Xavier launched himself through one breakthrough after another, performing feats of the body and mind he hadn’t known he was capable of before—performing feats he hadn’t been capable of before.

In all his time levelling up, gaining titles, getting powerful, he hadn’t realised the gaps he was leaving in himself.

Now, they were being filled.

He sped from one side of the time bubble to the other, or ran around it in a circle, or dodged the spells that the darkhaired time mage Liana tossed at him.

He focused his mind, ordered his thoughts as they came—and he moved beyond that. He did complex mathematical problems in his head, or held several chessboards in his mind, splitting it in several ways in order to have different parts of his consciousness play chess against one another.

He did this again and again, over and over, until he was sure he’d be able to give Kasparov or even Magnus Carlsen a run for their money.

Willpower was a difficult one to advance. Xavier knew he could endure much—and he knew he could assert his will over others. His Willpower attribute was one of his strongest. It should have been easier, but it was more abstract.

At least, it felt that way. Liana kept telling him not to actively focus on Willpower, but rather to actively push through on attuning all the other attributes.

Doubts crept up along the way—some attunements were harder to grasp than others, such as his Spirit attunement. Xavier was used to strengthening his soul with a spell, and his Spirit attribute was his strongest asset—but what in the Greater Universe did he need to do to attune it?

“It’s not about strengthening the attributes—that would be a different kind of training. This is about aligning yourself with them, about experiencing them, and being able to draw from more of the power you already possess.”

Liana’s words sounded helpful, but they also felt too wishy-washy for him.

Xavier liked practical solutions to concrete problems, not vague, Zen-like answers to abstract dilemmas.

But, whenever doubt crept in, he pushed through it. This woman had yet to steer him wrong, and he wasn’t about to quit. He would keep pushing.

And that was, eventually, how he attuned his Willpower attribute—he hadn’t even been intending to, it had simply happened while he was focusing on another difficult task.

After the fact, he could see the sense in it—he had pushed through even when he didn’t want to. Isn’t that what Willpower was all about?

Xavier quickly lost track of the time that passed within the bubble, instead focusing on the time that passed outside of it. He was sure that months must have gone by for him, while six days had passed outside the bubble.

It was time for him to step outside of the time dilation field and the glade and defeat his next monster for his Hunt Quest. Liana had completed her own Hunt Quest already during the week, stepping away while he was locked in his training—from his perspective, she’d been gone for days, and a part of him had wondered if she would ever return.

Xavier hadn’t completed his training with the woman, but he had attuned all of his attributes up to 5%.

A feat that, when he had attuned them each to 0.1 percent at the beginning, had barely even seemed possible.

His patience was a lot more ingrained now. Time seemed to pass… differently for him, and his body and mind were both relaxed and focused in a way that he hadn’t experienced before. Since his journey within the System had begun, it hadn’t been long until Xavier felt powerful. When he first gained his Soul Reaper class, the strength of it had amazed him.

That power had only grown and grown over time.

But he hadn’t realised how much of that power had still been hidden under the surface, and he knew he was even now only dipping his toes in. He had yet to dive right down into the depths of the well of power within him.

But he would, in time.

It hadn’t only been attuning attributes that Liana had taught him how to do. His Time Alteration spell was far more powerful than it had been before. Xavier had managed to push it all the way to Rank 50—and there were other things he had worked on along the way.

Xavier looked at his Hunt Quest—the one he’d chosen from the board so he could more easily find the Dark Mountains, and in so doing find Liana. He wondered if it was wise to venture toward the Dark Mountains again, after what had happened their last time. His control over The Nightmare was long gone, and while the creature, beast, or whatever it was, didn’t venture outside of its domain, stepping back into it…

Would the entity be conscious enough to hold a grudge?

Liana told him there should be nothing to worry about. She provided him with a good amount of salt, so that he could ward off the Infected Beasts without having to do battle with them, or have a repeat of what had happened last time—though taking control of all the Infected Beasts once more would certainly make taking on the Stone Bear easier.

Now is not the time to risk going after a C Grade entity. No need to be impatient on that matter.

Xavier once more wondered how it was Liana had gotten herself in the position she had when he had first encountered her—besieged by infected beasts all around his, The Nightmare’s dark, oozing form crawling around her skin, ready to claim her as one of its own.

If she’d had all this salt, she should have been able to fight it.

He ordered that thought, placing is somewhere he could come back to later, and focused entirely upon the task at hand.

