Path to Transcendence

Chapter 324: Luring Them Out

The first thing he did was walk toward the edge of the city. He didn’t tell the others, but he had been thinking really hard about how he was attacked. The timing was very strange. It was only when he had left the others and was somewhat alone that she decided to attack him.

That made him believe that she or the people who instructed her to attack him had a way to monitor where he was. Or at least managed to find out when he had left campus and followed him from there.

He couldn’t sense anyone following him, though. To be fair, it was to make sure when there were so many people around. Therefore, he decided to go on a little walk by himself.

If someone was still following him, he hoped he would be able to sense them when there were fewer people. If he couldn’t perceive anyone, it meant one of two things.

It meant that either the person who had been tracking him was the woman or had left after the attempt. Another possibility was that he was being tracked via some other method.

In that case, they might still be tracking him at this moment. He also hoped they couldn’t help but take this opportunity to attack him when he was alone. He wanted the chance to attack him to be too tempting, even if they believed he was luring them out on purpose.

So as he left the city gates and entered the wilderness outside, he threw out his perception once again. The entire time, he had not noticed a single person following him. If they were still tracking him, it certainly wasn’t by simply following him like the two men had done all that time ago.

There was likely some other technique behind it all.

He kept on wandering around for quite a while. Eventually, he found a little spot by a creek that rested at. It was getting quite late, and the sun had already set, but with his advancement to Tier 3, he had the ability to see in low light much more easily.

He looked up at the sky and noticed that some of the stars were already peaking through the slightly cloudy skies. The moon was bright as ever, shining down onto the shimmering water.

It was very relaxing, and for a brief moment, he loosened his shoulders, taking it all in. The assassination attempt had worried him more than he had told or shown the others. It wasn’t about the fact that he could have died either. It was more because he liked knowing who he was fighting.

With this recent attack, he had no idea who he was fighting.

Did his cousin break his promise and end up telling his father? Julius was quite sure that the boy had been sincere in his promise. But what if the other boy changed his mind? Or what if the father was able to find out about it another way?

There were too many ‘what ifs’ to be comfortable.

This was the first time he had been able to leave the city since he arrived back to Heston and while he didn’t know if he was being tracked, he was going at least enjoy his evening. He might have been just being paranoid, but he wanted to make sure.

Or at least take this chance to lure them out if they were still tracking him. He didn’t want to go about his time looking over his shoulder for assassins.

So with a slight grin, he removed his shoes and dipped his toes into the chilly water. The icy temperature made him shiver, but he sent a warm flow of fire mana throughout his body to make him comfortable.

He then removed some snacks from his storage ring and closed his eyes to enjoy the calmness of the creek.

However, just when he thought all of his worries were unfounded, he sensed a sudden disturbance behind him.

He couldn’t help but release a relieved chuckle as he turned around and slammed his fist into the person who was thrusting a shortsword at his skull. The blade nicked him, but the attacker found themselves being blasted away by his strike.

There weren’t any people around to force him to hold back, so he blasted his aura through his body, fueling his empowerment skill. He used [Flash Step] to dash forward and slammed his knee into the person, throwing them away until they finally stopped when they crashed against one of the trees.

He was about to dash forward again when he sensed a collection of mana coming right at him. Creating a shield of mana behind him, he blocked the powerful attack. The impact was heavy, but his barrier held up against the strike.

He was so preoccupied by the two attackers that he almost didn’t notice the flicker of shadow mana. He leaned to the side as a blade slashed right past him, and with a supercharged elbow, he slammed into the same woman who had attacked him earlier.

He tried to immobilize her with kinetic energy once again. Sadly, she was ready for his technique and had already enforced her willpower, not allowing him to incapacitate her as easily as last time.

Still, the force of his attack had her knocked off her feet, and she disappeared into another shadow before reappearing next to the man who had first attacked him.

Another spear of mana appeared and hissed through the air, crashing against the barrier he created once again. However, this time the attack exploded on impact, staggering him slightly.

The man didn’t let this opportunity slip and immediately appeared at Julius’s side, sending a swift slash at his face. Julius was prepared, though, and created a construct to wrap around the blade. He grabbed hold of the blade and ripped it down toward the ground.

The man decisively let go of his blade before he was pulled alongside it and jumped up, trying to smash his knee into Julius’s chin.

Julius evaded this and threw himself to the side as he sensed the mage and shadow woman attack him while he was distracted. An attack made of shadow mana wizzed over his shoulder and into the dirt. The attack was very akin to the poison she had used against him before, which made him believe that poison was indeed some kind of skill that was enhanced with a Concept.

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The mage’s attack wasn’t powerful like the previous ones. It almost seemed like the attack had some sort of stun effect, as if they were trying to hold him down.

He was a bit worried that he still had not found the mage as of yet. Either they were too far away for [Spatial Perception] to pick up, or they had another way to avoid his detection.

Both were worrying. Plus, he still didn’t know how they were tracking him.

There wasn’t much time to worry about that, though. He was busy trying to fend off three Tier 4s at once.

As much as he had gotten stronger, he was still only Tier 3.

When he had come out here with this plan in mind, he was pretty confident that he wouldn’t be attacked by a Tier 5. It wasn’t like they grew on trees after all. But he had assumed that the woman might have some reinforcements.

Since he had taken her down so easily, he expected that she would want some backup.

