Path to Transcendence

"What do you mean \'how did he know\'?" Aubrey said to Kyle confused. She pointed to Julius. "He has that stupid perception ability of his," she said like it was the most obvious thing.

Kyle put his hands up defensively. "Yes, I understand he has that frightening perception ability. But I was able to sense that Amelia had something close to a mist or vapor affinity and those are notoriously good for stealth. Arguably on par or better than shadow affinity users depending on the conditions," he explained carefully. "I just want to know if Julius was able to actually sense her or if it was just a general gut feeling."

"I was able to feel her entire general shape. That was how I was able to recognize her tonight," Julius told Kyle.

"Interesting," Kyle said softly before turning away and talking to himself like how he usually did when he found something that got him curious.

"What I find more interesting is how well you held off her aura," Lily commented as she walked next to Julius, ignoring Kyle.

He turned to look over at Lily who was glancing at the beautiful storefronts they were passing. They were in a district that focused on nightlife. The entire street was illuminated in bright lights, and there were a good number of people still out and about.

"Yeah, I was too. When I said that her aura was weak, I was mostly just playing it up. To be honest, it was quite good. Not to mention, that I don\'t think she used everything she could. It felt like she was still holding back quite a bit," Julius said to Lily.

"I didn\'t like her, I got to give her credit. She wasn\'t weak if her control said anything about her. How did you fend her off?" Lily asked.

"I would like to know how you did as well," Derek said.

Julius looked around and gave Lily a knowing look. She just shook her head and smiled before deploying a small isolation barrier of aura and psychic energy around them.

"It was my Concept and my aura skill that did a lot of the work," Julius told them.

"So, that\'s why your aura practically cut through hers without a problem. I thought that might be the reason. I just didn\'t think you were quite on that level yet to use your Concept in such a way," Lily said.

Julius shrugged his shoulders. "I didn\'t know either," he freely admitted. "It sort of just happened on its own. I have been using my Concept this past week nonstop though, and without the use of my sharpness-based skill. I think that\'s a big reason why I could do it."

"Do you mind if I see for myself?" Lily asked him curiously.

"What? Like seeing how my aura defended against Amelia?" Julius questioned.

Lily nodded her head. "Yes, I want to experience it for myself."

Julius didn\'t see a reason why he wouldn\'t. Perhaps she would be able to give him some information as well. "Sure, go right ahead."

Julius felt Lily\'s aura extend from her and start to approach Julius\'s. Unlike Amelia\'s aura, Lily was much more gentle. It was slow and prodded the edges of his aura like one would an interesting object.

Julius didn\'t do anything and let her play around with his aura to her content. He did notice that his aura wasn\'t defending itself like it had earlier. It was surprisingly docile.

It wasn\'t until Lily started to get closer and bury itself deeper that her aura elicited a reaction from his. The moment it got too close, his aura started to defend itself. It was like it was waving a long sword at Lily\'s aura, preventing it from getting any closer.

Then suddenly, Lily\'s aura increased in intensity by a lot. It was full-on pressing onto him, much like Amelia\'s had done. Whatever natural defenses his aura had deployed wasn\'t enough to stop her this time. She blew through it like it was nothing and it felt like he was getting bumrushed by a golem again.

Julius knew that if he wanted to defend himself, he would need to start actively controlling his aura, otherwise he would be quickly smothered. So with a quick focus, he manipulated his aura to condense down and start tearing apart Lily\'s aura with his Concept.

He saw Lily grin widely as she felt him fending her off. Then he felt another increase in intensity, this time it was less of a brute force method like she had been using and more of a subtle sneaky manipulation. Her aura snuck through his gaps and slithered its way deeper into his aura, slowly breaking it down from the inside.

It was very different than Amelia\'s tactic. She had just tried to strangle him with aura. Lily\'s aura felt like she was trying to seep into his pores and take control of him like a puppet. It was much more terrifying and much more challenging to fight against.

However, he wouldn\'t go down easily. If she was trying to sneak her way through the cracks in his aura, he just needed to make sure there weren\'t any cracks to sneak into.

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He compressed his aura deep into himself, making sure that there were no gaps. Then he infused his Severing Will Concept throughout the entire aura, with the intent of severing anything that wasn\'t his own aura.

And it worked. Julius felt Lily\'s attempts to sneak in being repelled with much more ease.

It was ironic. He had been wearing Professor Youma\'s aura-suppressing ring for so long, that he hadn\'t realized that he no longer needed it. At some point in his training, he had been able to suppress his aura with practiced ease.

He had gotten used to the increased power in his aura from his Tier advancement. Even the boost he got from his soul evolution wasn\'t anything he couldn\'t handle. It was more power, yes, but he didn\'t find himself flailing around trying to contain it like he had been. The many long nights and endless aura training sessions were showing their worth.

Julius found himself having a lot of fun as he kept trying to keep Lily away from his aura. She was really good. He knew that already, but until now he didn\'t understand quite how good she was.

