Path to Transcendence

Julius did not like assassins. After the night at the manor, he found himself having an intense dislike for anything that involved them.

Declan tilted his head and squinted his eyes. "Technically, he didn\'t fail his job. If anything he got killed because he succeeded at his job."

"How does that make any sense?" Julius asked the man.

"As you might expect, being a paid killer has some downsides. One of them is that people don\'t take kindly to them in general, especially the ones who were on the receiving end of their work."

"Yeah, that is quite expected," Julius said like it was obvious. "How did he get killed?" He asked.

Declan gave a little frown. "As far as I know. The Ghostblade took a job to kill a young man. He succeeded, but what the people who hired him failed to tell him, was that the man\'s parents were both Tier 6." Declan looked at Julius expectantly. "As you can guess, they weren\'t too pleased when they found out."

Yeah, Julius could only imagine the shit the assassin was in after they found out. "I\'m guessing they hunted him down."

Declan nodded. "Oh yeah. Hunted down to the little hole they found him hiding in. To the Ghostblade\'s credit, he survived much longer than anyone expected and put up a remarkable fight against the two powerhouses as a Tier 5."

"Still, you want me to get an assassin\'s skill?" Julius asked.

Declan walked up to Julius and put his hand on his shoulder. "The skill was used by an assassin, but that doesn\'t make it an assassin\'s skill," he said seriously.

When he saw that Julius didn\'t look convinced he continued.

"Hypothetically, a raging monster kills thousands of people with [Mana Strike]. Does that make [Mana Strike] a murderer\'s skill?" Julius shook his head. "No, of course not. The skill is merely a tool. How you use it and the type of person you are when you use, depend entirely on your choices and the person you are."

He has a point, Julius admitted to himself.

He couldn\'t discount a skill just because it was used by a person of dubious character. He couldn\'t afford not to take all the opportunities to get stronger. Not yet. He still needed to get much stronger.

Julius turned to look at Declan. "So you really think I should get his [Barrier of Severance] skill?"

"Yes, I think the likelihood that it\'s a rare+ skill is high. You might regret not getting it now while you can. Who knows if you will have the chance to learn it again. [Mana Strike], while a very good skill, is still a common skill. I am sure that you will be able to learn it another way with another evolution if you still want to get it."

Julius nodded in understanding. Declan had a point. [Mana Strike] could be learned by a large number of mana attack skills. Going with that same reasoning, why would he not take the opportunity to learn a potentially amazing skill? If [Barrier of Severance] had half of the potential that Declan told him, then Julius should take the skill.

"What about my epic skill then? Will not having the [Mana Strike] skill make it weaker?"

"Not necessarily. You might not have the extra damage in the initial stages, but take a step back and look at how much damage you are already putting out. I don\'t think you are in any need of extra damage right now. One-shotting golems at the same Tier is unheard of. Even if you are, there are always ways to add skills later down the path. Not to mention that you can always use [Barrier of Severance] or a similar skill to boost it," Declan told him.

Declan was making more and more sense. Julius felt himself being convinced of the time that passed. He did have a question for Declan that he still wanted to know.

"What about the Concept of Sharpness?" He asked.

"What about it?" Declan asked confused.

"Will I need to learn another Concept that fits the epic skill better if I am not adding [Mana Strike]?" Julius explained.

Declan chuckled and said, "No, the Sharpness Concept will still be a good Concept for an attack-based skill. Whatever epic skill you might be offered should be able to use the Concept easily."

"And having Sharpness as the first Concept added to a skill won\'t influence negatively in the long run?" Julius questioned further.

"In the long run no. In the short term, the skill will be more focused on being sharp and cutting through things. But epic skills are more fluid than rare skills are. They change with time and are affected by new Concepts that are added later on."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Julius took time to contemplate. He stared around at the large cavern that they were standing in. He was half surprised that no golems had come over and disrupted them.

Then he turned back to Declan."You really think that this skill will be as good as this Ghostblade\'s skill?"

Declan smiled at him. "No. I don\'t think your skill will be just as good." Declan gave a dramatic pause. "I think it will be even better."

Julius looked at Declan with a glint in his eyes and made up his mind. Declan was right, he didn\'t need [Mana Strike] for his epic skill, [Arcane Construct], [Pure Compression], and [Composite Mana] were more than enough. If he was being honest with himself, the three of the skills fit better together than [Mana Strike] would have. [Mana Strike] might have been the odd skill out in the group if he were to combine it.

He bit the bullet and chose the skill.

Congratulations, the skill [Barrier of Severance] (Rare+) acquired.

Well, he was right about it being rare+, Julius laughed to himself.

He smiled and turned to look at Declan who was looking at him with a questioning look.

"What?" Declan asked him.

