Path to Transcendence

Julius took a moment to rest before he checked his notifications. He moved to the exit of the ravine to get away from the scent of his burnt flesh. He sat down and took the time to re-center himself until he was ready to check his options.

[Restoration] has advanced to level 15. Would you like to evolve the skill?

Skill [Restoration] is evolving… possible advancements: [Superlative Restoration], [Extreme Rejuvenation], [Muscle Augmentation], and [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal]

Julius's eyes widened in surprise. There were some very interesting advancements available. He almost chose [Superlative Restoration] without a second look at the others. [Restoration] had been such a great skill so far, the only limitation seemed to be its ability to heal crippling injuries and it was highly likely the advancement fixed that.

However, he remained calm and checked out the three other options. [Extreme Rejuvenation] sounded like a skill that concentrated on healing aspects such as fatigue, hunger, and sleep. That was honestly a very useful ability, the ability to heal wounds was nice, but rejuvenation was an underappreciated function in his opinion. It had saved his life more than he could count. But he had been able to heal these aspects already with [Restoration], maybe less than this new skill offered, but enough for his current needs, so he eliminated [Extreme Rejuvenation].

[Muscle Augmentation] was a funny advancement to Julius. He had been practicing how to modify [Restoration] to facilitate muscle growth and it seemed like it had paid off. The option definitely was only there due to his previous experiments. If he had another healing skill, he would consider this skill much more seriously than he currently was.

[Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] was the most intriguing skill out of the lot. Just the name Phoenix was indicative enough of its power. Phoenixes were divine fire beasts who specialized in fire manipulation and were practically immortal due to their healing abilities. Even if it was called pseudo-phoenix, it was undeniably a powerful skill, but what if it didn't cover what [Restoration] had?

The option had most likely come from the phenomenon where Julius had felt [Restoration] using the flame's excess energy to fuel his skill. So he could assume that the healing properties were much more intense, but would he still be able to heal from fatigue, hunger, and sleep? That was the real question.

Restoration and renewal were similar words with similar connotations, which led Julius to believe that [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] at least covered some of the same aspects as [Restoration].

In the end, Julius couldn't give up a skill that had a divine beast's name in it.

Congratulations, skill [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] (Rare+) acquired.

What the hell does (Rare+) mean? Is it an indicator that the skill is powerful even among other rare skills? Edwin had mentioned [Spatial Perception] was in the upper range of rare skills, but he never mentioned anything like this. Julius pressed his lips tightly together as he thought about the potential significance of this discovery.

Instead of thinking about it anymore, he wanted to try the skill out. He still had a hand that was missing.

Julius activated [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] and he could feel mana race through his body to his arm. Just that small amount of time had Julius feeling like he touched an electric fence. The intensity of life and fire mana was extreme. However, he couldn't see his arm regrowing even when concentrating the skill on it. It was as if something was preventing it. Julius thought that it was possible that since it had been healed over already, it was unable to heal it.

After a few moments of thought, Julius gathered some fire mana and created a scarlet red short blade. He tested the edge of the blade with his finger to make sure it was sharp and accidentally cut himself, surprising himself with its sharpness.

Damn, that's how I had cut those trolls apart so easily.

He looked at the nub at the end of his right arm and then he looked at the sharp blade in his hand. He kept looking back and forth between the two with a pronounced frown on his face. Then he closed his eyes and groaned in defeat. It has to be done, he convinced himself.

He activated [Savage Dance] once again and brutally sliced down on his right arm. The blade was so sharp that he didn't even feel the pain for a few seconds, even as the offending nub was lying down on the ground in a puddle of blood.

Julius quickly activated [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal], focusing on healing his hand. This time there was a noticeable effect. A warm blaze of red and orange flame burst into reality around the bloody stump on his arm. A potent amount of life mana was suffusing throughout his arm and he visibly saw his hand knitting back together.

The skeleton of his hand was formed first. Then the muscle and tissue began to coalesce around his palm and fingers. Within less than a minute, his whole hand had regrown, as if it was never lost in the first place.

[Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal lvl 1 -> lvl 2]

It was slightly more pale than his left one, but other than that, it was an exact replica of the one he exploded. Julius flexed his hand, opening and closing it repeatedly just to make sure nothing felt off, but nothing did. It was a magnificent feat of magic.

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After getting his hand back, Julius made his way to the troll encampment. He hadn't forgotten the fracturing sky and knew he needed to do something soon before it was too late.

He gave himself a day. One day to pick off as many groups as he could before he made a move on the entire group. It wouldn't make that much of a difference but he could also try to evolve [Kinetic Reinforcement] during that time.

With that being said, he wasn't going to be sneaking around, taking them down here and there, from this point forward he was going to be hunting them down as quickly as he could.

He arrived at the center of the valley, noticing the usual activities of the trolls. He saw one group return to camp and another one preparing to leave as well. Typically, Julius would wait until he had found a suitable party to go after, but this time he followed the first group he saw leaving.

