The man sitting by the fire in the dark, dank cave on the nineteenth floor of the Tower of Champions smirked.

The man who was Xavier Collins but was not Xavier Collins.

“My version of the Tower of Champions has an old man sitting by a fire in this very cave, giving the quest to kill a monster.” He jutted his head through the tunnel. “Over in that underwater lair. I remember the floor clearly. I’ve also done all that I can to gain as much information about everything the old man says in response to people, so that I can play the role perfectly.”

Xavier shut his eyes and lowered his head into his hands. “Are you saying that you found where this floor happens, tracked it down among all the different worlds in all the different sectors, with the only knowledge being that it was in a cave, and there was an old man and a monster?”

“Yes,” the man said. “I did. I also had to wait until the right time. It wasn’t the first floor I tried to locate—it was just the first one that worked. The problem was, many of the tower floors occurred before Earth was integrated. You’ve already confirmed that yourself, haven’t you?”

Xavier blinked. “Romalda.”

“Indeed. Then there are floors where the events simply didn’t happen in our universe. I mean, that’s almost impossible to confirm, but I managed to on more than one occasion.” He waved a hand. “Finding this floor? It was all very complicated to calculate. And the chances of this actually working, of me encountering a version this close to myself…” He smiled. “The spirits said it could work. Even so, I struggled to believe them.”

“Spirits?” Xavier asked. “From the otherworld?”

“Indeed. You really should use their insights more often, Xavier.”

Xavier frowned. “What did you do with the old man that should have been here?”

The other Xavier waved a dismissive hand. “He’s safe. I controlled his mind and took his place. Nothing too sinister. His monster will be slain, whatever happens to the Champions who come here.”

Xavier sighed. “This is insane, you know?”

The other Xavier grinned madly. “It is rather insane, isn’t it?”

Xavier, slowly coming to terms that this impossible thing had actually happened, looked the man in the eye once more. It wasn’t the first time impossible things had happened to him, after all.

Why not something as insane as this?

“So, you still haven’t answered—why am I here? You obviously went to awful lot of trouble to talk to little old me.”

“Little young me, actually,” the other Xavier muttered.

“Indeed,” Xavier said. “So why go to all this effort?”

Another shiver ran up his spine. He imagined doing something like this himself. He wouldn’t do it on a whim. Wouldn’t do it for a laugh. Wouldn’t do it just to chat about life. He would do it because he needed to impart important information to… himself.

The older Xavier dipped his head in a nod. “I know that you’re confused. Trust me. I can’t say I’ve been in the exact spot that you are in, but as I am you—or, well, mostly you—I can understand what you must be feeling right now. It also means I know what you must be thinking, just as you knew I would be lying. And you are right to be worried.”

“Is this to do with Earth’s safety?”

“No. Not directly, at least.”

“The threat on the Silver River sector? The one Empress Larona is concerned about?”

The other Xavier shook his head. “No.”

“I’ll be able to deal with that?”

“That isn’t what I came here to talk about.”

Xavier shut his eyes. “This is like time travel, right? Not exactly like it, because our universes are different, but… aren’t you worried you’ll change something by talking to me?”

“Changing something is the very reason I am talking to you, Xavier.” The man shook his head. “God, it’s weird saying my name like that.”

“Our name,” Xavier corrected.

“Yes. Our name.” The older man shifted where he sat and stared at the flames, pushing the logs around with the stick he’d had earlier. “The System isn’t what you think it is.”

Xavier frowned. “What do you mean?”

The older man glanced up at the cave ceiling. Narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure what will happen if I tell you everything. The spirits knew talking to you, me…” He waved his hands a little wildly. “They told me this was possible, but they didn’t tell me much more than that. They didn’t tell me what the consequences of this might be. For a hundred years I’ve been trying to get to this conversation, and now that I have, I’m starting to get cold feet.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“A hundred years?” Xavier blurted. “You’ve been trying to talk to me for a hundred years?”

The other man chuckled again. “You say a hundred years as though it were a long time. Though I suppose to you it is a long time, considering you haven’t even lived for a quarter of that time yet. But one day? When you get to my age? It won’t feel like that much.”

“When you get to my age,” Xavier muttered. “As though there isn’t a better phrase to make you sound old.”

“I am old. Which means you should listen to me, Xavier.”

“I am listening. You’ve come this far. You obviously aren’t afraid of what the System will do to you,” Xavier said. “No point getting cold feet now.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Which, at least, mean’s you’re right too… What do you mean when you say the System isn’t what I thought it was? I don’t even know what it is! Not really. Only that it’s trying to spread across the entire universe—in every universe, I suppose—and that it’s been around for billions of years.”

