Path to Transcendence

"Stay back this time," he told Reinera. He had been allowing her opportunities to practice against the stragglers, but this time he didn't believe that would be a good choice.

Something was up ahead and it was very powerful. This wasn't the usual undead they had been fighting. This was different. The aura it gave off demonstrated that this was something that was something he needed to take seriously.

Luckily, she didn't try to argue with him, she appeared to trust his directions. Which he was thankful for. He didn't think he would have the time to argue at the moment.

They were far away, but he could already tell that the monster had sensed them. Unlike its undead brethren, this one seemed to have a pretty good perception skill.

Without saying another word, he used [Armaments of the Arcane] to summon his armor around his body. He then created several large spikes that hung over his shoulder.

He felt that familiar thumping in his heart that came from facing a strong opponent. It excited him and he used that feeling to fuel [Sage of Savagery].

It rounded the corner and Julius was finally able to observe it with his eyes. It wasn't a wolf this time, it was a large humanoid monster. It was like a knight out of nightmares, adorned in black armor and a ragged looking cape. Its flesh was already decayed and drooping from its skeleton, and it was lazily dragging a broadsword from behind it.

However, Julius didn't relax seeing this. In fact, he was even more focused.

It was a good thing he was too, because he almost didn't see it move until it was already on top of him.

Its broadsword that was lazily dragging behind it was now a swift blade of death as it tore through the air at his head.

Julius stepped back with [Flash Step] and watched as the blade missed his face by mere inches. The moment the blade passed by him, he dashed in with pistons on his fists.

This undead monster was somehow able to bring that massive blade back around and use it to parry his strikes with unnervingly impressive precision. Each parry was elegant and carried such strength behind them that they blasted his arms back more than he expected.

However, he didn't allow it to get any breathing room. He didn't want the undead to use its massive blade's extra reach to keep him at a distance.

He did notice that the monster was releasing some sort of black miasma that was getting absorbed through his skin, but he dealt with it by using his healing skill. It was quite insidious though, this miasma was trying to eat through his flesh and his mana at the same time.

If he didn't have his healing skills, he would have been in a lot of trouble.

After a minute of his furious assault and not getting anywhere, he decided to change things up. He took a step back and allowed the monster to counterattack. It didn't hesitate to do so. It immediately tried to take the momentum and put him on the back foot.

Large and annoyingly quick slashes of the broadsword had Julius dodging. Whenever it wasn't possible to dodge, he used an armored arm to knock the blow away. However, he didn't want to rely on that.

The strikes of the monster were infused with a Concept of its own. He couldn't tell what exact Concept it was but it ate away at his constructs an annoying amount of effectiveness. It forced Julius to use more mana to recreate more of his armor.

He had a feeling that this was how this opponent fought. It slowly ground down its enemies with its power and Concept until they had no more mana or stamina left.

He sent a few probing spikes at the monster but the monster either dodged them or smacked them aside with its sword. The few that did manage to nick it, didn't seem to do that much damage. The decaying aspect of its Concept weakened the construct before it could damage it too badly.

He hated to admit it, but it was impressive.

Was it weird that he kind of wanted it?

He avoided another slash with a tilt of his head and had to block the follow-up backhanded swing. He was just about to send out an attack of his own to avoid getting overwhelmed when his eyes widened like saucers.

The strike that the undead knight sent out wasn't like its previous attacks. This time it had activated a skill on its own. The skill made the blade split into several identical blades, all coming toward him with incredible speed.

What was interesting was that these shadowy blades weren't just illusions. He was able to feel with his [Spatial Perception] that these blades were very much real.

He had no interest in blocking all of these strong attacks. One of them was bad enough, four of them though were more than he wanted to handle.

But the miasma that had been trying to leech into him changed how it was behaving. It no longer tried to poison him, but instead, it was fully committed to preventing him from moving.

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He let loose an involuntary laugh. Just like he had been using his kinetic energy against his opponents, however, this time it seemed like it was being used against him.

Touché, he thought toward the undead monster.

Still, that didn't mean he just sat there and allowed it to happen. He ramped up Inexorable Resolve and he felt the miasma's hold on him struggle to keep him in place but it was no match for his ridiculously strong will. After all, fighting against someone's will was always easier than pressing your own against another.

Unfortunately, it was so well timed and he was unprepared for it that it allowed the blades of the knight to cut into his armor. It didn't cut him in half, but it still broke through some of his armor and left gaping wounds on his chest.

He used [Flash Step] to get a lot of space and sent some spikes to delay the monster's charge, before taking the time to heal his wounds.

