Path to Transcendence

Julius found himself staring over the troll encampment. It was night and he could only make out the details because of the fires that were scattered around the camp. He wasn’t going to lie, he was really nervous. Taking down individual groups was fine, but taking on an entire horde of self-regenerating monsters was terrifying. Part of him still wanted to rain bombs from a safe distance, but he knew that it would most likely be a waste of mana. Even if he used half of his core for a single blast, he didn’t think he would kill more than a couple dozen, and worse, it would alert them against any future attacks.

But Julius steeled his nerves and quietly made his way down to the camp. He had taken a couple of hours to prepare. He had observed the camp and watched as the trolls made their way back to their tents. There were no guards posted around the camp, which was expected considering they were probably the strongest monsters in the rift.

His core was full and his body was completely charged with kinetic energy. He originally planned on having many constructs surround him like an arsenal, but he realized that having a dozen shining red disks of mana would kind of defeat the purpose of stealth.

He approached the first tent, activating [Savage Dance] to settle some of his anxiety. He could hear loud snoring coming from the inside and based on what he had observed there were usually four to six trolls per tent. The same amount that were in a team.

He quickly prepared several sharp wedges of hardened fire mana. Julius had tested them earlier on some rocks and while they weren’t as effective as the saw blades, they didn’t require any spinning, meaning they didn’t whistle. Which was going to be important if he wanted to do this quietly.

He sensed five trolls within this tent, but no leader. According to what he was able to sense with [Spatial Perception], the groups with leaders all had tents more toward the center of the camp. The ones around the edges were apparently lower in the troll’s social hierarchy.

He opened the tent, which was made of the same type of plant-based material that their clothes were made out of. It made a slight crinkling noise as it parted, but thankfully the trolls didn’t awake. Then five wedges of sharpened floated over the heads of the sleeping trolls. Once they were all directly over the necks of the snoring trolls, he slammed them down and added a boost of kinetic energy to make sure they went all the way through.

It was anti-climatic, all wedges pierced through the monster’s necks, killing them swiftly. Honestly, Julius felt a little sick for the first since he’d been in this rift. It was the only time he had felt genuinely bad for killing a monster. Killing an opponent that was actively trying to kill you was different than slaughtering his opponents in their sleep. It just didn’t sit well with Julius and he swore to himself that this would be the last time he ever did something like this.

However, he still had many other tents to visit and he couldn’t back out now. So Julius quietly made his way out of the tent and went to the next closest one, keeping the constructs as low to the ground so that their glowing wouldn’t alert any trolls still awake.

The next tent had only four trolls and he just decided to send the wedges in alone. The constructs parted the tent and silently hovered above the trolls. He could sense every movement inside with his skill and with a pulse of kinetic energy killed all the trolls.

The same happened with the next dozen or so tents. By this point, Julius was racking up quite a lot of kills. It was going very smoothly, at this rate he could take out the entire camp in less than an hour. It was extremely disturbing, assassinating trolls by the dozens like it was nothing.

He even got a notification for his actions.

Would you like to learn to learn the skill [Assassination] (Uncommon)?

Julius hadn’t received any notifications for new skills in a while, even though he had been hoping for certain ones like some sort of burst step or movement skill. The fact that he was offered such a skill at this moment made his heart drop. He felt like his insides were curdling like sour milk.

He didn’t like it. The depths of his soul were vehemently opposing what he was doing. He didn’t like that he was forced to do this.

So why the hell am I? Julius asked himself.

Was it because he had no other choice? Because he had other plans that he decided against. Or was it because it was the easiest choice?

His mouth opened as if he wanted to refute that thought.

But that’s exactly what it was. It was the easiest choice.

It wasn’t that he was forced to kill the monsters like this, it was just the easiest way to clear the rift with the least amount of risk and using the least amount of mana.

Julius gazed up into the fractured night sky like it held the answers to his problems. I got so tunnel-visioned on clearing the rift that I was willing to do anything to achieve it, even if it meant doing what was easy versus what was right, he realized.

Julius didn’t consider himself a good guy. He wasn’t a hero. If it came down to choosing a single person he cared about or the entire world, he would let the world burn to ash. However, he still had morals, and cutting the throats of his opponents in their beds might very well be one of them. He was aiming for the pinnacle of this world, but if he turned into a broken shadow of himself while doing it, was that really considered a success?

Was silently killing them when they were asleep any better than bombarding them from a mountaintop?

No, either way, I would be killing them. But killing them in the same manner as the Genshen Clan bothers me in a way I cannot describe.

Julius knew he shouldn’t have a problem with it. He had killed dozens of trolls by ambushing them. His style of fighting wasn’t exactly “honorable”.

Maybe, there is something about slitting someone’s throat when they are sleeping in their beds that doesn’t sit right with me.

It was like he had said before, power without ideals was empty, and maybe this would be one of his. He had no problem killing his opponents in their homes, but he would at least give them the common courtesy and knock on their front door before he did so.

Julius smiled sardonically and shook his head in frustration.

From the corner of his senses, he could feel that there were some trolls who were getting up and making some commotion. Perhaps they had smelled the thick scent of blood coming from the tents. Julius didn’t know and honestly, he didn’t really care. He had no more plans of continuing this tactic. And it seemed like the trolls were no longer going to allow him either.

He felt more and more trolls start to awaken from the noise. Soon, Julius wouldn’t be surprised if they started to swarm him any moment. Time was up. The need for secrecy was no longer relevant. A part of Julius was glad the trolls had noticed, now he didn’t feel the pressuring need to continue this distasteful act.

With a grim determination on his face, he began gathering fire mana, forming it into a compressed orb. His eyes were shining with a hint of madness while he did so.

