Path to Transcendence

When Julius exited the field, he was greeted by Lily and Aubrey.

"Not how I expected it would go down," Aubrey commented.

"What do you mean?" He asked, confused.

"I thought you would have just used that same stupid immobilization technique you used on me," she said.

He couldn't help but let loose a smirk at her words. After his fight with Edgar, and seeing Julius beat him. Aubrey had wanted to know how he was able to stop Edgar from moving. This was why he had demonstrated the skill on her and she got pissed off when she wasn't able to fight it off as easily as she had been thinking she could.

To her credit, when she knew it was coming, she was able to prevent it from completely immobilizing her. But if she wasn't using her entire attention to fight it, she was done for.

It was better than Edgar at the very least. The guy had never been the best with aura and the recent loss to Julius lit a fire underneath the large fourth-year's ass.

He was now taking aura lessons and willpower training very seriously.

Lily, on the other hand, had also wanted to experience it for herself. But Julius was amazed at how well she managed to fend off his willpower. He had known that she was really good at aura control, but that didn't always transfer to a powerful willpower.

However, she had one of the most impressive willpowers he had seen from someone not at Tier 4. It was actually more impressive than that Tier 4 assassin he had beaten up.

"What about you? Did you find out who you are fighting? He asked Aubrey, knowing that if she was here then she already went ahead and checked who she was scheduled to fight.

She gave him a confident smirk. "I ended up getting paired up against this guy in his third year," she informed him.

"Don't get cocky just because he's a third-year," he tried to remind her.

She slapped him on the shoulder a couple of times. "Bah! You are an exception, don't be thinking that I am going to run into many people like you anytime soon."

"You never can know for certain," he pointed out.

He saw the gears start to shift in her head. "Good point. Then I will make sure to be safe and bury the poor sod into the ground immediately."

He turned to look at her with a disbelieving look at the complete change in attitude. "Okay, maybe you don't have to go that far."

"Nope, you are right. I can't know for certain, and I really don't want to be like that kid you just murdered in there," she said to him, looking over at where his recent opponent was walking away.

Julius followed her eyes, and his gaze inevitably came across the other boy's. Feras was the boy's name, if Julius recalled correctly.

Feras was now intensely looking at him like he had just been beaten up and mugged by Julius. His friend was trying to cheer the other boy up, but it seemed futile. Aubrey winced as she saw the look on Feras's face.

"Yeah, see what I mean?" She said, shamelessly pointing at Feras, quickly receiving the boy's attention.

"I did not murder him," he defended himself. He actually thought he did pretty well, all things considered.

He had established some ground rules for himself. If he was going to fight, he was going to continue with the story he had established when he first arrived.

He was a close combat fighter with affinities in fire and kinetic energy. He thought this was a good opportunity to hone his close combat skills against a wide variety of people.

It was a big reason why he hadn't fought that hard against participating after they signed him up on their own.

He was fine with showing off his new enhancement skill and the occasional fire construct if need be, but he didn't see the need to show his dangerous aura ability or other skills like [Phoenix Renewal].

Plus, he didn't know if his aura skill was prohibited, and he didn't really want to find out. Because if he did, then it would mean he was forced to use it, and he didn't need people to start creating even more nasty rumors about him.

He already had enough rumors about him and Reinera being 'together' from the other first years. Even his other first-year friends couldn't help but tease him about it.

"No, you definitely brutalized the poor boy. He didn't stand a chance even if you were holding back," Lily said to him with an apologetic grimace.

"Yeah, and he was actually pretty good. He had solid fundamentals and instincts, using his skills with impressive control. He might be toward the top of the third year," Aubrey commented.

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"You think so?" He asked.

She nodded her head. "There's a good chance he will make it decently far for a third year. I'm sure there will be some eyes on you now," she said while looking around at the handful of eyes watching their small group of three.

"They're just looking because you two are here," he reminded her.

"For now, at the very least," Lily said to him.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, until they start to see you rack up a flawless record. I am going to guess that their attention will quickly shift over to you," Lily explained.

He couldn't argue the sense of her words and sighed dejectedly at that thought.

They walked off and headed over to Arena 1, where Aubrey's match was scheduled to begin.

However, as he did, he observed the other students look at Lily and Aubrey as they passed by. But it wasn't just that. While their attention was mainly focused on them, he couldn't help but notice that some of their gazes lay on him for much longer than most people usually did.

***

"Damn, I thought she was joking," he commented to Lily.

"I didn't," Lily whispered to him. "Her emotions seemed oddly resolved when she said that earlier."

