Path to Transcendence

Chapter 189: Experimental Marker

When the weekend rolled around Julius had managed to ask Declan about a couple of things. For one he managed to get back the rift access card with a little bit of arguing. However, luckily for him, he had come prepared. He spent the entire week beforehand coming up with logical arguments that Declan would find difficult to refute.

Thankfully, it worked out perfectly. His preparation allowed him a landslide victory, poor Declan didn’t even have a chance. He handed over the access card to Julius with a defeated look. Knowing that he had been outsmarted and outtalked by a young boy.

He had also discussed the potential idea of using Lord Lagos’s favor with Declan. The older man hadn’t really understood why Julius would waste such a favor on learning about what House Greyson was doing in Heston.

After all, Julius still hadn’t fully told Declan what happened at the estate. He didn’t really know why he still hadn’t after all this time. A part of him rationalized it by thinking that it was to keep Declan and his family safe.

In a way that made some sense. Julius didn’t know how far House Greyson or Wesley Greyson would go in order to cover up what happened. The others he felt more safe about telling. For one they were under a magical vow and secondly, they each had powerful backings of their own. He had much more confidence in their families being able to protect themselves if anything came out.

Declan on the other hand had a wife and two kids to care for by himself. Julius knew that Declan would disagree and would want to know what happened to Julius regardless, but Julius was selfish. He made sure that Declan would never have to choose between Julius and his family by making the decision himself.

The discussion between Juilus and Declan was fruitful though. Declan had brought up a good point about why he shouldn’t use Lord Lagos’s favor on something like that. Declan thought that Julius would be able to find the information by using some sort of information broker or through Declan’s own contacts in the city guard.

Considering that it was within Heston’s own walls, the likelihood of the city guard or someone else who resides in Heston knowing what was happening was pretty high. So Julius had to admit there was some logical reason within that.

He just didn’t like involving his friends with his own problems. That was a huge reason why he hadn’t asked for Derek, Kyle, Aubrey, or Lily’s help. In fact, he had made them promise to not do anything that could be interpreted as help. Julius’s reason at the time was that he didn’t want to tip off anyone as well as he didn’t want to do anything just yet.

That was a small white lie. He mainly didn’t want them involved in any way because he didn’t know what would happen if they did. This was his problem and he would find a way without potentially endangering them. If they chose to side with him that would mean they would be siding against House Greyson. A Ducal House within the Luminous Empire.

It was too much thinking to do this early in the morning. Julius was still in bed relaxing as the rising sunlight poured through his room, hitting the crystal dangling in the window. The crystal gave off a soft aura that made him want to stay in bed even longer. It was the perfect room decoration for lazy morning people.

He had taken it down for that very reason. However, to his immense amusement, he had found the thing hanging from the window the next morning. Henry must have put it up while he was gone, Julius always knew that the boy liked it, though Henry wouldn’t admit it to Julius.

Speaking of Henry, he was already gone. Which was unusual for the boy. Julius was normally the first one out of bed. Julius sat up and looked around the room. He heard a whistle of panic and felt Drasil slip from his chest, falling down to his lap. A fall like that was like Julius falling from a three-story building so he understood Drasil’s panic.

He offered Drasil a small dense orb of Phoenix aspected life mana as an apology and the little spirit completely immediately forgave him.

Huh, Henry really is gone, Julius thought to himself surprisingly.

He and Henry had been getting along a little better ever since that last run-in. They weren’t friends or anything, but Henry never acted outright rude to Julius anymore. He would actually sometimes greet Julius in a friendly manner when they crossed paths.

Julius didn’t know how he felt about that yet. It was nice, but kind of weird considering how Henry first introduced himself.

Julius didn’t know if Henry’s apparent run-in with Aubrey had a large influence, but Julius certainly wasn’t going to complain.

***

Julius walked into the library with a pep in his step. He had recently read an interesting account of a chef-turned-fighter the other day. He had looked it up after he had met Johan, trying to see if there was any connection or people who had used chef-specific skills to good effect for fighting monsters. Julius was hoping to finish up the book this morning before class started.

It was more for his own curiosity than anything. But he found a person who had been quite successful. They used a similar combination of Julius’s own abilities. The person had a fire affinity but several sharpness-focused skills that he used to great effect.

Apparently, he was quite the monster to fight. Slaughtering his way through waves of monster floods with nothing but a kitchen knife. His signature was that he left most of his opponents neatly diced up into precise cuts.

He sat down, took out the book from his storage ring, and began reading.

The authorʼs narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Half an hour later, he sensed someone approaching him. It was Grace with Amelia following beside her. As he watched them walk up to his table, he smiled at Grace and gave Amelia a soft nod of acknowledgment.

They quickly caught up, talking about their weekend and other small things before they both got started on their own books. An hour passed by like this. A comfortable silence where Julius and Grace read their books and Amelia sat there doing whatever she wanted.

Eventually, Grace broke it. She must have just finished her own book and looked over at Julius. “What are you reading?” She asked him suddenly.

He told her all about the chef turned battle maniac with enthusiasm. Grace was certainly amused by his recounting of the book, attentively listening to Julius’s explanation, while Amelia gave a scoff.

