Path to Transcendence

Chapter 751: I Brought a Box

Julius always knew that Marcus was holding back when he sparred with him, but seeing the man go all out firsthand was a treat. Marcus didn’t just use simple teleportation skills to move around. To be fair, he didn’t need to. He moved so quickly that a teleportation skill was sometimes slower. Julius didn’t even know it was possible to reinforce one’s body that much with telekinesis.

How Marcus’s body didn’t fall apart was a mystery. Julius knew that if he tried to replicate it, he would have snapped his spine in half. Julius had hit Haruto with a full-blown punch to the face, but it was nothing compared to the damage Marcus did with a single blow.

It was clear there was still much for him to improve on.

He stared at Haruto’s demolished body. The man’s body was barely holding together; in fact, the only thing keeping it together was Marcus himself. A strong telekinetic force was holding Haruto’s body from falling apart and bleeding out. Julius suspected he wanted to interrogate Haruto to gain some information about the Conclave.

It wasn’t like the rogue was going to be talking much. Julius had completely incinerated him beyond recognition. Not even [Phoenix Incarnate] would have been able to save the man. But looking over Haruto, he felt like the man was savable.

Maybe… Marcus had really done a number on the treacherous man. His jaw was almost torn from his face, only hanging on by a few strands of skin. Haruto’s organs weren’t in much better shape. A large lump that looked suspiciously like the man’s heart was hanging out of the older man’s ribcage.

“Can you save him?” Marcus asked with a deep frown.

Julius pressed his lips together and shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t healed a Tier 5 who is in this bad of shape before. If I’m being honest, I am just as likely to kill him,” he admitted.

Marcus shrugged uncaringly. “That would be unfortunate, but not truly terrible.”

Julius nodded slowly. That was right; it wasn’t like he really cared if Haruto lived. Plus, this might be a good chance to really test his healing skill on someone other than himself. It wasn’t every day he got a willing Tier 5 to participate in some experimentation.

Willing might have been a stretch, but he doubted Haruto was in the condition to complain either.

He glanced over at Kaito and noticed the man was already finishing up his own fight. Julius had placed a mark on each of Kaito and Marcus just in case they received a few injuries. Marcus didn't need to use it, but Kaito had gotten cut by one of those dual swords. Some kind of insidious energy had entered Kaito’s flesh and required some help from Julius.

However, once Kaito was fully healed, it was no longer a contest. He took down the swordsman without too many other issues. The previous lustrous black armor was now faded and cracked. Kaito seemed a bit frustrated that he was the only one still fighting. However, Julius got the feeling that he didn’t want either him or Marcus to intervene. He wanted to take down the swordsman on his own.

It was a matter of pride at this point.

To Kaito’s credit, it was clear that the swordsman was the stronger one out of the three late arrivals. Not exactly surprising considering Kaito was the main target.

Satisfied that Kaito was okay, he started to send pulses of healing mana into Haruto. He wasn’t overly careful; he didn’t want the man to die, but he didn’t really care about the residual damage he left behind. In fact, it would be better if he partially healed him. It would make imprisoning Kaito’s uncle a lot simpler.

Julius looked over at Marcus, who was washing the blood from his arms. “What happened to the mage?”

“Oh. She’s dead.”

“Dead? Like dead dead?”

Marcus scratched his head. “Yeah, I used a bit more power than she could handle. I tried to keep her alive, but you know how some mages are… they are a little…”

“Squishy?” Julius offered.

“Yes, squishy,” Marcus said with a nod.

Julius sighed and looked over to see that Kaito had slammed the butt of his spear into the swordsman’s skull. Kaito’s opponent had finally run out of mana or stamina. It was apparent that using so much sword intent wasn’t easy, especially when it was against someone who had already reached the convergence stage like Kaito had done.

His attention was suddenly pulled back to Haruto when he heard a pained groan. His healing skill and the [Phoenix Mark] he placed on the older man were doing their work. However, since he wasn’t being too careful, the healing was not perfect. Haruto’s shattered jaw was somewhat healed, but was misshapen pretty badly. His ribs had grown at a weird angle too.

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However, Julius didn’t care to heal him any more than this. The man didn’t deserve it, not after what he just tried to do. Seeing the man wasn’t in critical condition anymore, Marcus walked over to him and slapped some shackles on both the man’s wrists and legs. Then he pulled out a collar that emitted a scary aura and clamped it around Haruto’s neck.

Marcus then did the same thing for the unconscious Tier 5. However, not before he removed the black armor and confiscated the storage ring as they had with Haruto.

Julius walked over to Marcus. “So what now?”

Marcus glanced up and looked over at the carriage. “Well, we still need to drop off Lady Lora.”

“What about them?” Julius asked with a pointed stare at their prisoners.

“Don’t worry, I brought a box.”