If the Stone Bear was anywhere close to the strength of the Magma Bull, Xavier would need to have hit wits about him.

Xavier moved swiftly through the forest until he made it to the Dark Mountains. He couldn’t help but grin as he ran. He could feel his Speed attunement at work—feel the extra edge it gave him, how the muscles in his legs tensed and relaxed as he ran. There was something pure about running, about being in motion, that he had never fully appreciated before.

Now, he felt it more deeply than ever.

The Dark Mountain looked exactly as it had his first time here, and the mark on his mini-map clearly showed him where his quarry was—he spotted the cave entrance, the shimmer of the instance, a little ways up the mountain, from miles away.

He sped forth, moving too fast for the beasts in the area to bother him. Liana had told him that once he was within the instance, nothing else would be able to enter—it would be him alone with the Stone Bear.

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Liana had faced a Stone Bear before, but she refused to tell him anything about it, saying that if he utilised his spells and skills and wit properly than he wouldn’t have any trouble facing the beast.

Xavier took this as another lesson, and instead of growing frustrated with the fact that she wouldn’t tell him anything about the beast, he took it as an opportunity.

While he’d been training with Liana, and his Time Alteration spell had been in cooldown, he’d been pushing his Identify skill forward. He’d never had much opportunity to focus on it and truly push it up as far as he could. When he started doing this, the skill was only at a measly Rank 50.

During those cooldowns, he ventured out of the glade and used the skill on everything he could think of. It had still been too weak to use on the beasts in the area, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use it on other things. And so he did. He used it on the trees, every single species that he encountered. He used it on the grass, on the weeds, on the flowers, on the different herbs that called the forest floor home. He was sure that if he were an alchemist, he would wish to gather up all of those ingredients. But he didn’t intend to slow down to do so.

It took a lot of time, and much of the things he identified he found of little to no interest, but eventually he was able to push the skill high enough that he managed to use it on the beasts that were around him—that was when it truly pushed forward.

And thus, Identify was the first of his skills to reach Rank 100.

Rank 100 was the limit anyone of E Grade could reach. It wouldn’t be possible to take his skills and spells higher than that until he made it to D Grade—or so he’d been told. He still wondered at the truth of that, and now that he had discovered attunements, he didn’t want to push to D Grade until he’d made enough progress in all of them.

As swiftly as he’d been moving through the levels, he hadn’t wanted to slow himself down and optimise everything. He hadn’t had the time to do anything like that. It had felt too… indulgent.

Now, things were different, and he was glad for that. He knew there were only so many things one could advance within a time bubble—it wouldn’t be an advantage to him in every part of his training, but right now it was a particularly strong one.

Xavier climbed up the mountain until he stood before the entrance to the cave. He paused, reached out to touch the shimmer that showed him where the instance began. He could see through the shimmer almost as though it wasn’t there. The cave was dark. Pitch black. Though he knew his eyes would soon adjust to it, he couldn’t see much of anything inside yet.

He stood there until he could make out the cave better, but it was taking far longer than it should. There was something strange at work. Usually, his night vision would kick in almost instantly. Yet the longer he stared within the cave, trying to discern where the walls were, the more he realised the blackness wasn’t entirely natural.

Even his Farscope ability, something which he’d grown rather reliant on of late, couldn’t penetrate the gloom.

Xavier tilted his head to the side. Within his Storage Ring, he had a myriad of supplies that he didn’t really think he would ever need—rope, being one of them. What exactly was he going to do with rope?

He also had enchanted torches, whose fire would burn for weeks without being exhausted. He’d never had need of them in the past.

Xavier summoned one of those torches to his hand now. They had a clever little enchantment that let the user simply will them to be lit, and they couldn’t be blown out by the wind. He lit the torch, and smiled at the flickering flames, appreciating the moment.

It felt rather adventurous, stepping into a dark cave with a flaming torch. He couldn’t help but take a childlike glee in what he was about to do.

He pointed the torch’s flames toward the inside of the cave, trying to see if the light would push back the oppressive, unnatural darkness found within.

The flames illuminated the darkness, but only a few feet around—far less than the flames’ light should have stretched.

Curious.

Though Xavier’s patience had grown considerably since meeting Liana, he knew there was no point standing there any longer. He had a full day before he needed this thing killed, but he didn’t want to take that time for granted. One needed to know when to be patient, and when to act.

