Path to Transcendence

Chapter 325: Introduce Ourselves

Toby POV

When Mackenzie told him and Aaron about the job, they had both been a bit hesitant. It didn’t have to deal with the fact that they were killing a person. No, they had taken plenty of assassination jobs before.

However, they usually strayed from those involving certain people. One of those groups included children. Especially younger ones.

Yet, she had come to them with a job to kill a boy. He wasn’t a little boy, but he was still young. The only thing that made the idea somewhat tolerable was when she mentioned the boy was Tier 3 and had done some bad things to deserve the punishment.

He didn’t know who had hired Mackenzie, and she wouldn’t say, no matter how much they tried to get her to talk. But he had a feeling that the mission came directly from her family. He knew her well enough by now that she only ever got this quiet when it involved her Clan or people connected with it.

They all believed it would be a simple job. A Tier 3 boy? They had assassinated a Tier 4 noble and his guards the other month without any issue. A Tier 3 boy was a walk in the park compared to that mission.

At least that was what they had thought.

Everything had been carefully planned; no matter how easy they thought it was going to be, they understood the need to be professional. They found out everything about the boy they could find.

They learned who his friends were and what his schedule was like. While he seemed friendly with some influential kids, it shouldn’t matter. It wasn’t like they were actually going to be assassinating them. Their only target was the boy, and he was an orphan with no family that might retaliate.

They even investigated his abilities, although that was a bit easier to figure out since he was an active participant in the local tournament.

They observed him fighting and labeled him as a warrior who used his fists as his primary method of attacking. This was good and bad for them.

The good news was that he didn’t seem to be the most sturdy or tanky type of bare-fist fighter, which improved their chances of killing him with poison.

But they were a bit worried because they all noticed how quick the boy’s reactions were. Undoubtedly, he had some type of advanced perception skill to go along with an equally impressive body enhancement skill. Additionally, the boy was quite skilled, as he had to be since he had claimed a top sixteen spot for the final round.

Thankfully, he was still just Tier 3. If he had advanced to Tier 4, then Toby wasn’t sure they would be able to get the drop on him. But the three of them were all Tier 4s, and if it came to it, they would take him down.

However, all of their plans went to shit when the first plan failed spectacularly. Mackenzie had managed to administer her potent poison, but the boy reacted even faster than they could have ever expected.

Before they could react, he had Mackenzie down on the ground, completely immobilized. Sure, the boy had managed to take her by surprise, but it was still alarming to see him keep her there and somehow disturb her shadow skills that should have allowed her to escape.

She escaped only thanks to the good fortune of the other man intervening. The only other way to save her would be to cause an even larger disturbance than they already did.

While the lords who ruled over Heston didn’t like to interfere with stuff like this, they wouldn’t hesitate to step in and make their presence known if something got too out of hand.

Fortunately, it didn’t have to come to that, and she was able to make it away safely.

However, what came as an even bigger surprise was their target leaving himself wide open to them. Perhaps he believed he was safe after the failed attempt, but he must not have known that Toby had been watching him the entire time with his unique skill.

A part of him was worried about it being a bait, but after making sure that nobody was following the boy, they decided to finish the job. They had a reputation to uphold, and they were already paid up front.

Yet, the boy managed to hold his own. It didn’t matter what they threw at the boy; he just didn’t die. Why couldn’t he just give up and die? It would make their job so much easier.

He kept on supporting his team. He made sure that Aaron was always protected by infusing his body with mana and other supportive skills. He also ensured that the boy wasn’t able to get comfortable, always throwing a random attack at him, forcing him to either dodge or block it.

Some people liked to tease Toby that his method of fighting was not honorable and that it was sneaky. But, to hell with these people. The only honor there is in the world is the one where you live long enough to experience it.

He didn’t care if he had to fight dirty. As long as he survived, it didn’t matter. You canʼt complain if youʼre dead.

Yet as he thought this to himself, he widened his eyes as the tide shifted so suddenly that Toby froze for a brief second. The boy managed to disappear into thin air, and Aaron got hit by Mackenzie’s attack.

Thankfully, the woman was able to pull back before the poison killed her teammate, but that momentary lapse of concentration was enough that he lost view of the boy.

