Path to Transcendence

Stella, who Julius quickly found out was an extraordinary mage who had access to both spatial and time magic, didn't waste any time and transported them all back to Blumand.

One moment they were standing on the plains in the dark and the next they were standing on a platform inside of some sort of building. He felt a small amount of dizziness but it quickly faded as he got situated.

He was more impressed at the delicate control of mana he sensed from the woman. From everything he had heard, space and time magic were two of the most difficult categories of magic on the continent. And the fact that this woman was able to use not one, but both kinds was supremely impressive.

"Where did you take us?" He asked the pretty woman.

"We are back in Blumand. I teleported us to one of House Quincy's properties we have in the city. Where there is also a spot where I can drop these troublemakers off," she said while pointing at the Tier 5 and two Tier 4s she dragged along. The assassin still looked pretty beat up and the woman was relatively uninjured. Though both of them were placed inside of a sphere of their own.

"I thought it would be irresponsible if I left a bunch of Tier 4s lying around with nobody in the caravan guards who can handle them," Kyle's relative explained with a proud grin.

"That and you are hoping that House Easten will owe you for capturing some of their members right?" Marcus added with a knowing shake of his head.

"That certainly helps," she didn't deny it at all.

He didn't see a reason why it was a bad thing. He suspected that the Marquis would be extremely pleased to find that she captured not only two Tier 4s but also the Tier 5 who had been overseeing them.

"So what are we going to do now?"

She was about to respond but Julius sensed someone approach them from a distance. He watched as the door to the room opened and a man in a sharp suit strolled in.

"Ah, Lady Stella, it is an honor to see you so soon again."

"Well I just missed your company so much Heinrich that I couldn't stay away," Stella teased back.

"I see you have brought some honored guests as well," the butler noted with a polite nod toward Marcus and Julius. But then gave the ones contained within the blue spheres a darker look. "And perhaps some that are not as honorable."

"Yes, I have to take care of these ones real quick. Do you mind showing these two upstairs where they can rest until I am done?" Stella requested of the man.

"Of course, milday. I will have the same tea and biscuits you enjoyed last time waiting for you when you are finished," the butler said with a graceful bow.

"You are a peach, Heinrich," Stella said with a happy clap of her hands, before shooing towards the two of them.

"Go on, I will only be a few minutes. I don't want to come back later only to find that they have escaped."

The two of them didn't bother to argue and followed the butler upstairs. Julius, a bit more quickly than Marcus, the moment he heard that there would be snacks. Almost dying always made him hungry and whatever Stella enjoyed must be something delicious.

***

I was wrong, he thought to himself bitterly.

No offense to the butler or Stella, but he didn't enjoy the tea or biscuits at all. It became quite clear that Stella had a very big sweet tooth because the tea and biscuits tasted so sweet that his tongue was numb.

Furthermore, Marcus had already seemed aware of this because the man hadn't touched his food at all. He merely drank the glass of water while giving Julius a knowing look.

"You could have told me beforehand," Julius complained to the man.

"I thought all kids loved sweets?" The one-armed man asked with a smirk.

"Yeah, but there's a difference between something sweet and something made entirely of sugar," he pointed out while removing some of his own snacks from his storage ring and munching on them trying to remove the sting of sugar from his mouth.

"I never understood her taste preferences either," Marcus stated.

A brief moment of silence echoed through the room as the only sounds made were the crunching of him eating a cookie. It was only when he got the sickening sweet taste out of his mouth that he asked the man a question he had been curious about.

"I apologize if asking offends you, but how come you only have one arm? I would think that Lily's family would pay for any healing or treatment," Julius asked the man.

Marcus chuckled at his question. "No offense taken. Most people are curious but are too scared to ask. The truth is that I could have it healed anytime I want but have chosen not to."

"Why? Wouldn't having an arm be useful for everyday life, not to mention combat?" He asked.

"You would think so, right?" Marcus asked as he stared at his left arm with a smile.

Julius nodded in agreement. He couldn't see a reason why being handicapped would be an advantage.

"Well you see, I got this injury when I was Tier 3 much like you are. During that time it wasn't possible to heal the injury. I got hit by a monster with a dangerous destruction affinity, smashing any dreams of getting my arm back. So I had to adapt. I used my telekinesis to fill in the gap of my missing arm and ended up acquiring some powerful skills along the way." Stay tuned with My Virtual Library Empire

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"I still don't understand why you haven't gotten it healed. Wouldn't advancing to Tier 5 allow you to heal it?" Julius was still confused.

"Advancing to Tier 5 did fix that issue. But I had gotten so used to using my telekinesis at that point that I found that I didn't even need any arms. I had more control and dexterity with telekinesis than I ever would have with an arm. Plus, it felt like it was part of my identity at that point as if getting my arm back would actually hamper my abilities," Marcus explained.

"Here, let me show you something," the man offered when he saw that Julius wasn't quite convinced.

He watched as the man removed a pack of something from his storage device. On closer examination, he realized it was a deck of cards. Interested in what the man was about to do, he quickly polished off the rest of his cookie and leaned forward.

He saw Marcus's purple eyes slightly brighten as he used his telekinesis to take control of the deck of cards and gasped in amazement as he witnessed the man spread out the entire deck in an elegant spread.

Then the man controlled the cards so that they flew upwards and danced in a coordinated show of skill. It was like seeing a flower blossom and fold back into itself. Marcus continued to show Julius a bunch of various displays of careful and deliberate control.