Xavier stepped over the threshold and entered the cave of the Stone Bear. He held his scythe-staff in his right hand, and the enchanted torch in his left. He couldn’t hear anything stirring within the cave, even though he stretched his senses forward as far as he could, straining his ears.

Xavier cast Heavy Telekinesis on the torch, hovering it in mid-air. His usage of the spell wasn’t near as precise as someone who had chosen a different telekinetic path, but he could still manage this well enough. Someone on a different path would no doubt be able to hover a dozen or more torches, holding them up all around them to illuminate more of the cave.

Xavier would make do with what he had.

And there was another thing he’d gained during his time training with Liana—identifying things during the cooldown breaks wasn’t the only extracurricular training he’d partaken in.

He’d hunted down beasts as well.

The forest had been full of them. Sometimes, they wandered into the glade by themselves, other times he had to seek them out, but always he tried to kill at least one during those cooldown breaks—for if he needed rest, he could simply take it within the time bubble, when the world outside was all but frozen.

And so, in that time, he had managed to complete the spell quest for Telekinetic Enhanced Strike. His Heavy Telekinesis spell was no longer tied up with his physical attacks.

After he’d taken a few steps into the cave, careful to keep his boots silent on the coarse stone floor, he halted and hovered the enchanted torch farther ahead of him. As the torch reached more than a few feet away, Xavier was consumed by the darkness, so pitch black he couldn’t even see his hand if it were right before his face.

It was rather unsettling.

He focused on what the torch illuminated. The cave was too wide for the light to reach the walls on either side, so Xavier had to make it zigzag left and right so he could cover everything. He didn’t want to leave an inch unseen, for who knew what might be lurking in the darkness.

All he saw was the jagged rock of the cave walls, and the stalagmites and stalactites that shot up from the ground and hung down from the ceiling like the sword above Damocles’s head, tied to nothing but a thin strand of horsehair, as he sat Dionysius II’s throne.

Xavier paused the torch’s forward movement as he considered those stalagmites and stalactites. He recalled his fight with the Magma Bull—how it was able to not only control lava, but the very rock and dirt of the volcano itself.

Then he thought of another beast from the noticeboard—The Nightmare, who lay claim to the mountain he stood upon. Though for some reason it had not made its way into the Stone Bear’s cave—perhaps the instance it resided within was protection from that.

The Magma Bull and The Nightmare are able to control the environments they reside within—could that be something the Stone Bear is capable of?

Though he had won his encounter with the Magma Bull, he still wondered if he would have been able to do such a thing without the help of the Spirit of Vengeance—and he knew he wouldn’t be able to call upon it again. Not until the situation truly warranted it.

This was not one of those times.

He tilted his head to the side and used Identify on one of the stalactites hanging above.

Stalactite

Stalactites are icicle-shaped deposits that form in primarily limestone caves—though they have been known to form in other types of caves around the Greater Universe.

Stalactites are typically naturally occurring phenomenon, though there is something strange about this one—its form is too pure, and there is no stalagmite beneath it.

Take care, for this stalactite may be controlled.

Xavier blinked. That was what he’d noticed—that was what was strange. His subconscious mind must have latched onto it. Stalactites dropped water as they formed, creating a mound-shaped stalagmite on the ground beneath them. If this went on long enough, they would meet in the middle and form a column.

The things you learn reading fantasy books.

But none of the stalagmites had grown beneath the stalactites, and there was no column formed in sight.

He couldn’t help but grin at his finding.

Xavier couldn’t see the stalactites directly above him, for the light of the torch he hovered was too far ahead of him. He was blanketed in the eerie darkness of the Stone Bear’s cave, but he was sure he would hear the slice of a stalactite’s fall and be able to dodge out of the way in time.

He stepped forward, hovering the enchanted torch deeper into the cave as he went, still seeing no sign of the Stone Bear.

Until something in one of the rock walls shifted, and he found a new meaning to the word rockface.

The Stone Bear inched out of the wall, almost as though it were being formed as he watched it. The surface of its skin was undulating and smooth all at once until it solidified, as if it were made from liquid rock—though it radiated no heat like lava would, and it looked as grey as any other rock.

Xavier was about to use Identify on the Stone Bear, which had just taken its first step out of the wall, when his enchanted torch was snuffed out.

The enchanted torch which had protection from being snuffed out by the wind.

The entire cave fell into complete darkness.

Well, this isn’t good.