Accidental Champion of Earth - Chapter 19 - If That Happened To A Normal Person, It Probably Would Have Broken Their Back (Patreon)

Even when the other Champions began to appear, Xavier had not ceased his punishing training regime.

Since the first day that he’d arrived in the Tower of Champions, he hadn’t slept more than four hours a night. He wasn’t sure if it was healthy or not, but he felt more energetic than he ever had in his life.

One thing he had discovered when he slept was that sleeping didincrease his Spirit Energy. It seemed to increase at a rate of 500 points per hour of sleep, as after his first night of sleep it had topped out at 4000.

That solves that mystery. He was pretty sure that meditation would solve that problem as well—a skill he’d yet to gain, as he’d chosen Staff Mastery first. Though with eating food, killing monsters and sleeping all able to gain him more Spirit Energy, he wasn’t sure if he needed a fourth way or not.

But he certainly wanted one.

That first day, he’d trained for hours. Mostly sprinting up and down the stairs and doing as many handstand push ups as he could manage. After a little while he realised the handstand push ups simply weren’t cutting it, and he’d done something he’d at first thought would be foolish.

He’d taken one of the vending machines out of his Storage Ring and picked it up. There was some information on the side, warning of how heavy it was.

It weighed 990 pounds, or 450 kilos. He’d looked at it a little dumbfounded, lying on the ground. Xavier hadn’t been to the gym in… a long time, but he was pretty sure the record for the heaviest deadlift wasn’t much higher than how much that vending machine weighed.

He looked down at his Storage Ring, glad he didn’t have to carry the weight of everything that was inside of it around with him. It must put everything in some sort of pocket dimension. I mean, there are pocket worlds, so why wouldn’t there be interdimensional storage spaces? How else would the ring work?

At that point, he hadn’t managed to gain any points in Strength despite all of his attempts. The only attribute he’d managed to gain through physical training was Speed.

He’d looked at his Strength attribute—21—and wondered how strong that made him in “normal” terms. He could do handstand push ups absurdly easily. He’d even be able to do them on one hand if he had the balance for it—which he didn’t. Yet.

But picking up something that was almost a thousand pounds? That seemed… even more absurd.

He’d stared down at the vending machine for a moment, then shrugged his now-large shoulders and thought it was worth a shot.

Xavier had leant down, picked it up, and had it over his head in seconds. He’d stumbled backward, felt a massive strain on his joints, but he’d managed to keep it steady and push it all the way up, his arms extended.

He’d laughed out loud into the empty hallway until someone had stepped out of one of the other rooms, peeking at him with wide eyes. The surprise of someone being in what he’d been considering his hallway made him falter, stumble back, and fall onto his ass.

The vending machine had slammed into the stone floor. The glass broke, and snacks had fallen out everywhere. If that happened to a normal person, it probably would have broken their back. His backside felt a little bruised, but otherwise he was fine.

A notification had popped up in his vision before he’d regained his feed.

You have gained +1 Strength!

The man who’d seen him had stepped out with a frown, arms crossed, looking down at him as though he were a little crazy. Xavier snapped back to his feet, placed a hand on the vending machine, and deposited it back into his Storage Ring.

Five more people had opened doors after that. Though he hadbeen the first to complete his quest, others had only been perhaps ten hours behind.

Xavier, being a bit of a loner, had ran a hand through his hair and sent them down to the bar to talk to Sam. They’d each looked a little perplexed to know that there was a tavern downstairs in this place, but considering what they’d all been through, they each took it in stride.

While it was good to see others here, he didn’t feel as though he had time to socialise, not when he was finally making some progress.

The second they’d all stepped through the archway—four Basic Warriors and one Basic Mage, by the looks of them—he’d gotten that vending machine out and started again.

The first point he’d gained must have been a fluke, because after three whole days of training he’d only managed to gain one more point in Strength, one more point in Speed, and a single point in Toughness.

Toughness, he had trained in his small bedroom. He remembered watching a documentary about Shaolin monks. The monks, when they trained, had done conditioning on their bodies to strengthen themselves. First punching water, then sand, then stone. They’d taken shots to the gut, too. Punch after punch after punch. He’d also seen Muay Thai fighters condition their shins by kicking banana trees.

So he figured… in a world like this… hitting himself with his staff might be the best way to train Toughness when he couldn’t add to the stat.

It had taken him six straight hours of slamming the wooden staff across his legs, arms, stomach, head and back until finally he’d received a notification. He only wondered what people would think he was doing in there, if they were able to hear him through the door.

He hadn’t known how to increase his Intelligence. When he’d tried reading books on his phone, opening his satchel which he’d been keeping in his Storage Ring, he found his phone was long out of battery with nowhere to recharge it.

And his laptop had been smashed. It must have broken in that last fight he’d had with the eighteen goblins, before he’d been whisked away to this place. He remembered falling onto it. The screen was cracked in about four different places and it couldn’t turn on.

He’d sunk onto his bed, then, lost in dismay, laptop cradled in his hand, wondering about all the writing he’d done over the last few years. All the short stories. Assignments. All the outlining. Ideas he’d jotted down. All the unfinished novels.

Had they all been… lost?

He backed up everything he wrote onto the cloud, but after the System came, he hadn’t been able to gain any signal—even when he’d been back on Earth and not in this pocket world.

