Path to Transcendence

Chapter 389: Savath

Savath POV

His mind was cloudy. There were huge gaps in his memory. He could remember some things, but for the most part, he couldn’t figure out how he managed to get here. From the hints provided by this boy and the fact that he was inside a rift, it was likely that he wasn’t even real.

This was a copy of the real Savath that someone or something had managed to create for this specific rift. However, that led to even more questions. How was someone able to do this?

The last memory he could recall was that he was already well into Tier 5. He was one of the few considered a candidate for advancing to Tier 6 at such a young age.

Even when compared to other demons, he was a top talent. The most likely scenario he could come up with was that he had somehow agreed to become a part of this rift. Or at the very least agreed to let someone make a spiritual copy of him to put in here. However, that also brought some questions.

The only people who were able to do something of that level were terrifying monsters or the Words of the World itself. Not something a regular Tier 6 would be able to accomplish without extraordinary skill or aid.

He was also pressured by the rift to do its bidding and at the moment, the rift was telling him that he needed to kill this boy. Something that Savath was currently having a hard time agreeing with. But no matter how much he fought it, there was nothing he could do.

Demons were a proud and powerful race. When put up against humans, there was no comparison. Demons were far superior. No question. Only a rare few humans could ever reach the level of an actual demon.

With that being said, Savath would be more than happy to welcome this human boy as a demon. His aura alone would earn him the respect of most demonkind. It told an entire story about the boy’s past and displayed how strong he was for his Tier.

It pained him that the human boy’s path would end here—such a waste.

At least that was what he had been expecting after he captured the boy with his restriction technique. Savath commonly used this technique against people who were quite shifty. It also had the additional benefit of restricting his opponentʼs spatial techniques. Skills like [Blink] or [Teleportation] were heavily limited and required his opponent to overwhelm his willpower as well as physically remove the shackles if he wanted to escape.

That wasn’t something that was currently possible for the boy. It was such a shame.

However, when he felt the boy vanish from his sight and the shackles dropped to the ground, now that they had nobody to hold onto, he couldn’t help but feel immense confusion. He threw out his senses and eventually found the boy standing off to the side, creating complex constructs that nobody at his age or tier should be able to do so easily.

The technique that required weaving aura into mana constructs was a highly advanced skill that most people never bothered to learn. Just for starters, it required aura control on par with their own mana manipulations. It also required a specialized construct creation skill that was able to utilize aura with complete synergy. He didn’t even want to mention how strict the soul requirements were in handling such complex manipulations.

Just that alone would put the boy in another category of elites. However, there was a healing skill that Savath sensed ripple through the boy’s body with such terrifying power. It healed the boy’s broken spine without a second thought. He also had the perception of an elite scout and had the physical strength rivalling some Tier 4s.

Then there was that movement skill that allowed him to escape Savath’s clutches. That wasn’t any normal spatial skill. If it were, Savath would have been able to disrupt it before it could start to activate.

This was something else as well. Something more primal. It was almost like he was using chaotic space to rip a hole into reality.

He scoffed at the idea of that. Who was that stupid to try to do something like that? Not to mention, at Tier 3, that would be suicide. Any person who attempted that would be dead before they managed to get to whatever location they were trying to go.

It would take a—

He froze as he came to a terrifying realization. It would take an extraordinary healing skill just to survive the chaotic nature of that space. Something the boy might have.

Who the fuck was this human?

What was even more unbelievable was that the human wasn’t done yet. Not even close.

Savath laughed loudly as he sensed a thunderous pulse of power. The boy started to overload his body with mana, kinetic energy, and aura. Normally, this amount of energy would kill the user before they could take a single step, but with his healing skill, the human was able to hold his body together.

He didn’t know how this human had the mana to keep it up. The mana requirement must have been incredible. Even demons with their superior capacity wouldn’t be able to power so much through their bodies and then use a healing skill on top of it.

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Savath was barely fast enough to react when the human disappeared once again. Like before, he couldn’t sense the connecting tether that most spatial skills used. Thus, he had no idea where this human would reappear from.

Which meant he was forced to release a shockwave of Authority in all directions around him, just to play it safe. He actually felt his Authority make contact with something, but by that time, the boy’s fist was already slamming toward the back of his head.

Savath reinforced his body with mana and prepared several thin barriers of mana to block the strike. However, he was still sent stumbling forward from the sheer amount of power contained in the punch. A punch that eviscerated the boy’s own fist from the backlash.

Savath used his own spatial skills to reposition, but was pretty confident that the boy could track him somehow. He said this because by the time he reappeared, several blades made from the aura-woven mana were already slamming into his chest, carving a thick line into his hardened skin.

