Path to Transcendence

Julius had all four of the limbs splayed out as he used the dredges of his mana to heal himself and tried to recover as much mana as he could.

Nothing went according to how he thought things might go. He had expected that he would have to fight the big bad troll chieftain in the end, but honestly, it was hard to believe that even it could survive that catastrophe.

Julius stayed on the ground for over an hour. He had already completely healed by now and his mana had recovered a decent amount in that time as well. He had checked his notifications as waited.

[Savage Dance lvl 11 -> lvl 14]

[Arcane Construct lvl 5 -> lvl 8]

[Pure Compression lvl 4 -> lvl 7]

[Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal lvl 5 -> lvl 9]

[Kinetic Augmentation lvl 1 -> lvl 5]

It was the greatest improvement he had seen while in the rift. Numbers-wise, it might have not been the largest increase, but considering that all of his skills were rare, the improvement was significant.

He even got a new skill offered.

Would you like to learn the skill [Fighter’s Will] (Uncommon)?

Julius didn’t know what to expect from a skill like that. He didn’t even know why he got offered it. Was it from participating in so many dangerous fights? Or maybe it was because of his dumb stunt? He didn’t know. However, he didn’t see any reason not to accept it.

He almost thought about not choosing it just because it would mean his status would no longer have all rare skills, but quickly whacked himself over the head.

Congratulations, skill [Fighter’s Will] (Uncommon) acquired.

Even after he acquired it, he still didn’t have any idea what the skill did. He guessed it would take some experimenting to find out. Julius had bigger problems to solve though.

For one, he was expecting some sort of exit would appear. Most times when a rift was cleared, a portal appeared, taking the delvers back to the real world. However, Julius had not seen any signs of a portal yet.

Could there still be other trolls in the valley? Or maybe the chieftain is still alive.

Julius knew that some rifts were only considered completely cleared once the “boss” was killed. But looking at the mess of the aftermath, he could not even begin to guess how or where the boss might be.

Getting back to his feet, Julius made his way to the destroyed remnants of the mountain. He had always planned to create some sort of landslide as a contingency but nothing on this scale. He thought it would be useful in getting away, but it was way more effective than he could have dared hoped for.

He was lucky that the direction of the landslide wasn’t where he was blasted off. If it was, it was very possible that he would have been buried alongside the trolls.

Once he made it to the base of the mountain, he used [Spatial Perception] to its limits, trying to sense anything living underneath. The skill was undoubtedly one of the most useful skills he had, but he was having a difficult time picking up anything through so much rock. It was hard to differentiate what was rock and what wasn’t.

It was only when he was almost directly over a troll, that he could sense it. It was also very tricky navigating through the rubble. Julius had to climb over boulders and be careful not to slip on the uneven terrain. A twisted ankle was funnily enough, not a big issue for him anymore, but it still didn’t mean he could just run across the debris.

Not surprisingly, he ended up finding some living trolls buried deep underneath the rock. He put them out of their misery with a wedge of mana or sent an additional blast of kinetic mana on the rock burying them, and smushing them for good. The trolls were persistent, he would give them that. But still had not found the chieftain or the mage.

Julius spent several hours picking through the ruins but still had zero luck. At this point, he was almost certain the chieftain had made it out alive. He found that there were a lot more trolls who survived than what he originally thought. It really highlighted their impressive survivability abilities. However, there was still no chieftain or mage and it worried him.

Even after constant searching, Julius came up empty-handed. But he at least was able to take care of the many stragglers stuck in the landslide, so that was a plus.

It was getting close to early morning and Julius was tired from the stress of the day, so he headed back to the ravine.

He was casually enhancing his body with [Kinetic Augmentation] jogging back as he thought about the day’s events. He still didn’t quite understand some of his actions. During the heat of the moment, he had decided to completely derail from his carefully made plans.

With that being said, he did not regret it. He still believed that he did the right thing. It wasn’t like these monsters had done anything to Julius. If they were the assassins or some sort of slavers, then Julius wouldn’t have felt as bad cutting their throats in their bed. However, it was technically Julius who was intruding. They didn’t deserve such a brutal execution.

No, what bothered him so much was his proclivities to self-destructive actions. He could rationalize putting himself in danger and taking unnecessary risks to improve his skills, but he realized that he would have still done it even without the skill improvement.

He had always been a weird, some might even say crazy, person. He didn’t deny that. What type of person would willingly blindfold themselves for several years? A genuine weirdo, that’s who. But he had never been suicidal. However, his actions since he entered this rift had been pushing the limits of what was normal even for him.

He was glad that he didn’t continue to slaughter the trolls in their bed, but why the fuck did he detonate a bomb instead? He could have easily slipped away unnoticed and figured out another plan. But rather than that, he decided to just break in, and snitch himself out to a bunch of monsters who he just killed. It made no sense.

