Path to Transcendence

Chapter 582: Hollow

Despite the shock of losing their comrade, the swordsman reacted instantly and was already attacking Julius. But Julius didn’t go on the defensive like he previously had been. He didn’t have a lot of time before the other two arrived back, and he wanted to see if he needed to finish off the swordsman before that happened.

Julius didn’t care about getting injured. He blitzed forward and met the swordsman face-on. He flooded his body with power, reinforcing his body to its limit. He was starting to feel the pain from his soul again despite his focus skill still running at full speed.

He felt his reactions slowing, as well as his delicate control over his skills.

But he persisted and attacked the swordsman like a wild beast. This change of pace surprised his opponent, and Julius made the most of it. He purposefully fell for a feint, and during the chaos, the man didn’t even suspect anything of the opening. Merely taking it without hesitation.

Julius let the blade slide between his gut, but grabbed the man’s arm and pulled the swordsman closer to him. His opponent was baffled by this development, but widened his eyes when he saw Julius open his mouth, and a torrent of azure flames came out.

These weren’t normal flames either. These were flames that had been specifically enhanced by Julius’s crown. The swordsman screamed out, cursing loudly as the flames burned his face, trying to shove Julius away from him.

However, Julius had already decided that he wasnʼt going to allow that. He brutally speared spikes of mana through his own arms and into the swordsman’s, effectively locking them together. He continued to spout fire from his mouth until he felt the insides of his mouth blacken from the heat. Then he leaned back and headbutted the man as hard as he could.

He was about to go in for another strike, but the swordsman gave one final tug and let out another roar of pain as he finally managed to tear his arms away. A lot of flesh stayed connected to Julius and his spikes.

His opponent was bleeding profusely, and Julius spotted a healing potion appear in the man’s heavily injured hands. Julius didn’t wait for the man to drink it and sent a spike of mana at the man, as well as boosting himself forward with all the accumulated kinetic energy he got from crashing into the black barrier.

He slammed into the swordsman with a grunt and grabbed the man by the throat, detonating as much kinetic energy as he could. A hole the size of his fist tore open the enemyʼs throat. Julius quickly prepared another attack. He was surprised that the man was still alive.

Unfortunately, it was this moment that the other two enemies finally returned, and a black barrier slammed in front of the swordsman, protecting him from Julius. Luckily, he had just run face-first into this barrier and avoided it this time.

He used [Void Step] once more, already collecting more energy around his fist. He bypassed the barrier and struck toward the swordsman with [Void Strike], covering his fist.

A thick dome appeared around the swordsman. The mage with the blue robes once again interfered. It would seem that this Tier 4 insisted on being a pain in the butt.

Julius smashed his fist into the barrier, feeling the void skill pierce it. Unfortunately, the barrier wasn’t so simple to break through, and most of the force behind the blow dissipated. However, Julius strained with all of his might, sending out swaths of blue flame to destroy the barrier. And finally, the barrier broke under the weight of his attack.

The swordsman must have thought he was safe and began to drink the potion, and didnʼt notice the spike of ruinous flames hidden among the blue flames. Julius used his perception skill to direct the spike through the chaos, and before any of them could react, the spike lodged itself into the manʼs eye, killing him instantly.

The other two panicked and tried to save their comrade, but it was too late. They took a half-step back and stared at Julius with nervousness.

Julius took a moment to breathe and let his soul try to recover. Not to mention that his injuries were pretty bad. His arms were still pierced by his own constructs, he had severe burns in his mouth, and he had several internal injuries.

He looked around and noticed that nobody had arrived yet. Perhaps the city guards were on a break or stuck in traffic and needed more time to arrive. That or the explosion of mana he had sensed was the reason for their absence.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” He asked loudly.

The two remaining assailants stared at him blankly. They weren’t responding to him, but he could feel the wind mage preparing something. The blue-robed mage was likely preparing something as well, but Julius wasn’t able to sense it if he was. That was a little worrying, and he reminded himself to be careful.

