wrapped his head around everything that was going on. “My Tower of Champions has you.”

“I daresay it’s different in other ways. We could sit here and talk about all of them, but the fact that you’re here at all is a very, very good sign.”

Xavier frowned. “What do you mean?”

The other, older Xavier shrugged. “There will be countless realities where we died facing the goblins back before we even made it into the tower. There will be realities where we weren’t foolish and actually read the description and chose not to become Champions. And I am sure there are versions of us who died on the first floor. Maybe even ones that died before the System came down at all. Hell, there are realities where we weren’t even born. The chances of me actually encountering me… well, those are impossible to calculate.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Unless one were the System itself.”

Xavier thought about that for a moment. It… boggled his mind.

“If your tower is different to my tower… the Tower of Champions is the only reason I’m as powerful as I am. If I didn’t push through it and gain so many titles, then I wouldn’t be this strong in the first place.”

The other man dipped his head in a nod. “That is true. Our towers are probably more similar than not. In fact, that is my hope. That was my plan.” He tilted his head to the side again, and now Xavier saw exactly why the gesture looked so familiar.

It was his gesture.

“What level are you?” the other Xavier asked. “And what floor is this?”

“I’m Level 161. This is the nineteenth floor. I came here to—”

“To cultivate Celestial Energy into your new core!” The man chuckled.

“Yes,” Xavier replied. “But… how did you—”

“Oh, how wonderful!” The other Xaiver was grinning. The grin looked a little mad. “It worked! I’m having a little trouble believing that it did, but it worked!” His fingers on his right hand curled into a fist and he pumped it into the air, then looked a little sheepish.

Xavier couldn’t help but laugh a little. This whole thing was a bit absurd. “What do you mean, it worked?”