Path to Transcendence

Chapter 369: Hear It Out

The man tried to hide his alarm at all of the undead bodies littering the floor, but Julius could tell that it had unsettled him. Julius didn’t blame him for his reaction. There were a lot of undead. At the time, it didnʼt seem like there were that many undead, but now looking at all of the bodies around them, the number was quite large.

Perhaps, it might have been better not to come along with Kuro. However, he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the same situation as he had been a year ago. While people still wanted to kill him, it wasn’t like he couldn’t defend himself.

As the failed assassination attempts had proven, he could take on a Tier 4 even at Tier 3. Sure, hiding his real power had helped him a lot. But the days when he would go out of his way to hide his power were slowly coming to an end.

He kept on doing it mainly out of habit, and it was useful. Fighting someone who underestimated him was much easier than fighting someone who was prepared for all his skills.

He looked at the man, who was trying his best to avoid bringing up the elephant in the room. Julius could tell that he wanted to ask him what had happened, but he held back out of politeness or some other reason.

In the meantime, Julius watched as Kuro used some kind of soul magic to extract the essence from the undead. This essence then funneled into the lich’s core like it was the most natural thing. But he couldn’t understand what the man was doing to achieve this.

It was almost like a more advanced usage of aura. Instead of using aura to directly influence something, soul magic felt a lot more sneaky, like carefully carving your way into something only to later exploit it.

Despite his proudly earned aura abilities, he didn’t think he would be able to accomplish the same thing that Kuro was showing him. It was an entirely different type of magic than the one he was used to. He knew his limits. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if he would be able to use soul magic.

At least not in the way that he saw in front of him. Perhaps there was a more rugged version that let him brute-force it like he did with many of his techniques. He would probably be pretty good at that.

It was actually quite generous of Kuro to let Julius watch his skills up close. Most of the time, these types of skills were quite private. The fact that Kuro was letting him inspect them was an odd display of trust for someone he didn’t know.

Julius actually had a feeling that there was something he wasn’t getting. Something that made Kuro trust Julius, or at least had him being overly nice to Julius. He suspected that it had something to do with the man’s soul magic. Perhaps, there was a way to find out what kind of person someone was by using some kind of skill.

Or maybe the man could see how strong Julius’s soul was and was attempting to get closer to him. That was also a real possibility. However, he didn’t see why Kuro would do such a thing. It wasn’t like a powerful soul at Tier 3 was enough reason to be so nice. There must be something else.

“How did you manage to kill all of these undead?” Kuro finally couldn’t help himself and asked when they came across their hundredth body.

Julius smiled at the man. “With great effort and sweat.”

All he got in return was a dubious look toward the piles of bodies in front of them.

***

“You got a flying familiar?” He asked Kuro with awe as he admired the beautiful bird before him. Its feathers were of the softest white and glowed with a slight teal energy. It was also quite large, or at least large enough to hold several people at once.

The man held his chin up proudly. “Yep! Pretty cool, huh?”

“Absolutely, does it make traveling through the forest easier?” He asked curiously. He could imagine how much travel time would be lessened when you didn’t have to traverse through the trees and dense brush of the forest.

“It does, but it also can be more dangerous,” Kuro commented.

Julius frowned. “Dangerous?”

“I mean, not around this area of the forest. But as you go deeper in the forest, there are other monsters who can fly and often hunt from the sky. She has the power of around a Tier 4, which dissuades most monsters from attacking, but there have been times when she has been attacked while flying around,” Kuro explained to him.

“Oh, that doesn’t sound very pleasant,” Julius said with a wince. He hadn’t been that deep into the forest yet, but from what he had heard, it was common to see powerful beasts roaming around once you left the outer ring.

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“It’s fine. She is really fast,” Kuro said with pride while patting his familiar on the back.

“What’s her name?”

“Syla.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” Julius complimented her, and got a cheerful chirp from her in return.

Kuro laughed and gestured towards her. “You can get on if you like. She won’t mind. You said that you were heading back to Peralt, and it will be much faster if we ride on her.”

Julius used a few moments to think about it, but the allure of flying on a majestic creature was too hard to decline and he quickly found himself climbing aboard Syla’s back with eagerness.

