Path to Transcendence

Chapter 767: Limbless Potato

Julius was quite amazed by how quickly Phoebe adapted to using kinetic energy. It wasn’t like she was very far in the first place, but the few tweaks he showed her weren’t something easy to do. It had taken him weeks to achieve similar results. While he knew he wasn’t some kind of prodigy, it was still a little humbling to see her pick up on nuances that took countless nights of getting his teeth kicked in by Cain.

It wasn’t just her comprehension that he was impressed by. It was her grit and pain tolerance. She seemed nervous when he explained the part about the pain and self-inflicted injuries, but she was handling it very well.

The first ten times were the worst. The kinetic energy tore through her body in ways she had never experienced before. She was used to controlling things, but he was trying to teach her how to let things get out of control. Leander almost stepped in to stop them, but Drasil’s miraculous healing held him back.

Drasil, in his ever-glorious magnificence, was more than enough to stitch Phoebe back together. He half expected her to give up, but she seemed pretty stubborn about giving it another shot. He didn’t stop her either; he knew that Drasil would keep her alive. And if Drasil wasn’t enough, he was there to help her.

“Okay, that’s enough for tonight,” he said after she failed to wrangle the kinetic energy with her willpower, and it exploded outward, rupturing several veins and tearing apart her muscles.

While he explained it to her as if the kinetic energy was supposed to rampage around, he was exaggerating slightly. You still needed to control it, but you needed to do so while it was at its most volatile.

She sat on the ground and waved him off while Drasil jumped down to her again, placing his palm on her thigh as his life mana surged through her.

“I’m good. I can go a few more times before I call it. I’m getting pretty close.”

Julius chuckled and shook his head. “As much as I would like to see that, your body can’t handle stress and healing anymore.”

“What? I’m fine. Drasil's healing magic is working fantastically. He's an amazing healer,” she insisted fervently.

“I know Drasil is an amazing healer, but there is a limit to how much he can heal someone. You have already passed that limit, and it is only because he’s amazing that he’s been able to heal you again despite that,” Julius explained.

Drasil glanced up with a smile and let out a happy whistle at the compliment.

Julius grinned back. “You’re welcome.”

“But—”

“You can always do it tomorrow, Phoebe. He’s not going anywhere. He still has to get permission to enter the rift alone,” Leander interrupted his sister before she could argue more and then looked over at Julius.

“Are you sure you want to insist on going in alone? Not only will it take more time, but the Graveyard of the Falling Mountain is quite a dangerous place. I went there when I was younger and have to say that it is one of the most difficult rifts I have ever explored. I understand that you are really strong for your tier, but having someone there to watch your back would drastically reduce the risk.”

Julius was tempted to dismiss the guy immediately, but he also realized that Leander wasn’t really the person to exaggerate or to say words needlessly. If he was saying this, it was because he genuinely worried about Julius.

“What makes it so difficult?” he asked Leander.

“The monsters,” the man said without any hesitation.

“Aren’t they undead?” Julius questioned with a confused frown.

“Sure are. But they are also some of the most annoying and frustrating undead you will ever come up against.”

“What makes them such a threat?”

“The fact they use kinetic energy. It’s not just that either. They use it to quite an extreme degree. Their lack of standard vulnerabilities, due to their unique nature, makes them quite dangerous. I almost died three times when I first entered.”

“Seriously? You never told me this!” Phoebe shouted at him from the back, where Drasil was still healing her.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t stop nagging me to tell you about it,” he shot back at his sister.

“So it’s just the monsters then? Nothing else?”

Leander sighed. “I wish. Navigation is a real pain in the ass while you are in there. We have some maps and general layout information, but since the rift is constantly shifting, it can sometimes be more of a curse than a blessing. You think an area is safe one day and the next you run straight into a trap.”

“It smells too,” Phoebe quipped.

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Leander winced. “Yeah, that it does.”

Julius turned to Phoebe. “Wait, you’ve been inside there already?”

She nodded. “Sure have. Went there when I was a Tier 3 and completed my trial.”

“What fruit did you get?” he asked curiously.

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Julius scowled. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Leander sighed heavily. “She already has a perfect affinity, so she really didn’t need anything from there. She still ate one, but unsurprisingly it didn’t do anything.”

Julius looked over at Phoebe and suddenly felt like the speed at which she had picked up the technique made sense.

“So she’s your clan’s genius?”

“Kind of. She isn’t the only one with a perfect affinity within the clan, but in my opinion she is one of the Tier 4s with more potential. She just needs to find a way to get her head out of her ass,” Leander said this last part with a pointed glare at her.

