Adranial frowned at him. “What do you mean, is there anything strange about the old man?”

Xavier shrugged. “I just felt like he might be hiding something.”

“Hiding something?” Adranial asked. “Why would the old man be hiding something?” The woman shook her head. Her hair was down, and her curls bobbed a little. “He’s just an old man! There is absolutely nothing remarkable about him.”

Xavier looked away.

“Why do you look offended by that?” Adranial looked over at Siobhan, Howard, and Justin. “Do any of you know what’s going on here?”

Justin glanced at the other two. Howard’s expression didn’t change at all. Siobhan crossed her arms and looked into her drink.

None of the three said anything.

Adranial frowned some more. “Anyway. Forget about the old man. He’s not the important thing about the nineteenth floor.” The woman took a sip of her ale. “What you really should be asking about is the monster.”

Justin grabbed his own ale. “It’s just a monster, right? Xavier can just… kill it really fast, then he’d be done with the floor.”

Justin had a point. Xavier wasn’t sure that he needed anything from Adranial about the nineteenth floor. He wanted to ask her more questions about the old man, but obviously doing so was making her suspicious. The last thing he wanted was to tip her off, though he doubted she would be able to simply guess who he was, or why Xavier was so interested in him.

Still, it was better to be safe. Which was why he asked about the monster.

“Justin’s right. What’s unique about this monster? This floor seems pretty straightforward.”

“Justin’s right. Two words that could never be more true,” Justin muttered to the side.

“Well, that’s where you would be wrong. About the monster. Not about Justin being right. Although, you’re wrong about that too. This monster is, well, as you said, unique.” Adranial sipped her ale again.

“Not to sound arrogant, but how exactly would I have any trouble with this thing? It can’t be stronger than me—no one would ever survive this floor if it was.”

“It’s not that it’s strong—though it is, at least for the floor. The problem is that it has the ability to teleport.”

“I’m still not sure how that would make an impact. I’ll kill it before it gets a chance to teleport away.”

“That won’t be so easy. This monster has a strong ability to hide when it needs to. It’s a predator, like all beasts in the Greater Universe. But, unlike other beasts in the Greater Universe, this one knows that it’s also prey.”

“You’ve lost me,” Justin said.

“She hasn’t lost me.” Siobhan leant her hands on the table and inched forward in her seat. “This makes sense, don’t you see? We’ve encountered a lot of beasts that will blindly attack us, even when they see how strong we are—even when they see how strong Xavier is. They are predators by nature. However, they are also prey—it simply depends who they’re fighting.” She nodded at Adranial. “This beast is smarter than many that we’ve fought in the past. It will see Xavier’s strength, even if it can’t read his aura, and it will hide.”

“That’s why it’s in the cave in the first place,” Adranial said. “At least, according to that old man you were so interested in.” She gave Xavier a pointed look, one that said she still had questions about that. “The beast attacks, then hides within the network of caves when stronger Denizens come to the area.”

“Can’t one of those stronger Denizens simply deal with it?” Howard asked. “It seems odd they would need Champions for something like this.”

“Those Denizens don’t much care about the safety of the smaller villages. At least, not enough to go on a hunt for the beast. If it were nearby, easy to find, or actively attacking, they would kill it. But otherwise? It simply wouldn’t be worth it for them,” Adranial said.

Xavier nodded. “All right. You’ve explained that the beast isn’t dumb, but I should be fast enough to take it down.”

“It’s got some sort of spell or skill that makes it resistant to the first attack that lands on it. Then, it disappears in an instant if it deems that attack too strong, hiding away from whoever attacked. That is why you’ll have trouble with it—you won’t be able to find it.”

Xavier tilted his head to the side. This was suddenly piquing his curiosity. “Well, that’s more interesting than the last few floors have been for me. Everything has become a little too easy lately.”

“Too easy,” Justin muttered.

Xavier ignored the young man. “Now, you must know where this thing hides?”

Adranial shrugged. “No one does.”

“Seriously?” Siobhan said. “There must have been billions of Denizens who have come through this floor and not a single one of them knows where this beast hides away when it feel threatened?”

“People simply tend to restart the floor. There have been many who have searched for it, but as no one has ever found it, it’s often deemed as a waste of time. Again, you know that knowledge of the floors is difficult to pass down—so there could very well be someone out there who has found it, and that knowledge simply never reached my sector, or they decided to keep it to themselves. Either way, you, Xavier Collins, have to be careful. Usually the tactic with this monster is to use a weak attack on the beast’s first defence. Any attack will do. It might be smarter than other beasts, but not by a lot. It’s easy enough to fool this thing into thinking you’re weaker than you already are.”

Xavier had been thinking of doing just that. He was glad for the information, but if that was how he could fix it, he wasn’t sure why the woman was going on about things so much.