***

Turns out when Marcus said he brought a box, he was being literal. It looked a little more like a coffin, but it was still a box. After making sure the two men wouldn’t escape or have anything on their person, they were unceremoniously stuffed into the box and tied to the top of the carriage.

As for the other Tier 5s who attacked them, they were “taken care of”. To be fair, only the archer was still barely alive. Turns out that Marcus hit him just as hard as Haruto, and unlike Haruto, the archer wasn’t as sturdy.

Additionally, they didn’t have any extra boxes, so Marcus put the man out of his mercy along with the contracted beast.

It might have seemed a bit cruel, but it was important to remember these men had tried to kill them. So Julius didn’t feel much guilt at all.

After they cleaned up, they headed for the Flowing Cloud Pavilion once again. Julius also checked out his notifications during this period.

[Calm Before Ruin lvl 7 -> lvl 8]

[Phoenix Incarnate lvl 4 -> lvl 5]

[Lord of the Dying Sun lvl 2 -> lvl 3]

[Primordial Armaments lvl 1 -> lvl 2]

[Void Step lvl 23 -> lvl 24]

[Absolute Spatial Perception lvl 25 -> lvl 26]

[Field of the Shattered Will lvl 21 -> lvl 22]

[Phoenix’s Mark lvl 8 -> lvl 10]

Once again, it was shown that fighting someone above his tier was the best way to gain skill levels. He talked to Lily about her own gains over the past year, and she said her skill progression was nowhere near his pace.

It wasn’t even like she wasn’t working hard or fighting monsters. Marcus had taken her into many rifts and missions to train her skills. But she hadn’t taken it quite as far as he had. To be fair, she didn’t have a skill that made her almost unkillable.

Still, her perfect mind affinity meant she still grew her skills at a faster pace than almost anyone else. It was also important to note that she had a number of very powerful epic skills due to her bloodline and was almost guaranteed to evolve them into legendary skills at some point. Her path to Tier 5 was as assured as Julius’s, perhaps even more so considering her bloodline would help her immensely with her Seed of Authority.

That was one thing that Julius noticed wasn't progressing as smoothly as his other abilities. His Seed of Ruinous Phoenix was powerful, but its cultivation speed was not as fast as he had hoped. Especially with how often he was almost dying and how hard he was pushing himself.

His newly improved life and fire affinities were helping a little bit. But it was clear that having a perfect affinity was dramatically different. Not to mention that his kinetic affinity was still only at high. He would need to try and increase it at some point. He had gotten some information from Cassandra, but he hadn’t had the time to really look into it.

Speaking of her, he’d completely forgotten that he was supposed to send her a letter to check in and let her know what he was up to. To be fair, he’d been dealing with a lot and was stuck inside Thorik’s little realm for a lot longer than anticipated. Then again, when he reunited with Lily, he’d forgotten all about it.

When he got back to Goldmere, he’d send her a message and at least let her know that he was safe. He didn’t need her to come running to Goldmere as Lily did. The last thing he needed was for her to cause a ruckus on his behalf. Though she should know how hard he was to kill, and probably suspected he was stuck inside a rift or busy elsewhere.

As they approached the gates of Cloudspire, he rolled the storage ring he took from the rogue in his hands. That and the red dagger were the only things that survived the fire he blasted the man with.

He had already tried to examine the dagger, but to his disappointment, the dagger tried to kill him the second he touched it. Julius didn’t think it was a soul-bound treasure, but it was quite a nasty little thing. A very powerful enchantment tried to poison his body and his mana when he made contact with it. It didn’t even have to be direct physical contact either. If he connected it with his mana senses, the dagger somehow tracked it and sent a pulse of disruptive energy into his body.

The pulse was strong enough to tear a weaker body apart. Not to mention the way it seemed to shred his mana channels. However, that only made him more interested in the dagger, so he kept it safely inside his void space. At the moment, that seemed like the only safe place to keep it.

However, the ring was a little more interesting because he was pretty close to breaking into it. It wasn’t as nice or as well protected as the new one he got, but it was still a nice little puzzle for him to play with while he sat in the carriage.

He was getting close to opening it too, just on the brink.

Unfortunately, he didn’t quite crack into it before they entered Cloudspire. And he was forced to leave it for the time being.

He exited the carriage and observed the city with a slightly breathless grin. Cloudspire was quite an apt name. It was a gorgeous place, with towering white spires scattered throughout the city. He could already see many signs and symbols of the Flowing Cloud Pavilion throughout the city. The sect’s symbol was a large circular green cloud with several pillars framing it. Regardless, it was definitely one of the most magical places he'd visited.

As he admired the city's beauty, he looked over and saw what appeared to be a large flying sword hurtling towards them. It seemed to be coming straight at them as well. He frowned and hoped that whoever was approaching was friendly.