He frantically searched everywhere with his skills.

He sensed the mana before he saw the attack. It was a concentrated surge of mana right below him. When he looked down, all he saw were dozens of powerful constructs tearing through the sky, right where he was. It was like a brilliant wave of blue light spearing toward him with such deadly speed.

How did he find me? And how is he able to control so many attacks at once? He thought desperately to himself. His stealth skill was really good. Not many people should have been able to see through it, yet this boy did.

He threw up every barrier and defensive skill he could, but it wasn’t enough. The mana spikes tore through his defenses, and countless constructs bombarded him. Each of them detonated in his face, and before he knew it, everything went black.

***

Julius POV

The entire night sky lit up in a ball of flame. It didn’t matter what the mage did, but Julius ensured that he overwhelmed him with sure firepower and explosions.

When the plume of smoke disappeared, he could see a small black speck falling out of the air. He wasn’t able to sense anything coming from the burnt and blackened body.

He heard a primal screech from the woman and soon found himself getting attacked by a wave of shadow magic.

Unlike her previously small and compressed attacks, this one was just a blunt blast of death energy containing all of her rage at losing her teammate. While it was impressive to look at and hard to dodge, there wasn’t the same level of compression that he had been worried about before.

As such, he had a pretty easy time dissipating the effects before they could seep in.

He also got attacked by the remaining man, but knowing that the mage wasn’t there to support them anymore, he decided to go for it. Without hesitation, he grappled the man with the shortsword, ignoring the stabs to the body.

He was more than happy to take a few injuries because, in return, he used all of his aura and kinetic energy to crush the man in his arms. Now that the mage wasn’t helping protect his teammate, Julius’s abilities absolutely crushed any resistance they faced.

The man groaned out in pain, and before the woman could come over and help, he had already formed a condensed ball of mana in his palm. He then proceeded to shove the orb of mana against the man’s head, detonating it without regard to his own safety.

Of course, he made sure to create a barrier to protect himself, but it didn’t do much. The orb exploded in a deadly boom. Julius lost a nice chunk of his face, but his opponent came out much worse for wear. The only thing remaining of him was his lower jaw. The entire upper half of his skull was a mist of blood.

He got stabbed by the woman before he could react, and kicked her away from him. This time, the poison was more concentrated and managed to penetrate his defenses. He could already tell that it was eating away at his flesh.

He turned his ruinous aura to chip away at it while he used [Phoenix Renewal] to heal his injuries before directing it toward the poison.

He saw the woman’s face, which was consumed with rage and grief, slowly morph into one of shock as his flesh regenerated before her very eyes. Only now realizing that he could heal such egregious injuries.

She tried to run, but he had a good idea of how her abilities worked at this point and blasted out his ruinous aura in every direction around him, focusing on destroying any and all shadow mana techniques.

This worked way better than he could have hoped because while he disrupted her skills, he also managed to hurt her with his aura. Then, as she started to dash away from him, he used a powerful pulse of kinetic energy to stall her and grabbed her by the arm.

Without any hesitation and with more satisfaction than was probably appropriate, he lifted her up in the air and slammed her down onto the ground as hard as he could. What he didn’t think about was the fact that she wasn’t as durable as the other man had been, and her arm was ripped away before he could slam her.

Still, she screamed out as her arm was literally ripped clean from her shoulder. She tried to make a run for it, but he wasn’t going to allow her to do that again. Nope, not on his watch.

So he grabbed hold of her once more and this time, using her leg as a handhold, he slammed her into the ground face first. Hard, but not hard enough to kill her. He wanted to daze and stun her more than anything else.

Thankfully, his strategy worked because she barely put up a resistance as he pressured her with his aura and held her down with his kinetic energy. There was nothing she could do as he made sure to ruthlessly tear apart any mana workings she attempted.

His aura viciously destroyed anything in its path. It didn’t matter how hard or desperately she tried; he shoved all of his unrestrained aura into her body and watched as her soul started to warp under the effects of it.

Her screams slowly changed into one of soft muttering and crying. Only when he was confident that he had her wholly secured did he get off her back, sitting next to her with a slightly exhausted smile.

“I think it’s time we introduce ourselves properly.”