Path to Transcendence

When Julius got back to his room, the first thing he did was feed little Drasil some life mana. Like usual Drasil inhaled the mana, like a fat kid eating Oreos. Julius had to admit it was somewhat impressive to see. It wasn’t just a little bit of mana either. It was much more than he used for each usage of [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal].

It was getting late, but Julius still wanted to check out the training areas. He locked his door and headed for the first-year training area. It wasn’t a far walk, so Julius got there in a couple of minutes.

He had to scan his school badge to get in. When he walked through the doors of the facility, he was surprised to see other students there as well. The training area was huge, it was about the size of a gymnasium. Various activities were portioned off from each other, weight lifting, sparring, agility, meditation, you name it and they had a separate room for it.

He walked past another first-year who was busy lifting weights and headed to a private room that had dummies installed. He wasn’t planning to do any hard training right now, he wanted to finish reading the books he got today. He didn’t think holding off on evolving his [Mana Manipulation] for too long was good. The two books he read already narrowed his choices down, but he wanted to read some more before he made a choice.

Julius tested out the dummies, giving them a few strikes to see how well they held up. He was quite pleased to see that they were of much higher quality than the ones at the guardhouse. These even had an option that would allow them to attack you. They weren’t very graceful but it sure as hell beat hitting a stationary object.

Once Julius felt comfortable, he started to crank up his power. The first thing he did was to use [Kinetic Augmentation] to the max. After some warming up, he was rocketing his fists and legs into the dummy at a blistering pace. Much faster than when he was fighting Gabriel the other day.

Then Julius began to slowly add aura into his strikes, enforcing his attacks even further. Heavy punches and kicks smashed into the dummy, each strike compacted and neat, just like Gabriel. His style was different than Gabriel’s. Julius’s style revolved around using his speed, aggression, and perception to punish opponent’s openings, while Gabriel was a steel wall, not allowing anything through him. Both were effective strategies that relied on their strengths, but Julius wanted to take some of Gabriel’s methods for himself.

The one thing that impressed Julius was how few openings Gabriel left open. Even the ones that seemed open were baits. Throughout their fight, Julius realized how that worked. It all played off of Gabriel’s striking.

Gabriel was able to use aura to compact his strikes and create a resonating force through his blows. This allowed him to keep his swings short and neat, not allowing any room for counterattacks and never overextending himself.

Julius's first thought was that he wouldn’t be able to generate enough speed or torque, but aura solved that. With a generous application of aura, he was able to replicate Gabriel’s aura strikes. It required Julius to expel it at the right moment, but he already had practice with something like that. Kinetic energy needed the same timing.

Julius completely ended up forgetting about his plans to read the books tonight and got so absorbed with the new technique that he spent many hours practicing the same strikes over and over. He unleashed aura strike after aura strike at the poor dummy, he even had it start moving so that it was more challenging to time up his attacks.

But he quickly got the hang of it. He was soon able to recreate the resonating force that Gabriel had demonstrated, he didn’t know how effective it was, but he felt like even if he punched someone wearing full plate armor, the resonating force would definitely transfer beneath to their bodies.

It was only after this did [Fighter’s Will] finally tipped over that threshold.

[Fighter’s Will lvl 14 -> lvl 15]

Skill [Fighter’s Will] has reached level 15. Would you like to evolve [Fighter’s Will]?

It wasn’t even a question.

Skill [Fighter’s Will] is evolving… possible advancements: [Warrior’s Will], [Aura Strengthening], [Aura Sense], [Empathy], [Empowerment of Will], and [Aura Strike]

Finally, after many sleepless nights, he was able to evolve the skill. He was getting worried that he might have needed to tier up before he was able to evolve it.

He was glad he didn’t.

Julius reviewed the possible advancements.

[Warrior’s Will] was the direct upgrade, but also a good option. He liked how [Fighter’s Will] had overlapped with [Savage Dance] and let him focus even more.

[Aura Strengthening] was predictable, it most likely would be a skill that focused on improving his physical abilities with aura from the inside. If he really wanted to go the close combat route, he should definitely consider it.

[Aura Sense] must be like [Mana Sense] but for aura, he didn’t think he would need something like this. He already had [Spatial Perception] that allowed him an easier time to detect aura usage along with his improving ability using it. It might make it easier to do so, but he hadn’t been unable to detect an aura probe yet. Declan doesn’t count, because if Declan doesn’t want you to notice his probe, you won’t. He said that not many people, even some Tier 5’s could detect his aura.

Julius would rather choose another skill. Then there was [Empathy], which was one of the most interesting skills Julius had been offered. He suspected that his adventure through the market using aura was the reason for this option.

It sounded like it was a skill that would allow Julius to know what people were feeling. It might not sound that impressive, but Julius could already imagine several uses for it. For example, if he got good enough he would be able to tell when people were lying to him. He might also be able to know how someone was going to attack. Emotions are powerful things, and being able to read them might be a useful ability.