Over the camp, a large ball of fire formed, the heat emanating from it was intense and Julius could sense more of the trolls inside of the tents start to move around. He thought about replicating his blue flame technique but honestly thought the scary blue flame had a better chance of killing him than the trolls did. Also, he hadn’t tried since he evolved [Firebolt], it was way too volatile to casually practice it.

Looking back, he didn’t know how he was able to keep the construct together before it destabilized. Maybe in the future, he could hopefully use that technique, but not until he felt like he could control it or no longer had a choice. For now, he just compressed as much kinetic and fire mana as he could.

In hindsight he should have just bombarded the camp in the first place, it would have saved him the time. On the other hand, he was grateful that he had learned this about himself earlier than later. With a flick of his hand, Julius dropped the orb right in the center of camp.

A deafening boom exploded throughout the otherwise quiet camp. He sensed every troll startled awake and couldn’t help but smile like a madman. He would be facing every troll within the horde at once. But at least he was doing it on his own terms. Also, it would provide a nice distraction to make his escape.

Now that the jig was up, Julius didn’t hold back. He created as many constructs as he could handle at once and began tossing out sharp disks of mana and explosive spikes at the trolls with impunity. [Spatial Perception] helped him retain his accuracy in the darkness and chaos but it was becoming tough to kill a troll with each strike, especially, the leaders. They were just moving too erratically to precisely take them out.

Julius didn’t stay within the confines of the camp for very long. He swiftly started to back away toward his fallback plan. He never had the intention of facing them on an open field like he was some one-man army. Nope, he had a plan that would allow him to funnel them into his attacks. Several hours ago, he found a nice cliffside where he could slowly retreat while he fended off the trolls. He just needed to make it there.

It didn’t take very long for the initial confusion to die down and for the trolls to collect themselves. He had only made it about halfway to the cliff and they were already forming up in an organized group, chasing after him.

He couldn’t afford to look back, and [Spatial Perception] couldn’t determine exactly what was happening, but there was probably some sort of chieftain or overall leader giving commands. There was a large central tent in the camp, and he suspected it was owned by the big boss of the horde.

Julius continued sending precise strikes at whatever troll entered his perception, but he focused on running as fast as he could to his objective. He was faster than the regular trolls so he was easily outpacing them by now and had stopped sending out any more attacks. It would just be a waste otherwise, considering he could no longer land them with any accuracy.

He was looking pretty good on his mana capacity. He had never been so glad for his ridiculous capacity than now. He was going to be in for a long fight even if he had the environmental advantage.

Abruptly, Julius felt something latch onto him. Some sort of mana-like substance seeped into his skin. It felt dark and insidious, causing him to slow down as he felt extremely weary all of a sudden. Even with his healing skill passively running, it wasn’t completely alleviating the fatigue. Julius had to increase the amount he was putting into [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] to get rid of it. However, that also meant he lit up like a bonfire in the middle of the dark.

It was only after he did that he felt like the symptoms went away. When he thought that was the end of it, the same feeling came back, but with a more violent reaction. If he hadn’t put kinetic energy into his body, he might have fallen to his knees from the weakness he was experiencing.

Julius had no idea what was happening to him and he didn’t have time to figure it out. He pumped mana into his healing skill, dealing with the weird effect, and continued making his way to the cliffside. Then, he sensed something. He was barely able to discern what it was, but it reassembled a black cloud racing toward him.

He tried to avoid it, but it was too fast, and was able to track his movements. When it hit him in the back, his eyesight vanished and he could no longer hear anything.

I’m being hit by some sort of curse or debuff ability, Julius realized with wide eyes.

There was a curse mage somewhere in the horde of trolls, some sort of shaman, or maybe even their leader. The situation was getting worse and the cynical part of him was kicking himself for not taking the easy way out. He just had to go and make it harder on himself, didn’t he?

Another sickly black vapor of mana was heading toward him. Now that he knew what he needed to look out for, it stood out like a lighthouse on a foggy night. He tried to block it with a barrier of mana, but it eroded straight through it like acid tearing through paper and hit him again.

This curse was different, he could feel it latching onto his core, trying to drain his mana. Julius tried to act quickly, he activated [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] but focused it on the mass of black mana on his core. He didn’t care about his blindness or deafness for the moment. He had [Spatial Perception] and it was dark out anyway, so he left it alone for now.

The mass of curse energy was rapidly draining his mana. It had already taken a decent chunk away and he needed to prevent it from doing any more damage. Julius tried to surround the curse with fire and life mana, squeezing it, trying to rid himself of this parasite. However, it appeared that the curse not only drained mana but also restricted his mana usage.

It took his entire attention to wrangle the mass off of his core. By the time he had, it had taken almost a third of his resources. Considering how much mana Julius had, that was a lot.

Julius had never experienced an attack quite like that. He had heard about mages that specialized in debuffs and curses but he hadn’t thought he would meet one in a troll rift. There hadn’t been a single monster that could use magic beyond physical enhancements. He sensed behind him and noticed that the effort and time he had put into fighting against the unusual attack had let the other trolls split the distance between them.

Julius was hyper-aware, trying to detect another attack like that before it could land. Moments later, he sensed it. It was the same attack, coming for his chest. He didn’t even bother trying to stop it with a construct, the last one didn’t do anything. This time, he manipulated [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] so that it surrounded his core. Not leaving a single gap for the black mana to slip into.

To his relief, his skill burned the black mana, purifying it before it could grab ahold of his core. He let out a sign, he was extremely lucky to find a way to defend against it so quickly. The problem was that the curse had already done its job. He had just over half his mana left, with less life mana than the other two. He had been planning to fight a war of attrition, using his high mana capacity to his advantage, but it hadn’t even gotten to the challenging part and he was down to fifty percent already. It was not looking good for Julius.