Xavier, Howard, Siobhan, and Justin materialised in the middle of a small wood, exactly where Adranial had said they would. He gazed up at the trees. The leaves were orange, red. Autumn colours. Though who knew if autumn existed on this world. He didn’t really know how seasons on other planets worked.

A breeze rolled in, scattering the leaves on the forest floor, and setting the branches to slightly sway. The breeze was cool, but not cold. The air was clean.

“Nice day for it,” Howard muttered, stepping past him. The man had his double-bearded axe in hand, though he hadn’t bothered to summon his tower shield.

He won’t need it here. I doubt anything could hurt him, even if he stood there and let himself get attacked for an hour.

Though the levels of the enemies on this floor had increased rather dramatically to the levels of the enemies they’d faced back on the ninth floor, they were still weak compared to Xavier’s party.

The normal enemies were all Level 30. Adranial said that if the melee didn’t get a Champion without prior knowledge of the tower, then the eleventh floor usually did the trick.

The wood was quiet but for the chittering of birds somewhere high up in the canopy.

There was a well-worn path heading through a break in the trees. They all walked toward it. Xavier didn’t feel like he was in a rush. It was nice to take in the fresh air of another world.

It didn’t take them long to come upon the town.

Adranial had said the town was called Grimward. The town had summoned Champions because it had been beset by a powerful necromancer who wanted the land. Apparently there was a resource in the area, something ancient that only the necromancer could sense. He wanted to purge the town of all life, then raise the victims into his own personal mining crew.

Xavier was looking forward to finding this necromancer and sending him to the land of the dead.

He already had a plan for how he was going to clear this floor, one he hadn’t told the others yet.

Mostly, because he didn’t know if it would work. That’s why he’d insisted on getting a feel for the floor. He’d asked Adranial if there were any records of anyone having defeated the necromancer, and not just the waves of zombies he’d sent into the town.

The woman had frowned, shaking her head.

“That’s impossible,” she’d said. “And it’s not the point of the floor.” She’d knife handed the table, gently, but enough to make Sam give her a small glare before he turned to serve another Champion who’d just entered the tavern. “Stick to the plan. You’re strong enough to clear every wave faster than anyone who’s come before. I’m sure of it. What is it your people say? This should be a slice of cake.”

“Piece,” Justin had muttered.

The frustration had leaked out of her like air from a balloon. She’d straightened and nodded at Justin. Xavier had assumed she’d thought he’d said peace.

He hadn’t bothered to correct her, nor had he bothered to argue with her point, either.

Impossible.

The word had sat with him since she’d said it.

Impossible…

There was another thing he’d done that everyone had considered impossible. Defeating the Lord of the Endless Horde himself.

He wouldn’t be here if not for what he’d done there.

So why would he hold himself back, just because he knew he could secure the best time on the floor without going above-and-beyond? Was that really what he needed?

Maybe no one’s ever been able to beat her ancestor’s time because they haven’t tried something like this.

The first thing they came upon was high walls.

The walls were made from some kind of stone, which was clearly enchanted, as it had a soft blue glow about it. Xavier already knew what was on the other side of those walls—several farms that circled the town.

According to Adranial, this town had tried to “hide” from the responsibility of living within an integrated world. Long ago, the highest power of their world had granted them the protection of the walls for some task one of the inhabitants had performed. The highest power of their world was, by now, long gone. The memories of these people barely stretched that far back. They lived a life as peaceful farmers and crafters, never venturing far outside of their town.

The monsters and beasts around them weren’t strong either. Without a population of powerful Denizens to test themselves against, many of the beasts had migrated to different lands.

At least, that was how Adranial had put it. Xavier wondered how accurate her little story on the history of these people had been. All he knew was the wall could protect against the strongest enemy this little world had to offer—as long as that enemy was living.

“Pretty big loophole,” Justin had muttered when Adranial had given them that tidbit of information.

“And these people just decided to hide away and ignore the rest of the Greater Universe?” Howard asked.

Siobhan had shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like such a bad life, I suppose. And there have been plenty of cultures that hid away from others. Not every country gets into the business of fighting other people’s wars.”

They walked around the wall, following the path, until they came upon the gate. A man stood above it. He wasn’t wearing armour, and he had no discernible weapon. He certainly didn’t seem like any other guard Xavier had seen before.

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The man was waving his arms down at them, frantically trying to get their attention.

“Champions! You’ve arrived!” He turned and shouted to someone they couldn’t see. “Open the damned gates! We need to get these people inside!”

The gates opened before them. The person atop the wall hadn’t even taken a moment to ask who Xavier and his companions were. He’d simply opened the gate to them.

That seems really foolish.

Xavier looked sideways over at Howard. The man seemed to understand exactly what he was thinking.

“These people have been sheltered,” Siobhan said.

“And it means they don’t know how to make themselves safe,” Howard replied with a shake of his head.

That, too, had been a part of Adranial’s explanation of the floor. Hearing it was one thing, however. Seeing it? It was still difficult to believe how much these people had put their heads in the sand.

For generations they’ve lived, not worrying about what might happen in the future, pushing the threat to their people onto the next generation and not preparing them for it.

He supposed it was a lot like climate change… those on Earth had been seeing it coming for decades, and while some tried to do something about it, mostly the threat of it was ignored or derided.

I suppose that kind of thinking is universal. Not very comforting, though.

They waited for Xavier to take the lead and step through the gate first. As he did, the people standing on the other side widened their eyes at the sight of him.

One woman, who looked to be roughly in her sixties, raised her arms and crossed them in some sort of superstitious symbol of warding. “Necromancer!”

Justin chuckled. “I guess it’s your dark robes.”