Julius looked at [Empowerment of Will]. It sounded similar to strengthening, but he had a feeling that it wouldn’t just empower his physical strength. It might be able to empower his spells as well. Much like how the troll mage had used aura to shroud his attacks, Julius might be able to do something similar.

He had tried already, but the most he could do was stabilize it slightly. He often didn’t bother because the effort wasn’t worth the results. Even after training it for a while he still hadn’t made much progress. But he could see the value of empowering his spells and even constructs with aura. For that reason, he was leaning toward this skill.

Then there was [Aura Strike] which he immediately dismissed. He felt like he would be able to do it comfortably on his own soon. It was so similar to how he used kinetic energy to punch something that he would rather use the slot for something more difficult and mentally draining.

At the moment it was between [Warrior’s Will] and [Empowerment of Will]. He believed that [Empowerment of Will] was undoubtedly the better skill of the two, but he liked the focus element of [Fighter’s Will], maybe [Empowerment of Will] had a focus element, but it was unlikely.

However, Julius thought of something. It was a crazy idea, but would he be able to empower his other skills with aura? If [Kinetic Augmentation] and [Arcane Construct] could be empowered like he expected they could, then it might be possible to empower a skill like [Savage Dance] or [Spatial Perception].

He didn’t know if that would work, but Julius had made crazier ideas possible and really wanted to try this one.

Congratulations, you have learned the skill [Empowerment of Will] (Rare+)

Only time would tell if it was a good skill. Julius closed his notifications, almost overlooking something very important.

A superior skill! Julius yelled to himself.

Julius was ecstatic, he wasn’t expecting something like this. He already knew the power of a superior skill. [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] was his most powerful skill. He had no idea what made this skill a superior skill though.

There was only one way to find out he smiled to himself.

Julius dropped back into the same stance he had been in for most of the night, he didn’t use [Kinetic Augmentation] or any kinetic energy, just pure body strength, and aura.

He activated [Empowerment of Will] and felt his entire body get illuminated by a dense aura, it was exhilarating. Even without any kinetic energy, he was already exploding with power. Also, for the first time, he was able to cover his whole body with aura.

Previously, he thought that he would need to get to the next tier, in order to improve his soul and get more soul energy, but nope. It seemed like he just sucked and wasn’t able to do it. He had plenty of aura to cover his body, but he had been using way too much on each body part before.

With [Empowerment of Will] he was only covering himself in the thinnest sheet of aura, but it was dense and potent. He sent a punch at the dummy, and his fist moved so fast it was like he had [Kinetic Augmentation] active. It crashed into the dummy with a deafening boom.

He barely had to focus on timing the aura anymore, it happened naturally, and the skill knew what he wanted and did it for him. The resonating force penetrated deep beneath the surface. Julius smiled widely, it was a fantastic skill.

Then he activated [Kinetic Augmentation] as well, but that turned out to be a bad idea. The energy was too much and Julius literally felt his body bursting apart like a balloon filled with too much water. However, for some reason, he couldn’t turn them off immediately, the aura and kinetic energy were stuck in his body, with nowhere to go.

Thinking fast, he dumped as much kinetic energy and aura into his fist as he could, and sent it ripping toward the enchanted wall on the other side of the room. A surge of invisible force smashed into the protective barrier with such an incredible force. The cobbled-together technique was almost as powerful as a fully condensed spike but covered far more space. Julius’s spikes were condensed fire and kinetic energy, which he caused to implode, creating an explosion. It required him to stick his target with it to do damage. It was an attack where precision was necessary.

This attack was more like an expanding wave that caught everything in its path. It was a good AOE attack when he thought about it. He could use it against a horde of weaker enemies and use his spikes or disks for stronger individuals.

The only downside was that the attack managed to mangle his arm pretty badly. He hadn’t been prepared for the technique and the force ripped apart his arm. [Savage Dance] was keeping the worst of the pain at bay, and he swiftly activated [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal], bursting his arm into flames, and healing it rapidly.

Within a few moments, his arm was as good as new, except for the burn scars that still remained there. At some point he had become used to getting injured and healing, not even blinking at debilitating injuries.

Okay, no using both skills at full power. My body can’t handle the stress. Julius reminded himself.

But he did want to find out how much he could use each skill before it became too much. So preparing to hurt himself again, he slowly activated both skills. [Empowerment of Will] and [Kinetic Augmentation] each building up at a snail's pace.

Julius was careful, he didn’t want a repeat of a minute ago. It was at around half that Julius felt his body was starting to fill up. His skin got tight and his flesh was breaking down from the energy. He tried to hold on for as long as he could, but eventually, he stopped supplying any more energy and focused on toning it down. But just like last time, he couldn’t seem to release the energy, without manually using the energy for an attack.

This might become a problem.