Path to Transcendence

Chapter 451: Humbling

Christina POV

Christine was a top-tier talent. That wasn’t her being pretentious or arrogant, either. It was just a simple fact. She and her brother had been trained since they were young by some of the best teachers the Empire had to offer.

However, she liked to believe that she was the more powerful of the two of them. After all, she enjoyed training more than Cyrus and spent more time honing her skills. Cyrus spent too much time messing around with his friends instead of training.

While she wasn’t quite on the same level of talent as Derek, she was confident that she was one step behind. With that being said, she didn’t think there were many people in the entire world who had Derek’s talent. She didn’t know how her mother didn’t understand this. For some reason, she always liked to brag about Christina and Cyrus to others, constantly comparing them to Derek.

She had been extremely excited to see Derek again after a whole year. Not only that, but she and Cyrus would be able to train side by side with Derek. That wasn’t something she had the pleasure of doing in all her years of knowing her cousin.

While her father had to force Cyrus to participate in the training, she didn’t need any convincing. She was already leaping at the opportunity. Seeing how Derek trained might give her some needed inspiration with her own lightning magic.

Furthermore, several powerful individuals were assisting with their training. House Zenith was going all out to help them and managed to secure Marcus Avery’s help from House Violet.

She had heard a lot about the man from her father. He wasnʼt shy about complimenting the man. Marcus was House Violet’s terrifying weapon, they used when they needed results. However, she didn’t know how she personally felt about the man, especially not after what he had just said to her.

They would also train alongside one of Derek’s good friends, Aubrey. From what Christina understood, Aubrey was the daughter of the Crystal Tyrant, which was a surprising revelation. That scary woman’s reputation was quite well known, even to someone as young as Christina.

The Tier 6 powerhouse had sent one of her retainers to help with their training. The man’s name was Cygnus, and while Christina didn’t know anything about the man, she knew that he had to be impressive if the Crystal Tyrant was willing to send him to help her daughter.

Finally, House Zenith had Stella to help as well. If there was one person she looked up to more than Derek, it was Stella. The woman was powerful, arguably more powerful than Marcus Avery. Her talents in time and space magic were unbelievable.

Even though it was their first day of training together, the woman had already helped Christina fix the issue she had been having with her lightning magic. She had trouble conducting her lightning through complicated aura defenses.

Thus, she had been in a good mood. At least until she saw one of Derek’s other friends looking at her judgmentally, it was the same quiet one that she had met last night. Julius was his name, if she recalled correctly. He had been very reserved, and thus she had almost forgotten about him. However, she noticed that he had a very close relationship with Derek and his other friends.

Julius was young. Younger than her. Yet, he looked at them as if he were superior, silently judging their abilities and techniques as he stood on the sidelines. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.

It didn’t matter if he was Derek’s friend. She didn’t appreciate someone looking down on her and acting like they were better when they weren’t. It was why she had decided to say something. But imagine her surprise when Marcus bluntly told her that he believed the boy was better than her.

What made her more annoyed was the fact that nobody spoke up in her defense either. Derek stood there calmly as he watched things unfold, and not even Stella spoke up. Perhaps, they were testing what Christina would do and wanted to see her prove herself.

She scoffed lightly. She didn’t have any problems doing just that. This would be the perfect time to show Derek just how much she had improved over these past couple of years. The last time she had fought against him, he had absolutely torn her apart.

It wasn’t even close. He had picked her apart like it was nothing. His mastery over lightning magic had superseded hers, and it showed. She wanted to demonstrate how much she had improved over the course of this time.

So, with a fire lit in her soul and properly motivated, she followed the black-haired boy across the field and positioned herself in front of him. She reached out her aura senses to examine Julius. What she saw didn’t impress her all that much. It felt like a typical Tier 3 aura, which meant he likely didn’t have more than one Concept, if that.

This will be easy, she smiled to herself. She glanced back at where Derek was gathered with the rest of the group. They had all decided to take a break and watch this situation play out. However, she did notice that a couple of them had a slight smirk on their faces.

She ignored this, though; she wanted to show off her power, and the best way to do so would be to finish the fight swiftly. She didn’t want to leave any doubts that she was better. She would show Marcus that it wasn’t a good idea to underestimate her.

“Are you ready?” She asked, noticing that he hadn’t taken out any weapons or whatnot. She had already taken out her staff from her storage ring. The lightning magic enchantments infused in the weapon were already sparking the air.

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Julius nodded at her. He had a confident and calm look on his face, which earned him a small piece of her respect. However, she didn’t know if it was arrogance or ignorance that let him act so calmly.

She glanced over at Marcus, awaiting his signal. The man had decided to be the referee for their fight and was standing between the two of them. When he ensured that both parties were ready, he lowered his arm to initiate the battle.

She didn’t waste any time; her specialty was casting speed, and she showed it off right away. Not even a second after the battle began, a streak of lightning shot through the air toward her opponent. Her Lightning Concepts helped her increase the power of the lightning, and she grinned when she saw him not moving out of the way.

