Path to Transcendence

Julius woke up face down in the dirt. His body was in agony and the pain made him breathless.

Gritting his teeth, he grasped some life mana from his core and sent it throughout his body. The small infusion took the edge off the pain and let him finally breathe again. He noticed something wet was pooling at his side, soaking his clothes.

It smelled like rust and copper, and with a quick inspection, he confirmed it was his own blood. There was a gaping hole on his side and it was leaking out like a deflated water balloon. At this rate, he might die from bleeding out.

He didn't know where it came from but he needed to heal it fast or else he was going to die face down, ass up, in a pool of his own blood. If there were any time to create a skill for healing it would be now.

First, he had to focus on stopping the bleeding. He didn’t have any tools or bandages to staunch it, but he checked his core and felt that he had some fire mana, it must’ve regenerated while he was unconscious.

Rolling over, he concentrated on creating a jet of constant flame. It was hard to keep focused on it, his brain was muddled from either the blood loss or the pain. He couldn’t tell at this point. But eventually, he managed to create a soft red flame over his palm. Then gently lifting his shirt with the other hand, he pressed the fire directly onto his wound.

Julius couldn’t even scream, choking on his tongue in silent agony. The smell of burning flesh wafted from his torso. Once he felt like he cauterized the wound and could no longer take the pain, he released the flame and started to gather life mana towards his side.

Julius had understood something about life mana. It was different than fire and kinetic mana. Where fire and kinetic were like beasts that needed a firm hand to control, life mana was the opposite. It required a delicate touch and you needed to convince it to do what you wanted.

That’s what Julius needed to do, he had to envision it healing him while he softly infused life mana into his injuries. As he was delicately leading life mana into the location of the wound, he desperately tried convincing it to heal him, to save his life.

It wasn’t enough. The life mana was just floating around his wound, with no direction, just passively healing it. It was too slow. Julius tried to recall as much information as he had about healing. He wasn’t a doctor but he knew enough about biology to get by.

He imagined the life mana visibly healing his tissue, taking oxygen in, and breathing life into his flesh. Rebuilding each cell of skin bit by bit.

This caused a reaction, he started to feel his skin become itchy and feel his body requiring more mana to sustain this process.

Julius let it have it all. But it wasn’t enough, he needed something more. Thus, he used the same method he used for all of his magic applications, he just condensed the hell out of it. Julius didn’t have the required knowledge to carefully finesse his mana to heal him. Therefore, he would just need to brute force it.

Julius jammed as much compressed life mana into his wound as he possibly could. There was so much mana present, that his side started to glow a brilliant verdant green. Then, to his astonishment, his skin was seen visibly healing. Not very fast, but at this rate, his wound would be healed within ten minutes.

Ten minutes later, and with practically no life mana left, his side was healed. Admittedly, it was a horrendous job that any proper healer would be ashamed of. His skin was left horribly disfigured with burn scarring all across its surface. It was a patchwork of ugly healing at best, but it got the job done.

He also got a notification along with it.

Would you like to learn the skill [Heal]?

It seemed that Julius would finally get that healing skill he was desperately wanting. It would have been more useful ten minutes ago but better late than never. He accepted it quickly.

Congratulations, skill [Heal] acquired.

It also seemed like he had some notifications from the fight that he didn't see.

[Thermal Compression] has reached threshold. [Thermal Compression lvl1 -> Thermal Compression lvl 2]

[Kinetic Release] has reached threshold. [Kinetic Release lvl1 -> Kinetic Release lvl 2]

[Focus] has reached threshold. [Focus lvl 9 ->Focus lvl 10]

[Focus] has advanced to level 10. Would you like to evolve the skill?

Julius was surprised, he always thought that [Unarmed Combat] would be his first skill to level 10 but it seemed like he was wrong. He wasn’t upset, and couldn't see any reason not to, so he mentally confirmed to evolve [Focus].

