The plan was a simple one.
Xavier would lower the health of the Great Shell while it was still under his control, then he would leave the planet using his Portal Stones.
The Portal Stone pair that he intended to use was sector-restricted. The connecting Portal Stone was back on Earth, in Collinsville. He could open the portal, step through it, and then close the portal on the other side.
The instant he closed the portal, he would lose the mental connection he had with the Great Shell, and he would also decouple the credit he might receive for killing it.
Xavier asked if this was a loophole in the System. Volkarin had shook his head and replied in Xavier’s mind.
This isn’t a loophole. There are ways to gain Mastery Points from incredibly long range kills, but you have to kill the enemy from that range. If a Denizen had the ability to explode an enemy planet—and many do, in the higher Grades—they might be able to do that from the other side of a sector. They would gain credit for that kill, for all of those kills. But you do not have any attacks that you could use at such a range without the assistance of a portal, do you?
Xavier had to take the dragon’s word for it. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, but he had no reason to disbelieve the dragon—Volkarin was the one risking his life here, not Xavier.
Xavier still approached this as cautiously as he could. There was the issue of how the baby dragon would do damage to the beast. Volkarin hadn’t even been able to break Famarial’s skin, and Famarial was low F Grade.
How could he possibly do enough damage to hurt this beast, a Level 242 Great Shell?
But that was something Xavier had already discovered a solution to, one he had spoken to Rhaalir about, then to Volkarin when he had summoned him here in the hunting grounds.
The dragon had agreed that it would work.
Xavier had found an offensive potion in the System Shop while he was still in Mareketh. The potion had a simple title—Health Stop—which told him all he would need to know.
He’d double checked the description of the item before starting their little quest.
{Health Stop - D Grade}
This is an offensive potion. It must be either drank or touch the desired target’s skin to go into effect. The potion prevents the target from regenerating their health for the period of the potion’s effect. This item lasts for a period of 30 to 60 seconds depending on the strength of the enemy. Some D Grades might be too powerful to be affected by this potion.
This potion cannot be taken into the Tower of Champions.
The potions had been incredibly expensive. Which was fair, considering how powerful they were. That was a lot of time for an enemy’s regeneration to not work. It was overpowered, and Xavier had a feeling there were rich Denizens out there using these by the truckload.
It was definitely cheating.
But Xavier was happy to take advantage of it. If it was possible, then it should be exploited. Despite how expensive they’d been, Xavier had acquired a dozen of the potions. He figured that should be more than enough for what they needed to do.
The baby dragon might be weak, but all damage accumulated. The problem usually was that even if you somehow prevented a foe from attacking you, you couldn’t prevent that foe from regenerating their health.
Unless you had something like this.
It was better than a poison potion or something that would cause damage over time, as that had the risk of killing the enemy before Volkarin had the chance.
They experimented on the Great Shell. Xavier had applied the potion to the beast’s skin. They needed to see just how many attacks the dragon would need perform to get its health down a single percent.
The potion’s effect was evident on the beast. That was something Xavier was grateful for. It applied a light red glow about the Great Shell. This potion lasted for fifty seconds.
Often, when Xavier was attacked by something significantly weaker than himself, it never showed that he lost any health at all. Sometimes there was a small, pinprick sting to these attacks, but usually he didn’t even feel pain.
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But that was because those enemies were doing a fraction of a single percent of damage.
Volkarin attacked the Great Shell with abandon. The baby dragon had no spells. All it had were its claws and its teeth. If the little beast’s life wasn’t on the line in all of this, Xavier might have found its attacks comical.
For fifty seconds Volkarin attacked the Great Shell, and for fifty seconds the Great Shell’s health remained at exactly 100 percent.
The potion wore off before the dragon managed to take off anything from the beast.
Xavier released a sigh. “Did the potion not work?” he muttered. But it clearly had—the red glow attested to that.
Try again, Volkarin said.
“The beast’s health will have regenerated already.”
Use more than one potion for the first potion’s effect stops. You can afford it, can you not?
Xavier did just that.
It took three potions and over two minutes of constant attacks for the little beast to finally reduce the Great Shell’s health to 99 percent. When Xavier told the beast the percent had been reduced, the baby dragon had leapt up in joy. It hopped around, looking like an excitable puppy. It almost hopped straight out of the time dilation field. It would have, if Xavier hadn’t extended the field.
