Xavier sped through the forest. Instead of stopping to fight the beasts he came upon, he ran right past them. He could hear them pursuing him—or trying to. The beasts didn’t seem to want to get too far away from their respective territories, and he didn’t want to deal with them right now.

He wanted to finish this beasty off and move onto finding the Denizen who could help him with his Time Alteration spell.

Assuming they’ll even be willing to help me.

Moving at speed, it didn’t take him all that long to reach the Magma Bull’s territory. He was a little surprised with how much the area changed as he went along. The forest he’d been in, when he’d leapt in the air and gotten a good look around, had seemed to stretch on almost forever. Yet in the middle of that forest, there was a more desolate area with a large volcano shooting up from the ground.

How didn’t I see before? Was it somehow blocked from my view?

Xavier wasn’t sure, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He wasn’t here for the scenery.

He received a quest alert the moment he stepped within the Magma Bull’s territory.

Magma Bull Hunt Quest Alert:

You are now in the territory of the Magma Bull.

Be wary, the Magma Bull has taken the life of many a Champion. Facing the beast is not for the faint of heart.

Well, that’s ominous. And also doesn’t tell me anything useful at all.

There was a part of Xavier that wondered whether he should take the warning seriously. Almost every enemy encounter on the one hundredth floor of the Tower of Champions had shown him that he needed to be more careful.

And here he was, doing the exact opposite of being careful.

Running into danger. Jumping ahead. It’s what got me where I am in the first place. No point in stopping now, he thought, though he wasn’t being entirely genuine with that thought.

He was, however, confident he could take on this beast.

Even if he had to use the few spells in his arsenal that he’d been avoiding to take care of this beast, he’d happily do it. He could see how important his Time Alteration spell would be in the future. If there was any way to speed up the reduction of its cooldown, he was all for it.

Half an hour is simply too long.

Xavier was paused at the bottom of the volcano. In all his life, he’d never actually been this close to a volcano before. As he stared up at it, he wondered if it was active. A puff of smoke coming from the top told him that it must be.

He pursed his lips, wondering if he was strong enough to resist lava.

Hopefully that won’t be an issue.

Now that he’d reached the Magma Bull’s territory, Xavier slowed to a walk. His gaze swept around the area. The area was devoid of trees. It didn’t make sense, in his mind, for this place to exist so close to a massive forest. Nothing seemed to grow here. Nothing was able to penetrate the hard ground. And there were no beasts out in the open that he could see, either.

He sighed, looking up at the volcano again.

Something told him he’d have to go up there.

He paused. Tilted his head to the side, and wondered… how was it he hadn’t seen this volcano before? He’d leapt high in the sky, gotten a vantage point from which he could see the entire forest.

Yet he hadn’t seen this?

He’d shrugged that off only moments ago, but there was something eerie going on here. Something he shouldn’t be too swift to simply ignore.

­Could it be that… I’m in a different instance, like the instances back in the tower itself, with the different Staging Rooms, and the different taverns?

He turned around, gazed behind him. It hadn’t seemed as though he’d stepped into a new instance, but it was possible, wasn’t it? The hundredth floor was unique. It wouldn’t surprise him if the System had messed with this world in a way it hadn’t with others he’d been on.

For a moment, Xavier shut his eyes. He drew on the memory of him speeding through the forest to reach the volcano. One benefit of having as much in his Intelligence attribute as he had, was the fact that his memory was close to perfect.

Though he had to actually go searching for the things he wanted to remember.

He examined the surroundings in his memory. It was difficult to examine something in a memory he hadn’t been actively paying attention to at the time the memory had been created, though he found that with his Farscope ability it was much easier.

When he spotted what he was after, he smiled. Honestly, he wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed it before. A few miles back, when he’d still been in the forest, there had been the slightest of shimmers in the air.

He’d run straight by without even noticing it. Though perhaps a scrap of his subconscious had latched onto it, and that was why he’d thought to look back and find it.

Either way, it was there, and it was clear why he hadn’t seen this place—it wasn’t technically in the forest.

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It was a separate instance from it.

Xavier opened his eyes. Though this was interesting, he supposed it didn’t change he needed to do next.

Xavier was about to head up the mountain—or, well, the volcano—when he thought better of it.

Maybe I should heed that quest update’s warning.

Xavier waited a few more minutes.

He’d left his soul puppets far behind because they simply couldn’t move as fast as he could through the forest. He could feel them, getting closer, but it would be a little while until they reached this place, and it would take time for him to get them up to the top of the volcano, even with using his Heavy Telekinesis spell to do it.

His puppets had been a strong asset in these recent fights. A part of Xavier hadn’t been about to wait for them, but he was starting to learn that he shouldn’t bumble his way through every fight.

And he shouldn’t let his impatience get the better of him.

­Those Whiptailed Boars could take out more than 60 percent of my health. What if this thing is strong enough to take me out in one hit? I’ll need the puppets as a distraction—if I’ve learnt anything in the fights on this floor, I can’t risk even getting hit by this enemy.

Before coming to this place, Xavier might not have thought that would be possible until he faced something at C Grade. But he knew he’d been cocky.

The wait felt like an age, but it was really only another two minutes before his puppets arrived. Xavier breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them.

Now, all he had to do was get them to the top of the volcano.

That turned out to be even easier than he’d expected. He used his Heavy Telekinesis spell, one by one, on the puppets.

Never in his life did he expect to be a magical lift.

Though the spell was far better at massive pushes rather than more delicate work, it was still something he was more than capable of doing.

