Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 2) - Chapter 51 - Burn, You Bastard, Burn! (Patreon)
Content
At the prow of the last remaining flying ship above the floating Lord of the Endless Horde, Xavier steeled himself and stood his ground. A strong wind blew in, flapping the sleeves of his robes, pulling the dark hood back to rest on his upper back.
Xavier had a plan. But if he was strong—if the plan failed—he would die in the next second.
He didn’t know if what he was about to attempt would work. He’d never tried something like it before. And the only reason he thought it was even possible was because of a confluence of events.
Candleflames don’t produce smoke.
The fire that was the Lord of the Endless Horde’s core was out of control. He’d let it loose—let it run wild to put pressure on Xavier. To the point where he was sure there must be weaker Denizens out there in the city, falling unconscious, even dead because of its power.
The Lord of the Endless Horde had underestimated Xavier just enough to be angered by his actions. He’d let his guard down, and Xavier had been able to take control of his mind. Even if only for a brief moment.
His emotions are out of control. He killed his own people because I put them under my thrall—if he were thinking straight, would he do such a thing?
Xavier gritted his teeth. A blade of golden energy hurtled toward him. It was too late to get out of the way.
Now!
He cast Soul Block, Spirit Break, and Willpower Infusion almost at the same time. With the death of so many caused by the falling skyscraper—and those deaths attributed to Xavier’s actions—he’d been able to reap over eight hundred souls.
Xavier didn’t know how strong this golden energy blade was. He had to trust that his defences would be enough. The spell was clearly a magical one, and though it was his Toughness attribute that gave him more health, it was his Willpower attribute that gave him resistance to magic. And his Willpower attribute was well at 3248.
He infused two hundred souls into Soul Block, hoping it, along with his resistance to magic, would be enough to withstand the attack. The apparitions sprang up in an instant. He then threw the rest of the souls into Spirit Break. Over five hundred—the most he’d ever infused into the spell. God, he wished he’d been able to use more. Wished he’d been able to use over a thousand.
For this to work, what he assumed was true had to be true, that after the first time he’d broken into the man’s mind, he’d weakened it. That the man hadn’t been able to shore up his mental defences—if he had, his emotions wouldn’t be so volatile, would they?
Spirit Break hit. The golden barrier that had surrounded the Lord of the Endless Horde for almost the entire battle was gone. It had disappeared after the building had fallen atop him. Which meant this Spirit Break was stronger in more ways than one.
In the same instant that Spirit Break struck, so did the Lord of the Endless Horde’s golden blade of energy. It tore through the apparitions like they were as weak as spiderwebs. But the glowing light in the attack dimmed with each soul that it passed through until it reached him.
The blunted attack slammed across Xavier’s torso. His robes were already a tattered ruin of slashes and blood—he hadn’t had a moment to infuse Spirit Energy into them for repairs. Now, a new slash joined them.
Your health is at 3%.
The attack brought him to his knees. But he was alive. Alive long enough to fulfil the next step of his plan.
A hiss released from the Lord of the Endless Horde’s lips. Pain slipped onto his face. Far more than a flinch. Without his golden barrier, the spell didn’t just break him mentally—it hit with a trifecta of pain. Physical, magical, and mental. It did not snap his limbs backward like it would on a lesser enemy, but it didn’t need to.
Purple mist seeped through the man’s nose, eyes, ears. The misted Willpower Energy was thicker, more concentrated, than any he’d ever been able to summon. The Willpower Infusion spell had ranked up several times the last time he’d been able to use it on this bastard.
He just hoped it had ranked up enough.
Once again, Xavier felt the man’s mental block spring up. Once again, he felt the cracks. There were more than last time. Far more. And they were larger. Usually, when Xavier tried to take over a mind, he would put one half of his consciousness toward the task.
He couldn’t do that this time. Not if he wanted this to work.
Xavier put his entire mind, all of his focus, every single part of it, toward this. He pushed through the cracks and took control. The line between himself and the Lord of the Endless Horde was like a steel cord. He felt the man’s emotions. Felt the surface of his thoughts.
And he felt the man’s tumultuous core. The raging fire of power he had within him.
When Xavier had first learnt about the concept of controlling his aura from Sam, the barkeep back at the Tower of Champions, and guardian of his cohort, he’d almost burned through his core in his attempt. He would have, if not for Sam.
And once he burned through all the Spirit Energy in his main core, he would have burned through his health until there was nothing left.
Xavier, however, didn’t only feel one core—he felt three.
Of course the man would have three active cores. He was D Grade.
This might be harder than I thought.