Usually, a construct created by a Tier 3 wouldn’t have hurt him, but the blades tore through his barriers without much issue. The human’s aura helped a lot as well. The destructive nature of the aura broke down the integrity of his barriers. He also noticed that the Concepts he had felt from before were much stronger than he had anticipated.

If he had been Tier 5, this wouldn’t have worked. The aura wouldn’t have been able to affect him through his domain, but since he was weakened to Tier 4, he wasn’t able to prevent this tyrannical aura from working.

Savath compressed some mana into his injury, staunching the blood, and parried the follow-up strike. He grunted as he was forced to take another step back.

This fucking human was pumping so much power through his body. It would generally be suicide for most.

The human was basically a Tier 4 at this point. They had a powerful soul, at least several epic-ranked skills, well-developed fighting instincts, powerful Concepts, advanced mana control, and equally advanced aura control.

And now, with the recent power up, he had a powerful body to help him utilize all of that. He was just missing the actual title of Tier 4. It didn’t even matter that he didn’t have an Authority of his own yet. The pure strength of his willpower and the remarkable nature of his Concepts were enough to mimic one. Funnily enough, Savath suspected it was stronger than many of the Authorities of other Tier 4s.

He couldn’t help but feel amused as the boy slowly backed him into a corner. The boy was relentless. Powerful bursts of kinetic energy had him on the back foot. It didn’t matter to the human if Savath landed a particularly harsh blow in return. He shattered the human’s ribs or arms on multiple occasions, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. The little monster just ignored it and kept on its assault with that same manic grin.

After all, it wasn’t like Savath was doing more damage than the boy was doing to itself. Whatever the human was doing, he was barely able to keep hold of his own body as it crumpled from the influx of power.

It was brutal and it was insane. And it was exactly how a true demon would fight.

There was no way for Savath to get any space. He teleported away and tried to gain some distance, but the boy was already on top of him. The boy was still somehow able to sense where he would appear before Savath could recover from the movement. It just put him in a worse position than before.

The only thing that consoled his pride was the fact that the boy wouldn’t be able to continue such actions for long. At least that was what he was hoping for, because at the moment, he didn’t look like he was slowing down at all.

The excess power channeled through his body caused the boy’s flesh to start peeling away in large chunks. However, despite the evident pain, he continued the pressure.

Savath defended himself from the continuous blows from the human as well as he could. However, this body just wasn’t able to keep up. It didn’t help matters that tearing out half of the human’s chest didn’t seem to make the boy flinch.

It wasn’t just his tier that had been weakened. His skills had similarly been affected, as well as all other aspects. He was weaker than he was even when he was in Tier 4.

Still, Savath was slowly accruing damage, and nothing he did was able to stop the human. Something he found he wasn’t all that upset about. At this point, he was half hoping that the boy would kill him, because that would mean Savath wouldn’t have to kill him as a result. He would hate to see such potential wasted.

His eyes glimmered in pride as he saw the boy suddenly pause from his relentless assault and display a truly magnificent work of mana manipulation. The aura-woven constructs that the boy had covered his arms with melted down like molten metal and coalesced into a massive sword.

As this was happening, the human had thrown a dozen spikes of highly compressed mana at Savath. They weren’t the most dangerous of attacks, but this forced him to defend himself, not allowing him to get a breather. It was a small detail, but it was one that only an experienced warrior would think of.

Then in one smooth movement, he hefted the sword over his shoulder and swung it with as much strength as he could. The kinetic energy enforcing the boy’s strike was so strong that his arms blew up before the sword struck.

It was only thanks to the human’s ability to control the sword with mana manipulation that it didn’t just drop to the floor.

Savath teleported once more, just to see if he could evade it. But like the previous times, the boy was one step ahead of him and was already swinging at his chest by the time he appeared.

Savath tried to disrupt it, but the aura-woven fibers of the construct were too strong. He could only create barrier after barrier around his palms as he used his hands to block the blade. This sword, which had been created using an advanced technique and several powerful Concepts, one of which was an evolved Sharpness Concept, ripped through his barriers and chest like it was nothing.

He was able to do nothing except collapse to his knees as he felt his internal organs torn to shreds. He tried to tie them together with mana, but it was all in vain. The damage was done, and he had lost the most valuable thing a demon had—his core. The blade had cut his core into two pieces. It was a miracle that he wasn’t already dead.

Surprisingly, he was fine with all of this. Perhaps, if he were the real Savath, he would have been more upset that a human of all things defeated him. A human who was a whole tier below him at that.

However, it was a well-earned victory. Even a demon as prideful as he was acknowledged when he was beaten.