He had a feeling that the blue-robed mage was the most dangerous one out of all of them. The problem was that he doubted his ability to take them out quickly. His gut was telling him that he would have been hard-pressed to beat this mage even if he fought him alone.

The other remaining mage didn’t have the same type of intensity or willpower that this mage had. Thus, most of Julius’s attention was focused on this man, which is why he reacted instantly when he sensed the first signs of the man’s technique activating.

He teleported backwards, narrowly avoiding the bolt of black energy racing toward his face. Unlike the black mass before, this was extremely quick and almost homed in on his position. If not for his preemptive reaction, he would have been hit.

He still didn’t know what this black energy was. His best guess was that it was related to some kind of disruption element. It was actually similar in a lot of ways to the energy the Null Fiends had used all that time ago.

He backed off and sidestepped the attacks from the other enemy. With the ice mage out of the fight, they seemed to be a lot more cautious around him. He didn’t see any openings for him to sneak in with [Void Step] either.

He didn’t know what to do, and his degrading soul wasn’t helping him. He could feel his control over his skills slipping as the fight prolonged. His soul injury was another reason why he hadn’t bothered to use his healing skill to heal his injuries, despite them being bad enough to warrant it.

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[Phoenix Renewal] was almost entirely dedicated to keeping his soul intact for the time being. If he were to distract it now, he didn’t know what would happen. It was barely holding together for the moment, but he didn’t know if it would still hold together if he loosened his hold over it.

He had to decide whether to heal his body or to keep his soul in one piece. The choice was pretty obvious to him. Still, it was a problem, and he was in a bad situation with no plan to get out of it.

He backed away, blasting himself to the side with kinetic energy as more attacks rained down on him. The wounds on his body were increasing, and he was forced to teleport far up into the air, removing a healing potion from his storage ring. He rarely drank healing potions since he had a healing skill of his own, but desperate times required desperate measures.

He also consumed a mana potion as well. The constant teleportations consumed enormous amounts of mana, and the previous teleport had almost drained him. He normally wasn’t able to teleport that far since [Void Step] wasn’t a long-range teleportation skill, but he had pushed himself to do so.

His breathing was heavy as he tried to recover. His wounds were healing slowly, but the blood stopped flowing as rapidly, and he could feel his organs stitching back into one piece.

The mana potion was very potent; it was the one he had received from Freya, but there was only so much it could refill his dwindling reserves. Not to mention that the mana from mana potions was inherently less efficient than the mana he cultivated from his core.

He was barely able to take a few moments to breathe when he felt someone closing in on him. Apparently, the blue-robed mage had tracked him up here and had already closed in. Julius had a feeling that the mage had managed to sneak some kind of mark on his body. If that was the case, then he really needed to find the mark and get rid of it.

The problem was that he wasn’t able to sense it. He searched for it while the attacker continued to shoot these bolts of black light at him. If the black bolts got close enough, small vapors of black energy tried to seep into his skin. He didn’t give them any opportunities to infect him, and he wiped out this energy with his ruinous aura before it could leech into him.

While distracted with this, he didn’t even sense the sudden spatial warping right behind him until it was too late. He blamed his injured soul and tired mind.

Still, it was a mistake, and he knew right away how fucked he was when he felt the newcomer’s domain spread out and encapsulate Julius. His soul, which had already been feeling the pressure, was suddenly crushed by this domain.

He could feel his soul tearing bit by bit as the Tier 5 held him in place. He was completely unable to move as the weight of their aura and various concepts held him in place.

“How disappointing, Hayden. You couldn’t even finish off a Tier 3 with an injured soul?” The newcomer said with a mocking tone. Julius noticed that this was a woman’s voice, and he could feel her ice-cold breath rolling down his neck as she stood behind him. It felt like someone had put his head in a guillotine.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” the blue-robed mage said with a deep bow, not even bothering to make excuses.

The Tier 5 lady stayed silent for a moment as she stared at the man, then scoffed and waved her arm casually. “Well, either way. Time is up. I distracted the city guards for as long as I could, but they will arrive shortly. We don’t want to be here when they do. Where are Yubel, Tuskin, and Fisher? I can’t sense their presence.”

