The two parties parted ways after their conversation. Xavier was deep in thought, his forehead creased, as he made his way up the stairs.
Adranial, Domical, Elsie, and Larson had told them everything they knew about the eleventh floor. They’d sat down at a table near the bar. Sam’s eyes had widened at the sight of Adranial and the other members of her party. He hadn’t asked where they’d come from, or how they’d gotten here, but Xavier could tell the man was having a small internal freakout.
Denizens from another world had not only gotten into this instance of the Tower of Champions, they were also in his cohort.
Xavier could see how that might be disconcerting, especially if you’d never before known something like it was possible.
Adranial and her party had laid out everything they knew about the eleventh floor.
And everything was not an overstatement.
They knew exactly how many enemies could be found in the area of the floor. They knew what level each of those enemies were. They knew who the friendlies were, what levels they were, if they would be of any help, and what the mission objective was.
Xavier was reminded of reading one of those old strategy guides for the Final Fantasy games he used to play. Sometimes, when he’d gotten stuck, he’d pick one up and flip through the pages, and it would walk him through every step.
It felt like cheating. It felt too easy. And it made him… angry.
The information she had would be the type of information most established worlds had access to, even if it could only be transferred by word-of-mouth. They’d memorised every detail of the different floors, something they must have spent much of their time doing before they were integrated.
It was a wonder that Xavier had managed to do what he’d done.
He stepped into the Staging Room feeling conflicted. Adranial and her party were down in the tavern, spreading the information they had about the floor to other Champions, so in turn the information could keep spreading through the entire cohort and to other ones. He’d told all the Champions he’d been able to contact to hold off from entering the eleventh floor until they could get a hold of this information, so he knew he’d delayed many by hours.
But he also knew the difference it would make in the long run.
It wasn’t just that these Champions would be more successful on the floor—there would be more who would actually survive it.
According to Adranial and her party, there was quite a jump in difficulty between the first ten floors and floor eleven up. The time away from the Tower of Champions was not intended for people to be idle.
They needed to keep pushing forward. And if they didn’t, they might get left behind.
Xavier worried for the other Champions out there. It felt like every single one of them was his responsibility. But he knew he couldn’t dwell on what happened to them too much. Adranial would take care of informing others about the floors—Xavier and his party could focus their full attention on their own journey here.
Which was quite a relief. It was good to take away the burden of being responsible for everyone from time to time.
Stepping into the Staging Room felt almost freeing. He’d spent a good amount of time here. The place felt familiar, even more so than the tavern downstairs. This was where he’d chosen his classes, opened his loot boxes, bought new equipment. It was where he’d prepared himself for the tower, where his party had trained and practised their spells. He chuckled to himself as he thought of the first time Justin had used Winged Flight.
“What are you laughing about?” Siobhan asked.
Xavier shook his head. “It’s just… good to be back. Better than I thought it would be, actually.” He strode over to the door to the next floor. He wasn’t going to walk through it, not yet. They had a chance to discuss their strategy for the floor now that they knew what to expect.
“Protecting Earth is important. And I do worry about what might happen to it while we’re gone. But now that we’re here, I feel like we can move forward even more. What I did in the tower? It’s what brought me my strength in the first place,” Xavier said.
Howard crossed his arms over his large chest. “This floor sounds easy enough.”
“Another wave floor,” Justin said with a sigh. “Just like the Endless Horde. Figured we’d be done with waves.”
“The System is likely to reuse floor types a lot, especially considering there are a thousand floors to clear,” Siobhan said. “Besides, it’s not just like the Endless Horde. The waves aren’t endless, for one.”
“Neither were those, technically…” Justin trailed off. “But I get your point.”
“So, how are you going to do this?” Howard asked. “Are we going to farm the floor first?”
“No,” Xavier said. “I don’t think that would be wise. The enemies on this floor won’t be strong enough for that to be worthwhile for any of you anymore.”
Howard grunted. “True.”
“So, what is the plan, then?” Siobhan asked.
Xavier had spoken to Adranial about his lead in the floors. He’d been worried that he might lose it due to the fact that he’d been held back on Earth for a few weeks before the other Champions had returned. A part of him had wondered if those Champions from the other competing worlds in this instance of the tower had already made it back and cleared the eleventh floor.
