Xavier stood in the large cavern on the nineteenth floor of the Tower of Champions. The kraken had been slain with ease, and its corpse had floated to the top of the water.

Now, it was frozen in time, as everything else in the cave was.

But it hadn’t been Xavier who had frozen it.

If this notification was to be believed, it had been the System itself.

Xavier took a stumbling step back as he stared at the notification. He read it again.

The System wants to talk to you.

Xavier had gotten a direct notification from the System before—one that said the System was watching. But he’d never seen, nor heard, of anything like this.

The older version of himself had said that the System thought Xavier would be the one who was able to help save the universe from ending. Xavier had believed the man—why would he lie to himself, after all?

Even if the realisation had been overwhelming, it had been one that he’d accepted. Was he worried about the implications? Of course. But he also had years and years to prepare.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was meeting the very System itself.

He stood there, looking around, waiting for… something, he didn’t know what, to appear. How would the System look to him? Would it appear as a person, or would it look like something completely different? Would it even appear at all?

The System always “talked” in notifications, so Xavier wasn’t sure why he was expecting something different to happen.

Of course something different will happen. This isn’t normal. Not at all.

Then, someone appeared.

A woman. She looked human, as far as he could tell. But she was taller than any human he’d ever seen—perhaps seven feet tall. She was slender and wore silver, glowing full-plate armour that hugged to her figure. Her hair was silver, too. Not the grey of old age. This silver was more vibrant. It was tied up in a ponytail that fell down her back.

A cape was draped over her shoulders. It flowed as though it was being pulled and pushed by the wind, even though the air in the cavern had been completely stilled.

This System is a woman?

He hadn’t really ever thought that the System would be a physical entity at all. Not really.

And yet, here she was.

“You’re the System?” Xavier blurted. Then he shut his mouth. He hadn’t been intending to speak. He didn’t want to talk out of turn to the very System itself. But he hadn’t been able to help himself.

The tall woman tilted her head down and looked at him. Her face looked severe—until she smiled. Then, it looked calm, serene. It had an odd relaxing quality to it, to the point where Xavier wondered if he were being affected by some kind of spell or skill in the woman’s—the System’s?—arsenal.

“I am not the System. I am merely The Voice of the System,” the woman said. Her voice was beautiful. Calling it the voice of an angel sounded fairly cliche, but it was the only comparison Xavier felt as though he could make.

The Voice of the System. The System has a voice? Someone who speaks for it?

Why bother thinking it, when he could ask.

“You… speak for the System?”

The woman inclined her head. “I do. It is my primary role, now.” She looked around the cave. Her eyes glazed over for a moment. “We have been here before.”

Xavier blinked. “What?”

The woman’s forehead creased. “Something is different, however. Yes.” Her smile returned. “Something is indeed different.”

“What do you mean, we’ve been here before? I would definitely remember this.”

“Indeed. I imagine you would.” The Voice of the System nodded her head toward the tunnel.

Xavier turned around to look at what she was motioning toward. He hadn’t noticed it before, even when he had looked behind him, but there was the tip of a boot protruding from around the corner of the tunnel. Xavier didn’t have to see who that boot belonged to to know.

It was the older version of him.

“I have spoken to other versions of you,” the woman said.

Xavier blinked again as he looked at the Voice of the System. “You… you exist in different timelines?”

“I exist wherever the System wills me to.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“But…” Xavier shook his head.

The woman raised a hand. “You are not at a point where you are ready to understand it all, and that is not why I have come to speak with you.”

Xavier swallowed. “Why has the Voice of the System come to me?” He wasn’t thrilled by what was happening. So far, it was the second curveball he’d been hit with in as many hours. First, the other version of himself. The older one. And the bombshell he’d dropped.

Now the System itself had sent its Voice to have a word with him?

I was getting a bit bored with how easy these floors were…

Perhaps he shouldn’t have complained so loudly in his thoughts if he hadn’t wanted something different to happen.

The Voice of the System began pacing in front of him. It was only then that he realised she was walking on the surface of the lake. It made Xavier wonder if the woman was even there at all—except when her foot moved and revealed the water beneath it, he could make out her boot print. The ripple in the water her movement would cause had not yet eventuated, as time had been stopped in the area.

“The Tower of Champions was intended to be a challenge. It was created as a forge, to temper the Weapon of the System.”

“The… Weapon of the System?” This was the first Xavier had ever heard of that.

“Indeed,” the woman said, without any further explanation. She stopped. Faced him. “But you are not being challenged by the tower anymore. Even gaining record titles has stopped being a challenge for you.”

Xavier swallowed again. It sounded like an accusation. He remembered what had happened when he’d been mowing down the different waves of the Endless Horde. The System had throttled him for it, making it harder for him to gain Mastery Points from the enemies he’d defeated.