But that didn’t matter. This was his plan. He was down to 3 percent health. If he didn’t do this…
I will do this!
Xavier set things in motion. He threw his consciousness. His wholeconsciousness, straight into the Lord of the Endless Horde’s mind, just as he’d done to that one Denizen during the waves back outside Queen Alastea’s castle.
Suddenly, his control over the man strengthened even more. More than he would have thought possible. In that moment, Xavier was the Lord of the Endless Horde.
Burn!
The command was yelled with all the power of his mind.
Burn through your cores!
He didn’t just set one to burning—he set them all to burning. Xavier identified the three cores. A Spirit Core. A Strength Core. And an Intelligence Core—the Intelligence Core was the weakest of the three.
He could feel it. Feel the pressure, blazing outward. When he’d done this to himself, his aura had flared brighter than ever.
The Lord of the Endless Horde’s aura, flaring as it was, might very well crush everyone in the city.
Everyone but me. I’m strong enough to resist.
He could feel the energy of the man’s core. It was a blazing inferno. An inferno the size of a city—of ten cities.
Burn, you bastard, burn!
He pushed the process ever forward. If it were his own cores, at the rate these were burning… he would have been dead in seconds.
As the cores burned, the Lord of the Endless Horde fought for control of his own mind. Seconds passed. One. Five. Ten. With every second, Xavier felt his control slipping away.
And with each second, the Lord of the Endless Horde grew ever weaker.
~
How? How is he doing this?!
The Lord of the Endless Horde was trapped within his own mind, his cores burning through all of their energy. Soon, they would burn through his very life force.
This was the second time that meddlesome child had taken control of him. But this time, his control was far more intense.
Crellstello was stronger than this foolish Xavier Collins. He was stronger than anyone! No one—no one who stepped foot in his sector—could ever face him! Could ever even put up a challenge!
No. They couldn’t defeat him even if all the worlds in the sector gathered together under the same banner and declared war on him. He would crush them like the bugs they were.
And Crellstello had known that, coming into the fight with Xavier. He’d known he needn’t worry, and so he hadn’t worried. Even when the boy’s first spell had knocked him back two feet, it hadn’t hurt him.
This child couldn’t hurt him.
He’d only just advanced to E Grade.
The Lord of the Endless Horde tried to take control of his own mind once more. The last time it had taken a mere moment for him to take control again—a moment that had seen a building fall on top of him. But that had barely hurt.
Why… why didn’t I just crush the child at the start? How did he even survive my True Blade spell?
His mother’s words entered his mind. Words he’d despised for centuries. Words that had been the reason he had finally killed the woman.
You are weak, Crellstello. You will always be weak.
But he proved her wrong! He’d been strong enough to kill her! Strong enough to take over this entire sector!
The fires of his cores burned. He could feel them, snuffed out, one by one. His Intelligence core was the first to lose everything.
You are weak, Crellstello.
His Strength Core went next.
You will always be weak.
Then his Spirit Core. The main core of every Denizen. His Spirit Energy had not been low for centuries. Not since he himself was E Grade.
Crellstello, the Lord of the Endless Horde, could feel how close he was to taking back control of his body. But he knew all the energy in all of his cores… it would be gone by the time he did.
I’m not weak! he yelled within his mind. I am strong!
Though he thought it with all the determination he had, he no longer believed it. Maybe he never had. That’s why he was still here, lording over those weaker than him, instead of trying to become stronger. Instead of facing new challenges.
I toyed with this man when I should have crushed him. So sure I was in my own power.
His mother had always told him his weakness, his arrogance, would be his downfall.
When the Lord of the Endless Horde finally took control of his mind once more, all three of his cores were burned out of their energy.
But his cores, they were still burning. Burning through his health!
He woke on the ground, in the rubble of the fallen building. His Flight spell had been interrupted when that bastard had taken control of his mind. Pain stabbed at each of his cores. It wracked his entire body.
Not since he was F Grade had he so little control of his energies.
The Lord of the Endless Horde opened his eyes to see a man standing over him. A man in dark robes with glowing silver eyes. A man that shouldn’t have been able to take control of him—shouldn’t have been able to defeat him.
Yet here Crellstello lay at that man’s mercy.
His body, his mind, his spirit—it was weak. He struggled to reverse the burning of his health. Doing such a thing should have been child’s play, but something within his very soul had broken, and all he could hear, over and over, was his mother telling him how weak he was.
“Please…” the Lord of the Endless Horde begged to the man standing above him. “Help me.”
Xavier Collins raised the bladed half of his broken scythe-staff and uttered a single word, “No.”
The blade came down.