“The problem, however, is you won’t be able to fool it, Xavier. No E Grade ever has. It’s recommended that people don’t advance to E Grade until after they’ve completed this floor, or that E Grades come onto the floor with F Grades so they can help with the monster.”

Xavier looked at the other members of his party. He wanted to solo the floor. Something told him this wouldn’t count. “I’ll just have to come up with some other solution.”

Adranial smiled. “I was hoping you would say that.”

Xavier blinked. “You were?”

“Oh, yes.” She leant forward on the table. A lock of her fell over her shoulder and into her face. She moved it away with a hand. “I want to see you struggle for once.” She winked. “It would be nice to see something the Great Xavier Collins isn’t able to do.”

“The Great Xavier Collins?” Siobhan raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me people aren’t calling you that, because I think your ego has grown enough as it is. There’s no need to make it any bigger.”

Xavier looked at Siobhan, deadpan. “But… I am great.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Adranial and Siobhan sighed at the exact same time.

Xavier and the others returned to the Staging Room. They were eager to move on through the floors after their short break. Adranial had detailed the twentieth floor, and the next few after that, as well as the nineteenth floor that they were about to enter. Xavier had originally thought he would be returning to Earth after the twentieth floor, like he’d returned to Earth after the tenth floor, but apparently that wasn’t an option.

He was actually glad for that, considering how quickly they’d gone through these floors. As much as he wanted to be able to go back to Earth, right now his primary focus was simply getting through these floors as quickly as he possibly could. That wouldn’t happen if was sent back to Earth every ten floors.

Adranial hadn’t told him which floor would send him back to Earth. Almost as though she were trying to hide it from him. When he asked Sam, the barkeep kept it to himself as well, not without winking at Adranial in the background first, however.

Apparently it was a conspiracy, though he wasn’t sure why they were keeping it from him. He supposed perhaps Adranial didn’t want him leaving the Tower of Champions before letting her know. She knew he wouldn’t blindly plough ahead if he didn’t know which floor would take him back to Earth until he reached it.

Xavier rubbed his hands together as he looked over at the door to the next floor. The last thing he wanted to do was linger in the Staging Room now that he knew what was coming next.

“So, do you have a plan for this floor?” Justin asked.

Xavier smiled. He nudged his new spell—the one he’d just acquired and tested in this very room only a few minutes before they’d gone down to talk to Adranial in the tavern. He could feel that the spell had already reached the end of its cooldown. It had been about thirty minutes since the last time he’d used it. He was a little annoyed that it had taken so long for the spell to be used again, but considering how overpowered the spell was, he supposed that it made sense that he wouldn’t be able to use it so quickly.

At least, not yet. Perhaps in the future it would have a much shorter cooldown and he’d be able to use it multiple times during a fight.

I’m definitely looking forward to that.

At least half an hour wasn’t really all that long.

“I do have a plan,” Xavier replied. “But you’ll just have to wait and see what it is.”

Justin glanced at Siobhan with a raised eyebrow. “You see how he isn’t telling us the plan, and he’s pretending how he knows exactly what he’s doing? That means he hasn’t got a plan. He’s clueless.”

Siobhan laughed behind her hand. “Yeah, Xavier can be pretty clueless sometimes. Though I wouldn’t sell him short.”

“No. I suppose I wouldn’t want him harvesting my soul if I got on his bad side, either.”

“I’m not going to harvest your soul, Justin.” Xavier paused. Turned. Looked at the young man. “At least, not anytime soon.” He winked.

Justin knew he was joking—at least, he probably knew. Though as Xavier stepped over to the door to the next floor, he heard the teenager swallow.

They entered the floor. The old man was by the fire once more. Xavier looked over at him. This man was him. An older version of him, but him all the same. But it wasn’t the exact same older-version-of-Xavier that he’d spoken to the last time he was on this floor. This Xavier had never met him before. This Xavier might think this was the first time he’d been on this floor and try to talk to him.

[You guys deal with him,] Xavier said through the Communication Stone. He fled down the cave tunnel toward where the monster was. He needed to find it as fast as he could if he was going to get the record for this floor. And he didn’t need to just find it, he needed to cast a spell before it caught on to how powerful he was.

He figured that shouldn’t be too hard, despite all of Adranial’s warnings. Just because other Denizens had struggled to keep it close didn’t mean he would have the same issue.

You aren’t going to hide from me.

Adranial hadn’t explained what the monster was, or what it looked like—according to her, that wasn’t the important part.

Xavier, however, hadn’t been expecting it to be a damned kraken. The sight of the thing in the underground lake made him almost stop running. Krakens were things of myth back on Earth—but of course in the Greater Universe they would be something that actually existed. He should have known that. He was getting used to finding out things like this existed, after all. He’d faced dragons and hydras and wyverns and all manner of other kinds of previously mythological beasts.