***

They both climbed off Syla right outside the walls of Peralt. Julius was very glad he had chosen to take a ride. It had been quite the magical experience. Being able to move as fast as he was able to on his feet was no comparison to what he had just experienced.

Flying was a totally different thing altogether. Not only that, but Syla was wicked fast. Like ridiculously fast. He almost fell off her back when she took off. He could have sworn they almost broke the sound barrier.

The only bad part was that it was over so quickly. They had arrived back in Peralt in a matter of a few minutes. In a place where spatial transportation was heavily limited, if not outright impossible, a faster method of traveling was nice to have. He was a little jealous that Kuro had a familiar with such usefulness.

All Julius had was a cute green spirit the size of his hand who ate and slept all day. Drasil wasn’t going to be giving him a ride anytime soon.

“You enjoyed it?” Kuro asked with a knowing look on his face.

Julius grinned widely and gave Syla a grateful scratch. “Absolutely. She is wonderful.”

He got a soft nudge of appreciation from her in return.

“Well, let me know if you want to get a ride from her again. I run a lot of errands for my master in the forest. If you want me to take you to or from one of the bases inside the forest, it wouldn’t be much of an issue. Also, it would seem that Syla has taken a liking to you, which is not something I can say for everyone.”

Julius smiled. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I might have to take you up on it. If not just to experience flying on Syla again.”

They talked as they approached the entrance to the town. When they entered through the tall walls of Peralt, they exchanged information and Kuro told him that he had to report back to his master. Apparently, he was already supposed to be back but had taken a detour to explore that rift.

He also told Julius that he could take the lich’s core to the guild if he wanted to sell it. Apparently, now that there was so much of the undead’s essence inside of it, the core was practically on par with a Tier 4 core. This made it much more valuable, and the guild would pay good money for something like it.

Kuro also mentioned that this core could possibly rank him up to the next rank if he was lucky. The core was proof that he had closed an undead rift and if he answered some of their questions, it was likely they would either increase his rank or get him close to the next one since the core was so powerful.

Honestly, Julius believed his chances of ranking up were high. He was only E-rank which meant he didn’t have much further to go in order to rank up. Plus, after that gathering mission, he had already gathered a good amount of points.

Thus, Julius found himself standing in line at the guild, looking around at all of the other people who were in there either submitting their completed missions or for some other reason. Thanks to Syla, he had returned to Peralt much earlier than he had initially expected.

When it was finally his turn he went up to the lady receptionist. However, when he started to explain his situation, he was directed to a back room where someone would come and inspect the core.

To his surprise, he was welcomed by the same man who had done his examination earlier. He believed his name had been Ashton.

“I see you have been busy already. Taking on that Flowing Ginkon mission and now this?” The man said to him with an amused shake of the head.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. But coming back with such a unique item poses a lot of questions. It’s not every day we see such a pristine lich core. I am also curious how you managed to come across the rift and clear it by yourself,” Ashton said with an attentive look at Julius.

“Oh, I didn’t clear it by myself. I have a Tier 4 right alongside me. He was the one who actually defeated the lich. He was also the one who removed the core. He said that I should take it to you guys and that you would find good use for it,” Julius said honestly.

“Who was this Tier 4? Was he a friend?”

“No, he was just a guy I came across randomly. I am not sure if he would want me to tell you his name, but he didn’t seem like a bad person,” Julius explained.

Ashton looked at Julius for a little while with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Would you be willing to come with me so I can verify your words?” He eventually asked Julius.

When the man saw Julius’s look of hesitation, he added, “Don’t worry, you won’t have to tell us who the man was. But we need to make sure you didn’t just buy this core and are using it as a way to deceive your way to a higher rank. It’s just guild policy.”

Julius had expected something like this, especially if he was looking to increase his guild rank using the core as proof. The fact that they didn’t seem to need Kuro’s name was reassuring as well. Which is why he nodded and followed Ashton to verify his statement.

However, as they were heading down the hall to the same room that Julius had first gone through for his examination, Ashton turned to him with a weird look.

“I actually wanted to speak to you about an opportunity that came up recently. I think you might find it interesting. Curious about it?”

Julius narrowed his eyes but couldn’t find a reason not to hear it out at the very least, and nodded his head slowly. But in the back of his mind, he hoped it was something exciting.