Path to Transcendence

Chapter 566: First For Everything

Julius felt embarrassed. He had believed that his control over his aura and emotions was fine. Perhaps, sparring right after rescuing Edwin hadn’t been a good idea. He had hoped that he could alleviate some of his stress, but it ended up hurting Erik, April, and Landon.

“Are they going to be okay?” He asked worriedly.

Cain waved off his concern. “They will be fine. I caught it before it got bad. But honestly, that crown of yours is quite insidious. I almost didn’t catch what it was doing.”

“What was it doing?” Julius asked with confusion. He knew that the crown had been releasing some ruinous aura, but he had no idea how it was able to hide it from Julius, not to mention Cain.

“It was passively leaking your aura, consuming the aura of the other three. It was literally feeding off their souls,” Cain explained.

“Shit.”

He glanced up at the crown and removed it from his head, looking at it with a disappointed glare.

“I thought we had an agreement,” he said toward the soul-bound item. For the past few weeks, the crown had been quite easy to handle. It listened to Julius, and he hoped they had reached a mutual accord. It would seem he was mistaken.

As he scowled at the crown, the item let out a pulse of blue flames from its surface. Julius wasn’t an expert at translating dangerous soul-bound items, but he could have sworn he detected slight signs of shame from the crown.

“Fine, but don’t do it again. Especially not when I am already having a shitty day, alright?”

The crown pulsed a little more brightly in response.

“Are you sure that thing is safe to keep on wearing? I know it’s soul-bound, but I can destroy it if you think it will eventually become too dangerous,” Cain offered with a skeptical look at the crown.

Julius was about to say something in response, but the crown beat him to it. The item flared with anger, and a spark of blue flame shot toward Cain. The man didn’t even bother to dodge; he took the spark to the face.

Apparently, the crown didn’t like that idea and was displeased at Cain for even bringing it up.

“Is that thing actually alive? I thought you were joking before,” Cain murmured.

Julius shrugged. “Sure seems like it,” he said before giving the crown a couple of pokes. “It responds well to my desires. Though it’s been a while since it acted up like this. I wonder why that is.”

The crown flared up briefly, and Julius felt something tug on his fire mana as well as his aura.

Seriously? Is that what it is?

“You gotta be kidding me,” Julius said, crinkling his nose in disbelief. Was the crown trying to tell Julius that it was hungry and that was the reason it had sucked everyone’s aura?

He brought the crown up to his eyes. “Just ask next time. There is no need to go off draining people’s aura without their consent.”

The crown pulsed hesitantly and wobbled in place. Julius could have sworn he felt the crown send him a burst of weird feelings that were hard to decipher.

“What? Are you trying to say that you didn’t want to bother me because I was already upset?”

The crown flared brightly.

“Oh. That is considerate of you. But still, just ask me next time.”

It flared once more, this time with more warmth.

“Can you communicate with that thing?” Cain asked from the side, looking at Julius with an odd expression.

Julius paused. Could he? Was that what he was doing? He honestly had no idea. He was going solely off instinct.

“I’m not sure. But it is a gluttonous little thing, so the odds are high that it was merely hungry.”

“Oh,” Cain said plainly.

Julius shrugged and proceeded to let some of his aura release. Unlike the phenomenon from before, this time around it wasn’t subtle. A very obvious and very viscous wave of ruinous aura surrounded Julius. He took control of his fire mana and shoved it into the crown without much fanfare.

He didn’t hold back, and neither did the crown. Like the greedy little thing it was, all of Julius’s aura and mana were sucked in. The crown’s dull gray surface slowly shone with bright blue light as it consumed the energy like a starving beast.

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Julius could practically feel the crown’s excitement and happiness as it consumed a large amount of his aura and mana. This process continued for a couple of minutes. The entire room was being flooded by mana, but there was no concern about it being wasted. Everything got dragged in by the crown.

Only when it was satisfied did it slowly return to its normal form. The destructive energy blooming from the item had also retreated, tucking away into the crown like nothing had happened. He could have sworn he saw the crown burp when it was finished, but that could have been his imagination.

Julius wiped the sweat from his head from having to sustain that much aura and mana for so long. He wasn’t out of mana, but releasing it in continuous waves like that took a mental toll. He then placed the crown back on his head and could feel the crown’s satisfaction pulsing downward into his skull.

He was just about to address Cain, but before he had the chance, Julius felt a sudden weight on his shoulder.

He glanced over and saw Drasil there, pulling on his ear with a dirty look on the cute spirit’s face. Drasil let out a couple of coos and whistles at Julius, expressing his envy and displeasure.