However, he wasn’t expecting such an annoying combination of fighters. There wasn’t a chance for him to cut down their numbers. The moment he tried to finish one off, the other two were there to take his attention.

It wasn’t like he could ignore them either. They were Tier 4s, and he had to be wary of their attacks. The mage in particular was very annoying. Their variety of attacks made predicting them very difficult. That wasn’t even mentioning that he hadn’t even been able to find them yet.

They were still throwing out attacks from every direction, completely hidden. He also noticed that this mage was helping the other two with some kind of supportive magic. The man was able to take more punishment than Julius would expect from someone with such a style.

Additionally, the woman was faster and stronger than she had been when she attacked him earlier.

The woman was a pain in the ass to pin down. Her shadow magic made her able to disengage easily, and he always had to be wary of her attacks because he really didn’t want to deal with her poison while fighting all three of them at the same time.

The man was probably the smallest threat among them. He was skilled, but he didn’t really pose a danger to Julius. The main issue he was having with the man was that he was always in Julius’s face. It didn’t matter how hard Julius hit the man; he never seemed to get injured or harmed. He just got back up and kept on harassing him while his team tried to kill Julius.

After Julius kicked the man away for the dozenth time and had to dodge the other two’s attack once again, he sighed audibly. He needed to change things up. He also needed to figure out where the mage was attacking from.

If he was able to handle the mage, he felt very confident in taking down the other two. So while he parried and evaded the woman and the man, he stretched his senses outward to find the mage.

He kept on moving, scanning the environment carefully for anything that stood out. A speck of mana or aura, something he could use to find the mage.

Unfortunately, since his attention was shifted away from the other two, he felt himself get tagged by the shadow woman’s magic. It had a bolt of shadow mana that grazed his skin, but that was enough for her poison to work its way into him.

On the bright side, he had some experience with the death-aspect poison and was able to halt its progress before it started to spread. However, this took even more of his focus, and when he wasn’t able to remove it right away, he realized that there was a quicker way to get rid of it.

He created a small blade of mana in his other hand and surrounded it with his Sharpness Concept before slicing a hunk of his infected skin off his arm. Then, with a swift burst of his aura, he encircled the small amount of remaining poison and blasted the hell out of it with the ruinous aura.

He didn’t even bother to use his healing skill to regenerate his flesh. He didn’t want them to know that he could heal so easily. For all she knew, he had been protecting himself with a poison resistance skill and not a healing skill. He already had plans to surprise her with his healing skill later on.

Now that he had removed the poison, he was able to refocus on finding the annoying mage hiding around.

So as he fended off the attacks from the two of them, he searched every inch of the forest.

Eventually, he found something. At first, he had overlooked it because it was so small and blended into the environment, but when he sensed the mana spear surge out of it, he knew that it wasn’t normal.

It was like a small orb of some sort, and once he noticed that one, he searched around for anything similar. To his surprise, he found that there were at least half a dozen of these small invisible orbs constantly encircling him.

He suspected that this was the reason he hadn’t found the origin of the mage’s attacks yet. He had been looking for a person, but failed to realize that the mage could have been using the orbs as mediums to attack him.

He also began to suspect that this was how they managed to track him. He had been looking for people following him and totally neglected anything else. One of these orbs could have been following him from the beginning, but he wouldn’t have noticed because they were invisible to his [Spatial Perception] and blended seamlessly with the ambient mana.

Now that he had found these orbs, he could examine them even further. So while he kicked the man away into the distance once again and threw a spike of mana at the shadow woman’s chest, forcing her to create a barrier to protect herself, he followed the tiny connection of aura he sensed coming from all of these orbs.

It was hard to do with all of the chaos around him, but he used [Sage of Savagery] to filter out all the unnecessary clutter. And after a bit of time, he finally zeroed in on the mage’s position and couldn’t help but laugh.

The mage was indeed outside of his range of perception. But not where he had been expecting. They were high in the sky, well over a couple of hundred feet above him, where they could observe the entire battle unbothered.

Of course, they were invisible as well and managed to hide their aura with spectacular skill. However, their connection to their drone, like orbs, betrayed them.

He already knew what he was going to do.

So as the man stabbed toward him again with his recovered blade, Julius didn’t dodge and instead stepped forward, letting the blade pierce his chest. He smiled when he saw the confused expression on the man’s face, and before the man could disengage, Julius slammed his face directly into the man’s nose.

As Julius was completely wrapped up with the man, the woman understood that this was a golden opportunity and committed fully to her next attack. A powerful rippling of shadow mana was coming directly at Julius’s back. But before it could reach him, he used his new necklace that he had been charging the entire time he had been tangled with the man.

In a powerful surge of mana, he was teleported away. The attack that had been meant for him was now heading straight for the man. The woman desperately tried to break it apart, but it was too late. The attack struck her teammate, and the man screamed as the poison went to work.

While this was happening, Julius took advantage of the surprise and appeared a hundred feet away. The orbs no longer having a visual on him, he sensed the mage above him frantically searching for him.

They turned toward his general direction, as they must have sensed his mana, but it was already too late. He had used this time to create over two dozen very condensed spikes of fire and kinetic energy. Contained within them was everything he had been improving on. Ruinous aura was surging through the circuits he carefully grafted inside them.

He could feel his nose bleeding as the focus and willpower to hold them together was almost too much for his mind and body to handle. But he was still grinning widely as he managed to send them screaming through the air toward the unsuspecting mage. Lighting up the night sky in a brilliant display of fireworks.