However, that grin quickly turned into a frown when she spotted a faint shimmering barrier of mana protecting the boy’s body. It wasn’t even how fast he had deployed the barrier that concerned her; it was how subtle he had been about it. She hadn’t even sensed it until her attack hit him.

She lip twitched upward. Okay, so maybe he has some skill, she admitted.

Despite that, she didn’t let up. Her first attack had been more focused on speed, rather than power. It was also to allow her to have an extra second to collect even more mana to attack afterward by stunning her opponents.

A burst of mana ripped from her staff. The item enchantments allowed her to keep a hold of the structure of the spell with greater ease. Then it was followed by an even larger spear of lightning that screamed through the air; this time, she focused the arc, allowing it to penetrate the barrier rather than stunning it.

He still stood there and was about to let the spear of lightning strike him when he suddenly disappeared into thin air. Her eyes widened as she quickly understood what was going on. He had a teleportation skill, and she immediately activated [Blink] to get away from the attack she was already predicting coming her way.

Thankfully, her reaction was the correct one, and she was just in time to avoid the strike about to plow into the back of her head. She activated another one of her skills, slamming her staff into the ground, and a dense net of lightning appeared around her.

[Lightning Field] was quite a powerful skill. It was also very versatile. It served as both an offensive and defensive tool, depending on the situation. She turned around just in time to see Julius on the move, he was already dashing toward her.

She hadn’t known if he was a close combat fighter or a mage, but now she was beginning to understand that he was a hybrid fighter like Derek. That made things a little more problematic. Hybrid fighters were always annoying to fight against; they had fewer weaknesses than most.

However, she also knew that they had to give up particular strengths to achieve this. Hybrid fighters were typically good at almost everything, but that jack of all trades mindset came at a cost.

For example, Derek’s offensive skills were quite average, considering his overall skill level. It was mainly thanks to his lightning affinity that he was able to work around this weakness and turn it into a strength. If he had chosen to be a mage, he could have been like her and specialized in pure output.

Her opponent didn’t seem to particularly care about the field of lightning, and without hesitating for a moment, he entered its influence. The dense net of lightning immediately started to target him, but for some reason, it didn’t seem to have that much effect on him. It was utterly baffling.

The stun feature of the skill didn’t work, and she wondered if the barrier he had placed to block her first attack was a full-body barrier. If so, then that was somewhat of a good thing, because she could use that against him. A full-body barrier like that required a lot of focus and mana. Additionally, if he were a hybrid fighter, he might not have that large a mana pool to draw from.

The problem was that he was fast, like annoyingly fast. He had already crossed the distance between them despite the field’s impedance. She was forced to [Blink] once again and started to prepare another attack.

This time, she needed something that would be powerful enough to break through this barrier and also something that could hold him down long enough that he couldn’t teleport away. Thankfully, she already had an idea of what she wanted to do.

For some reason, he didn’t teleport to her location like she expected. She actually wanted him to do so because she had already set up a trap for him. She didn’t know if his skill prevented him from doing so or if he had somehow noticed something was wrong.

She shook her head and prepared as he got closer. She used the lightning that the field created and had it collapse on his position. She grinned when he seemed a little surprised by this. Then she sent the attack she had been preparing, blasting toward him.

A lightning bolt the size of a pillar slammed into him. He wasn’t faster than lightning, and as she expected, the barrier was unable to hold under so much force. She saw it shatter into small pieces.

However, she frowned when she didn’t see him collapse to the ground as the lightning discharged throughout his body. There was enough lightning to stun a Tier 4 for a brief moment in that last attack; she had no idea why it wasn’t affecting him.

She got her answer soon after. A giant pulse of terrifying aura suddenly blasted out from Julius. It was nothing like what she had seen earlier. This aura wasn’t a normal Tier 3’s aura. This aura was heavy and merciless. It ripped apart everything in its path, which included the lightning.

She had never seen anything like it.

Then, before she could react, this aura reached her and swallowed her up. It was like she was suddenly transported into the void, and all of her skills flickered out into nothing. Her mana felt completely unresponsive despite her mastery over it.

Even the barrier around her body was wiped out, and she was left entirely defenseless. While she was disoriented, he suddenly appeared next to her, his fist cocked above her head. The pain of having all of her mana ripped from her grasp had her gasping, and it took everything in her willpower to prevent it from eating away at her actual soul.

She could do nothing as she closed her eyes and braced herself for the inevitable impact, but when it didn’t come. She sighed in both relief and shame.

She hadn’t been attacked because Julius had already walked off, leaving her alone in the center of the arena. Her throat was dry as a desert, and as the adrenaline left her, she couldn’t help but wonder what in the hell that aura had been. She had never seen the likes of it before.

It was like a disruptive skill, a debuff skill, and an offensive skill merged into one.

As much as she wanted to ask him all about it, all she could think about was how embarrassed she was. She had been so confident, yet she had never stood a chance. After feeling that aura at the end, she realized that he had never taken her seriously from the start. He had been playing with her and could have ended it anytime he wanted to.

It was equally humbling and frustrating.