Path to Transcendence

Chapter 710: Early

Julius was about to finish off the remaining golems when he felt something explode from all sides of him. He cranked up his skills and tried to see if something was attacking him, but nothing came at him.

He let out a sigh and noticed that there was now a large barrier separating him from the remaining golems. He had no idea what the barrier was supposed to be for. He sent a few spikes at the barrier, but to his surprise, it was quite a powerful one. His spikes exploded uselessly into the barrier.

Even more shocking was the complex and profound aura pouring from the barrier. It was different from anything he’d experienced so far, and it almost felt like another person was interfering. It was curious, especially since the barrier didn’t have any willpower behind it, nor did he sense anyone in the area.

Either they were hidden, or it was something else. He narrowed his eyes, and with a burst of mana, he teleported through the barrier and appeared next to another golem. A spike was already prepared over his shoulder and shot toward a golem. The spike tore through its chest and exploded. The golem was shattered into small fragments, and he was about to go after another one when that same barrier moved.

The spike he’d thrown at another golem was intercepted by the barrier, and when he created several more spikes over his shoulder to throw at it, he watched as two more of these barriers activated, layering over each other in a thick defensive shell.

He cracked his neck and smiled at the barrier. But before he could start to test the barrier, he felt a twisting of spatial energy not far away. He glanced over to see what it might be and was greeted by the appearance of a portal.

He had a feeling that this was the next floor’s portal. He nodded, making a note of the portal’s existence, and before he walked through it, he wanted to deal with the rest of the golems. They were good target practice for him. He hadn’t been able to experiment with [Armaments of the Arcane] in a while, so this was an excellent opportunity.

He was walking toward these golems when another barrier appeared right in front of his nose, blocking his path. The barrier was mostly translucent, but it sparked lightly in the light.

He tapped the barrier and let out a chuckle, shaking his head up at the sky.

“Does this mean you’re asking me to go on to the next floor, huh?” Julius asked out loud.

There was no response, but he was eighty percent certain that the trial was asking him to move on and forget the golems.

“But I want to test my skill on the golems,” he said with a shake of his head, even more convinced that there was something else going on here.

Another barrier appeared behind the one already blocking him. The barrier started to push at his back, pulsing wildly with spatial energy as it nudged him in the direction of the portal.

Julius rolled his eyes and turned around to walk back toward the portal. “Fine, we’ll do it your way.”

***

The fourth floor’s trial was much the same. It was the same chamber, and he already spotted the golems. There were far fewer of them, around a couple of dozen instead of the several dozen before. Furthermore, these golems seemed a bit different from the others. They had returned to their glossy appearance, but they were a couple of feet taller. Not only that, but they also felt much more dangerous. He could feel a powerful kind of concept emanating from them.

That didn’t stop him from blitzing the golem straight from the get-go. He first tried a spike of mana, sending it piercing through the air, cratering into the creature’s chest. However, unlike the previous floor, this golem didn’t seem to go down as easily. It held up against his spike, and he was already creating several more spikes to throw at the golem.

Ruinous flames and mana surged around his body as he let himself go a bit wild. It would seem that these golems were a bit stronger than the ones from the previous floors, with them having a combination of both the mana resilience and the physical defenses of the two.

Hence, he decided to push himself a little bit and modified his standard spikes. Typically, they were around the size of his fist or forearm, but he normally didn’t go much larger than that. He learned that as he increased the size of them, it became an issue of supporting all of the mana inside.

It was sort of the same concept as objects gaining volume at an exponentially higher rate than their overall proportions would suggest. It was a scaling issue, one he found to be a problem for his own constructs. This was especially true with how much compression he put into each construct.

That being said, he felt like he’d been putting off these kinds of improvements for a while. Then again, his spikes had been more than enough to beat most of his opponents.

But today he wanted to test something out. And so started to weave the overall structure of a very large spike. He started somewhat reasonably, keeping it at around the size of his torso. Although he could already feel the difficulty in holding it together, he began to add various fire mana and kinetic energy into it.

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He used [Spirit Fortification] as well as his aura abilities to support it, but it was still challenging with all of the complicated energies getting shoved inside of it. The balance was hard to figure out, but luckily, he had the perfect concept to help him.

He infused, folded, compressed, and then wove it all together into complex layers. Only once he did all of that did he feel like he was done. What he was left with wasn’t a spike anymore. It was a thick rod of blue fire with a dense core of white flames. It looked closer to a really chunky spear or an oversized bullet. To be honest, the amount of mana shoved inside scared him.

