Path to Transcendence

Julius didn\'t quite fully grasp how fast Edgar was until he was on the receiving end of it. The only thing that gave Julius the advantage was how condensed he could make his constructs and how [Empowerment of Will] protected them from any outside influence.

He had seen how one of Edgar\'s skills had blown apart the other\'s constructs and had felt him try to do the same thing to Julius\'s. If Julius didn\'t have that thing going for him, he would have lasted much shorter than he did. However, once Edgar got close enough, it was always over with a quick exchange of strikes. Even with his improved physique and how much more mana he could charge into his body, he still fell short. He had really thought that Tier 2 would allow him to fight on his level, but there was much more he could learn.

Edgar was a much better hand-to-hand fighter than Julius, and it showed. Julius also quickly realized that he was not fully leveraging his newfound strength and Tier 2 body as he should have been. Just because Julius had been able to push so much more mana and aura through his body, didn\'t mean that he was doing it correctly or the most efficiently.

He felt like a lot of it was going to waste. He believed that with how much power he was cycling through his body, he should have been able to keep up better with Edgar. Edgar thought the same thing as well.

So as Julius was backpedaling, avoiding a sweeping leg, he focused on lowering his output but trying to maintain better control over it. It was still more than he could previously flow through his body, but he worked on slowly integrating precision over his enhancements.

He was attempting to get more space between him and Edgar, but [Spatial Perception] picked up on a subtle use of earth mana behind him.

A thick pillar of stone launched itself out of the ground and tried to smash into Julius\'s back. It missed, thanks to Julius noticing it before it was too late, but it still did its job. Just that slight opening and time Julius had to allocate to dodging it was enough for Edgar to send a rippling burst of fire mana out of his fist and catch Julius in the gut with it.

Julius found himself getting burned by the fire mana much to his surprise. He thought that he would have a good chance of siphoning the fire because of his affinity, but Edgar\'s fire had a touch of his aura inside of it which made it difficult to take control of it before the attack hit.

It was painful almost like he was really getting burned, only the simulated combat bracelets saved him from receiving any actual injuries. Edgar didn\'t let up either, he understood that if Julius got enough space and had enough time to prepare something, he could actually hurt Edgar, so the big guy blitzed Julius with a ferocious stream of strikes.

Unlike, Aubrey\'s more graceful onslaught, this was pure savagery. It wasn\'t like it was out of control, the opposite in fact. However, it did mean that every strike, every attack was aimed to do the most amount of damage as it could.

No matter what Julius did and how hard he tried to fend Edgar off, it didn\'t end well. He always found himself lying on his back, beaten thoroughly.

I did say I wanted him to take me seriously. So I can\'t be complaining, because he is definitely not taking it easy on me. Julius thought to himself.

They had fought several times at this point and each time Julius managed to do a little better. Lasting a little longer and learning a little more. However, losing this often was not doing his confidence any good. He had to keep reminding himself that he was facing someone who was a whole tier and a bit above him.

Not only that, but he wasn\'t fighting someone who was an average or weak Tier 3 either. Edgar was one of the best at Goldencrest and expecting to best someone like him was not achievable at the moment. The best thing he could do was learn from him.

Thinking about it, he didn\'t even think he could defeat Aubrey if it came down to it. He didn\'t think she would be able to consistently defeat him either, but her skills made it really hard for Julius to put her down if she wanted to play cat and mouse with him.

Aubrey did have a few ranged attack options that she had rarely used during their spars, but against Julius, she found them pretty useless. So she hadn\'t been using them that often. Her reason was she had been trying to learn how to fight better up close for the better part of a couple of years now and she only used her range attacks in conjunction with her clone and stealth skills when she was ambushing someone.

She didn\'t think that they would have been all that effective against Julius anyway, with his perception skill and mana senses, so she didn\'t really use them all that often. But if she decided to sit behind a bunch of trees or use hit-and-run tactics against him, he didn\'t think he would be able to catch her without bombarding every inch of the surroundings.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Edgar walked over to where Julius was lying on the floor and sat down beside him. To Julius\'s credit, Edgar was out of breath as well, Julius made him work for his win.

Julius reached over to Edgar, pressing a hand on his shoulder, and used a little bit of life mana on him, healing him of his fatigue. Then he did the same to himself, bringing him back to normal. Julius did notice that the changes he felt from his life mana weren\'t transferred over to Edgar.

So far, the extra boost only affected him. This might mean it only worked that way because Drasil was residing in his core. Lily did say that if Drasil was already occupying his core, then it would mean that he was already Julius\'s familiar. He thought he would have to go through with a ritual or some sort, but Lily said that familiar bonds were based on intent, especially for spirits. As long as both parties agreed and wanted it, then it was very easy to accomplish.