Besides, this was hardly delicate work.

Once the puppets were up there, Xavier trekked up the volcano himself.

Well, perhaps trekked wasn’t the right word—he leapt, with the help of his Heavy Telekinesis spell.

Xavier used his Midnight Scythe to slice a platform straight from the ground, then he launched himself up in the air with Heavy Telekinesis. When he could start to feel the platform beginning to fall, he jumped off it.

In one leap, he’d made it to the top of the volcano.

Xavier had to take a moment, just standing at the edge, to laugh, and bask in what he’d just been able to do. He might not be able to fly like Justin could, but when he wanted to? He could really move.

This was one of those times where he needed to remind himself of how amazing his life had become. No matter his responsibilities or obligations. No matter what the stakes or the consequences of his action. Here he was, on another planet, leaping mountains—or rather, volcanoes—in a single bound…

This is the stuff of my dreams, yet here I am, wide awake.

Xavier looked down into the volcano. He’d been expecting to see a big pit of lava. Maybe that was all the popular media he’d consumed about volcanoes that had been influencing him—or maybe this volcano, on an alien world, worked differently to the ones back on Earth.

Either way, the terrain inside the volcano looked different to how he’d initially imagined it. There was a lot of solid ground, for one. It looked like lava that had dried over the years. There were also tracks where there were gaps in the ground, leading straight to the lava beneath, and every now and then a geyser of lava would shoot up into the air.

Wouldn’t want to be hit by one of those.

Fighting in an environment like this would definitely be quite the hazard.

But it wasn’t just the terrain he saw.

The Magma Bull was down there. The beast was bigger than Xavier had first imagined. He’d thought—he’d hoped—it would be around the size of the wolven he’d been fighting.

This bull, however, was twice the size of the Whiptailed Boar. It stood, six storeys tall, and incredibly long and broad.

Its muscles were unbelievably massive.

The damned thing looked like a building more than it did a beast. It also put into perspective just how large the inside of this volcano—and the volcano itself—was.

Xavier was about to get his puppets into place, only the Magma Bull had other plans.

It spotted him, and the moment it did, steam shot from its nose and ears like it was from some kind of cartoon. Except unlike a cartoon, it wasn’t in the least bit funny.

The massive Magma Bull pawed the ground with one of its front hooves, leaving a long gash where it impacted.

Then it bolted forward. The heavy impact of its hooves on the ground shook the entire volcano. Xavier felt the vibrations run up his leg and heard an ominous rumbling deep inside the earth.

What if this thing sets off the volcano with its movement?

Its horns started to glow red, and Xavier had seen something similar to this in the Whiptailed Boar—before it had shot a beam of energy at him.

I guess the fight starts now.

Xavier dropped down into the volcano, landing easily on solid ground. His soul puppets were still high up behind him. He used Heavy Telekinesis to get the first of them in place just as a geyser shot up a few feet away from him to his left, lava streaming up into the air. He was about to ignore it when he realised that lava was heading straight for him.

The Magma Bull must be controlling it.

Xavier dodged away from the lava easily enough, then he cast Time Alteration, as the Magma Bull had been moving so fast it was already almost close enough to be within the radius of the spell.

Everything froze. Smoke, halfway from leaving the beast’s nose. A stream of lava coming from behind him, from another geyser, that had been close to reaching him—he wouldn’t have gotten hit. He’d seen it was his Farscope ability. And one of his two Whiptailed Boar soul puppets, hovering in the air controlled by his Heavy Telekinesis spell, halfway to reaching the volcano’s surface.

The beast stood before him. Massive. Muscular. And with a look of complete anger etched into its features.

Well, this isn’t exactly going to plan.

Xavier was tempted to use Soul Strike on the beast. He hadn’t tested Soul Strike out since he’d come here, not wanting to “waste” too many souls.

He still felt the same way about that.

But there was something different about this beast to the ones he’d been facing. Something he knew he needed to be wary of.

Xavier blinked, then his eyes widened.

Had the beast… shifted?

He inched forward until he reached the edge of the time bubble. The beast was close to reaching it, something that had been intentional—Xavier had activated the spell so it would be as close to the bubble as possible.

Watching the Magma Bull closely, Xavier could have sworn it shifted again.

But time is frozen!

Except, Xavier knew that wasn’t strictly true.

His time Alteration spell didn’t freeze time outside of the area he was standing in, it sped time up within the barrier. Technically, time outside the barrier wasn’t standing still, it was just going so slowly that nothing out there could move fast enough to make a difference.

Nothing, except, for the Magma Bull.

He could see a glow about it, one that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Speed Energy. It had infused Speed Energy into itself so that it could move faster.

Xavier took a few steps back. He bit his lip, and felt actual fear seize him.

This beast was stronger than he’d thought, and he wasn’t even able to identify it to get an idea of exactly how strong it was. When he’d picked up the notice it had only shown the beast’s grade, not its level, and to him, it had seemed like one of the weaker enemies for him to choose from.

Apparently, I was wrong about that.

Xavier sifted through his options, suddenly realising it might be a mistake to think that he could simply plan on evading this enemy’s attacks. He might have increased his Speed and Toughness attribute with his last level up, but that didn’t mean it would be enough.

No. Xavier needed to be careful.

He needed to throw everything he had at the beast.

It moved again. A fraction of a millimetre, but it was enough. One of its hooves brushed the very edge of the time bubble. God, he’d timed the activation of the spell perfectly—too perfectly.

The moment the Magma Bull was within the barrier, the bubble burst.

Time started moving again.