Path to Transcendence

Chapter 773: [Pseudo Void Manipulation]

The ugly little shit was fast as hell. It used its kinetic energy to accelerate at inhuman speeds. Not only that, but it was also very hard to detect. Its aura and presence were minimal. Additionally, its spatial signature seemed unnaturally small for its already tiny stature. He suspected it had a skill or ability that shrank its physical presence to the point of being practically invisible to his spatial senses.

At Tier 4, it was becoming increasingly common to come across opponents with spatial abilities. After all, it was a big part of obtaining a domain, and as far as he knew, one needed some variation of a spatial sense skill.

His own [Absolute Spatial Perception] was apparently pretty unique even amongst spatial skills. Alice had said as much when he first told of it. Speaking of Alice, he wondered how she was doing. She should still be working for House Violet, but he hadn’t seen her since he left Goldencrest.

It would have been nice to ask her some questions regarding space magic. Perhaps he could ask Lily to contact Alice for him.

He was brought out of his thoughts when the bunny slammed into him again. This time, the void energy around his body flickered a little. The monster was constantly trying to break through it, but Julius’s new application of his Authority had changed its fundamental structure.

Once he was satisfied with its stability, he began to use it more actively. As he had previously, he teleported himself right behind the tiny monster. His movement was detected, but it was slightly too late. His leg, which was covered in void energy, flicked out and punted the terrorizing bunny across the street, and it slammed into a half-broken house.

Julius felt it was still alive and was about to go chase it down, but before he could, the monster used its kinetic energy and dashed in the opposite direction. He sighed and stared at where the monster had run off.

Coward.

However, he was much more interested in the notification he got instead.

Would you like to learn [Pseudo Void Manipulation]?

He let out a small chuckle and shook his head. He had honestly been hoping for a notification about combining [Void Step] and [Void Strike], but perhaps he had been a bit too hopeful. He was also a little surprised that he hadn’t been offered a similar skill already.

Then again, he hadn’t really used void energy outside of his own skills. This was the most he had experimented with. Which, in hindsight, might have been a bit foolhardy.

Still, it was perhaps an even better result. He knew it wasn’t necessary, but he didn’t feel a hundred percent confident about combining two skills. He'd typically combined only three skills in the past, and that usually resulted in a skill he was happy with.

He had a feeling that if he used three proper skills, the legendary skill he’d get would be even better than if he had just merged [Void Step] and [Void Strike]. Of course, he had other options he could merge with these void skills, but after playing with the skills more thoroughly, something in his gut told him they wouldn’t work as well. That was why he had been trying to merge just the two of them.

A part of him was nervous about accepting the skill simply because it had the “pseudo” descriptor in its name. But he quickly reminded himself that arguably his most powerful skill had the same descriptor before it evolved at epic rank.

He thought about it for a few moments and eventually nodded to himself. He had two open skill slots, and if he really didn’t like it, he would tear it out of his soul before it could start to settle.

He accepted the prompt before he could start to hesitate any more.

Congratulations, you have learned [Pseudo Void Manipulation] (Rare+).

Acquiring the skill was surprisingly easy. He barely felt anything surge through his head or his soul. It sat in his soul with his other skills, as if it had been there for years.

As he suspected, the skill wasn’t epic yet. But just like [Pseudo Phoenix Renewal], he felt that the skill was very promising and had a lot of potential. Especially if he used it as the basis for merging his other two void skills.

He couldn’t wait to use his new skill and immediately activated it. The void energy instantly appeared around his body as he replicated the same technique he’d been practicing with for the past couple of days. Unlike his previous attempts, the void energy took shape with barely any effort. Or at least, with much less effort than before.

It wasn’t quite as responsive as his mana or his aura, but it was much closer. He felt like he had some semblance of control over it, rather than wrestling a python, which was typically his experience with it.

The membrane of void energy wrapped around him, and he tapped his lip as he examined how it interacted with his body. The changes were certainly noticeable. For one, the energy seemed a lot more welcoming of his presence. Instead of feeling cold and distant, the void energy felt a lot warmer.

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He tried to shift the membrane around, changing the density and whatnot. That was pretty easy, but it was also obvious that the membrane's current configuration was already quite good, and he shouldn’t mess with it too much.

Once he was finished with that, he finally used the skill to teleport over to a nearby pile of rock. Unlike his other attempts, it was seamless and required almost no effort. In fact, the only thing that he struggled with was making sure that [Pseudo Void Manipulation] didn’t reach out to his [Void Step] skill and activate by accident.

It was like the new skill was already trying to establish a connection with the skill on its own. As if it could feel the synergy between them and was trying to leverage that connection to make it easier on him.

Under other circumstances, it might have been more welcome, but right now he wanted to test things independently. At least for now. He would definitely try it out later.

