Path to Transcendence

Julius found himself very distracted for the next couple of days. He was so distracted that his next fights barely registered in his brain. He went to them and won them. That was all he really cared about.

It wasn't like his opponents were all that exciting either. His second match had him facing off against a girl with a similar skillset to Bethany. She mainly used simple mana-based attacks but without the fascinating disruption technique that Bethany had used against him.

He didn't bother to let that fight draw out like the one with Keldon. This one he finished in under a couple of minutes. He could have just waited a couple of more minutes before the girl emptied her entire mana pool all by herself. She wasn't the most accurate or precise opponent he had faced and had wasted a lot of mana in her attacks.

While they had been strong, she had to actually hit him if she wanted to do anything.

His third match of the second stage was against someone a bit better when it came to interesting skills. Another girl, but this time she used some kind of summoning magic to bring out some spirits made of fire.

Summoning magic was an interesting type of magic that differed from many others. First off, summoning magic relied heavily on the contracts one made with certain creatures or astral beings.

This can include beings like spirits, spectres, or even more common monsters.

The contract would provide the user with certain benefits, such as being able to summon them from anywhere at any time. They could also improve one's affinity to the element or type of magic the summon used.

For example, the girl he had fought had used fire spirits as her main summoning contract. This likely allowed the girl a deeper connection to fire than she would normally have.

There were some pretty large downsides to summoning magic though. The most glaring one was the user's inability to make a contract with powerful creatures without the appropriate strength. Since the creature you would make a contract with would stay within your soul space, that also meant you had to have a powerful soul to go along with it.

Of course, this limited the number of summons you could have as well. While seemingly similar to taming magic, there wasn't as strict a limit on the monsters you could tame since you didn't need to store them inside your soul.

Without a powerful soul, there wouldn't be a way to even forge a contract with powerful creatures, much less command the creature in question.

That made the lower tiers of summoning users kind of weak. The girl was a prime example of this. While she was able to use fire spirits, the spirits themselves were weaker than other Tier 3 monsters. The trade off was that the summons couldn't die very easily.

If they took a lot of damage, the summon would simply disappear back into the summoner's soul space to recover.

Summoners often didn't see the fruits of their labor until Tier 4, and sometimes, it took until Tier 5 for them to actually see any benefits.

You often saw summoners use their abilities for utility. They made good scouts since they could investigate without much risk of death. There were also a lot of people who used their summons to help with their day-to-day activities.

For example, Julius recalled that there was a food stall in Heston, where the person had a fire spirit to help them.

Still, the girl and her spirits hadn't been much of a threat, doubly so because of his fire resistance. The flames from the spirits had barely tickled him. He tried to see if there was anything he could learn from them, but he quickly realized that he wasn't going to be learning anything.

His own talents specialize in a different direction.

Drasil's changes were a welcome sight as well. Marcus was correct when he said that it would take Drasil some time to absorb the properties of whatever that treasure was. However, Julius had already noticed some changes.

For one, Drasil's coloring had already changed. Instead of being comprised entirely of a soft verdant green color, there were now white little specks flecked into his familiar. It was especially noticeable in the crown on Drasil's head. It almost looked like tiny white flower buds were blooming among the vines.

Not only that, but the quality of Drasil's mana underwent a significant change as well. The little spirit now had mana more potent than before. Much like how the sapling displayed a Life Concept property, Drasil was showing something similar.

The teleportation item he received was a bit more complicated. Julius spent most of the day stuck in a room, testing it and trying to figure out how it operated.

The only times he left the room were to fight his match for the day or to have dinner with the others.

He would have stayed up all night like he used to, but his friends would not have allowed him to.

Even at this moment, he was teleporting himself across the room as soon as the cooldown was up. Although he hadn't figured out how it worked exactly, he was able to confirm a few things.

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First off, spatial magic, like he had suspected, required a high level of willpower and to an extent, a strong soul to go along with it. He believed that this was the reason why people weren't able to utilize spatial movements until Tier 4.

He also found the mind aspect difficult. Visualization was probably one of the hardest parts. When he used the item, he had to envision the exact location he wanted to be in. It wasn't enough to throw his will toward a spot and activate it; he had to really visualize the location.

His eyesight was enough for this in most cases, but that also limited where he would be able to teleport. He had a feeling that [Instantaneous Step] would also be like this. It was highly likely that the skill could only teleport you in a step at a location you could see.

However, after some experimentation, he figured out that [Spatial Perception] helped far more than he could hope. When he properly utilized this skill, the visualization became much simpler.

Sensing the cooldown was up again, he focused on a spot around a dozen feet away and activated the item once again, trying to really feel how the item folded space around him.