She had reassured him that that wasn’t at all possible.
Though they had all returned to the tower at the same time, even if another Champion cleared the eleventh floor before Xavier, they wouldn’t gain the lead. This was because only their time in the tower counted.
At first, this had confused him. She’d gone on to explain that the week or so Xavier had spent in the tower was being tracked by the System, and that the moment he returned, the timer would start ticking again. The Champions who had several weeks here would have that on their timers. There was no way they would be able to catch up unless Xavier wasted weeks on the eleventh floor.
It messed with his mind a bit, but it also helped to reassure him.
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He could take his time. He didn’t need to rush through this.
“We need to take a look at this floor. Get a feel for it. It’s all well and good to have the background information that Adranial and her team gave us, but it’s not the same as experiencing it on the ground for ourselves.”
Siobhan stepped up to him, a look of concern on her freckled face. “What about the innocents? If we leave before the tenth wave…” She looked down.
It was something they’d wrestled with on every one of the floors. The people they met when they entered a tower floor, they were real. They existed out there, somewhere. Even if that somewhere was a different universe—which, well, it always was.
Still, they were real people. People that if he didn’t save, would likely end up dead. When Adranial spoke of the best ways to farm the floor, she hadn’t mentioned any of this. She hadn’t been concerned with the safety of the town’s inhabitants. She’d only spoken of the objective.
It was something he understood. Those people were collateral damage, in a sense. Damage that the System caused. Not her. Not him.
But that didn’t mean he was just going to let people die if he could do something about it.
“I’ll see what I can do, but you have to remember. Our world, even our sector, is the priority. We need to make the best use of these tower floors that we can, even if that means innocent people die.”
It was happening all over the Tower of Champions. And not just this Tower of Champions, either, but every single one of them throughout the entire Greater Universe. People, real people, were dying because of the actions of Champions.
That didn’t excuse him from helping, though. It simply gave him a bit of a feeling of emptiness. Not for the first time he wondered why the System operated this way. Wondered why it wished for conflict in the first place—why it pitted people, worlds, sectors, against each other.
Something told him he would never find the answers to those questions. But if he did… maybe they’d be somewhere in the tower.
Maybe they will be at the end of it.
“Well, I’m ready,” Justin said. His sword appeared in his hand. He walked over to the door. Placed his palm on it. “It does feel good to be back here.”
Xavier smiled. It was nice to see how enthusiastic his party was.
“All right. Now, Adranial gave us a recommendation on how to finish this floor, and what the records are based on, but she wasn’t able to tell me what the highest record was.” Xavier tapped his foot. “Her strategy made sense, but I don’t think we should take it at face value. If her way is how all the most well-trained Denizens in the Greater Universe go through this floor, then it might not be the best option for us.”
“How do you figure that?” Howard asked. “It sounds like her way has literally had billions of years to be tested. What makes you think you can do it better?” The man’s words were not harsh, simply blunt.
“Because doing something in the exact same way and expecting a better result isn’t always the way to go,” Xavier said. “If we find a better way to do this floor, that’s what I want.”
Howard nodded. The others did too. They knew he’d be taking the lead here—he was the one who would be clearing the floor, after all.
Before entering the tower, he took a look at his status screen listing all his attributes.
He’d pushed hard to get through as many of those dungeons as he could. The only thing that had slowed him down was having to powerlevel the people he’d taken with him.
That, and actually finding more dungeons.
Especially when he’d started coming across dungeons that wouldn’t let him in. They weren’t as common as the other ones, but there were dungeons that only allowed Denizens of certain levels or Grades to be permitted inside.
And he didn’t always fit the bill.
He’d also already started to lose a few of his record clears, but only for the first few dungeons he’d gone through. He’d quickly began to solo dungeons after going through them with others. That way, he could secure the solo-clear title as well as the record title.
As it was, the accumulated dungeon titles contributed more attributes to his stats than his Tower of Champion titles, but he knew that wasn’t the whole truth.
Being a True Progenitor meant that everything was tied together. He wouldn’t have been able to clear those dungeons as swiftly as he had if he had been weaker, nor would he have been able to guarantee that he could get the record clear for each of them.
