Path to Transcendence

Chapter 611: Treants

Julius came across three more treants. Each of them was even stronger than the one he had initially faced, and he was glad for it. He let out a tired smile when he finally ripped open the last treant with his bare hands and removed the core.

He tossed the core over to Drasil, who happily took it with a grateful whistle. The treants weren’t the only threat in the rift. There were a large number of Tier 3 monsters as well. They weren’t even close to the treants in terms of danger or power, but they were still a little annoying.

Speaking of annoying, he was forced to tuck his head down when he sensed a figure heading straight for the back of his head. With a casual flick of his wrist, the squirrel with four-inch teeth was splattered against a nearby tree.

He sat down on a log and took a swing of water. While he recovered from the fight, he removed his lunchbox from his storage ring. He opened up its beat-up surface as he grazed his fingers over the poorly drawn phoenix.

He furrowed his brows. Inside was a simple sandwich and the shiniest banana he had ever seen in his life. It was so shiny he almost thought it was made of gold. He shrugged, though. He had seen many weirder things produced by his lunchbox and quickly devoured the sandwich with a satisfied moan. Like usual, the lunchbox’s food was always delicious, and he could feel his fatigue washing away.

He could have used his healing skill to do so, but he realized that the food from the lunchbox was much more effective, and his stamina slightly increased as a result. Plus, he got to eat tasty food, so it was a win-win.

The banana was truly special, though. It was the sweetest banana he ever had the pleasure of consuming. The soft flesh of the fruit melted on his tongue and flooded his soul with energy. He could feel his fingertips vibrating and grinned widely.

He quickly stood up and, putting this extra energy to good use, he started to make his way through the forest once more. He had sensed a large concentration of energy not too far away and wanted to check it out. He believed it could be the center of the rift.

Although he felt like there was something off about the energy. It was ripe with life mana, but there was an undercurrent of something else. Something eerie and dangerous.

***

Along his way, he came across a few more monsters. However, he decided to have a little fun and removed the axe he stole from the bandit from his ring. The large weapon was heavy in his hands, and he inspected the finely made piece of metal curiously.

He had a feeling that the bandit hadn’t gotten this axe on his own; he likely stole it from someone else. There were no insignias that he could spot, but the craftsmanship was quite nice. Even an amateur like Julius could see how much care went into the engravings on the shaft.

He hefted the axe over his shoulder and spotted a group of wolves coming at him. Their eyes were shining red, and pale green light exuded from their fur. They weren’t very large, only coming up to his hip. But he could tell that they were Tier 4 and decently strong.

He let the wolves surround him, standing in the middle of the pack with a calm expression. He spotted what seemed to be the pack’s leader. It was about fifty percent larger than the other wolves, and unlike the others, it had no green light around its body. He stared at it directly in the eyes and smiled.

As if this were the trigger, all of the wolves converged at once. Julius grabbed the shaft of the axe with both hands and spun in a circle. The blade of the axe was sturdy, but it wasn’t as sharp as he hoped.

He cut through one of the wolves completely in half, but the axe got lodged into the ribs of the second. Julius wasn’t able to dislodge the axe from the wolf in time, so he didn’t bother to. Instead, he swung the axe with the monster still dangling off it, slamming it into the other wolves.

Julius staggered backward when the wolves behind him slashed open his back and hit him with some kind of pulse of green light. Their claws were really sharp and tore open his flesh with relative ease. The pulses were also strong, he felt his bones shaking from the impact. He stopped his healing skill from acting on its own and instead attempted to heal himself manually with pure life mana.

The results were lackluster, but he wasn’t too worried. With a feral grin, he spun around and smacked the wolf who injured him with the haft of the axe. He flicked the weapon to the side, dislodging the dead wolf still attached to it.

He danced around as the other wolves tried to shove their claws into his eyes. He took some glancing blows since they were so fast, but he used these injuries as practice for his life mana. All the while, he was attempting to get a better grasp of his reinforcement with life mana and Tezuko Willow’s technique

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He actually felt like he was getting close to understanding the purpose of the first chapter. It was supposed to be unpredictable, but also fluid. In fact, he was starting to believe that he needed to change some of the ways he manipulated his mana.

In fact, the rift had actually given him a cool idea when he saw how the entire forest interacted with each other. He realized that he had been thinking about everything wrong.