Xavier looked down at himself. Shrugged. he supposed it wasn’t strange that someone might mistake him for a necromancer, considering how he was dressed in all black. He hadn’t even summoned his scythe-staff.

“I’m not a necromancer.” He motioned to the others. “We are the Champions you summoned.”

The look of relief on the woman’s face was palpable.

It was also worrying.

It made Xavier frown. Did this woman simply believe him at his word?

These people really are sheltered.

“Thank God!” The woman clutched her chest as she caught her breath.

Xavier didn’t need to scan the woman to know she was Level 1. These people had shunned the System their entire lives.

God? Xavier wondered. To which God are they referring?

He wondered if the god was real or imagined. Considering how much he’d recently learnt about the universe, he wouldn’t be surprised either way.

Xavier sensed the boy long before he reached them. As they’d walked toward the town, he’d seen the tiny aura flitting through the forest. Adranial had also told them to expect him.

“The zombies are coming! The zombies are coming!” the boy shouted from somewhere behind them. When he reached the small crowd that had gathered on the inside of the gate, he bent over and clutched his knees. “The zombies… are… coming.”

“Yes, yes, Trevor. We heard you.” This last voice had come from a bald man walking through the crowd. They separated for him as he passed. The man was in his late forties. He was trim. Tall. Had a refined look about him.

Again, he wore no armour, had no weapon to speak of. Xavier didn’t think that everyone should have to fight in the Greater Universe… but he worried about an entire culture refusing to do so.

If any country or culture did that back home, they would have been wiped from history.

Sometimes, you have to fight for what’s yours if you don’t want to lose it.

The bald man folded his hands in front of him, lifted his chin up. He had an all-important look about him. “You must be the Champion we summoned.” His gaze trailed from one to the other. “Interesting lot, you are.”

Xavier tilted his head to the side. “For someone who despises the System, I’m surprised you summoned us at all.”

The man opened his hands. “Unfortunately, it was our only option. Though it is a truth we refuse, we do live within the System, and so when it can be used to save us… well, sometimes there is no other choice.”

Xavier couldn’t help but be reminded of the Amish. He’d heard they would never drive a car themselves, but would be more than happy to be driven by someone else. It all seemed a little hypocritical to him.

“So,” the man said. “Will you help us?”

The man’s name was Connor Drier. Adranial had worn an odd sneer on her face when talking about him. Apparently neither this town nor its people were much liked by the Champions who’d passed through the floor.

No surprised there, Xavier thought. Though he supposed he might be judging them too harshly.

“Do you have any fighters?” Xavier knew the answer to this. According to Adranial, none of the people in the town were above Level 1. Not a single one of them. From what he could see before him, that information had been accurate.

Connor Drier smiled at him as though he were a simpleton. “We are not a fighting people, Champion.”

“Well, maybe you should be…” Howard muttered.

Xavier looked out at the gathered people. People who seemed wary of Xavier and his party, but clearly looked up to the strange, up-himself bald man who ran this town.

Ever since he’d heard about what this floor entailed, he knew he wanted to go about it differently to all the other Champions who’d come before, but to do that he would need to get a feel for the place.

He’d been trying to think of how he could spare these people’s lives. Now, as bad as it made him feel to admit, he was beginning to wonder why he should care about these people. They had been in the System for generations upon generations, and yet they didn’t even try to protect themselves. He looked at the wall that had been created to protect them. It was strange that it would have such a loophole if someone so powerful had created it.

Surely someone strong enough to create something like this would have been able to stop the undead from getting past it.

He shrugged those thoughts away. It didn’t really matter. He had a job to do. This floor was a means to an end.

“If you want your people to survive this, you’re going to need to act,” Xavier said. He figured there was no reason not to be upfront with them. Maybe he would feel better about himself if he could just lie and pretend they were going to defend them till the end, but it was better to tell them the truth.

Wasn’t it?

“Do you know anything about Champions? About the tower?” Xavier asked.

Queen Alastea and her people had known all about the Tower of Champions. They’d known what the consequences of summoning Champions to their aid was—that it would create a near infinite number of alternate universes, and the chance of it saving their iteration could be anything.

It still did his head in thinking about it.

Connor crossed his arms. “We may do our best to live outside the System, but that does not mean we are fools.”

Xavier sighed. He stepped forward, making the other man step back. A look of fear flickered on the bald man’s face. Xavier smiled. Raised his hands. “I’m not the one you have to worry about. This necromancer. He wants your land. Your resources.” He motioned toward his party. “We’re not here to clear this floor. We’re here to feel it out, so we can clear it better the next time around.”

The man’s look of fear turned to one of anger. “This is what’s wrong with the System! You Denizens don’t care about anyone but yourself! You would throw away our lives for what, a little extra power?”

Xavier shut his eyes for a moment. “I’m not here to argue with you. I want to save your lives, but I don’t have to. There is more at stake than your little town, but I don’t need to explain myself.”

He summoned his scythe-staff to his hand, an action which made every single person in the gathered crowd take a step back. Some even gasped.

“Leave or die. It isn’t a threat.” Xavier turned to Siobhan. “Your Summon spell, how strong has it become?”

Siobhan smiled. “Strong enough to do what you’re thinking, especially with a bunch of level ones.”

Connor took another step back, his hands up in front of him as though that would be enough to stop Xavier or the others from hurting him.

Thinking back to when Xavier had checked his attributes, he could probably kill this guy with his pinkie finger. Stab straight through his skull and into his brain.

Not that he would.

He shrugged away the randomly violent thought.

“All right, Siobhan. Let’s find a safe place for them. Then get them the hell out of here.”