Path to Transcendence

Chapter 314: Not Advanced Enough

He awoke and found himself with Drasil sitting on his chest, desperately pounding his chest with his small arms while pumping him with life mana.

[Phoenix Renewal] was slamming concentrated pulses of healing into him as it tried to keep him alive. He looked down and examined the damage.

What he saw shocked him. He lost everything from the waist down. His chest was just a single lump of flesh with only his heart and ribcage somewhat intact.

The pain was there, but [Sage of Savagery] was thankfully handling the brunt of it. Still, he winced at the dull throbbing that made it past the skill.

This was probably the most damage he had received in a long time. That collapsing spatial distortion had wreaked havoc on his body, unlike many other things could have done. Not even his fight with the Tier 5 had caused such extensive damage.

Sure, he blew up a few limbs and got blasted with an arm through the chest, but he had more trouble dealing with the leftover Authority, which prevented him from using his healing skill. His actual injuries were not that bad, at least by his standards.

For the first time in a while, he actually felt like he was quite close to kicking the bucket. What was

“Is this why people don’t use tears in space for spatial travel?” He muttered as he lay there, letting his skill and Drasil patch him up.

Luckily, Drasil’s consumption of the sapling also helped his healing abilities. Julius was already able to feel the difference. Some kind of resistance prevented his wounds from healing as easily as they normally would.

He had a feeling that this problem was due to the spatial nature of these injuries.

The only thing he could do was focus his skill on his vital areas first. It was probably a good idea if he healed his stomach sooner rather than later. His guts were all falling out at this point, it didn’t seem like a smart thing just to let be.

On the bright side, he noticed he had some notifications waiting for him.

[Sage of Savagery lvl 13 -> lvl 14]

[Phoenix Renewal lvl 9 -> lvl 10]

[Inexorable Aura of Ruin lvl 6 -> lvl 8]

His aura skill had gained a whole whopping two levels from his experimenting. Sure, it might have almost killed him, but some might consider it well worth it. Him being one of them.

After all, he had learned some interesting things about spatial magic.

It wasn’t just levels, either. He had another notification that caught his eye.

Would you like to learn the skill [Spatial Tear]?

He grinned wildly as he read the notification. He had been hoping to acquire a spatial skill for a long time, but now that he was finally being offered one, he laughed out in joy.

See? Thatʼs some proof that some good things come from almost killing yourself.

Now, the question became whether he wanted to accept the skill. He didn’t see a reason not to, but he also didn’t know enough about it to feel confident in his choice. Unfortunately, his curiosity and impatience had him selecting yes before he could start overthinking it.

However, the flood of notifications was not what he had been expecting.

Skill acquisition in progress…

Error…

Concept of Sharpness: Severing Will not advanced enough for the new skill. Searching for replacement Concept…

Appropriate Concept not detected. Unable to acquire [Spatial Tear] (Epic).

Evaluating options…

Cancel skill acquisition process Acquire downgraded version of skill - [Spatial Crack] (Rare)
What was that supposed to mean? Julius couldn’t help but review the messages with a worried frown on his face.

What did it mean when the Words of the World told him that his Severing Will Concept was not advanced enough?

He knew that it was his first Concept and all, but that didn’t mean the Words of the World had any right putting it down like Dante or Alice liked to do. Only he could do that.

He sighed and sat up now that he was somewhat healed. He stretched his newly grown legs and picked Drasil up, who was still doing his best to whack Julius with his tiny fists.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The issue was that he didn’t know what to do or what to make of this.

While he had realized long ago that his Sharpness Concept was quite lacking compared to his other Concepts, he didn’t see a way to fix that.

Well, actually, that was wrong. He did know a way, but he had no clue how to proceed.

He understood that Concepts were very important to a person’s path and that you could never really get rid of them. However, he also knew that there were ways to change or evolve them.

At least, that was what he had gathered from talks with those of higher tiers. While they had not outright told him, they dropped enough hints about eventually evolving Concepts to implement with your Authority or Domain. He also experienced this when his Phoenix Concept evolved from his Fire Concept.

Since he was still Tier 3, they probably didn’t think it was the most crucial of information to explain to him. It wasn’t like they would know he already had four Concepts at this point.

After all, most people at Tier 3 only had three Concepts before advancing to Tier 4 since that was the requirement for gaining an Emblem and evolving it into an Authority. Something he was still working on during his downtime. But it was tedious and slow work. It wasn’t like mana or aura control practice where he could make up tasks to occupy his boredom.