“That almost sounds closer to a fictional story than an accurate historical account,” Amelia said with a chuckle.

Julius gave her an agreeing chuckle of his own. “Yeah, I kinda agree. Some things do sound pretty outlandish and itʼs not like itʼs a firsthand account. The author is most likely just some person who heard some of the stories of this person and compiled them into a book,” he said.

“Why are you reading it then?” Amelia asked curiously as if she couldn’t understand why he would be spending his time reading fantasy.

“Eh, it’s entertaining imagining a chef taking out an entire horde of monsters,” Julius casually said.

“That’s the only reason?” Grace asked.

“Who knows, I might be planning to use this chef as inspiration for my own skills,” Julius joked.

Grace gave him an odd look like she didn’t believe he was joking. It was as if she really thought he would do something like that.

Admittingly, she’s not exactly wrong, Julius thought to himself amusingly.

He did have some plans to make use of this person’s stories. He had a sharpness aspect himself and according to the story so had this chef. Unlike Julius’s way of incorporating his Concept into his aura and skills to cut off his opponent’s own skills, he was thinking of a way to use it in a more tangible way.

Slicing apart his enemies like they were butter was an intriguing proposition. At the moment his Sharpness Concept worked more as a small buff to his constructs. [Barrier of Severance] was slowly falling behind his other skills. It was still a potent defense, but when it came to offense enhancement there was still plenty of room for improvement.

He believed that this was because the skill was technically a defensive skill that he managed to use for offense. It was probably a good idea to get an upgrade at epic that focused equally on both aspects.

However, he was also very happy with the way it cut off his opponent’s skill and mana usage. It wasn’t that powerful yet, but it often caught his enemies off guard enough that he was able to get an edge.

He was broken out of his reverie when he saw Grace get up to return her finished book and probably went off to find a new one. Though as he watched, he couldn’t help but think of what he had been noticing lately with Grace.

He understood that she was hiding something from him. It was pretty obvious. He wasn’t like Lily where he could sense everyone’s emotions just by being near them, but he did have quite a good sense for aura. At least that’s what he liked to think.

That sense along with the fact that he has now known her for a good amount of time, gave him this suspicion. That wasn’t all. Julius slowly realized that he could never find Grace around campus during class time. She had always told him that she had a separate class schedule than he did, but honestly, that felt like a lie.

The paranoid part of him told him that Grace was some sort of noble that was hiding out at Goldencrest or perhaps secretly the princess in disguise, but he still had a hard time believing the latter one. They acted so differently, not to mention how different their forms looked to [Spatial Perception].

However, recently he has seen firsthand that the skill isn’t infallible. So he had to keep the possibility open. It didn’t escape his observation that he had never seen Grace or the princess together before. However, to be fair, he could say that about a lot of students. It was a large campus after all.

When he thought about it, did it really matter that much? So what if she was the princess? What would that change? In his opinion, that wouldn’t change how he saw her. She would just have a different title, that was all.

Still, he wanted to satisfy his own curiosity. It also didn’t hurt that he wanted to test out one of his experimental techniques. Although, that definitely wasn’t the reason why he was doing this.

Okay, that was a lie. He really wanted to see if this idea worked out.

See? Even people like him sometimes lied, so if she lied to him about who she was, he promised himself that he wouldn’t get mad.

It was about time to go meet the others for a quick breakfast before class so he neatly packed away his stuff. As he was doing so, Grace had come back with an arm full of books.

“Oh, you’re leaving for breakfast?” She asked him from behind her stack of books.

He nodded even though he knew that she couldn’t see it. “Yep, I could use some food. See you later?”

She walked over to the table and put the books down. “Sure, can we get dinner together with the others tonight?”

“Oh? What’s the occasion?” Julius asked. Grace usually didn’t eat dinner with them that often, she said that she didn’t feel comfortable being around all of the older students. He didn’t blame her, it took him a while to get used to their stares.

“Nothing, I just feel like it,” she said with a mysterious grin.

He gave her a flat stare. “Come on, is that really what it is,” Julius asked.

She just laughed in his face. “Yep, thatʼs really what it is.”

I donʼt believe her.

She gave him a nudge on his shoulder and tilted her head toward the library exit. “Go on, I’ll see you later. The others are waiting on you.”

Julius just smiled and shook his head. He gave her a wave and walked away.

He was smiling for a different reason though. His little experiment might have just worked. When she had bumped shoulders with him, he managed to transfer some heat from his body to her. It was like putting a sticker on someoneʼs back, a sticker that he could keep track of.

He had gotten the idea from the two men who followed him as well as with some inspiration from Johan’s heat skills. It was very slight, but it was undoubtedly his own fire mana, mana that he could sense from a good distance.

He didn’t know how long it would last, but all of his testing showed that it should last at least a couple of hours as long as Grace didn’t go jumping into a pile of snow. He just hoped that she didn’t notice anything. He knew that she sensed mana through her eyes, so he was hoping that she wouldn’t notice it because he placed it on the back of her shoulder.

Well, only time would tell how well it worked out. For now, all he could do was eagerly wait and observe.