He had the advantage of using his Severing Will Concept to help him, but his ability to manipulate aura still fell short of hers by a lot. If he didn\'t have Severing Will, he suspected she would have already had him dozens of times. Now that he was paying attention to her aura really closely, he had an inkling that she also had a Concept of her own that she was using to help her. However, instead of making her aura like a sharpened blade, it acted like his aura skill, [Empowerment of Will]. It just made her aura overall stronger in every way.

Eventually, no matter how hard he tried to keep her out, she was better. She slowly ground him down in a battle of attrition and had been using large spikes of aura to spear his compressed aura. The opening she would then exploit by prying it apart and invading his aura.

She had his aura in a vice grip and it felt like she was choking his soul. He gave the spiritual equivalent of a tap of conceding and she let him go right after.

Julius was sweating like crazy and he turned to look at Lily with a wild grin on his face. He had a blast, fighting with aura like that was a very entertaining way of practicing aura. And by the similar maniacal grin on her face, he would say that she agreed.

The others were looking at them expectantly.

"Well…?" Aubrey said to them.

Lily looked at Julius with an incredulous grin. "That Concept of yours works great with aura. What did you say its name was?"

"It\'s called Severing Will, why?" Julius answered.

"I can see why it\'s called that. It certainly severs aura like nothing I have quite seen," she said in awe.

Aubrey got in between them with an impatient frown as she hopped on both feet. "I don\'t know if you guys know. But we weren\'t privy to whatever happened with your guy\'s auras. What happened?"

Edgar spoke up as well. "I agree. Normally, I would tell Aubrey to calm down, but I find myself impatient to know as well."

Lily looked over at Julius as if asking for his permission to share what she had learned about him. He scanned over the other\'s faces quickly. He saw everyone, even Kyle who had taken a break from whatever he was thinking about regarding Julius\'s perception skill looking on very intently.

He gave a small nod to Lily, letting her know that he was okay with it.

"Julius has a very interesting set of skills and abilities that give his aura a considerable boost. His Concept in particular allows him to cut apart my aura far more easily than someone should be able to. He also has an admirable amount of control over his aura, something one wouldn\'t expect from someone of his Tier. However, I am curious about one thing," she said while turning to look at Julius.

"Why does your soul feel like a Tier 3?" She asked in wonder.

Julius had an awkward look on his face. He hadn\'t had the time to tell the others about his newly acquired epic skill yet, nor was he able to tell them about the soul evolution he went through.

With a hesitant expression, he came clean. "I actually had something I wanted to tell you guys."

"Again?" Aubrey asked exasperated. "What did you do this time?"

"Well, you know how I just learned my Concept right? I wanted to use that to acquire an epic skill for the past week right?" He told them.

He saw them all nod, following along patiently.

"Well, I was able to achieve it last night."

He was barely able to finish before Aubrey said, "And let me guess, you forgot to mention it again."

"That\'s why you had the cake last night…" Lily softly commented more to herself than anyone else.

"No, I just didn\'t really find the right time with everything that went on today," he explained. "And yes, that\'s why I had the cake."

"While that was faster than many acquire their epic skills after learning a Concept, I can\'t say I am that surprised considering what we know of you. But what does this have to do with your aura?" Edgar asked.

Julius scratched his head. "I don\'t really know for myself. But I got a notification telling me about a reward for a soul evolution."

They all simultaneously turned to look at him. "Already?" Lily asked excitedly.

He tilted his head and looked at them curiously. "You know what happened to me?" Julius asked.

"Of course. It happened to all of us immediately after we advanced to Tier 3," Lily explained to him.

"Yeah, it is sort of a thing that almost every single elite Tier 3 will go through once they advance. If you don\'t go through it, it often means you didn\'t have a solid enough foundation and enough skills at rare," Aubrey added.

"Do you think that I was able to do it early because I got an epic ranked skill?" Julius asked them. He watched as they all thought about that for a moment before he got a mixture of headshakes and shrugs.

"Honestly, there are many factors when it comes to soul strength. It\'s a combination of skills, natural-born talent, the kinds of tribulations, what tier you are at, and many other things. Some nobles even feed expensive soul-strengthening treasures to their children, even though they are wasted on someone at that Tier. For you to go through it already, even with an epic skill, means that you must have had an increase from one of these other factors. An epic skill is not enough alone to get you past that threshold," Derek explained.

"So what happens when I advance again?" Julius asked them.

Derek looked up in the sky in thought. "I don\'t know," he honestly told Julius. "I doubt you are the only person who has ever achieved it. But I don\'t know what happened to those people. They probably kept it a secret."

"You did choose the additional skill slot option though right?" Aubrey asked worryingly.

"What? Was I supposed to?" Julius asked, pretending to be worried, and smiled internally when he saw the horror bloom on Aubrey\'s face.