He quickly teleported once again. His aim was slightly off this time, and he arrived half a foot from his intended location. While half a foot didn’t sound like much, in a fight that was quite significant. He frowned and looked down at his legs. Perhaps he could adjust the void energy to make it more precise.

He’d have to keep testing it out, though. For now, he was quite happy with his progress and his new skill. Void energy had always been a fascinating thing to him, but for the most part it remained outside of his abilities.

His recent advancements with his soul and other senses helped him a lot. He could detect things that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

He teleported a few more times to test some of his other ideas. He didn’t spontaneously explode, which was honestly a great sign. He didn’t know if he should be proud that not exploding was a standard for when things went right.

He shook his head and let out a mirthful grin.

It was important to note that this teleportation with plain void energy and the simpler technique used a lot less mana than [Void Step] did. Though, it made sense. It wasn’t like he was ripping open a hole into space and stepping through. It was more of a standard movement technique. It was necessarily bad, though.

There were both pros and cons. For one, it was faster and cost less mana. In a regular fight, less mana cost meant more mana for him to use for other things. On the downside, he didn’t think his ability to avoid anti-spatial enchantments would work as well as his standard [Void Step]. At least with this current technique.

He was sure he could figure out something that let him do both. Alas, he was getting ahead of himself, and so before he could go down another rabbit hole, he first wanted to test out how he could use void energy as an offensive tool.

Once again, he had to stop his new skill from pulling on [Void Strike]. This was a bit difficult considering that the applications were already so similar. But he made it work and wrapped his fist in void energy.

A purple haze covered his hand, and he waved it around curiously. It certainly didn’t feel as powerful as [Void Strike], and it wasn’t nearly as cost-effective, but it was a lot more versatile. He was able to shift around the void energy with a lot more control than his [Void Strike] typically allowed him to do.

In fact, he shifted the energy so that it covered the edge of his hand into a thin line. He walked over to a wall and slashed his hand against it. To his amazement, the wall teetered to one side before falling down, bisected into two pieces.

He stared at his hand and the void energy responsible for this. It felt like his entire hand carved through the space holding the wall together.

Now, it ended up consuming a great deal of mana, but the results were impressive enough that he didn’t really care. It was sort of like [Void Strike], but instead of transferring the power deep into the core structure of the wall, it bypassed it completely and peeled its physical makeup apart.

He already had several ideas for how he could use it: a knife or something with a sharp edge. If [Void Strike] was an overall damage enhancer, this new attack seemed a more specialized version of it.

He did notice that his hand didn’t come out a hundred percent intact. A deep incision marked where he placed the void energy. At least his hand wasn’t completely mangled, so that was a plus.

Even more importantly, he had already received a notification for his troubles.

[Pseudo Void Manipulation lvl 1 -> lvl 2]

To his fascination, he had already gained a level despite not doing much. He had a feeling that this was the sort of skill that would level up quickly, but there was no way to be sure. Not to mention that the first few levels were always easier. It usually slowed down once it hit level 10. He’d have to wait until then to see.

However, he hoped that with his stronger soul and more experience with skills in general, he could level it up faster.

He smiled as his hand received a pulse of life mana from Drasil. The little guy suddenly appeared over his shoulder and gave him a slap on the head.

“What was that for?” he asked while reaching up and rubbing his head.

Drasil whistled and glared at him.

“Okay, fine. I’ll take a break,” Julius muttered and quickly found a building that was almost intact. He laid out his blanket and took out some snacks before he sat down.

As much as he wanted to continue experimenting with his void energy, Julius knew Drasil was right. For one, he was inside a rift, so while experimenting was fine, it wasn’t if he took it too far. And Julius was already running a little low on mana. His constant practicing had put a substantial dent in his mana pool.

Void energy was still a costly thing to use, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have time. He would be inside this rift for a bit longer, and so there was no real need to rush.

Plus, he had a feeling that Drasil was a little cranky because he was hungry.

Turns out that he was right about that, because as soon as Julius handed over a life-infused biscuit and an orb of life mana, the little spirit settled down with a bright grin.

Julius smirked and settled down as well. While he snacked on some food, he took the time to play with the ring he retrieved from the rogue who had attacked them out in the Howling Skylands. He had already given the one he retrieved off Hayden to Lily and Marcus so they could find any potential evidence. However, he kept this one to himself. He hadn’t been able to work on it as much as he wanted to, but that was to be expected. He had been very busy lately.

It was actually good aura training too, so perhaps it would have been a good idea to include it in his nightly rituals. He shrugged and began to play with it, using his aura to gently probe its defenses.

He couldn't help but wonder what kind of tasty treasures were tucked inside this ring.