“Yubel and Tuskin are dead. The boy killed them,” the blue robe said casually, as if it didn’t really matter to him.

“That’s a shame, but they were expendable, and ultimately why they were selected for this mission. However, Fisher isn’t as expendable. So where is he?” The woman’s tone suddenly turned serious, and Julius couldn’t move, but he could practically feel her gaze piercing toward the blue-robed mage.

Unlike when he mentioned the ice mage, he seemed much more worried now. Julius saw the man fiddle with his hands anxiously.

“He returned early,” the man said, looking at the ground.

“Why?” The woman’s voice was ice cold.

“...”

The woman’s domain spread out and encapsulated the mage as well.

“Why?” She repeated forcefully.

“Lady Vale was injured after her ambush on the boy,” the mage admitted with a wince. Julius couldn’t expand his senses while being contained within the domain, but he didn’t need his aura senses to know that the man was terrified of the woman’s reaction.

“How badly?” The woman asked coldly.

“I’m not sure.”

There was a long pause, but eventually the lady sighed. “I knew it was a bad idea to have her participate. But she insisted. Maybe this will teach her to be more careful.”

She pinched her nose and didn’t look up when she used her other hand to slap Julius in the back of the head. It felt like someone hit him with a semi-truck, and his consciousness flickered.

“Stop trying to mess with my domain, kid,” she said with a dark look.

He held back a groan as she increased the pressure in her domain. He had been trying to use his aura to find a gap, but there wasn’t a gap to exploit. This Tier 5 was of a totally different caliber than the Tier 5 crafter he had fought before.

He thought about exploding his soul to get some space, but his damaged soul clearly made that a bad choice. It was already hanging on by a thread, and didn’t need to kill himself for these people.

She looked in the distance.

“Okay, timeʼs up. Although this didn’t go as planned. It isn’t necessarily a bad result. We can take him back with us and use him as a hostage. This way, it might force his monstrous master to be more careful about retaliating,” the woman said to the mage and started to weave together a massive amount of mana around the three of them. She was using a spatial skill, he realized with a panicked expression.

Julius immediately flooded his willpower with all of the meager power he could muster. Doing his best to fight against her. While his soul was injured, it would seem that his Concept of Space allowed him some measure of resistance. He saw her frown and forcibly imposed her will on him. He groaned and felt his soul cracking even more.

He let out a choking gasp when she suddenly snatched him by the throat and turned his face to hers. Despite the pain flooding his soul and struggling wildly against her willpower, the first thing he noticed was how pretty the woman was.

She had soft blue hair, sapphire gems for eyes, and a face that angels would be jealous of. Still, it was hard to truly appreciate her beauty when she was choking the life out of him.

“What are you doing?” She asked him, almost sounding impressed. But her expression suddenly morphed into one of alarm, and she swiveled her head to look off in the distance again.

She looked back at Julius, and she cranked up her domain, pressuring him even more. He felt his resistance failing and knew that any second she would bypass his defenses. He also knew that he couldn’t let that happen, and so with a cold, cruel decisiveness, he exploded his soul.

He felt her grasp over him loosen by a hair, and her domain’s influence over him was torn away. He immediately attempted to teleport out of her grasp. [Void Step] activated, but to his horror, it didn’t teleport him away. She did something to stop him, and he saw her smile with a pitying expression.

“It’s too bad. I would have loved to ask what kind of skill that was. But alas, I am out of time,” she sighed with a nervous look to her left.

“If you won’t come with me, then there is only one other option,” she said with a grim expression.

Before Julius could wonder what she meant by that, he felt a cold emptiness in his chest. His heart was impaled by her arm, and while he coughed up blood all over her, her arm glowed bright with mana, and he attempted to rip it apart with his aura, but her willpower was overwhelmingly strong. He could only flail in desperation as an explosion ripped through his torso, eviscerating his body.

He didn’t feel anything. Not pain. Not sadness. He felt nothing but a frigid hollowness as darkness consumed him.