Amazingly, she didn’t even seem to argue with this and simply grumbled under her breath.

Julius let out a soft laugh as he watched the siblings interact. He hadn’t known them for long, but he found himself already becoming quite fond of them.

***

On the recommendation of Leander, Julius stayed within their family’s private courtyard for the most part. He was glad he had listened to him, too. The other times he walked through the estate alone made him feel as if everyone were staring at him.

Fortunately, there were plenty of things to do even without having to leave the private courtyard. For the most part, he was helping Phoebe with her kinetic energy techniques. She was an easy person to teach, and with Drasil helping heal her, she was able to push herself quite hard.

In fact, she had already learned a new skill by the second day. He grumbled to himself about how geniuses had it easy. But that wasn’t to say he didn’t have his own opportunities to train.

When he wasn’t helping Phoebe, he was working on his skills. More specifically, he was training both [Void Strike] and [Void Step] together. The way he thought about it was that he had multiple options to use the skill combination crystal on, and so if he could only use it for one skill, why couldn’t he see if he could merge the other skills naturally?

In fact, he was kicking himself for not thinking about this solution earlier. He’d become a little lazy since he knew he had a treasure to help merge his skills. It was a good reminder to himself that he didn’t need such a thing.

He had merged skills in the past. Now, they weren’t epic skills, but he didn’t see a reason why he wouldn’t be able to combine these epic skills into a legendary one.

He already had several legendary skills to use as a reference too. He was somewhat familiar with the nature and feeling of legendary skills, so he was optimistic about combining them. He wasn’t in too much of a rush. He had time and needed to focus on his Seed of Authority before anything else.

He also made some decent progress too. [Void Step] had always been a pivotal skill for him; it helped him reposition and surprise his opponents. [Void Strike] wasn’t as simple. It was a pretty straightforward skill to use, but it required a lot of mana and focus to use properly.

He’d actually say it was one of the weaker skills in his arsenal. Not in terms of potency, but in terms of synergy and relative value it brought him. With his new legendary skills, this gap has become even more evident.

For the same cost of mana, he would be able to increase the power of his body with [Lord of the Dying Sun] or use it to empower [Primordial Armaments]. The only thing he didn’t wish to lose would be the penetrative effect of the skill, but then again, it wasn’t the most effective, at least not on the type of opponents he’d been facing recently.

Something needed to change, which was why he was training it and testing it out thoroughly. The first he tried was to hold [Void Strike] throughout his body while also using [Void Step].

At first he thought he was onto something, but he soon realized that the two skills weren’t as similar. [Void Step] and [Void Strike] might have been related skills and used the same kind of void energy, but had fundamental differences.

For one, [Void Step] was a skill he had acquired after he used void energy to literally rip open a tear into the void. It was, at its core, an external use of void energy, one that his body used so instinctively that it felt like an internal movement skill. But it was also this unique property that allowed him to bypass enchantments and other means of disruption.

[Void Strike], on the other hand, was a much simpler application of void energy. It was a blunt infusion of void energy into his body or his constructs.

It was also at this moment that he finally understood the reason he’d been having a hard time merging the two. It wasn’t due to his lack of effort; it was due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the skills’ natures.

Weirdly enough, once he came to this conclusion, several things started to fall into place. It was as if dozens of floating pieces were suddenly attracted by something, and they started to converge toward the center of his soul.

His mind was on autopilot, and he began to work subconsciously, letting his instincts take over. His void energy and his Space Concept activated before he was even fully aware of it. Void energy ran through his body much like how it did with [Void Strike], but it was also noticeably different this time around.

He created a thin layer of void energy around his skin similar to how he tore open a hole into the void. It was dangerous, yes, but he was okay with that. He had already messed with the void back when he was weaker and less experienced. He also had a much better healing skill in case anything went wrong.

That being said, it wasn’t exactly easy. Void energy was a fickle thing, one that required a lot of care when handling it. It fizzled out harmlessly almost a dozen times while he tried to figure out the proper amount to use.

When he finally got a sense of how much he needed, he moved on to the next step.

However, not even five seconds after he began, his entire body felt as if it were being squeezed by a hydraulic press. Understanding something was wrong, he immediately ripped apart the technique. Unfortunately, he was already too late, and the void layer he had spent so much effort on creating abruptly collapsed around him on all sides.

He was barely able to let out a curse before all of his limbs popped like a balloon. Blood and bone fragments sprayed everywhere. The training chamber they had so graciously allowed him to use was suddenly covered with gore.

He remained there, a dirty and now limbless little potato, silently lying on the cold stone floor as he reviewed what went wrong and what he could have done differently.