Xavier chuckled at the sight of the beast.
But there was more they needed to do.
“Three hundred and thirty-two,” Xavier said.
Volkarin stopped hopping around and held his chin high, a proud look. Three hundred and thirty-two what?
“That’s how many times you struck the beast before it went down a single percent.” Xavier walked up to the Great Shell—still under his mental control—and put a hand to it.
Xavier needed to get the beast’s health down to exactly a single percent.
He tapped his foot on the ground as he thought about this. There was an incredibly fine margin of error here. If he got the beast down to less than one percent, Volkarin would kill the beast in front of him, before he got a chance to leave the planet. The moment Xavier left, the Great Shell would kill Volkarin.
There would be a chance for the beast to give but a single strike. The Great Shell would be disoriented when Xavier’s Willpower Infusion spell wore off, but would not be incapacitated.
Xavier turned to Volkarin. “We must get the beast down to 2 percent health. Then, you will have to get it down to 1 percent.”
All he would need to do after that was count the dragon’s strikes to three-hundred and twenty-one, then portal out of there and give the beast the last strike when Xavier was back on Earth.
Then return as swiftly as he could. The mindlink that they shared because he was a soul bound beast companion wouldn’t work when they were worlds away. Volkarin said it would in the future, but he wasn’t powerful enough for it to have such a range.
The more they worked out, the more confident Xavier became. But that didn’t take away his fear of the baby dragon dying. He’d gone to a lot of effort to bring Volkarin into the mortal realm. To secure the dragon a vessel… He didn’t want the dragon to die before he’d even reached Level 1. When he thought about it like that the risk didn’t seem worth it, but he knew that if the roles were reversed that Xavier would most definitely take this risk.
In a heartbeat.
He wasn’t sure what kind of title this would give the dragon, but he was excited to find out.
Xavier, using the few Health Stop potions he had left, found out exactly how much damage he needed to do to take down the Great Shell’s health by a single percent with ten attacks.
He simply had to stab it with a clawed finger. Not too hard, just hard enough.
It required a great deal of restraint.
Xavier lowered the beast’s health down to 4 percent with some heftier attacks, then he reduced the Great Shell’s health down to what he needed.
Then it was up to Volkarin.
Volkarin once more attacked with everything he had, and despite what the beast had said, Xavier could feel the baby dragon’s fear.
He would be foolish to do this and feel no fear at all.
Fear didn’t make one a coward, it was acting despite one’s fear that made someone brave, and this baby dragon—or, the ancient dragon that resided within it—was most certainly brave.
Xavier counted.
The moment the dragon began attacking he’d activated a portal back to Collinsville using the Portal Stone from his Storage Ring. He applied the necessary further health stop potions and waited.
When the dragon had reached three-hundred-and-thirty-one attacks, he stopped. The baby dragon turned his head to face Xavier.
Wait five seconds before you return.
Xavier inclined his head. Sweat dotted his brow. Not from exertion, but simply from how worried he was.
This was an insane thing to do. He almost called it off, but he saw the determination in the set of the baby dragon’s eyes.
“All right. I’ll see you soon, Volkarin,” Xavier said, thinking, Assuming you survive this.
Xavier stepped through the portal and cut it off the instant he reached Collinsville.
Two of his spells deactivated. First, the time dilation field deactivated the instant he’d stepped through the portal. Time was now moving at the normal rate on that small patch of the alien moon once again, which meant if there were any other beasts nearby, even if Volkarin killed the Great Shell, he’d be vulnerable to attack.
Then, when he cut off the portal, his Willpower Infusion spell deactivated. Xavier released a breath, losing the connection to the Great Shell’s mind.
He counted to five, though he knew the moment he started counting that the outcome would have already been decided. Volkarin was now either alive or dead, and like Schrodinger’s cat, Xavier wouldn’t know until he opened the box—or, in this case, until he opened the portal and stepped through it.
Those ten seconds moved at a crawl.
Xavier had left the other Portal Stone in his own quarters, which meant no one would be alerted to the fact that he had returned to Collinsville. That was good—he didn’t have time, nor the desire, to talk to anyone here right now.
“Five,” Xavier whispered.
Instantly, he activated the portal and stepped back through to the alien moon where the hunting grounds resided.
What he found on the other side made him do a double take.
The Great Shell was dead, but the baby dragon he’d left behind was gone.
Accidental Champion!
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