Xavier wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there, staring off into nothing, thinking about all the work he’d lost. After a while he realised that while it was important to him, right now… it wasn’t important enough for him to lose time. His world was in turmoil. Under threat. His people had only been given a one out of ten thousand chance of survival.

Half of all people who had chosen Champion—like he did—would have died. Then more would have died failing their quests. And that was just those who’d chosen Champion.

Xavier had no idea what other people were going through. Whether the invaders had attacked them. He hoped that they would be safe in their tutorials, but with Sam telling him this world wasn’t “locked,” he sincerely doubted it.

And he was worried about a few lost written words?

I can write things again. Who knows, maybe I’ll be a much better writer now I’ve gained so much Intelligence. And with my Willpower stat, I might actually finally finish something…

On the day he knew orientation would finally come, Xavier had sat on the stone floor of his room, closed his eyes, and breathed steadily. He wanted to test something out. So many of those skills that he’d seen when looking to use his skill point were things people already knew, so he’d wanted to find out how good the System was at picking that up.

What if he were to demonstrate his proficiency in a skill? What if he showed the System that he could already do something? When he’d been using his staff to smash in goblin skulls, he hadn’t been doing it was any particular skill.

Would it have been different if he’d shown skill when fighting with the staff, as though he already had some mastery at it?

He wanted to see if he could unlock a skill through the simple use of it. And, being rather stubborn, he’d sat there meditating for a good five hours before a notification had finally appeared.

Skill Quest Unlocked:

To unlock meditation, successfully meditate for 100 hours.

Progress: 5/100

Xavier smiled. It worked. One hundred hours felt like a long time, and he imagined it might be easier simply learning the skill, but he was glad that he’d discovered this option. I wonder what other skills I could unlock Skill Quests for. He soured, wondering why he hadn’t unlocked a Skill Quest for running, considering all the damned running he’d been doing since he’d gotten to this place. Maybe I don’t have good running technique, so it isn’t registering it properly? He’d been relying heavily on his newfound Speed and Strength stats as he ran, not really thinking about running technique at all. Running wasn’t something he’d really done since his parkour days, after all, and those days had been a little short lived.

Even though other Champions of Earth had arrived, he still hadn’t actually had a real conversation with anyone except for the barkeep. Late in the first day, only a few people had arrived. The ones he’d sent down to Sam in the bar. On the second day, however, hundreds of people had arrived. Way more people than Sam had said would be in his cohort.

Now, there were thousands of people out there, heading back and forth from their rooms down to the tavern. Somehow, the hallway never seemed too crowded. Neither were the stairwells, as there were so many of them every few rooms, on both sides of the hall.

But it did mean he couldn’t run up and down the stairs anymore without getting in people’s way. It didn’t stop him from running down the hallway, though. Even if he got a lot of weird looks.

On the second day, he’d done a little exploring. Well, exploring was a bit much. He simply went up the stairs instead of down them. What he’d found at the top of the stairs was a locked door, one he wasn’t able to open. He’d tried to scan it, like he might with an enemy such as the goblins, but it didn’t let him. He wondered if that was because it was just a door, or if it was because he didn’t yet have the Identify skill. He figured it was the latter.

When Xavier wasn’t training in the hallway, he spent his time in his room, where he had more than enough food in his Storage Ring that he’d taken from the cafeteria. He’d sorted out all the coin purses he had taken from the goblins, and found he had 1,231 Lesser Spirit Coins. Not that he knew what to use them for, other than buying alcohol down in the tavern—not that he’d beendown to the tavern since that first day.

He knew he should have gone out and talked to people, but… he’d always been a bit of a loner. Though the demographics of the people outside varied considerably, and people didn’t exactly seem excited about what was going on, it felt like he was stuck in a university dorm, surrounded by a bunch of strangers he didn’t want to talk to.

I’ve faced goblins from another world, and I’m afraid of making new friends?

It seemed incredibly foolish, especially since he was pretty sure he was the strongest one among them. Hell, I might very well be the strongest person on Earth right now… Though he wasn’t happy about the fact that he hadn’t been able to gain any more levels for the last few days, something gave him the impression he hadn’t fallen too far behind.

The Tower of Champions is an opportunity for me to get strong, gain rewards… I still don’t really know what the tower really is, but I’m sure it will accelerate my progress beyond anything anyone on Earth can manage.

Xavier was in the middle of a strength training session, holding the vending machine aloft in his tiny room. Good thing it has high ceilings. He pushed it upward. Managed to press it twenty times before another notification popped up.

You have gained +1 Strength!

Xavier practically dropped the vending machine onto the floor, his arms were trembling so much. But as he’d gotten used to this, instead of dropping the 900 pound weight, he put it straight into his Storage Ring.

Suddenly, the weight he’d been holding disappeared and he felt as light as a feather. Another point in Strength! That’s 26, now. He was getting really close to 200 stats. I wonder if there’s another achievement, of if there won’t be one until I’ve reached 500 combined stats…

A second notification appeared in his vision soon after the first.

Orientation begins in 5 minutes. Please head upstairs to the next floor where you will meet the rest of your assigned party.

Xavier blinked. I guess I finally need to talk to some people around here. He wasn’t sure why that made him more nervous than the prospect of fighting monsters.