Julius could only deflate and, without another word, created an enormously dense ball of life mana. On the bright side, his exercises with life mana were bearing fruit. His ability to control it was on a totally different level from before.

It wasn’t like his control over life mana had been bad before. However, the way he manipulated it had undergone significant changes. The best way he could describe the difference was by comparing it to making food.

The way he had been doing it before was safe and well-thought-out. It was like cooking something in a slow cooker with a step-by-step recipe. A relatively simple, easy task, yet still maintaining good flavors and tasty food.

It was also the reason why Freya had taught him this way. His life mana combined with his Phoenix Concept was way too dangerous. If he made a mistake when healing someone, he was more likely to kill them than to heal them.

It was structured and limited risks.

The way Tezuko Willow had shown him was the complete opposite. It was like cooking on a roaring bonfire without a way to manage to moderate the heat. One mistake and the food would be burnt to a crisp.

In his case, the food would be him, and why he had blown himself up countless times with life mana already.

If that wasn’t bad enough, he didn’t even have any tools or kitchen equipment to help him. He was forced to rely entirely on his mana control and pray that nobody threw a sack of gunpowder into his fire while he was at it.

Funnily enough, that helped him a lot when it came to his life mana control. He was able to control larger amounts of life mana with more confidence and use this mana to do things he didn’t think were possible.

That’s why the new orb of life mana he created for Drasil was completely different. It swirled with dark green waves of mana, literally sparkling brightly as he held it in his palms. He made sure to incorporate some structure using the same techniques he learned from Freya, as well as those he learned from Tezuko’s manual.

With all of those improvements, it was no wonder Drasil was jumping up and down with excitement as he observed the new dense ball of mana. The spirit almost fell off Julius’s shoulder trying to eat the orb before he was finished with the last touches.

Once Julius was done, he let out a tired sigh. His channels were slightly sore and had taken a lot of mental focus to create, but he was happy with the result. It was only then that he finally allowed Drasil to have it.

He laughed brightly and watched as Drasil jumped on the orb, latching onto it like a child hugging a huge stuffed animal. Then the little spirit began to consume the massive amount of life mana like it was nothing.

To Julius’s amusement, the crown on his head had gone eerily silent. The Ruinous Crown had consumed a lot of mana over the couple of minutes of its feeding, but it was still less than what was in that small orb of life mana.

If he didn’t know any better, it almost felt like the crown was scared by how much mana Drasil was currently consuming.

He didn’t blame it either.

Julius gave one last glance at Drasil, who was consuming the orb at a terrifying rate, with a shake of his head.

Yeah, Drasil was a scary little guy. He suspected the world would find that out someday.

Julius waited until Drasil was finished with his meal before walking away.

“Where are you going?” Cain’s voice echoed behind him.

He furrowed his brow. “I thought you said we were done?”

“They were done. That Landon kid is a stubborn one, and unless I said something, he wouldn’t have stopped. This would inevitably lead to him getting injured, and I don’t want to have to explain to Oliver why one of his guild members was lying in his own drool with a damaged soul. However, you still need to release some steam, and luckily for you, I am still here. Hence, you’re not going anywhere.”

Julius smiled at Cain. “So you’re saying I can go all out against you and not worry about it?”

Cain nodded. “Yes, get it all out now. Don’t bottle it up anymore. I know youʼve been suppressing your emotions with your skill.”

Julius felt his lips twitch upward, and for the first time in the last several hours, he finally deactivated his focus skill.

He didn’t bother to gradually release either; he let it fall completely away. Allowing all of his complicated emotions to boil up to the surface.

He didn’t even realize it himself, but he had already used [Void Step] to appear next to Cain, throwing everything he had into a punch. His entire vision was red, and his arm shook as it barely stayed together with how much kinetic energy he shoved into it.

He didn’t even wait to see the result and was already gathering more kinetic energy for another attack. This one he took more time to put together. He bottled up all of his frustrations into one singular point, using his ruinous aura as an anchor point.

He didn’t bother to use [Void Strike] either; it was a strike created purely of kinetic energy and residual aura. A vortex appeared around his fists, absorbing every speck of force he could. Everything was funneled. All of his anger was stacked on top of each other.

Before he could doubt the wisdom of such an immense gathering of kinetic force, he was already slamming his fist into Cain. An explosion rocked out, and despite his arm vanishing into a mist of blood, as well as flying backwards twenty feet, he smiled.

He smiled because he saw that Cain was no longer in the same spot he had been standing before.

For the first time ever, Julius managed to knock Cain back a few inches.

Therefore, it wasn’t much of a surprise when he received a notification to go along with it.