Julius didn\'t say anything but just gave him a grin.

"Don\'t tell me you just chose the skill right away," Declan said in disbelief.

"What can I say, you can be mighty convincing at times," Julius said.

"Yeah, but I didn\'t mean for you to choose it right now. I meant for you to think about it tonight or until next week," he said in a deadpan tone.

Julius just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, too late now." He turned to head off deeper into the cave. "Come on, aren\'t you curious about what the skill can do?" He asked Declan over his shoulder.

Julius heard Declan sigh loudly but he was barely able to hear him grumble, "Of course I am," and proceeded to follow Julius deeper into the rift.

Within a couple of minutes, they found another golem, one much like the last. Julius took a pebble from the pile that Declan had handed him previously and focused his new skill on it. [Barrier of Severance] was surprisingly similar to [Mana Slash], at least similar to how Julius had been using it when he had fought with Aubrey.

The most prominent difference was the color of the mana emitting from it. It was a distinct pale white light instead of a light blue. As the pebble was surrounded by the pale light, Julius could already feel the sharpened mana trying to cut through his hand, even though he was merely holding the thing.

He knew instinctually from acquiring the skill that he could choose what the skill targeted. So with a quick thought, he stopped the pebble from continuing to try to saw through his hand. With a little application of [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal], he was able to heal his palm.

Julius inspected the pebble closely and could feel that it was much sharper than [Mana Slash] had been. He was interested at what the specific differences might be. He cocked back his hand that held the rock and sent it flying at the golem with nothing more than his pure physical strength.

To his surprise, it did more than he would have thought. The rock hit the golem right in the chest, but instead of bouncing off, the pebble lodged itself into the hardened chest of the golem like it was stuck in a piece of clay.

The golem paused as if confused by the attack. It looked at Julius and back to where Julius had hit it.

Finally, after a long pause, it seemed to come to the conclusion that Julius was the one responsible for the attack and charged at him.

When it started to charge, Julius could see why golems were considered Tier 2 monsters. Although its defenses were some of the best for its Tier, its speed was quite… sad.

Julius guessed the sheer weight of the golem made it hard for it to move around, but he would have expected that it had some type of skill that made it easier to maneuver around. At this speed he was surprised anyone got killed by this thing. He could have probably out ran this thing when he was unawakened.

Julius took his time to take another pebble and use [Barrier of Severance] around it before throwing it at the incoming golem. He noticed that this new skill used quite a lot of mana. It wasn\'t enough to bother him, but if he had mana capacity like normal Tier 2s he expected he would find it difficult to use this skill more than a couple dozen times before he had to conserve his mana.

He kept going at it. Infusing stones with [Barrier of Severance] and throwing them at the golem. Each of them lodged itself into the golem\'s chest or other limbs with a satisfying plunk. Julius barely had to focus on dodging the golem\'s attacks. The only techniques that posed any real danger were the occasional surprise stone construct that the golem created to attack Julius from a distance and the frequent blasts of energy that came out of its face.

Still, Julius was able to feel the constructs being created with [Spatial Perception] and the energy blasts because he has eyes of his own. It wasn\'t very difficult to predict that the glowing face of the golem was an indicator of it attacking. He just had to make sure to not keep still in the same spot for too long and he was in no danger.

Thus, he kept on throwing pebbles at the thing, getting a feel for the skill and trying to connect with the Concept of Sharpness. Declan insisted that this way would help him learn a Concept easier.

To anyone who was observing the fight, it would look quite hilarious. They would see a young boy running around and throwing rocks at a giant made of stone. To be fair, Julius was doing some damage. His new skill didn\'t seem to have any issue penetrating the exterior of the golem. But it did seem like the size of the pebbles as well as him only using his physical strength was preventing him from doing any more damage.

Yet, that was kind of the purpose of this exercise. He was only going to use [Barrier of Severance] to take down this golem, no matter how long it would take. He did learn something very interesting though. The stones that were lodged into the golem\'s body were still surrounded with [Barrier of Severance]. This meant that Julius could still influence the barrier to some extent.

Since the pebbles were surrounded by the barrier, Julius could remotely control said pebbles. It didn\'t mean he could slingshot them toward the target, otherwise he wouldn\'t be using his arm to throw them. However, he could try to drill the pebbles deeper into the golem. And that was exactly what he was attempting at the moment.

The pebbles that were lodged into the golem\'s chest all started to vibrate and move as Julius tried to drill the stones into the golem. He was disappointed to say that it didn\'t work out that well. He was sure that if he were to add some kinetic energy to them he could generate enough force to do some damage, but since he was limiting himself, he wasn\'t able to.

He tried a lot of things with the embedded pebbles and wasn\'t able to find something that would work.

That is until in typical Julius fashion, he accidentally exploded something.