The world around him distorted and he felt the item wrap itself around him like a protective barrier. Then suddenly he found himself a couple of feet away from the spot he was aiming at.

He gave himself a quick once over and was happy to see that he was completely intact. After some practice, he didn't splinch himself a single time on the last day or so. That was something he was proud of.

With that being said, no matter how proud he was that he was in one piece, he couldn't help but frown.

He still didn't feel the folding process like he did when Stella had transported him. The way he was teleporting now felt much more primal and rugged.

There was no elegant overlapping of spaces he could subtly detect from Stella's own technique. If he didn't know any better, he would say that the item wasn't folding space around him, but actually ripping an actual hole into space to send him through.

Wait a second, he thought to himself with pinched eyebrows. Remember what Marcus said about the secondary effect.

If he was able to recall correctly, Marcus was quite impressed with the item's seeming ability not to be restricted by anti-spatial barriers. While he hadn't quite tested that part of the item yet, he trusted Marcus's opinion.

It wasn't as if the man wasn't competent himself.

Therefore, what was the difference between folding space and tearing through it if that was the case?

For example, does folding space create a more structured teleportation route, limiting the possibility of something going wrong mid-transport? Or perhaps it was the standard and simpler way of spatial travel.

And if tearing through space allowed one not to be as restricted by anti-spatial enchantments, why didn't more people use this method?

There were so many questions he wanted to find answers to. He could probably ask Stella if he ever ran across her again and he could probably ask Alice too, but she was always so busy. For all he knew, she was on the other side of the continent working on something important for House Violet. It wasn't like he could call her like he would a dog and expect her to show up.

Plus, she had also mentioned that she used the properties of folding space to teleport the last time he had spoken with her. At the same time, she didn't fully explain the reasoning why, she seemed to be confident that it was a better method.

For the time being, he might have to find out some things on his own. Which in all honesty, might not be a bad idea. Getting answers for free was not the best way to learn. A lot of the time, he was able to progress more if he figured things out on his own. If he had to work and struggle his way through a task, he would internalize the process better once he did.

And so he continued to experiment, deep into the night. Whenever the item was on cooldown, he would train [Flash Step] as much as he could.

The skill was still at level 16, and he needed to get a few more levels before evolving it. He still wasn't wholly convinced that [Instantanous Step] would be his next skill anymore, but if he wasn't offered something that was definitely better, he would probably take it.

With a single-minded devotedness that he hadn't displayed since his early days, he continued to push his movement skills as hard as he could, and eventually, that hard work paid off.

[Flash Step lvl 16 -> lvl 17]

However, he barely paid attention to the notification. [Sage of Savagery] was being pushed to its limits as he concentrated on improving his skill while also figuring out how the necklace worked.

Realizing he needed to change things up, he changed the way he used [Flash Step]. Since he couldn't figure out how to 'fold' space, he decided to try to tear it apart.

The hard part was figuring out how to do that, though. He made many attempts but could not see any progress.

It wasn't until after countless attempts that he felt something shift. On his last try, he had been using his ruinous aura to literally eat away at the fabric of space, literally trying to rip a hole through it with sheer willpower and aura.

But this last time, his [Spatial Perception] was able to grasp onto something. It reminded him of a small distortion he felt when he sensed the Tier 5 teleport that one time.

Only this time, the distortion didn't feel like a vortex. It felt rough and jagged. Nothing like before.

Still, it was progress and he leaped on it like a starving wolf in winter.

He grabbed onto this distortion and pumped as much aura into it, forcing it to widen with pure willpower. He used the innate properties of his aura to aid the process. As a matter of fact, he believed his aura was the only reason he was even able to accomplish this.

It fought him, but he resisted with everything he had. In his mind, there was no room for failure.

Eventually, the distortion admitted defeat first. The little pinprick in space that had been fighting so hard to close was now more or less stabilized. He said more or less because he knew the moment he lost concentration, the distortion would collapse immediately.

At this point, he was barely thinking and working off of sheer instinct. But this same instinct told him that he needed to connect the distortion with something else, that there needed to be a destination point.

So, with half of his mind continuing to focus on keeping the first distortion up and running, he attempted to create another distortion at another point across the room.

At this point, things went terribly wrong. The first distortion, which was no longer being held up by his focus, was shaking wildly. He tried to shift his full attention back to the original distortion, but it was way too late. Like a stack of dominoes, the distortion collapsed onto itself, and the results weren't pretty.

A massive explosion blasted from the point of the distortion and ripped through his body. He wasn't even able to react in time as the rebounding shock of the collapsing hole in space blew his chest into chunks of flesh.