Skill [Focus] is evolving… possible advancements: [Enhanced Focus] and [Combat Trance]

Julius learned about the possibility of choosing multiple skill evolutions when you rank them up. Most of the time, people get offered a general upgrade of the skill. Something that increases it across the board, but there could also be an option to specialize within a certain part of the skill depending on how you had used it.

For Julius, it seemed like he got an option that specializes in combat.

If it was before everything happened, the obvious choice would have been [Enhanced Focus] but now he was stranded in the middle of the wilderness with monsters lurking around. It was expected that he would be doing a lot of fighting. But he really liked how the general [Focus] worked. It was incredibly versatile and was able to be applied to everything that he wanted it to.

While the effects weren’t as dramatic as say [Thermal Compression] it was still a useful skill that gave a small boost to many other applications. However, his instincts were telling him that [Combat Trance] was going to be vital in the future.

In the end, he decided to follow his gut. It hadn’t steered him wrong yet.

Congratulations, skill [Combat Trance] (Uncommon) acquired.

He tried activating [Combat Trance] the moment he received it and it seemed like his suspicions were right. It no longer worked on everything, it took more manual effort to get to the same level of focus again.

Despite that, it wasn’t as big of a difference as he initially predicted either. It appeared that Julius had been getting better at focusing regardless of the skill. The skill had been giving him a little extra boost, but nothing so extreme that it was detrimental.

However, his new skill appeared to only work while he was in combat. It was like the conditions weren't right to activate it yet. Julius was sure that would change once he got into a fight.

He remembered he also got [Heal], something he believed would be keeping him alive for the foreseeable future. Figuring that now would be a good time to test it out real quick, he channeled some mana using [Heal]. The difference was massive. It was faster, more efficient, and more potent now. Julius could feel the life mana thrumming through his entire body, healing small tears and scratches he had.

Now that his life wasn’t in immediate danger, Julius took the time to look around and check his surroundings.

He was in a forest of some kind. Massive trees were caging him in on all sides. It was beautiful to see. However, it was definitely not a city, and definitely not Celestia.

This meant that whatever had happened to the teleportation, had landed Julius off course from his supposed location. He didn’t know where exactly he was. There were many forests within the empire and even more outside of it.

He would need to find civilization if he wanted to determine where he was. Plan in mind, Julius got up and started walking. The hard part was choosing a direction to start walking toward. He chose to head east just out of simple randomness, he was hoping that there was some sort of vantage point he would find. If he was able to get a good look at the surrounding environment, it would be extremely helpful in dictating his travel route.

---

The thing about walking alone in a forest with nothing to do is that Julius started to think too much. Julius’s head was filled with a hundred different scenarios in which he imagined what had happened to Lukas and Edwin after he was transported. Constantly worrying about whether they were safe, if they had died, or if something else happened.

However, he knew from experience that obsessing over it would lead to more issues down the road. It would just build up until Julius couldn’t handle it. He needed to distract himself. It was better to focus on the current task, something he could do.

Therefore, he didn’t just walk through the forest doing nothing. He was continuously training his skills while he made his way east. Julius constantly had [Spatial Perception] pulsing to check his surroundings.

To the naked eye, Julius didn’t see any activity. But with [Spatial Perception] he could sense small rodents and critters scurrying around the foliage and forest floor. There were also larger creatures he sensed occasionally, but whenever he did, he would take a detour trying to avoid them. He also was storing and releasing small amounts of kinetic energy in his legs, increasing his speed by a little. It was good practice for getting familiar with [Kinetic Release] and using kinetic mana in general.

Furthermore, he was training his fire manipulation, as well. Julius had witnessed Samuel’s last attack and noticed that Samuel added centrifugal force for additional penetration and flight stability. It reminded Julius of how the rifling of a gun barrel worked on a bullet.

For a world that wasn’t as knowledgeable about physics and or other scientific fields, the people had a surprisingly good grasp on what was the best way to do something. Even if they didn’t fully understand why it worked.

---

Julius had been walking in the same direction for several hours by now. The surroundings were still just large trees, and it didn’t seem like the forest was going to end soon.

