Path to Transcendence

And considering the smallish mass of the object, he was leaning toward the second one.

His armor did slow it down enough that it didn\'t completely puncture him, the bullet-like object got stuck inside of him. However, a quick investigation of the object that was lodged in his chest showed that it was made of some sort of metal material.

It was shockingly dense and heavy for its size. It also had a really good ability to conduct mana, he was able to feel how seamless the flow of mana was able to flow through the small object.

He noticed that Declan had taken a worried step toward him when he saw Julius get hit by the ambush, but his calm attitude must have assured Declan that he was alright. He also removed his helm from his face and gave Declan a meaningful look.

It was a look that told Declan not to intervene no matter what. He could see that Declan was more confused than anything else, but the older man gave him a short nod in return.

Julius smirked to himself as he saw this. He had a plan that was a little bit risky, but one that he thought had a pretty good chance. It might be one of his only chances to lure this unknown monster to him.

He got as far away from Declan as he could. He didn\'t want the Tier 4 old man to scare off this monster.

Then he pushed a small amount of mana through [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] and he felt as the skill pushed out the bullet from the opening and healed him. But he didn\'t allow it to completely heal him. He let it keep bleeding just a little bit.

He pretended to hold his chest where he got hit and acted in pain.

Come on, take the bait, he prayed.

Fortunately, he didn\'t have to wait long as the next strike came from his back. This time he also didn\'t try to completely avoid it, he moved just enough that it struck him in the lower back.

He dropped to one knee and grabbed the spot in pain, making sure to heal it just enough that it didn\'t inhibit his movements, but also keep it bleeding.

It was a little funny in some ways. He didn\'t expect that there would be a day that he fight his healing skill not to heal him. [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] was trying to heal him with or without his consent. It was only due to his will that it didn\'t.

While he wasn\'t the best actor in the world, he tried his best to pretend as if the attacks were really hurting him. Though, to be honest, it wasn\'t very hard to act like it.

He was still literally getting shot by this stupid sniper monster.

Fortunately, after ten or so shots the monster seemed to think that it was enough. Julius was crawling on the ground with blood pouring out of him like a punctured bag of blood. He looked the part of a person on the edge of death.

Finally, he felt the monster enter his perception. It was indeed a bird-like monster. But it was unlike any bird he had seen before. It was much chunkier and slower than he would have thought it to be. It looked more like a fat owl mixed with a swan.

It flew down very cautiously and landed a few feet away from Julius. He still pretended that he hadn\'t noticed the creature and was dragging himself with one hand while using the other to stifle the blood.

He sensed that the monster was more at ease the moment it saw Julius\'s sorry state. It waddled over to him and he was able to feel it gather more mana around its mouth. The amount of compression it was able to accomplish was ridiculous. It was at a higher stage than his own ability to compress things.

He could see why those bullets were so strong. Still, it wouldn\'t be enough.

The entire time, Julius had been waiting for the perfect moment. He had lulled it into a false sense of security and patiently let it make a mistake. While it was gathering mana and creating another bullet, he used all of the mana and kinetic energy to swivel around and launch himself at the chunky bird.

He used [Quick Step] with more force than he had ever used it before. It was almost as if he teleported in front of it that was how fast he was.

[Quick Step lvl 14 -> lvl 15]

He tried to hide the grin from his face as he recognized the notification. He was busy wrapping his hands around this stupid bird\'s ugly neck. He saw the shock in the creature\'s eyes and when it felt his hands grip its neck like a steel vice, he saw that shock turn into fear.

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It tried its best to get away and free itself from its position, but Julius wasn\'t going to allow this bird to escape him. Panicking, it shot the incomplete bullet at Julius from point-blank range.

While Julius had seen what it was about to do, he didn\'t dodge it. He wanted to send a message to this annoying shit before he killed it. He allowed the bullet that shot at his face to tear through his lower jaw and shoot out the back of his head.

All the while he still had it in an iron grip and was giving the scared bird the most menacing smile he could. And it was pretty menacing. The gaping hole in his face really sold it if he said so himself.

He let the bird watch as he healed the rest of his wounds. Then it stopped struggling as fiercely as it watched the hole in Julius\'s face seal over within a second. It finally seemed to realize its mistake.

It was only then that Julius squeezed his fist with a good amount of kinetic energy, crushing the throat of the bird easily. It was almost so much force that he practically decapitated it.

He was a little surprised at how weak it was. Its physical abilities were even worse than many of the Tier 2 students. Yet, its ability to shoot compressed and dangerous bullets from such a far distance with precision made it a real threat to him.

