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Book 5: Chapter 9 - The Wrong Kind of Attention

Several months passed on the hundredth floor of the Tower of Champions. And those weren’t months that he spent trapped within one of his time dilation fields. There was only so much training that he could do while stuck inside one of those, especially when they stopped his spells from cooling down.

Though there were a few things that his Time Alteration spell had been able to give him. If he only used his melee attacks, he was able to farm a massive number of enemies as fast as he possibly could.

The problem with using that method, however, was it wasn’t the way he wished to fight. It helped him on occasion when he was trying to push his skills forward, but without being able to use more than a single spell, it greatly reduced the rate at which he could push the ranks of his spells up. And pushing his spell ranks up was greatly important.

Still, he had used the technique several times to boost the rank of his soul bound weapon, Lost Bone of a Dead God, and his own levels as well.

He was finding that there was a massive difference levelling up as a D Grade than there had been as an E Grade of F Grade.

It took significantly longer for him to gain levels.

Significantly.

He was also beginning to think that the System’s hand was at play here. It wasn’t the first time the System had nerfed his ability to gain Mastery Points.

But gaining levels was important. The more levels he gained, the more attributes he had, and even though lingering in a grade and gaining as much from it as he could had been how he’d gained not only such a powerful class, but also a powerful new race, it didn’t matter how quickly he got to Level 300—he could simply remain there for as long as he needed to strengthen every other part of him.

But Xavier quickly found out that it was a pipe dream to think that he could get anywhere close to reaching C Grade while he was on this floor.

Not unless he wanted to spend many years of his life here.

The last few months he’d spent here since getting to D Grade had only gained him two levels, and that had been with him trying to gain as many as he possibly could, pushing himself to his very limits in farming enemy monsters.

Something told him the System was trying to tell him to move forward—but that wasn’t something Xavier was ready to do.

There was more he wished to achieve on this floor.

Fortunately, those months of training hadn’t gone to waste. Though he’d struggled to push his levels forward, he’d had no trouble pushing his ranks forward—both in his skills and in his spells.

That day, he was returning to Hunter’s Home after a particularly long session out hunting beasts. He’d just completed a Hunt Quest as well while he was out, and he was looking to collect his reward from the barkeep. Xavier had completed well over two hundred Hunt Quests, and he wondered if he’d completed more Hunt Quests than any of the other people here by now—excepting Gimble, of course, as that mad dwarf had been on this floor for who knows how long.

Gimble was in the tavern as Xavier entered. He looked over at the dwarf, and something occurred to him. It had occurred to him several times since he’d reached D Grade.

What if the System wasn’t nerfing his Mastery Points as much as he thought?

Xavier had gained a great deal in the incredibly short period of time since he’d been integrated into the Greater Universe. The strongest Denizen in his entire sector was C Grade, and as far as he knew she’d been around for at least a thousand years.

Xavier was well aware of how impatient he was. Well aware of how quickly he wanted to amass power. And with the fact that he’d gotten an unmatched, speedrun achievement for getting to E Grade and D Grade… he was clearly able to do that.

But his journey, despite how it had gone so far, was still going to be a long one. There was no way that he could expect to keep progressing at the same speed that he’d maintained since being integrated.

Gimble must have been here for… decades, from the way that he spoke, and he was still not close to reaching C Grade. At least, not as far as he’d let on.

It might be a very long time until I get there, but that doesn’t mean I can’t amass enough power to take stronger C Grades down—I took a normal C Grade down before I even made it to D Grade, after all.

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Gimble nodded over at him and raised his drink. Xavier had been on raids with the raid group several times since he’d become D Grade, but he felt as though he’d gained a lot more from the experience back when he’d been E Grade, and so he’d fallen back into his solitary training habits.

None of the D Grades on this floor, not even Gimble, were able to keep up with him anymore.

Xavier nodded back at Gimble, but he didn’t head over to the dwarf’s party. Instead, he headed to the bar. He was there to claim yet another Hunt Quest reward.

Briefly, he thought of Rhaalir. The elf spirit from the Otherworld whom he’d made a contract with. The one who had taught him how to better use his Otherworld spells. The spirit was still with him, but he rarely seemed to appear anymore. Sometimes, he didn’t even respond when Xavier called to him.