Maybe that made a difference or was the reason why his life mana was working differently. Julius hadn\'t heard about anything quite like what he was experiencing but he wasn\'t going to complain. So far, it seemed more of a benefit than anything else.

Edgar grunted his thanks to Julius for the healing but remained lying next to him. Julius could hear the others working on other things in the distance but remained focused on reviewing what he could have done better. He felt like he was close to something.

Tier 2 had released him from the shackles and constraints that he had been feeling when he was Tier 1, but there was still a lot for him to do and work on. He asked Edgar for his opinion.

Edgar took a minute to catch his breath and think about it. "I would say you need to work on combining your close combat skills with your long-range skills. Right now it feels a little disjointed. Like it is either you\'re a warrior who fights with his fists one moment and then you\'re a spell-flinging mage the next. If you can somehow merge the two, you would become very challenging to fight."

Julius agreed with Edgar. It had been something he had been thinking about for a while now. The most troubling problem was that he wasn\'t able to completely focus on both aspects and not sacrifice something in return. If he wanted to fight up close using [Kinetic Augmentation], [Savage Dance], [Empowerment of Will], and [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal], it took a lot of mental processing, so if he wanted to add his other skills, it becomes very difficult. He would have to try to empower [Savage Dance] with [Empowerment of Will] again pretty soon. He had attempted it during the fights, but it took too much focus for him to make any actual progress during a fight, so it seemed that his nightly practice would consist of that.

On the other hand, combining both close and long-range aspects was one of the reasons he had been trying to create mana armor for himself. He wanted to take advantage of his large mana pool, but sometimes it felt wasted. He found himself having a hard time using large amounts of mana at once.

The best way he could describe it was that he wanted to fill up a bucket and at the moment he only had a faucet. His skill was the bucket and how much mana he could use in a single second is how much water the faucet could dispense. Unfortunately, that means if it is a big bucket, it takes too much time to fill it up, especially in a fight.

What he wanted was a fire hose. If he could expend that much more mana in a fight, then he would see a large increase in his strength. He suspected that it would naturally occur in Tier 3 though. After observing Edgar for a good while, Julius was able to sense that Edgar, while not having a large amount of mana, was able to call upon it at a much faster rate than Julius was. He was jealous, watching Edgar effortlessly use mana like he did.

It\'s like I have McDonald\'s internet, while Edgar has fiber optic internet, Julius grumbled to himself.

He was going to have to search in the library to see if there was a way to hasten his mana flow rate. Or maybe, one of the others knew about a way, he would have to ask them. Advancing to Tier 2 had helped, but it was not as a huge improvement as he was expecting. It was more of a boost of how much mana and how more evenly mana could flow through his body.

Edgar didn\'t mention it, but another thing that Julius wanted to work on was a movement skill. He was already on his way to constructing a defensive skill with his mana armor idea, but speed was what really limited him in his fights so far.

Even Aubrey was faster than him, even after he reached Tier 2 because she had her teleporting clones. For someone with a kinetic affinity, he felt like he should be even faster than what he has been displaying. There weren\'t that many books he found in the library that discussed kinetic mana or affinities. The ones that did, didn\'t specifically talk about skills or usages of it. They more so described the general history of the affinity and what applications it was used for.

The most interesting thing that he had learned from his quick research was that there were runic enchantments that absorbed kinetic energy. They were commonly used in large buildings for structural integrity. Not very useful for his current dilemma but interesting nonetheless. However, that was really all there was available about kinetic energy. At least that was all he had found so far. He would most likely have to ask the librarian later, to see if she had any ideas or recommendations.

It was pretty late when the six of them were finally done. With that being said, they weren\'t the last ones there. Not even close. It appeared that a good portion of the upperclassmen spent their night\'s training late. Considering that many of them were Tier 3s, it didn\'t come as a surprise to him.

What did surprise him, was how many recreational games he found many of the upperclassmen playing. They were still games that were technically considered "training", but they were definitely for fun.

The one Julius found the most fun looking was the one where he saw a single student blindfolded with the others all around them. The objective was simple, the person blindfolded would have to hit the other students with a ball of mana within a certain time frame. Whoever survives until then would win, or if everyone gets hit then the blindfolded student would win.

However, what made it interesting was the people not blindfolded would have to wear a ribbon that emitted mana pulses in quick succession, this way the blindfolded person would have an idea of where the others were at all times.

It seemed like a fun game, everybody was enjoying it if the laughing and fooling around were any indicators.

Julius thought he would be pretty good at it. Though he didn\'t know if his [Spatial Perception] would be considered cheating or not. He suspected that it would not be looked upon with favorable eyes. He would most likely have to refrain from using it if he decided to play.

He shrugged his shoulders and kept the game in mind for the future, maybe he would try out some of the other games as well.

He put those thoughts out of the way for now and headed toward the first-year training facility for his usual late-night training. He still had some things he wanted to test.