“Countless billions of years, actually,” the other Xavier said. “No one really knows how long.”

“I know that it wants conflict. That it gives us levels, titles…”

The man shook his head. “The System isn’t the entity that gives those things to you,” the other man said. “Though I know you aren’t yet able to grasp the distinction at this point in your journey.”

Xavier stared at his older self over the flames. This was the first time he had ever spoken to someone who had knowledge of what the System actually was and was willing to share it with him. “The System doesn’t give us levels and titles?” That didn’t make sense to Xavier. Of course it was the System who gave them these things. They didn’t have them before the System had integrated his world, after all. There was no way to cultivate energy into oneself, or to throw fire from one’s hands, move things with their mind… even if there had always been stories about such things.

“Celestial Energy isn’t only present where the Systems is present. I know that’s something you’ve yet to learn, but it’s the truth.”

Xavier’s forehead creased so heavily he thought he must look as old as the man across from him actually was. “What do you mean? You mean to say that there’s magic even without the System?”

The other man shifted from side to side, his head tilting one way then the other. “Magic isn’t really what I would call it. Celestial Energy, the energy one can turn it into… it’s more complicated than that.”

Xaiver waved a hand. “Regardless, are you telling me that people could do these things even without the System?”

“Yes, and no.” The man was staring into the flames again. “Think about how thin the Celestial Energy is in the Tower of Champions. That’s the very reason you stepped onto this floor, isn’t it? I was glad to find you alone. I remember doing the exact same thing.” He nodded to his left. “The exit to the Staging Room is that way, by the way. For when you’re ready for it.”

Xavier ran a hand through his hair. Something clicked in his mind. “Are you saying that back on Earth, before the System came, there was Celestial Energy, it was just… really thin?”

“Indeed,” the other Xavier said. “You’ve heard of qi.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard of it. Never thought it was real though.”

“Well, that’s because it was so difficult to grasp before. The Zen masters who’ve been able to… they have great potential now that the System has come. Post-integration, Celestial Energy is abundant. Not only that, the System is there to help us harness it. Qi is simply energy. There were some people, pre-integration, who were able to harness it. There were even some normal people who used it by accident.” He paused. “You’ve heard of mothers picking cars up to save their trapped children, or the berserker rage that warriors can sometimes get into, or the amazing, impossible things that people through Earth’s history have managed to do. The miracles that some myths say people performed… If you really, really look for it… it’s there. And, I imagine it was more abundant a few thousand years ago. That’s why we have so many stories about it.”

Xavier took a moment to wrap his head around this.

“Is this why you brought me here? To tell me that magic—Celestial Energy—existed before the System came?”

The other man shook his head. “No. Not exactly. But it is something that you need to know if you’re to understand what’s going on here. Or at least, a small part of what’s going on.” He waved a hand. “The System is not the entity that gives you power. It can facilitate the giving of power, through things such as titles, as you’ve said, but titles existed before the System gave them to people—they just weren’t strictly quantifiable.”

Xavier shut his eyes. His head was starting to hurt.

“A headache coming on?” the other man said. “I figured something like this would happen. Here.”

Xavier opened his eyes and found that the other man was offering him a thermos, of all things.

“It isn’t poisoned. Trust me, I wouldn’t go through all of this just to poison myself.” The other him smiled.

Xavier knew he was telling the truth. He took the offered thermos and sipped from it. “Coffee.”

“Not just any coffee. That’s the best damned coffee this side of the Greater Universe. A kilo of those beans costs more than your entire outfit of gear.” The man sniffed. “Not that what you’re wearing is worth all that much.”

“You could always pitch in, fund my next set of gear.”

The other man chuckled. “No. That wouldn’t do. That is not the kind of help I am going to give you. You already know you don’t want it, too, don’t you? You refused the offer Adranial’s ancestor gave you. Earth could have been completely safe, and you could have been given everything you needed to progress.”

Xavier opened his mouth, about to ask how the other man knew that—which would be an incredibly stupid question. Of course the other man knew—the other man was him. “Did you ever regret doing that?”

The other man winked. “You tell me.”

“You never did.” Xavier nodded. “I didn’t think I would, when I made that decision. But…”

“One can never be sure, otherwise these decisions would be far easier ones to make.” The other Xavier motioned to where they were. “I am in a similar predicament. Not knowing whether this choice is a wise one until after I’ve made it. In fact, I might never know, as I doubt we will ever be able to talk again.”

“That brings us back around to why you’re here—or rather, why you brought me here.”

“Yes, well. There are things you must know. Things… that I think would have made a difference, had I known them.” The other man got a faraway look.

“A difference? A difference to what?” Xavier leant forward. “What’s happened?”

The man shook his head. “Nothing I should tell you.”