It was an opponent that specialized in singular long-ranged attacks. He admitted he didn\'t see how he would have been able to attack it back if he hadn\'t lured it to him like he had. The monster had some sort of camouflage skill that Julius was unable to see through because it was outside his range of [Spatial Perception].

That meant it could have just stayed out of his range for as long as it wanted and rained down shot after shot until it ran out of mana. And in an open field like he was in, that was the perfect environment for it.

He reminded himself to keep an eye out on long-range ambushes from now on. That could have been dangerous.

After he retrieved the body of the bird and put it inside his storage ring, he went back to Declan, who was waiting for him. The man was lying on the ground with a couple of dead monsters littered around him.

"You have company when I was gone?" Julius joked as he approached.

Declan looked up at him and grinned. "Yeah, I did. Though they weren\'t the most polite of guests, so I had to deal with them appropriately."

"Eh, that\'s too bad," he said in mock sympathy.

"What about you? Did you manage to handle that bird?"

"You knew what it was?" Julius asked curiously.

"Yeah, it\'s a monster called the Piercing Avius. Very annoying monster. I\'m a little surprised to see one in this rift," Declan told him.

"How did you manage to spot it from that far away?"

Declan smiled and pointed at his eyes. "I got a very good vision skill that I evolved from [Farsight]. It\'s able to see through their camouflage as well."

Julius grumbled to himself about the unfairness of it. But Declan swiftly swatted him on the back of the head. "Ouch, what was that for?" Julius asked.

"Don\'t gripe about unfair skills. Your perception skill is already freakishly good. If it didn\'t have any weaknesses even I would put you in a cage until you told me how you learned it," Declan told him with a chuckle.

Julius smiled back at him, but he also slowly backed away from the older man with wary eyes. Declan didn\'t miss that though and gave Julius a disbelieving look of betrayal. "I didn\'t mean I would actually do it," he said, offended at the thought that Julius would believe he would.

Julius gave an amused smirk and stopped backpedaling before he asked him another question. "How would you have taken out that fat owl?" Julius was curious as to how someone like Declan would have handled the monster.

It wasn\'t like Declan could have done the exact same as Julius. Playing dead only worked because Julius actually looked like it. He didn\'t expect everyone to allow the monster to shoot them full of holes to lure them in.

Declan grinned at Julius\'s question. "Well, as you might have noticed, that \'fat owl\' had some pretty big weaknesses. One of them is the fact that it is indeed fat. For a Tier 3 bird monster, it is laughably slow and physically weak. The only advantages it has is its ability to maintain a distance and how strong its attack is. But as long as you can spot where it is and then have an attack that can reach it, it becomes much simpler."

"How would you have taken it down?" Julius asked Declan curiously.

Declan just smiled at him with a confident grin. "I would have shot it out of the sky," he said simply.

"Out of the sky? From that distance?" Julius asked skeptically.

Instead of responding to him with words, Declan decided that actions spoke louder. A large longbow appeared in Declan\'s hand and with a smooth motion, casually pulled back its string. He didn\'t have an arrow in his hand, but it didn\'t seem he needed one as an arrow made of mana appeared on the bow string.

The construction of the shaft and arrow tip felt outrageously dense with mana. Within a second of him pulling out his bow, he released a piercing bolt of light from the weapon at a distant tree.

One moment the tree was there, and the next it had disappeared in a puff of smoke. It was ridiculously fast, there was no way Julius would have been able to dodge that in time. He doubted the fat bird would have either.

Julius chuckled and nodded his head. Point taken.

"Okay, I get it," he said with a smile. "But how would you have dealt with it if you were in my shoes?" Julius asked.

Declan put away his bow like nothing happened and placed his hand on his chin as he thought about it. "Honestly, I would choose a similar method as you did. Making it come to you was a good plan. Allowing yourself to be shot so much was a bit overkill, but it worked so I can\'t complain about the results," Declan grudgingly admitted.

"It was just something that I thought of in the heat of the moment," Julius said while shrugging his shoulders.

Declan didn\'t have anything to say after that and the two moved onwards. Julius continued his delve while Declan made sure to keep an eye out on him.

The rest of the rift went smoothly. He fought a few more groups of monsters, but he had no issues with them. He was able to take care of them with ease.

However, Julius made sure to keep an eye out for any more annoying fat owls that showed up. The second he saw one, destroying it would become his first priority over anything else.