Julius winced as he looked at the poor boy who had taken an absolute beating. If Aubrey called his fight with Feras a murder, then she did nothing less than eviscerate the third year.

Her opponent didn't get a chance to use more than a single skill before he was drowned in a prismatic beam of light. And while that hadn't taken the boy out of the fight completely, Aubrey's follow-up fists made that a certainty.

She slammed crystal-covered fists and elbows into her opponent's face over and over until the enchantments activated with a huge burst of mana, protecting the boy from any more of her violence.

"And you called my fight a brutalization, huh?" He whispered to Lily.

She gave him a guilty look. "Yeah, maybe I was a bit too hasty," she admitted back in a whisper.

They were whispering because there was a much larger crowd in this Arena than in his. It was also a much larger Arena than his. This meant that there were, of course, more seats to go along with that, which was why it was surprising that more than half of the seats were filled up.

He had thought about creating a barrier to isolate themselves, but it would have been incredibly rude, and it wasn't as if they were talking about anything important.

According to Lily, Arena 1 was the main arena and the one where many of the more anticipated fights were happening. When students chose to watch fights, they usually chose to watch these ones. Julius didn't blame them either, he would probably do the same if he had to choose which fights to watch.

It was the same way in his old world. People didn't like to watch a minor league team play as much as they enjoyed watching a major league team.

Another thing that surprised him was the number of non-student spectators. He knew that people other than students were allowed to watch the matches, but he was still surprised at how many showed up, which is why he asked Lily to clarify his confusion.

"A good number of spectators are people who live in Heston and come here to watch the matches. However, some are scouts for guilds or other organizations. They like to approach students before they establish themselves in the world. If they do everything correctly, they might be able to create a contract with a person with high potential for an undervalued price. All it would take for them is to give some resources to advance and watch them grow."

"Does House Violet try the same thing?"

"Of course we do. However, we are looking for other qualifiers. Most of the time, people are looking for fighters or crafters. House Violet always has a need for people with unique traits or skill sets," Lily said proudly.

As they were talking with each other he noticed a small group of attractive fourth year girls approach them, walking up the stairs to their seats.

"Oh hey, Lily!" One of the girls said cheerfully when they noticed her.

Lily smiled back at the girl. "Hey, Irene."

Irene took this as an invitation to come over, and her friends all sat down next to Lily and Julius.

"I just saw the ending of Aubrey's fight. Did she have something against that other boy or something?" Irene asked with a laugh.

"No, I think she was just motivated," Lily chuckled good-naturedly, thankfully not telling her that it was because Julius had warned Aubrey to take it seriously. Actually, now that he thought about it, he was partly to blame for the boy's evisceration.

"Oh my god, did you hear about what happened between Daph and Eric?" He heard one of the other girls ask Lily and couldn't help but hide a grin. Based on the way she said it, you would have expected something terrible happened, but he soon learned that these two students had simply gotten into an argument during a class.

Realizing where this was heading, he swiftly tuned out the newcomers and placed his attention on the other fights that were going on. Although Aubrey had finished hers, there were many other fights going on.

He saw one fourth year in particular use fire magic in a way he had never seen before. The girl was not like the girl he saw in the other arena, this girl didn't use large blunt attacks.

This girl's fire magic took on many fascinating forms. For example, he saw her use an interesting spell that created a field of flowers. However, these flowers were practically individual landmines that tried to smother her opponent and then explode.

Safe to say, the person she was fighting in her match was not having a good time. He was constantly throwing out short bursts of mana to try and destroy these flowers, but there were just too many of them. Not to mention, it wasn't worth the mana expenditure.

However, he used this chance to examine the girl's magic in further detail. She did a really good job at recycling the fire mana from any destroyed fire flowers to create new ones.

There were also at least two Concepts woven into these constructs—something he hadn't seen from many people yet.

By far the most interesting thing he observed was the way she imbued her willpower into each strand of mana.

Imbuing willpower into your mana was a normal thing to do and something essential if you want to create anything of real substance. However, this girl was doing it in such a way that he couldn't help but feel like her constructs were more of a construct of willpower rather than mana.

Not only did it make it stand out, but he could feel the additional power this technique lent to her attacks.

Of course, like all good things, his peaceful examination of the girl's magic was brought to an end when the girl finally noticed his presence, and they put their attention on him.

It didn't matter that he had been doing his best to fade into the background. So with a heavy sigh to himself, he turned to them, hoping they weren't the nosy type.