Seeing such immaculate skill, he no longer wondered why the man didn't see the need to have an arm. Sure, having an arm would have been more beneficial than not having one, but being able to have such deft manipulations made an arm feel clumsy in comparison.

"What if someone fights you up close? Wouldn't having an arm be good then?" He asked, all the while his eyes never looked away from the show Marcus was displaying.

"Oh yeah, I figured out a way to take care of that too," the man said with a nod, forming a purple prosthetic on his missing limb. The amount of mana and pure power that exuded from the arm was remarkable.

Julius was fascinated and got closer to examine the arm in closer detail. Seeing his reaction, Marcus even went as far as to extend his arm out for him to look at.

He was impressed with the construction of the prosthetic. It wasn't quite the same as his own constructs, but there was a massive difference in how strong it was compared to his own.

It was difficult to say how much exactly the difference was, but he could immediately get the sense that this man's arm would never break no matter how much he pounded it with his own constructs.

Seeing that there was no reason to hide his own skills, considering the man had already seen him fight going all out, he created a similar creation over his own arm. The same kind he would create when forming his armor.

He had believed that his own constructs were quite pretty and elegantly formed. However, he was really reconsidering that opinion the more he examined the man's purple prosthetic.

There were layers upon layers of intricately woven threads that formed the arm. Connections which appeared to be some kind of circuits or lines flowed around the arm in a pulsing pattern.

He had some serious work he needed to do with his own constructs if he ever wanted to create something this powerful.

"How did you manage to create something like this?" He finally asked the man the million-dollar question.

"Practice and repetition," Marcus answered simply. "I started off with simple exercises and slowly increased their difficulty until I was able to create something like this."

Julius could only nod as he heard the man's explanation. He had no doubt that such fine work needed a lot of practice. It also reminded him of how he first began compressing his constructs.

In the beginning, he had really focused on the weaving of mana and layering. However, as time went on, he no longer needed to focus on such things. It took too much time to do so and thus he used his skills and memory to form the constructs without much thought.

That being said, they were still very powerful for his tier and he was able to create them with such ease that made it very useful in a fast-paced battle. But he was also realizing that perhaps that wasn't the best idea in hindsight.

He had forgotten some of the basics on his way. For the past several months he had been extremely focused on infusing his Concepts with his constructs. Something that had been coming along very nicely by the way.

With that being said, the other aspects of his constructs might have been falling behind. He could be putting much more deliberate effort into creating something more powerful and able to withstand more of his Concepts or mana.

He already had ideas about what kind of mana training he would be doing in the future. It was something he had already been thinking about improving, but now he had a direction he could start heading in.

Speaking of improving, he forgot about the notifications he got while he was fighting the Tier 5, and with an excited glint in his eyes, he opened them up.

[Armaments of the Arcane lvl 11 -> lvl 12]

[Sage of Savagery lvl 10 -> lvl 13]

[Phoenix Renewal lvl 7 -> lvl 9]

[Pyrokinetic Embodiment of Ruin lvl 5 -> lvl 7]

[Inexorable Aura of Ruin lvl 3 -> lvl 6]

[Barrier of Severance lvl 17 -> lvl 18]

[Flash Step lvl 14 -> 16]

Unsurprisingly, almost every single one of his skills leveled up from his experience. The only one that didn't was [Spatial Perception] which was still capped at level 19 until he got a suitable Concept to evolve it.

His other skills made some amazing progress. [Armaments of the Arcane] had only gotten a single level, which now that he assessed Marcus's own prothetic he didn't feel that odd. He had a lot of work he would need to do before he was happy with the skill.

It was nice to see [Sage of Savagery] gain three whole levels though. He had been using that skill to direct a lot of the other skills. It also allowed him to keep his concentration on the fight and not worry about blowing apart his body or the pain that came with such a decision.

[Phoenix Renewal] had also made some nice leaps unsurprisingly. He had lost of a lot body mass during that fight and regenerating through whatever willpower the man influenced him with was a hard task.

[Pyrokinetic Embodiment of Ruin] along with [Inexorable Aura of Ruin] he had recently acquired made some nice improvements. Those two skills had been directly responsible for allowing Julius to keep up with the man. The ability to strengthen his body that much allowed him to be fast enough to dodge the Tier 5, even if he had to sacrifice some meat to do so.

Then the aura skill allowed him to fight against the man's Domain's influence with greater ease than he probably should have. Regardless of whatever hobbled-together technique he used to create that weird burst he probably should have been crippled by the Domain.

Speaking of that technique, he quickly checked out his soul. At the time, he hadn't been worried about his soul since he was more worried about staying alive or not being kidnapped. But now that he had time, he made sure that he was okay.

He scanned every inch of his soul to ensure it was fine. He did manage to spot some damage and stress fractures, but honestly, it was better than he expected it to be.

He estimated that it should be fine within a day or two as long as he used his healing skill to fix it up. With a sigh of relief, he smiled and resumed his inspection of Marcus's arm.

Which oddly enough, the man seemed completely fine with. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the man worked for Lily's family, but Marcus was surprisingly very considerate of him. Almost like he was trying to please Julius.

Regardless, he wasn't going to complain. Not when he had the opportunity to examine such a cool skill before his very eyes.

So while snacking on some more cookies, he paid close attention and attempted to decipher the man's construct.