Path to Transcendence

Chapter 342: Long Awaited Evolution

After all of the time he had spent meditating and trying to find a way to acquire a Space Concept, he finally managed to pull it off. A small part of him had written it off, and he was tempted to wait until he reached Tier 4 to try again. After all, there were still plenty of ways he could improve and get stronger.

It wasn’t like this was his only option. It was just one of many, as well as the one he wanted to accomplish the most. However, he was glad that he didn’t and had persevered to the end. It was worth it.

He reviewed the notification once more just because he wanted to see it in all of its glory.

Congratulations, you have acquired the Concept of Space: Chaotic Space

He grinned at it, but tilted his head when he noticed more notifications awaiting him.

[Spatial Crack lvl 10 -> lvl 12]

He almost forgot because learning a Concept was such a big deal to him, but he had just successfully teleported himself for the first time using nothing but his own abilities. That was something to celebrate just as much as the other stuff.

Sure, his body was in pretty rough shape. Almost all of his clothes were gone. But that wasn’t exactly new to him. He had a healing skill for a reason and made sure to activate it to heal the rest of the injuries that he wasn’t able to take care of when he was unconscious.

Although he was a little bit worried because there was a bit of pain everywhere, especially pertaining to his soul. He couldn’t even open his eyes quite yet. But it also could just be because his eyes were completely gone. His healing skill was working on them and seemed to be taking longer than usual.

Eyes were apparently more complicated to heal and thus required some additional patience.

He tried to extend his [Spatial Perception], but found it to be too much. He was bombarded with unknown sensations and had to shut it off right away. Unlike the version of the skill he had gotten used to, something must have changed when he gained his Concept of Space.

As far as he could tell, he hadn’t evolved the skill quite yet, so it didn’t make that much sense. So at the moment, he didn’t even know if he had truly successfully teleported. For all he knew, he could be in the middle of the wilderness.

It almost felt as if his newly acquired Concept was still acclimating to his body and soul. The energy from it was still quite ripe and still heavily present. But he could sense that it was slowly decreasing as time went on.

He just had to be patient and wait until his body was ready. He was just hoping he was still in the training room.

For the time being, he began to meditate deep into his soul and went over the other more interesting notification.

Notice: A proper Concept has been detected for a previously downgraded skill, [Spatial Crack]. Would you like to use this new Concept to forcibly acquire [Spatial Tear]?

Warning: Prior improvements in [Spatial Crack] will not be acknowledged in the newly acquired [Spatial Tear] skill.

He frowned at this. Apparently, with his new Space Concept, he could now learn the proper version of [Spatial Crack], the one he was supposed to get if he already had a proper Concept. However, there seemed to be an evident downside to choosing to do so.

If he chose to upgrade immediately, it sounded like all of the work he had put into [Spatial Crack] would disappear.

He didn’t really want that. But he also couldn’t deny that another epic skill would be nice. [Spatial Tear] sounded like it would be much more helpful and potentially an easier skill to use. At the current moment, [Spatial Crack] is quite inconvenient to use. It took a laughably long time to use, and even longer if he wanted to teleport through it.

Just because he had been able to make it work didn’t mean he would be able to use it in a real battle. If he tried to, the enemy would have practically a whole week to shove their blades into his skull.

Thus, what else could [Spatial Tear] provide that wasn’t included in the downgraded version? He was leaning towards keeping the inferior version and upgrading it so he could get a more useful skill.

Plus, if he was able to rank up [Flash Step] with a Concept of Space, perhaps he could get something more useful for movement. Then all of his teleportation woes would be fixed.

He quickly made his decision and declined the offer to upgrade the skill back to its original form directly. He had a good feeling that he would see more benefit from evolving [Spatial Crack] the old-fashioned way in the long run.

After denying the notification, he had nothing left to do but sit and wait. His eyes were still forming with help from [Phoenix Renewal], but it was obvious from how long it was taking that something was wrong. He had lost his eyes before, yet they had never taken this long to regenerate.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

He attempted to try and use [Spatial Perception], but was once again overwhelmed by the chaotic nature of the sensations. It was nauseating so he stopped.

However, before he could give up, he reminded himself of the first moments he gained [Spatial Perception] and recalled how hard it had been to use at the beginning. It took him over a year until he was able to use it with any proficiency.

He only managed to do that by repeatedly exposing himself to that uncomfortable feeling. That was why he gritted his teeth and pumped the skill. The sensations came roaring back, and he felt his mind unable to comprehend what he was sensing.