Xavier chalked that up to the fact that he hadn’t been able to gain any more Otherworld spells as of late, so the elf had nothing much to teach him, but he was beginning to wonder if something else might be at work. Perhaps the connection they had was damaged somehow. He would need to look into that.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to use his Otherworldly Communion spell as much as he’d liked anymore. It took him far longer to gain a level as a D Grade than it ever had in the past, so he’d been limited to the actual cooldown that the spell had. The spell’s cooldown often varied, but more often than not it took a month.

He’d needed to use those insights on other things.

The floorboards creaked beneath Xavier’s boots as he made his way to the bar. His great black wings were tugged tightly to his back, though not fully retracted, as he walked. It felt strange fully retracting his wings into his back, as though they were no longer a part of him, and so he was doing that less and less.

Felicia had a steaming mug of coffee waiting for him by the time he reached the bar. The woman raised an eyebrow. “You know, once upon a time you were a commodity. Someone people could bet on, and there was a little mystery as to what the outcome would be. At least for a little while. Now, betting on you isn’t fun anymore. It’s all dried up, except for a few new additions to the floor who haven’t gotten to know your reputation. If I catch them early enough.”

Xavier smirked. “I’m sorry I’ve affected your side business.”

Felicia let out a dry laugh. “You know it’s not just my side business, you’ve profited off this little venture too.”

Felicia had long been making bets on his behalf, since the first time Xavier had entered this floor and gone on a Hunt Quest. And the woman was right, he had made a good deal of coin from the arrangement. But making coin wasn’t something he was all that concerned about.

“I’m here to redeem another Hunt Quest.”

Felicia sighed. “Of course you are.” She tilted her head to the side, looked over at the notice board. “So, when are you going to go after them?”

He raised his head and looked into her eyes. “After them?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

Felicia eyed him. “You think I don’t see the way you stare at those two Hunt Quests tacked to the board. Every time you come in here, you stand in front of that board, just looking at them.”

Xavier frowned. “You’ve been paying that close attention to me, have you?”

“I’m not the only one, you know. You’re being watched by a lot of people here. Have been for a while. There are some Champions that have hung around longer than they usually would, and they always seem to be in the tavern whenever you show up. Haven’t you found that strange?”

Xavier didn’t really pay all that much attention to the other Champions in this place, except for a few of them who’d been in the raid group. “I hadn’t really noticed. Though Gimble always seems to be here.”

“It’s not Gimble I’m talking about.”

Xavier noticed, with his Farscope ability that allowed him to see everything in a 100-foot radius, that the barkeep had concealed their conversation from the rest of the room. This made him lean a little forward in his stool. It meant she was trying to talk to him about something important.

With his Farscope ability, he looked around at the different faces in the bar. There were plenty of people who’d looked his way when he’d first entered. He’d become a person of notoriety around here, even if he hadn’t intended to be. So that wasn’t unusual. Some of those people were still looking his way—a few with clear respect, others with small hints of resentment.

He could even sense a bit of fear, even though fighting other Champions was strictly restricted by the System on this floor, so there was no chance that he was going to hurt them.

Xavier had to say he didn’t find any of that behaviour strange.

There were, however, a few Champions in the place that pointedly weren’t looking at him, and that made him wonder…

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gained attention I wasn’t aware of,” Xavier said, thinking about the presences that have looked at him in the past—Empress Larona and Adranial’s ancestor. And, well, the System itself.

Felica waved a hand. “If you’re going to make your move, you need to do it soon.”

Xavier frowned again. “What do you mean? There isn’t a time limit on this floor.”

The woman sighed. “No. There isn’t. But I want you to be aware of something. I’ve been here for a long time, and I’ve seen others receive the look you’re getting now. You may think you’re safe around these people because the System restricts violence on this floor, but that hasn’t stopped me from seeing Champions murdered.”

“Seeing?” Xaiver raised an eyebrow. “This bar is a Safe Zone. I didn’t think violence like that would even be possible?”

Felicia’s gaze slipped to the left. “This isn’t the only place on the floor that I’m able to see, you know. I have ways of throwing my sight. Ways of observing things out there. Comes in handy when seeing the outcomes of bets, among other things…”

“Does that mean you’ve been spying on me out there?”

Felicia shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve got to be entertained somehow. I have to say, the way you took down that Fetid Forest Troll… I’ve never seen anyone fight like that before.”

The Fetid Forest Troll was the C Grade beast he’d taken down back when he’d been E Grade. Xavier sighed. Perhaps he should have felt a little violated that she’d been watching and he hadn’t even known, but it honestly didn’t come as much of a surprise. As he thought about this reality, something clicked in his mind. “The birds.”