He had been thinking about it in terms of rigid channels and structured lines of mana. But that wasn’t the nature of life mana. At least not in its pure state. Life mana in the wilderness acted differently.

It acted as if it were the roots of a tree. Long, wild, and instinctual. There weren’t any ideas or complicated plans. But it fed off pure intuition and emotion. Feeling some inspiration, he decided to try something.

He distractedly smacked another wolf to the side. He then began to empower his body with a lot of life mana, too much mana, really. It was wasteful, but he didn’t care. Instead, he continued to push more mana into himself. The sudden increase in mana must have made the wolves nervous, so they stood back, not attacking him.

Julius barely focused on them; he was busy weaving together a new technique of life mana. He not only based it on the roots of a tree, but also on what he had seen from Drasil when he smacked that fish into oblivion.

If Drasil could increase his strength so much with life mana, why couldnʼt Julius?

He let out a laugh when he finally deployed the new technique. He didn’t even bother with sending all of the mana through his channels the ‘proper’ way. They were stronger, yes. But they restricted him in ways that he didn’t need to.

Instead, he carved out new, small lines within his own body. They were like little conduits that life mana could resonate with as it traveled through his body, feeding other conduits in a feedback loop. These lines didn’t have any rhyme or reason. He created them on raw instinct and intent. Just like nature would have wanted.

As the cycle continued and more lines glowed brightly with his life mana, he could feel his reserves draining quickly. He had a lot more mana now than he had a few weeks ago, but this technique used a shit load of it. His lack of experience surely didn’t help matters either. Which meant he had to compensate with more mana.

His body strained to contain all of this mana, but even his new body was reaching its limit. Every inch of his flesh was packed with mana. His skin began to glow a pale green and simultaneously fall apart. Flakes of disintegrated skin peeled away and drifted into the air.

He maintained hold of this technique with gritted teeth, doing his best to keep it contained and not explode into a million pieces. Only when he felt like reached the pinnacle, he firmly compressed all of this mana.

It was grueling, forcing all of this mana into a compressed state, and his willpower faltered for a brief moment, but he wrestled control over it before it could go out of control.

But once it was ready, he didn’t bother keeping it pent up inside. He let all of the mana rush through his channels and makeshift conduits, arcing through his body like living lightning.

He didn’t control it perfectly, and so a few pulses of life mana exploded outward. The nearby trees and grass were ripped up by their roots. He also felt several chunks of his flesh vaporize instantly. Though to be honest, it wasn’t as bad as he expected, so he counted it as a win.

He was more annoyed about the waste of mana than anything else.

With power thrumming through his body and into every inch of his muscles, he moved.

The nearest wolf turned into a bloody pulp and peeled the large axe from the monster’s corpse, using some aura to remove the excess blood. His entire body felt so… alive.

It was addicting, and before he could lose that feeling, he dashed back in. He still wasn’t moving as fast as when he used kinetic energy, but he was much more graceful and had so much more control. He felt the wolves’ claws miss him by inches and used his aura to block all of their weird pulses of green light.

Then he proceeded to shred them apart. His skin had been reinforced by this life mana, making it dense and surprisingly tough. The claws that had cut him so easily were barely able to pierce his skin.

It was a nice little benefit that he wasn’t planning on. But he would gladly take it. He always had an issue with his relatively weak constitution. He could heal, sure. But it would be nice not be forced to heal every time someone hits him.

Sadly, he wasn’t able to use his aura to enhance himself too much. He already had his hands full with this new technique. Perhaps after he got used to it, he would be able to use both at the same time. Ideally, he was hoping to use aura, kinetic, fire, and life mana at the same time. Though he suspected that he was going to have to wait. At least until he got a better grasp of his life mana.

Hopefully, the second chapter of Tezuko’s manual had something to help him. He was tempted to open it right then, but he stayed patient and waited until he left the rift.

In the meantime, he removed the wolvesʼ cores. He had a feeling that Drasil would enjoy them as he had with the treant cores. They would make good snacks for when Drasil got a little peckish.

After he did all of that, he noticed the thing in the distance flare up suddenly. The odd feeling he got from it was still present, but he was feeling curious, so he hefted the axe over his shoulder to go check it out.

He was already enjoying this rift more than he expected, so he had high hopes that it would be something exciting.