Advancing an Emblem required patience and simple allocation of will toward one’s Emblem.

The only known method to increase this process was to either consume expensive treasures or fight powerful beasts. The latter was the more common option for people and was why those who graduated often went on to delve and adventure frequently.

It was probably going to be what he had to do if he wanted to hasten the process. Otherwise, he might be spending a lot of time at Tier 3, slowly nurturing his Emblem the old-fashioned way. And he had no plans on wasting years of his life doing it that way.

He shook his head as he got off track from the main point.

Was he, or was he not going to get the skill?

Hell, did he even want the crack?

It would be his second spatial skill, and if he acquired it, it would probably help him obtain a Space Concept more easily.

Plus, he didn’t really mind that it was rare, that just meant he could evolve it into something more suitable for him when he upgraded it to epic.

The name was a weird one, though. He definitely would rather have a skill named [Spatial Tear] than [Spatial Crack].

He sighed once again. He was already leaning toward accepting it. He had plenty of skill slots open still and it was a spatial skill he had been looking for.

If worse comes to worse, he could always just remove it. Sure, it might hurt his soul once again, but this time he had [Phoenix Renewal] that could heal his soul, provided enough mana and time.

After thinking for some time and not seeing any reason not to accept it, he confirmed the notification.

Congratulations, skill [Spatial Crack] (Rare) acquired.

The usual flood of information entered his brain, and he nodded his head as he took it all in. It was very similar to the process he had just used not long ago to create the spatial distortion.

The main difference was that he felt he could create that distortion much more easily.

He couldn’t contain his curiosity, and before he could think better of it, he activated his new skill.

However, he was smarter than last time and made sure to create the distortion further away from him, so in case it did explode, it wouldn’t be right in his face.

Despite his worries, he felt his aura seep outward and rip open a distortion once again. This time, it wasn’t as unstable. Sure, it was still rugged and somewhat crude, but there was this sense of balance that wasn’t there before, likely stemming from his new skill.

It was funny because although his skill called it a crack, you couldn’t actually see the crack with human eyes. It was only with [Spatial Perception] that he managed to sense the crack in space.

Mustering his courage, he decided to try the same thing which had caused the accident to happen. He concentrated on opening another crack on the other side of the room with another twist of ruinous aura.

Thankfully, his new skill seemed to help immensely with this. Unlike last time, he was able to hold the first crack open while focusing on opening the second one.

With that being said, it was still very difficult to do. He grunted as he tried to wrangle his aura and skill under control.

Only after a few minutes of struggle did he grasp the space and rip it open. Once he had both open, it was much easier to simply hold them open as long as he didn’t try to do anything with them.

Now that he had two separate spatial distortions set up, he could finally implement his idea, which was the whole reason he began trying to do something like this.

He stared at the two cracks in space with a skeptical expression as if, at any moment, they would implode all on their own. But eventually, he gave in and walked over to one of them.

He was holding a piece of blue fabric in one hand and slowly used his aura to carry the fabric so it hovered in front of the crack.

But before he could drop it in, he made sure to tuck Drasil back into his soul space and create several barriers of mana. After he took another several steps backward, he shoved the piece of fabric through the crack.

It disappeared instantly. One moment, it was in front of him, and the next, it was nowhere to be seen.

Where in the hell did it go? He thought to himself while looking exactly at the place where the other crack was. It hadn’t exited the other side of the crack like he had been expecting.

Thankfully, nothing exploded, but he was still curious about what had happened to the cloth.

However, just as he was turning away, he sensed the first crack, the one he sent the fabric through, ripple slightly. He took a careful step closer and created another three mana barriers just in case while enhancing his body.

A moment later, he stared confusingly as the crack spontaneously ejected a puff of dust that had a scarily similar blue color as the fabric had.

He was suddenly very glad that he hadn’t used himself as a test subject. He had a feeling that whatever happened to that piece of fabric when it was in the crack would not have been very nice to experience with his own body.

Still, he was excited because at least he knew that he could send stuff through. The problem now was that he wanted to figure out how to do that with the object surviving the trip and exiting the other crack. Because at the end of the day, he was hoping to use this technique himself and he didn’t want to accidentally vaporize himself if he stepped through one of his own cracks.