He needed to be better in the future. He knew better than anyone what death was like, and he also knew how valuable life was. He should not be so willing to throw his away.

Maybe, what happened to Lukas and Edwin had been affecting him more than he wanted to admit. It was something that he had been avoiding up to this point. But his careless attitude up to now was similar to how he acted when he lost his other family.

I should think ab–

Out of nowhere [Spatial Perception] picked up a fast-moving object coming straight at his back. His body was already throwing itself into a dive, getting out of the way, feeling a gust of wind as the object passed over his head. However, when he got back to his feet, a leg was already heading straight at his chest. This time, he didn’t have time to dodge and tried to block it while enhancing his body to the limit with [Kinetic Augmentation]. It felt like getting hit by a speeding semi-truck.

His arm was completely smashed to the side and the kick pummeled him in the shoulder, launching him off into the distance. If not for the recently evolved [Kinetic Augmentation], that kick would have shattered him like a piece of glass. Even with the skill, almost every rib was split in half, his organs ruptured, and his right shoulder turned into a paste.

I think I found the chieftain, Julius thought to himself through clenched teeth.

Julius got to his feet as quickly as he could, because the troll was already charging right at him, and unlike the other trolls, this one was way faster.

The chieftain made the other trolls look like the fat kids in gym class. It was so fast Julius could barely track its movements with [Spatial Perception]. Julius flooded his body with kinetic energy and blasted himself as far away while simultaneously throwing out a condensed spike right at the troll. The troll ducked underneath it and proceeded to dash straight at Julius.

It was the first time that a troll had been fast enough to dodge his attack. It wasn’t like the chieftain was Tier 4, by Julius’s estimates it was still a Tier 3, but it was on a whole other level than their other trolls. It was all over Julius, not giving him an inch to breathe. It was taking everything he had to continue to evade the rapid strikes.

This chieftain didn’t even have a weapon, it was just using its fists. The red aura around its body was like a thick bubble surrounding its movements. Every action it made was supported by the aura so that its attacks were stronger and faster. Julius threw everything into [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] and healed his injuries. When he finally found a tiny gap he released a handful of condensed spikes he had prepared while frantically dodging.

The spikes were too close for the troll to avoid them, but it didn’t matter. The spikes got swallowed up by the aura, breaking down and exploding before they made contact with the troll. Julius’s eyes widened in shock and almost got punished for his lapse in concentration.

The troll was relentless, it didn’t let up for a second. Julius started to get overwhelmed by the sheer violence and speed of his opponent.

The fact that the troll's aura was somehow breaking down his constructs was a problem. Julius didn’t know how it was doing it but he did notice that as he created constructs around his arms to deflect some of its strikes were not as affected by its aura. They were still getting interfered with, but he could easily keep them together.

It appeared that he would have to try to get in close and land a blow. Which was going to be difficult considering that Julius had been on the back foot the entire time, and had not found an opening to counterattack. However, he still had some tricks up his sleeve. He activated a burst step while he created a wall of flame, blocking the troll’s vision. Then he sent an exploding orb to distract it while he shifted behind it.

The troll still thought he was still in front and didn’t sense him priming a heavily condensed spike on his fist behind it. Then with a quick pulse of kinetic energy, he jumped toward the troll’s head and delivered a blow directly to the back of the troll’s head.

The aura around this troll didn’t break down this attack and landed flush on its skull. Unfortunately, the spike barely managed to pierce an inch before it was stopped. Julius kicked off and got some distance before he detonated it.

The explosion still took out a nice chunk of the troll’s skull, but it didn’t put it down for good. So Julius prepared another attack before it could recover. However, just as he was about to move in, he felt his muscles seize and a wave of fatigue hit him. Julius didn’t sense the curse mage around but he remembered what it felt like getting hit by those curses.

It was somewhere, close enough to hit him, but he couldn’t sense it. He quickly removed the effects of the curse and blitzed over to the still-downed chieftain, spike in hand. Another black cloud of mana raced toward him. He blocked it with flex of [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] but it was all just a distraction. A large amount of earth mana activated around him and turned the ground into mud that swallowed his legs and stopped him in his tracks.

He tried sending a burst of kinetic energy to force his way out, but it didn’t work. He could feel the earth trying to crush his legs as it trapped him. The chieftain was getting back up by this point and had completely healed its injury.

It looked at trapped Julius with eyes of unrestrained fury and proceeded to bum-rush him. Julius thought fast, he created several exploding spikes and jammed them deep into the softened dirt. Then he detonated them.

The resulting explosion freed him from the grasp of the earth while not blowing himself up, but it had also tossed him a dozen feet into the air leaving him no way to dodge the chieftain’s punch. He tried to block it with both of his arms overlaid with layers of mana, but it did little to stop the force. It blasted him head over toe, smashing him over a creek into the nearby forest and smashing his back against a tree.