However, even though he was on the brink of throwing up, he persevered and kept it running. He did his best to organize the various sensations, but honestly, it didn’t do him a lot of good. It was simply a task that distracted him and let him focus a little easier.

He did actually end up throwing up. It was just a little too much, and he felt his body lurch forward and hurl up his dinner. However, this didn’t stop him; he kept running the skill.

Eventually, he felt something change within it. Something that he had been waiting for a long time.

[Spatial Perception lvl 19 -> lvl 20]

[Spatial Perception] has advanced to level 20. Would you like to evolve the skill?

He accepted the notification before he even read the entire message.

Appraising requirements…

Congratulations. Skills requirement met.

Congratulations. Concept requirement met.

Congratulations. Soul requirement met.

Skill [Spatial Perception] is evolving… possible advancements: [Absolute Spatial Perception], [Third Eye], [Total Awareness], and [Spatial Calculation]

He read over the options and couldn’t help but scrunch his eyebrows. Each one seemed a little bit different.

As usual, the first option appeared to be the most general upgrade of the skill. [Absolute Perception] sounded amazing. It was probably just like his old skill, but with some nice additions. He liked the sound of absolute. It made it sound impressive.

His second option, [Third Eye], looked to be a skill that resembled the old mythological stories about a third eye. If he could recall correctly, it had to do with gaining spiritual sight. Some of the powers in the stories included seeing auras or other things not visible to normal sight.

However, there were also stories about precognition, which he couldn’t help but wonder if it would be a powerful skill to have. Being able to predict the future sounded overpowered and could help him immensely in fights.

However, he had questions about how far this ability would go. How limited would the precognition be? Because there were skills like [Sixth Sense] and [Danger Sense] to help alert people to such threats. The downside with these skills was that the users would be alerted very subtly and without much detail. It would usually be a gut feeling or a tingle in one’s spine. It was likely because he had [Sixth Sense] before that he was being offered this skill.

Regardless, would this skill be similar, only more powerful? Or would it be vastly different?

He hesitantly pushed [Third Eye] to the side, though. His perception was a big reason for his combat effectiveness, and he wanted to keep that as a part of his skill set. It was why he was already leaning toward going with the general upgrade.

While seeing the future sounded nice, his other skills were already heavily reliant on his perception from his skill.

He then looked at the third option and immediately wasn’t interested. It just sounded like a worse version of the general upgrade. He wanted to take advantage of the spatial aspect of the skill. And [Total Awareness] seemed like a version he could have gotten by leveling up a more generic skill, like his old [Awareness] skill.

Finally, he took a look at [Spatial Calculation]. Now that was a skill that interested him. While it sounded kind of nerdy, he was already imagining that this skill could help his newfound teleportation technique.

Perhaps it would alleviate some of the troubles he had when creating three separate cracks and connecting them. It was very likely that he was offered this just for this very reason. Or the skill could have been totally different and combined [Third Eye] and [Absolute Spatial Perception] into a singular, more versatile skill.

Calculating enemiesʼ movements might help me predict their actions, he thought, amused.

He knew he couldnʼt, no matter how much his curiosity wanted him to choose it. It was the exact reason why he couldn’t choose the other skills. [Spatial Perception] was already such a unique skill as rare and such a pivotal ability that he couldn’t afford to risk it.

That was the reason he chose [Absolute Spatial Perception]. While it didn’t sound as fancy, he was confident that it would serve his purpose.

Congratulations, skill [Absolute Spatial Perception] (Epic) acquired.

After a very very long time using the skill, he finally managed to evolve it. In a lot of ways it felt liberating. It had been hovering over his shoulders for a long time and he couldn’t help but feel like he was being held back by not upgrading it.

However, now that he had, it was an immense relief.

The feeling he had wasn’t that drastic. Sometimes when he was learning a new skill, a flood of information bombarded his mind. Perhaps it was because he was upgrading it to a general skill, but it wasn’t that much information. It was also a good thing. This could have meant that the skill retained many of its previous features. Features that Julius very much loved.

He barely let the skill have time to settle in before he activated it. It was actually a misstatement to say that he activated it. Much like his body enhancement and aura skill, there was barely any need to activate it. He could see everything around him.

He could see the two beds occupying the room and a matching set of tables by their side. He could see—

Ah shit… He groaned to himself.

It took him far too long to realize it but eventually he understood that he wasn’t in the training room anymore. He was in Lily’s and Aubrey’s shared room.

He was certain of this because Lily was sitting right beside him, cleaning his vomit-covered chest with a cloth, looking very worried.