What was one more?

There was a small part of him that wished he could tame beasts like this. But he knew that would never be in the cards for him. He wasn’t some sort of beast tamer or monster summoner.

He was a killer.

As soon as Xavier deemed that he was close enough, he stopped running, skidding across the ground. His feet stopped a couple of inches before the water started. Instantly, he cast Time Alteration. He’d been moving so fast that the kraken hadn’t gotten a chance to even lay eyes on him yet—and the damned thing had a lot of eyes, so he figured that was an impressive feet.

He couldn’t tell exactly how large the beast was, as so much of its body was submerged in the water. But it looked as though it had hundreds of writhing tentacles, each of them just as slimy as the last, filled with disgusting puckers that appears to be like small mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth.

He could already see that the kraken was snagging up other smaller beasts and feeding them straight into its giant, teeth-lined maw in the middle of its large body, but he shuddered when he saw some of those small, pucker mouths eating tiny fish beasts in the underground lake.

Xavier knew most people would look at a beast like this with fear, but mostly it just made him cringe. The Tower of Champions wasn’t a challenge for him anymore—he wasn’t sure if it ever would be again.

That realisation made him sad.

He paused where he was for a moment—it didn’t matter how much time passed while he was still in this time-bubble. Time was moving at the slowest of crawls outside of it, after all. That was the whole point of him using the spell in the first place.

Xavier just stood there. The tower floors… they weren’t enough for him, just as the dungeons he’d been clearing hadn’t been enough for him. Had they made him stronger? Of course—he’d gained countless titles clearing them. He was a great deal stronger than he’d been before he’d gotten so many titles.

But he’d refused to go to Adranial’s ancestor’s sector and be under their protection and tutelage because he’d wanted things to be harder, not easier.

This wasn’t harder.

Standing there, Xavier cast a few spells at the kraken, sure that his plan would circumvent its ability to teleport. The kraken was outside of the bubble he’d created with his Time Alteration spell, but it wasn’t far outside. He’d needed to be close enough for what he’d wanted to work. One of the beast’s tentacles had slid outside of the water and was less than an inch outside of the bubble. Xavier had measured the space exactly, ensuring that this would happen.

That tentacle was where he’d targeted his spells.

The first spell that he cast was Heavy Telekinesis. It didn’t really matter what spell he used—he simply needed the beast’s defensive spell to be spent, and this felt like the easiest way to do that.

The second spell he cast was Soul Strike.

Then he cast Soul Shatter for good measure, though he didn’t think it was completely necessary.

Each of the three spells reached the edge of the bubble then moved so slowly it was almost like they weren’t moving at all.

The spells hit the beast in quick succession.

And exactly what Xavier had thought would happen, happened. Once Xavier had dropped the Time Alteration spell, the beast died. The floor was completed. Xavier slumped his shoulders.

He felt an utter sense of disappointment.

His plan had worked, but a part of him hadn’t wanted his plan to work. He’d wanted this floor to be more of a challenge. He stared down at the dead beast that was floating up to the surface of the water. The kraken was even larger than he’d thought it was. Xavier hadn’t even bothered scanning the beast. Its actual name, its level, more information he might have gained about it from his Identify skill—none of that seemed important.

Why would something like this be important if it was so easy to defeat?

It’s like I’m crushing insects beneath my boot.

More of an annoyance than anything else.

He stood there and waited for the titles to flow in. This was the single objective from the floor.

But the titles weren’t coming. The floor hadn’t ended like he’d thought. Xavier frowned and looked around the cavern. He looked down at the beast—it wasn’t bobbing at the surface anymore. It wasn’t moving at all, despite the fact that it had been bobbing slightly in the water. In fact, nothing in the cave that he could see was moving.

He looked down at the water where it had rippled outward from the massive beast’s movements. The ripple had stopped, like it was a photograph and not reality.

“What’s going on here?” he said aloud. His voice didn’t echo, despite the large cave, as though the sound waves didn’t travel very far.

It was like his Time Alteration spell had been activated again, but of course he hadn’t done that. There was still almost half an hour until the cooldown ended—the cooldown didn’t start until the spell finished, unlike most other spells.

And he would know if this was something he had done.

He looked behind him, half-expecting to find himself—the older version of him, anyway—standing there. But the man wasn’t there. The man wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Something very, very strange was going on.

Do I have the ability to be invisible in the future? Xavier wondered. But then, why would he want to hide from himself?

None of this made any sense.

Then a notification popped up in his vision. For a split second between the notification popping up and him actually reading it, Xavier thought he could relax.

But what he saw wasn’t a notification about him finishing the floor. It was something else.

The System wants to talk to you.