Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 2) - Chapter 40 - That’s Not Cowardice (Patreon)

Heavy rain pelted down from the sky. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The storm was violent and all encompassing, yet still the noise of the Endless Horde overpowered it.

Xavier whipped his head left and right, eyeing the different portals in the area. He couldn’t see the portals behind the castle. Didn’t know exactly how many there were. At the far back ranks of the Endless Horde, in a circle that encompassed Queen Alastea’s castle, he’d counted hundreds of portals.

There must be over a thousand of them.

From each, more enemies streamed out. He didn’t know what would meet him on the other side of one of those portals. He only hoped it would be what he needed.

He’d observed the portals. Seen that they were different to the portal in the castle. They were far larger—mass portals that whole armies could walk through, shoulder to shoulder—and, most importantly, they were two-way.

This wasn’t the first time Xavier had contemplated stepping through a portal and leaving this world. He’d thought about going through the portal back in the castle. That portal, however, was one-way, and he’d come to the conclusion that the System would stop him and the other members of his party from accessing it.

His logic behind that was the System didn’t tolerate cowards, and running away from the Endless Horde would no doubt be considered a cowardly act.

But heading through one of the Endless Horde’s own portals to try and take them down on the other side, on one of the worlds they controlled?

That’s not cowardice. It’s a suicide mission.

When a suicide mission was your only option, however, it started to look appealing. Not that Xavier planned on perishing on the other side.

“Just pick one,” Xavier growled at himself as his gaze kept pivoting from one portal to the next. Then his eyes fell on a single portal that looked different to the rest. It was even larger than the other ones, and while the other portals glowed yellow—much like lightning—this one was blood red, like the sky had been before the System had integrated Earth.

When he looked at it, he felt a sort of primal fear overtake him. He didn’t know where that fear came from. Didn’t know if it was some kind of insight, for part of him had fallen into a meditative state trying to seek an insight to answer his problems, or if the fear came from somewhere else.

If an insight was warning him away from stepping through that portal, then that meant whatever lay on the other side must be incredibly dangerous.

And if it’s dangerous, it will offer more Mastery Points than anything else.

Though fear blossomed in his chest at the mere sight of the blood red portal, the temptation to enter it was stronger. Perhaps it would be a mistake—perhaps the D Grade leader of the Endless Horde was what lay on the other side, and it would crush him under its boot the moment he stepped through.

A D Grade won’t bother with the likes of me. Not yet. I hope.

It was a gamble, but much in his life had become a gamble since he’d entered the Greater Universe.

What was one more?

Xavier kicked off the head of some giant humanoid Denizen that stood three times as tall as the others, making a beeline straight for the blood red portal. Rain pattered every inch of him in a constant deluge.

Thousands of attacks streamed toward him from the enemies below, and he sensed that some of those attacks were coming from the E Grade wave bosses. He cast Soul Block, splitting it to protect him from all sides. He cast Heavy Telekinesis, pushing arrows and spears and other projectiles away.

A ripple ran through the ranks of the Endless Horde. A hush somehow quietening the millions of enemies around him enough for the sound of the storm to drown them out. The war drums and horns and roars and shouts ceased for the first time in hours.

All eyes turned toward him as he made it to the portal.

They couldn’t stop him getting through.

~

Xavier had never stepped through a portal before, let alone leapt through one. Not only did he have no idea what lay on the other side, he hadn’t known what it would feel like.

He imagined some sort of swirling galactic void. Stars, planets, and other celestial bodies would stream past him like he’d just stepped through a stargate.

What he encountered was nothing like that it all.

In fact, it was… nothing. A darkness more pure than any he’d experienced—even more pure than what the System had pulled him into when he’d been forced to choose his moral faction, and when he’d chosen the path of the Champion.

But it was a darkness that seemed to have weight. That weight pushed down at him, as though it were trying to crush him from every side. He didn’t feel pain, only pressure. Once so immense he worried it would kill him.

Xavier didn’t know how long the sensation lasted. To his mind, it could have gone on for a fraction of a second or an entire eternity.

Then it was over, and Xavier came out of the portal the way he’d entered it—leaping through the air, over the heads of the Denizens that had been about to step through. He glanced down, saw shock on their faces, then clocked the area around him, taking in the architecture in an instant.

What he found took him by surprise.

The Endless Horde always felt like a primitive organisation to him. Perhaps it was the connotations a name like horde gave the galactic entity. Either way, he’d envisioned a world of stone and wood and castles much like the one Queen Alastea lived in.

The buildings here, on the other side of the blood red portal, were nothing like that. In a way, they resembled that of a modern city. Skyscrapers made from what looked to be metal and glass reached higher into the sky than those in New York—so high that they pierced the clouds. He could not see the tops of many of them, obscured as they were.

But these weren’t modern buildings in the way that he knew them. There was a… presence to them. They felt as though they were imbued with different types of energies. Some pure Celestial Energy, while others had Spirit and Willpower Energy. He was sure the others, which he was less familiar with, held Intelligence, Strength, Speed and Toughness Energy.

How does it help, to have buildings imbued with energy like this?

What was even more eye catching than the buildings themselves was the vehicles that flew from one to another.

The different craft varied considerably. Some were flying ships, their sails whipping in the wind—he saw several of them moored in mid-air around some of the larger buildings, and wondered how they didn’t fall. Others were simple circular platforms only large enough to hold those who stood upon them. It wasn’t just flying vehicles, either. Flying beasts and Denizens soared high in the sky, expertly veering around the different crafts as though they did it every day.

Are all cities in the Greater Universe as fantastical as this place?

A blaring warning sound trilled into life. Xavier had taken in all of this in the space of half a second, just long enough for the soldiers gathered near the portal to raise weapons and begin to cast spells.

Bells rang in Xavier’s brain, the city’s alarm somehow sounding as though it was coming from his own head.

The attacks came swiftly. Xavier, taken in by everything around him in this new environment, didn’t have enough time to respond. What must have been a hundred attacks slammed into him from every side before he was able to cast Soul Block and land among the soldiers, where it was more difficult to strike him.

He hadn’t even flinched as the attacks were launched at him. He’d been taking the enemies’ attacks head-on for a long while now. He was confident in his ability to take a beating.

But these attacks actually damaged him, even if the damage he took from them was incredibly blunted, getting hit by that many all at once…

Your health is at 6%.

Xavier landed among the enemies, suddenly worried he’d made the biggest mistake of his life coming through that portal. He tried to scan one of the nearby enemies, but—

He wasn’t able to.

How wasn’t he able to? He should be able to identify enemies over Level 100 by now, shouldn’t he? Not by virtue of his actual Identify skill—that he’d failed to rank up enough—but by virtue of the fact that he was Level 74.

But, thus far, he hadn’t been able to scan a single E Grade wave boss…

The Denizens around him. They were all E Grade. Every single one of them.

Xavier had gotten exactly what he was looking for, and his earlier assessment may very well have been the correct one:

This was a suicide mission.