Path to Transcendence

Chapter 251: Worries

He looked at all of them with a worried glance.

“What’s wrong?” He asked nervously, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Richard, who also had a slightly anxious look must have saw his facial expression and quickly came over to Julius with a swift teleport. The man laid an arm on his shoulder and said to Julius with a serious look.

”Donʼt be alarmed, try to remain calm.”

Seeing the man’s unusual seriousness, Julius was even more confused.

“Can you tell me what is going on? Why are you all looking at me weirdly and why is Grace looking like I am going to hurt her?”

“You can’t sense it?” Rebecca asked perplexed.

“Sense what?”

“Your aura,” she said like it was obvious.

My aura? What does she mean?

Julius quickly focused inward and tried to get a feeling of his own aura which was harder than it sounded. While he had gotten very good at controlling his aura, there were things he wasn’t able to control. And being able to see his aura exactly how others did, was quite difficult.

It was like facial expressions in a way. Just because he knew he was smiling, doesn’t mean he knew exactly what he looked like. He needed a mirror to do that.

However, when he concentrated and looked inward on his aura, he felt something off. It wasn’t totally under his control anymore. His previously proud control was not to be seen. And there was some sort of fluctuating reverberations pulsing outward.

How did he not notice this earlier? Sure it was subtle but he should be able to control it.

Also, how did this happen? It obviously hasn’t happened before, otherwise one of them would have told him. So it must be something because of his new skill.

“Is my aura acting like this because of my skill?” He asked Richard, worry coloring his tone.

“I don’t know, but you are going to have to learn how to control it that’s for sure,” the man replied with a firm shake of his head.

“It almost feels like that undead knight,” Reinera commented from where she was standing, her face no longer as pale and not looking as scared, to his relief.

“Really? Like my aura is corrupting you?” He asked her.

“No, there isn’t that same sickly feeling that the monster had, but instead it seems more aggressive. Almost as if your aura is trying to burn and destroy anything in its way,” she said to him with a meaningful stare.

Almost like ruin huh?

Richard gave him another encouraging pat on the back. “It’s probably because of your [Aura Burn] skill as well as the pinnacle grade token. That token might have given you a really powerful skill, one that might be too much for you to control at the moment.

“What should I do then?” He asked.

“I can help keep it in check for now, but if you go around the estate like that, you are going to hurt some of the servants,” Richard said to him with an awkward smile.

“Do you have any ideas about what I can do to control it?”

“Practice. Once you start learning how it works you should be able to get good control over the aura aspect pretty soon afterward. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it now. If there’s anything I don’t worry about you, it is your dedication to training. You are going to be just fine.”

Julius gave the older man a grateful smile and went to work right away trying to control this new skill. He didn’t want to accidentally hurt someone when he walked down the streets of the city.

If Reinera was right, then his aura was now like the undead knights, whose aura almost killed her just by being exposed to it. That wasn’t something he wanted to expose his friends to.

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His enemies on the other hand… well that seemed like a very nice tool to have.

However, no matter what he tried, he wasn’t able to stop the ruinous aura from wafting off of him like a badly scented candle.

It wasn’t like normal aura control and it felt like a brand new limb he needed to train.

In the end, Richard was forced to use his domain to temporarily suppress his aura so that he could walk around the estate without hurting anyone within reach of its presence. It wasn’t comfortable for him, but it was necessary.

***

Richard POV

“You know, he’s not going to be allowed to be around Cory until he has a handle on it,” his wife said to him after she washed her face, getting ready for bed.

“I know. I made sure to set up the isolation enchantments to his room so that nobody is accidentally hurt if they walk by,” he assured her.

“What kind of skill do you think he ended up getting?” She asked as she headed for their bed, her blonde hair tied up in a bun. She looked as gorgeous as the day he met her and couldn’t help but smile like an idiot as she crawled underneath the covers with him.

“Earth to Richard,” she said while waving a hand in his face.

He shook his head. “Sorry, what did you ask?”

“I asked what kind of skill do you think Julius got?”

He shrugged his shoulders and reached over to hug her, shifting the both of them around so that he was spooning her.

“It’s a good bet that he got something that combined his kinetic and fire affinities,” he stated.

“Well of course that, but what kind of addition is that aura ability of his? We are both Tier 5, but that aura is quite scary,” she admitted.

“I haven’t known anyone who has gotten one of those before, but it has to be something that the pinnacle grade Skill Combination Token provided him. I can’t help but wonder how such a skill is going to advance as it levels up,” he commented but noticed his wife go silent.

He reached out his aura to check on her and she opened up to allow him to feel what she was feeling at the moment.

All he got was a feeling of uneasiness and sadness.

“What’s wrong,” he asked.

She turned her head so that one of her eyes looked at him over her shoulder. “I never told you this, but Aden also received a pinnacle grade token from this Challenge Rift when he attempted it.”

“Aden got a pinnacle grade Skill Combination Token as well?” He asked surprised, but also not that surprised. While pinnacle grade rewards were things of legends, it wasn’t exactly shocking to learn that someone as powerful and talented as Aden was rewarded with one.

She shook her head. “No, he got a Skill Evolution Token, but it was a pinnacle-grade token too. It ended up helping develop one of his signature skills.”

Richard could only nod his head as he listened to her. But his mind was already connecting the dots.

Aden’s signature skill was a sword skill which leaned toward being very destructive. Something very similar to what he had felt from Julius’s aura that had been changed by his new skill.

It was unusual to see a single skill make such a large impact on someone’s aura. But Julius’s aura had made such drastic changes, that he could barely believe it if he hadn’t touched the boy’s aura earlier that day.

What was once a strong and resolute aura, was now something else. It was still strong and resolute, but there was this destructive and terrifying energy to it now. It made the boy seem less like a powerful but young boy and more like a grizzled war veteran who was having a hard time reigning in their aura.

“Do you think that the rift had an impact on the direction each of their skills took?” He asked his wife, knowing she was already thinking of something similar.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Both of their skill sets lean toward the violent side of things. Aden was always a blade of death and carnage, but Julius also has skills and Concepts that lean in that direction. So it might just be a coincidence.”

“So then what are you worried about?”

“I am worried that Julius might end up just like Aden,” she admitted with a sad frown.

“You don’t really think that do you?” He asked, squeezing her tighter around the stomach.

“I can’t help it. The two of them are similar in so many ways, I just can’t help but think about what’s going to happen to Julius if he continues,” she told him.

“Just because the two of them are both strong for their tier and age, does not mean they are the same person. I only met Aden several times when I was younger but I can tell you that Julius isn’t like him.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Julius has things that Aden never had. Aden was so focused on the sword that nothing else mattered in the world. From everything I have seen from Julius, he won’t have the same struggles,” he reassured his wife.

He knew what Becca was worried about. She was worried that Julius might turn into another Aden. A heartless person who only cared about the sword and nothing else.

Richard knew firsthand how Aden’s obsession with power and the sword drove him to become the person he eventually became. But he was certain that Julius was not the same.

He had seen it with his own eyes. How the boy treated the servants around the estate. How he treated the two of them. How he interacted with Cory. How he befriended ‘Grace’, a princess known for not having any friends.

No, he wasn’t like Aden. Aden never cared about people like Julius did.

So while his wife was worried, he was not. For some reason, he felt supremely confident that Julius wouldn’t become like that, apart from something truly tragic happening to him. He would just have to make sure that nothing like that did happen.