It looked as though something similar was about to happen.

But now the System had sent their Voice to talk to him, he imagined it would be something much, much worse.

“The System wants difficulty, challenge, conflict. That is not something that you are getting from these floors.”

“What does it… intend to do about that?”

The woman smiled. This time, it wasn’t comforting.

“It intends to make things more difficult for you. The Weapon of the System needs to struggle, after all.”

Xavier frowned. He was feeling slow. Slower than usual. As though his mind were moving through thick sludge. This had all come as quite a shock to him, so he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised to find that his mind was sluggish.

Still, he couldn’t help but catch that she seemed to be calling him the Weapon of the System.

“I’m the Weapon?” Xavier asked.

“You have claimed the role before. In… other lives.” She tilted her head up. “Though you have yet to succeed.”

Again, he felt an accusation in her words. Though, were they her words? She was the Voice of the System—these were the words of the very System itself.

An all-powerful entity, staring down at him, accusing him of failing.

This was most certainly not a feeling he liked.

I suppose I knew something like this was coming ever since the older version of me spoke to me. Maybe… maybe even before that, with all that Adranial had told me.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but how could it not?

“I am the Weapon of the System,” Xavier said again. This time, it wasn’t a question. He was simply testing out how it felt saying the words.

It felt very strange.

“No,” the woman said. “Not yet. But you will be.”

She stepped forward and took hold of his shoulders. He tried to pull away from her grip, but as strong as he was it was impossible.

She was far, far stronger than him. Something told him he wouldn’t be able to Soul Step to the corpse of the kraken, either.

And even if he could, he doubted it would actually do any good.

For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Xavier felt vulnerable. No, he didn’t just feel vulnerable—he was vulnerable.

There was absolutely nothing that he could do. The Voice of the System—and so the System itself—had him in its clutches. But when couldn’t the System do whatever it pleased with him?

Everything went black. Then white. He appeared, standing in the middle of the Staging Room. He blinked. How in the world had he gotten back here?

The floor hadn’t ended. He hadn’t gotten any of the notifications before turning up here. But there were a list of notifications that were trying to get his attention now—a list that hadn’t been there before when he’d been speaking to the Voice of the System.

Xavier had thought something terrible had been about to happen, and yet… here he was, standing in the Staging Room, absolutely unharmed.

Had what he’d just experienced been some sort of weird hallucination?

He looked around, expecting to see the other members of his party.

But none of them were there. He was about to call out to them, but what would be the point? Instead, he used his Communication Stone—they each had one now, and they could be all linked so he could talk to his entire party telepathically at once.

[Siobhan?] he said first. When a few seconds past without a response, he communicated through the stone again. [Howard? Justin?]

Still no response.

A shiver ran up his spine. This… was bad, wasn’t it? And it definitely wasn’t a hallucination. He thought through the worst scenarios. The first one was that the System had simply killed his friends. Perhaps it thought they were holding him back…

But would it do something like that? And if it would, why wouldn’t the future version of himself have warned him of that? Why wouldn’t he have told Xavier that his friends were in danger? He’d been tight-lipped on much of the future, only telling Xavier of his one goal—to stop the universe from ending.

Would he, would I, really have let my friends die if there was something I could do for them?

He shook his head.

No. The System wouldn’t have killed my friends. It needs my help. It’s clearly an intelligent entity—it would know that I wouldn’t want to help it if it did something like that.

Wouldn’t it?

Xavier tapped his foot on the ground, wondering about the predicament he was in. He finally looked at the notifications that had popped up. Maybe they would offer some sort of explanation for what had happened.

The first few notifications were nothing interesting simply because they were exactly what he’d been expecting to appear. They were the titles that he’d gained from clearing the nineteenth floor of the tower.

He wasn’t surprised to find that he’d reached the first-place record. Of course he had. If he hadn’t, the System wouldn’t have sent its Voice to talk to him. Wouldn’t have done… whatever it had just done to him.

He skipped past them, barely reading what they had to say. Honestly, he didn’t care what they had to say. Getting these titles was no longer a victory—just as the Voice of the System had been alluding to.

It was all too easy for him.

This should be a struggle…

Well, the System was trying to make it one for him, that was for sure.

After the final title notification, Xavier read on.

His eyes widened at what he saw. His mouth fell open as he read it. He felt a host of different emotions. Anger. Fear. Trepidation. His fists clenched so tightly his nails dug into his skin, making him bleed. But he healed so fast the wounds never lasted very long. Still, the pain let him think a little more clearly.

He read the notification for a second time.

The System has transported you forward through the tower.

Your next floor will now be the 100th floor of the Tower of Champions.

You cannot receive any titles for the previous floors that were skipped.