He also wouldn’t have gotten the first clear titles if he had spent longer in the tower. The fact that he’d cleared the first ten floors of the Tower of Champions as fast as he had, then kicked all the invaders from Earth, gave him an opportunity that few in the Greater Universe would ever likely have access to.
Then, of course, there were all the attributes that he’d gained from his levels. And, considering he had a Legendary class… that was a lot.
XAVIER COLLINS
Age: 21
Race: Human (?)
Grade: E
Moral Faction: World Defender (Planet Earth)
Class: Otherworldly Reaper (Legendary)
Level 161
Strength: 6,339 (13,312)
Speed: 6,177 (17,110)
Toughness: 6,141 (13,203)
Intelligence: 7,016 (20,346)
Willpower: 7,044 (18,314)
Spirit: 8,320 (21,216)
Mastery Points (E Grade) until next level: 4,550/10,000
Available Spirit Energy (E Grade): 215,890/215,890
Available Willpower Energy (E Grade): 150,600/150,600
Available Skill Points: 0
Free stat points remaining: 0
Titles:
Bloodied Hands, Born on a Battlefield, Settlement Defender, Quester, First Defender of Planet Earth, Survivor, All 100, First All 100, 1,000 Stats, First to 1,000 Stats, Greater Butcher, All 1,000, First All 1,000, Level 100, First to level 100, E Grade, E Grade Progenitor, E Grade Speedrun (Unmatched), Destroyer of Hordes (Unmatched), Ahead of the Pack 2, Goliath Killer 2, Ninth Floor Ranked 1 – RECORD HOLDER, Tenth Floor Climber, Solo Tower Climber 10, 1st Tenth Floor Climber, Tenth Floor (Tower Milestone), Homeward Bound, First Dungeon of Earth, Dungeon Diver 110, Dungeon – First Clears, Dungeon – Solo Clears, Dungeon – Record Clears, 10,000 Stats, First 10,000 Stats, All 10,000 Stats, First All 10,000
Spells List:
Spiritual Trifecta – Rank 60
Heavy Telekinesis – Rank 60
Spirit Break (All) – Rank 60
Spirit Infusion – Rank 60
Soul Harvest – Rank 60
Soul Strike (Ranged) – Rank 60
Soul Block – Rank 60
Soul Harden – Rank 60
Willpower Infusion – Rank 75
Core Burn – Rank 60
Summon Otherworldly Spirit – Rank 1
Soul Shatter – Rank 60
Soul Puppet – Rank 60
Skills List:
Physical Resistance – Rank 80
Magical Potency – Rank 70
Magical Resistance – Rank 60
Physical Damage – Rank 80
Assimilate Properties – Rank 25
Scythe-Staff Mastery – Rank 60
Meditation – Rank 50
Aura-Control – Rank 50
Core Strength – Rank 50
Cultivate Energy – Rank 50
Identify – Rank 50
Split Mind – Rank 50
Evasion – Rank 50
Minor Spirit Coins: 11,300,480
Lesser Spirit Coins: 5,606
He couldn’t help but be a little taken aback by how much stronger he was. How much more efficient his skills and spells were. Though he’d said there might be a better way to do this floor, he was beginning to wonder if that was just wishful thinking—because he wouldn’t be doing it the exact same way as everyone else, simply because he was more powerful than anyone who had stepped on this floor in the past was liable to be.
At least, he hoped that was the case.
He stared at his attributes for a bit longer. The only things that had lagged behind were his skills and spells. Especially his otherworldly spells, which he’d been avoiding using lately—information about what kind of damage they did to his soul appeared to be tightly guarded around the Greater Universe, with nothing about it available in the System Shop.
But he had plans for that.
As for his other spells and skills, it was hard for him to push them forward when he wasn’t facing enemies that were strong enough to give him a challenge—the only reason he’d gained as many levels as he had was because of the quests he’d completed.
The System hadn’t penalised him for those.
God, he felt powerful. Ready and eager to finally move forward in the tower once more.
“Everyone ready?” Xavier asked with a grin.
They all nodded. He took the handle, and entered the eleventh floor of the Tower of Champions.