At the moment Julius was ultra-focused on keeping a spike made of fire mana spinning in front of him. It was a surprisingly difficult technique. When he initially tried it out, he was unable to keep the spike in place as he spun it. It would sometimes shoot out or spin out of his control. The amount of concentration he spent on the construct meant that he was unable to split his attention to his legs.

This predictably led to him failing to sense a tree limb or releasing too much kinetic energy through his legs, resulting in him falling on his face several times. If anyone were watching him, they would see a boy obsessively playing with fire who frequently tripped over his feet, it was certainly an odd sight.

But he kept at it. Eventually, he made an interesting discovery. It seemed like kinetic energy was the perfect complement to this spinning technique. The motion of spinning the spike generated kinetic energy on its own. This would mean he didn't have to always use his kinetic mana to use kinetic energy. He would be able to capture natural kinetic energy in its place. There were so many applications he could use this discovery for, either to increase the strength of his attacks or to save kinetic mana, they were endless.

---

The sun was getting low to the horizon and Julius was still in the forest. He must have been walking for at least 10 hours, but he still hadn’t seen any evidence of society.

However, he realized that he needed to stop for the day and set up a camp. He had finally found a suitable place to sleep for the night. There was a creek nearby and there was a grouping of large boulders that would make for a secure place to sleep with a little work.

First, he went to the creek and checked to see if it was safe to drink. It looked clear and there was a pretty strong current, so he expected it to be safe. He took a small sip to test it, and it was cold and crisp. It was remarkably fresh and he took a deep drink, dehydrated from all the walking from the day.

He was also pretty hungry and wanted to get something to eat before it got too dark. Not that it really mattered with [Spatial Perception], but he didn’t want to be running around in the dark regardless.

He sensed a small rabbit-like creature hiding underneath a log and slowly crept toward it while creating a small needle of fire mana. During his walk, he had seen many of these rabbit-like creatures running about and knew they were really quick.

Once he felt he was at a comfortable distance, he stopped and aimed his needle at the rabbit. Spinning it gently, he took in the excess kinetic energy and concentrated on repurposing it to propel towards the needle faster.

Prepared, Julius shot it, aiming at the center mass of the rabbit. However, his aim was slightly off, the extra kinetic energy he used to launch it, caused the release point to be slightly off. The needle missed by a few inches, right over the rabbit's head and way off into the woods. Successfully missing his target and scaring off his dinner, Julius had to find another poor rabbit.

Several minutes later, he found another one that was just sitting there eating some sort of vegetation. This time he had an idea.

Before, when he was practicing spinning the spike, he had compared it to the rifling of a gun barrel. This time he wanted to create some sort of barrel that would keep the projectile from deviation from its course once he released the kinetic charge.

He didn’t necessarily need to make a barrel with rifling in, because he was already doing that by spinning it manually. Thus, all he needed to do was create a mental image of a barrel, whose main priority was to direct the object initially, so that it was more accurate.

Julius stalked the rabbit just like before and got himself ready. He recreated exactly what he did earlier, but now he was imagining a barrel extending out to his target.

Lining up his aim, he released the kinetically enhanced fire needle. This time he hit his target right in the chest. The barrel idea worked perfectly.

He even got another notification for his technique.

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

It was a good skill, that he could see having a lot of various uses. It was also uncommon, which was nice. However, he was approaching his ten-skill limit already. Initially, he thought that ten was plenty, but he had seven already and he was just in Tier 1. That on top of his triple affinities, it seemed like he was always going to require more skill slots.

I will have to start thinking about combining skills earlier than I thought.

It was still a great skill so he accepted it.

Congratulations, skill [Firebolt] (Uncommon) acquired.

Getting all of that settled, Julius shifted his attention back toward his dinner. While his technique had proven satisfactory, the results were less than ideal.

Unfortunately, it seemed like shooting an explosive dart at extreme speeds was overkill. The needle shredded through the poor rabbit and exploded on impact. The rabbit with little meat to its bones, was reduced to a paste scattered across the forest.

Julius had a feeling that getting dinner was going to be a more difficult challenge than he expected.