There was something attached to the knight's sword that fed into his open wounds. The Concept within it made it more difficult for his healing skill to deal with it. However, unluckily for the monster, he had a Phoenix Concept, something far beyond a normal Concept.

He overpowered the poison and healed himself within a moment.

He could have sworn he saw hesitation from the knight. However, he didn't care for it that much, he had a good idea of how he was going to deal with it. He had finally seen an opening he could exploit.

With a quick dash, he sent out blistering strikes at the monster. If it was any other monster he had faced within this rift, it would have already fallen from the sheer pressure of his attack. However, it was able to fend off his assault.

Julius continued this for a couple of minutes, carefully monitoring the situation. Finally, he decided to disengage, giving the impression that he needed to recover his stamina. He even went as far as to not use his healing skill to recover it during his burst.

Thus it was much more believable when he was actually out of breath.

The undead knight decided that it was the perfect time to counterattack him. Just like last time, the knight waited until he tired himself out and then tried to punish his aggressiveness.

However, that was exactly what Julius had been counting on. He noticed it last time, the knight's skill with a blade was phenomenal. Its skill with mana? Less so.

Julius had noticed a slight lag from when the knight used his multiple-strike skill and the time it took to deploy.

When the knight went for the same combination again, he was ready. The second he felt the knight activating the skill he immediately used kinetic energy to freeze the knight's movements. And since the undead knight was too distracted with trying to use that same freeze skill on Julius, its will was not prepared for his attack.

He used everything he had and was able to freeze the knight for a single second. Still, that was all he needed.

Julius sent the six spikes that he had left hovering over his shoulder at the chest of the knight. These weren't the usual spikes. These ones were blazing with blue flame. That wasn't all either. He had been using the time he was viciously assaulting the knight to infuse as much Inexorable Resolve and Severing Will into them as possible.

This made them much more durable against its own Concept and Julius found his spikes piercing the knight with ease. Julius didn't allow it any time to break down the spikes any further and immediately detonated the payload within them.

Even with its impressive defensive skills, it wasn't able to withstand the absolutely massive explosion that ripped through its chest.

All that was left were two legs and the remains of what used to be its torso. However, what was impressive was that it wasn't done yet. Even with all of that, it was still not finished.

He didn't let it have a chance to recover, he didn't know what kind of skills this thing had in reserve so he sent three more spikes and blasted apart the monster. This time he felt its aura finally fade away.

He wiped his brow dramatically. "You were one tough cookie," he complimented the destroyed remains of the knight. The only thing that survived was the large broadsword, though it had some chips, showing it took some damage.

There also wasn't a core left to recover, his explosions must have been too much for it to withstand.

He tossed the sword into his storage ring and looked back to where he left Reinera.

He was very surprised to see the young girl on her knees completely ash white in the face with black lines of miasma coursing through it. She was sipping on some sort of potion that was helping her body fight the miasma as her eyes were screwed closed in pain.

He didn't think the corrupted mana would have reached her, but it seemed he was wrong.

Along with the potion, Julius was able to sense that she had some sort of skill already activated, that was fighting back against the miasma. The only problem was that this miasma was backed by the undead knight's Concept.

Something that her skill seemed to be having a hard time dealing with on its own.

He dropped down to one knee by her side and started to immediately feed his life mana into her. The only problem was that [Phoenix Renewal] made it very hard for him to heal others. This left him in a difficult spot because he wasn't able to infuse his Concept into his manual healing technique.

Thinking for a moment, he came to a potential solution. He called out Drasil from his core. The little green spirit popped out and went over to Reinera right away.

Drasil gave a small whistle and patted the girl on her shoulder reassuringly. As if he was saying it was going to be alright. The girl who was in pain, could only give a struggling grunt in return, but that didn't seem to deter Drasil. The little guy hopped up onto her face and placed both of his tiny hands on her forehead.

Something that Julius realized as Drasil went through some changes was that he was able to heal others as well, not only Julius. The little spirit could infuse some of his essence into people, but that wasn't what Julius was hoping for.

Since there was a Concept at play that didn't want to go away, he believed it would be possible for Drasil to use some of Julius's mana that had been infused with his Phoenix Concept to heal her.

Since he couldn't do it himself, Drasil would act as a medium for the infused mana to break down the miasma.

And to Julius's surprise, it worked really well. The miasma didn't stand a chance against the full weight of Julius's and Drasil's combined effort.

The black lines that were pulsing through her skin quickly faded away and her painful breathing turned into a sigh of relief.

Julius had to hold back a laugh. When Reinera finally opened her eyes all she saw was Drasil's round tummy that was squishing against her nose.