This group had six trolls and one of them was a leader. Julius hadn't got the chance to fight another troll leader since he last fought the other one. He wondered how he would fare now that he had gotten stronger.

Julius stalked them until they had made their way far enough from the valley and began his preparations. He created five rotating saw blades, using [Pure Compression] and [Arcane Construct] to make them as sharp and durable as he could. Then he poured kinetic energy into them, causing them to whistle as they spun as fast as he could make them.

He waited until he lined up all five trolls, and then he released them. The four regular trolls didn't even get a chance to respond, as their heads were decapitated in an instant. However, little to Julius's surprise the leader troll didn't go down quite as easily. The saw blade meant for it had managed to cut through half of its neck, but its spine had resisted the force of the blade, causing it to chip as it ricocheted off the bone.

Julius was already bringing the other four constructs around for another attack. The troll was still on the ground, holding its bleeding neck as it healed rapidly. Yet, the troll had activated some sort of skill like the other leader Julius had faced. Its skin was enveloped in a red glow and the troll was looking around frantically trying to find its assailant.

It had noticed the incoming blades of fire mana too late and could only brace itself. Two disks were aimed at its chest and the following two were aimed at its throat. Much to Julius's disappointment, not a single saw blade had managed to kill the monster. The blades created several lacerations that were quite deep but failed to finish it off. The physical enhancement skill had hardened the thing's flesh to the point where his constructs were no longer able to penetrate more than a few inches. That would still be considered a good result if the troll didn't regenerate the wounds within a few seconds.

As he had learned the hard way, he had to put the troll down with overwhelming power. Otherwise, it would just get back up, looking none the worse.

Since it was apparent that his blades weren't working on the thing, he went back to old reliable. A big pointy missile. He gathered the five cracked disks back to him and disassembled them, recycling their mana and kinetic energy. Recycling his own constructs was a much simpler task than trying to pilfer another's.

The troll was still a good distance away from him, so he wasn't in a rush. Julius started to condense a spike made of fire and kinetic mana. The process of compressing was made exponentially easier thanks to the newly evolved [Pure Compression]. He was able to condense way more mana than before and at a faster rate as well. Then he honed the very point of the spike with [Arcane Construct] refining it and making it as dense and sharp as he possibly could.

Once it was formed, he started to rotate it, generating an enormous amount of penetrative force. Much like the disks, the spike started to scream as it reached its peak rotational speed. He could see the atmosphere around it start to heat up, emitting heat waves around it.

Finally, as the troll was still stampeding toward him, he released the spike. Julius was worried that even this much wouldn't be enough to break through the thing's defenses and had already started to form another one just in case. However, it seemed his worries were not warranted. The spike blasted the troll off of its feet and onto its back. With [Spatial Perception] Julius could see that the spike had pierced the troll's navel. Only about a couple of inches of the backend of the spike had not made it through the troll, but the other foot or so had torn through its chest.

The troll was unable to heal the wound with an object clogging up the hole and it was clawing at its chest trying to remove the spike. But Julius didn't give it another chance and detonated the payload inside of it, killing it instantly.

Julius didn't give it a second look and charged a good amount of kinetic energy into his legs before he bolted toward a random direction, trying to hunt down another group. He didn't bother with the cores, he wouldn't have the time or the storage to carry them.

He was able to run quite fast now, he felt like a cheetah as he raced across the grassy plains leaping across creeks and boulders with a single step. It was exhilarating. He had always enjoyed running when he was younger, but being able to run as fast as a speeding car was another level of fun.

It was slightly rough on his body, even with [Kinetic Reinforcement,] but [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] was passively running and was offsetting the fatigue. An odd characteristic though, was that his new healing skill produced a subtle fiery aura around him as it worked its magic.

I better not use it if I want to stay hidden in the future, Julius reminded himself.

He would be like a nightlight, letting anyone know where he was. It was something he was going to try to fix in the future.

In the meantime, he had been sprinting around for almost ten minutes and still hadn't found another group. [Spatial Perception] was scanning the entire area for any signs of trolls. He had found some weaker monsters but not what he was looking for.

It wasn't until another ten minutes went by and a good chunk of life mana was used to sustain his crazy pace that he found another group of trolls. There were six of them and they had trekked out pretty far, it was almost to the end of the mountains. There was another leader with them. Not that it mattered much.

Julius knew how to take care of them. He created five spinning disks and a single condensed spike that he sent to the unaware group. He made sure he focused on killing the leader first, blowing it up before it could activate its enhancement skill, but ended up missing one of the trolls. His aim was slightly off and had only sliced through its chest partway.

But Julius quickly controlled the blades and circled them back for another barrage, leaving the troll cut up into six separate pieces in the dirt. He didn't even blink at the brutal execution of the monsters, he was already quite used to the violence by now. Standing there with calm and determined eyes he brought the disks back to him and absorbed them. Then he sent another rush of kinetic energy to his legs and dashed off, continuing his hunt.