But it was too late to stop what he was doing, and with a grunt, he used his immense will to heft the projectile to hover over his shoulders. It was flickering wildly as the energies threatened to explode outward at any second. But he held firm, and with a strained groan, he detonated the kinetic payload at the back of it and sent it flying at the pack of golems.

However, it didn’t just fly. It moved so fast and so violently that it practically vanished before his very eyes. All that was left was a trail of blue light as all of the air in its path was ignited from the residual heat. The resulting explosion and pillar of fire deafened him.

That said nothing about what was left of the golems either. What had once been a couple of dozen powerful and sturdy golems was now about half of that, and the one remaining had huge pits of missing obsidian from its body. The crater where the missile hit was enormous, over a hundred feet wide. Fractured bits of molten glass were still falling from the sky, and Julius admired his work with a bright grin.

However, he wasn’t able to enjoy it for long because the same barrier from the previous floor suddenly appeared all around him. It wasn’t just blocking him either. This time around, it was actively moving and shoving him towards the portal that had appeared off to the side.

Honestly, he felt like he was being treated as an unruly kid who did something wrong and was being dragged away. He used [Void Step] to get out of the barrier. There were still some golems left, and he wanted to see if he could replicate that last construct again. He already had some adjustments in mind he wanted to test.

Unfortunately, while the teleportation skill worked, he wasn’t able to avoid the other barrier that trapped him, delaying and interfering with his plans to finish off the golems.

Realizing that he was no longer welcome on this floor either, he sagged his shoulders, and with the barrier gently prodding him, he went over to the portal and stepped through with a heavy sigh.

“You’re no fun,” he muttered to the barrier. He could have sworn he got a small pulse of light in response.

***

The next floor was at least different. He didn’t see the chamber; he was greeted by a large city with towering pillars that reached high into the sky. The city was weird, though; it felt off. It wasn’t even the black stone buildings or the large glowing black moon hovering high in the sky that made him feel this way. It was something else, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

He looked around to inspect his surroundings, and to his surprise, there were other people around. Or rather, they were human-like. He stood there in both shock and curiosity when he watched what looked like a family of dwarves pass by him down the street.

He had never seen a dwarf before, though the small stature, sturdy muscles, and impressive beards were certainly indicators that these were indeed dwarves. He looked up at the sky with a curious creasing of the eyes. He heard they lived in the mountains, but this didn’t look like one to him.

Then again, he was pretty certain this place wasn’t even real and that these dwarves were like the simulated humans he experienced in previous rifts. Which led him to wonder how someone like the Lord of Obsidian could make something like this.

Rifts were something that the Words of the World created and were on another level than a normal, albeit powerful, person.

“Watch where you are standing, boy!” a voice barked out at him, and he felt someone’s elbow slam into his hip.

He looked down and saw a dwarf staring up at him while dragging a wagon behind him. The dwarf was short, but he wasn’t as short as he imagined dwarves to be. He came up to around his chest and had very broad shoulders, almost as wide as he was tall.

He was also obviously very annoyed at Julius.

“Sorry,” he said with his hands up, moving to the side.

“Why are ya standing in the middle of the street? Ya want to get run over or something?”

“Umm, no.”

“Stupid humans always seem to think the world revolves around you, yeah?” The dwarf muttered under his breath as he pulled his wagon past Julius.

Julius ignored the irritated dwarf, letting the insults wash over him. While he did this, he inspected the area around him. He didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. From his cursory glance, this city was exactly like most other cities. The architecture and style were different, as well as the proportions, but he saw people shopping for groceries or going about their day as usual.

He also had zero clue what he was supposed to be doing there. He tried to find a clue or something, but he couldn’t find anything. Why was he here? And what was the condition for passing this trial?

The previous floors had pretty clear and obvious tasks. One simply needed to beat the golems or show proficiency against both mana and physically resistant opponents.

But with the addition of these dwarves, things were suddenly a lot more complicated.

He was about to start asking around to see if you could glean any information, but just as he was approaching a nice-looking female dwarf, he was met with a notification.

The admission period to the Fifth Floor Trial will end in 12 hours. Only once the time has elapsed will the trial begin…

Julius frowned and stared at the notification for a little longer than he probably should have. The admission period sounded weird, but it would seem that this floor was going to be open to more than just him. The previous floors might have been different, but he’d also gone through them pretty quickly. Who knew if there would be other people who would enter that same chamber he had just left?

Was this one of the reasons why the trial seemed intent on stopping him from destroying the golems? Or did they just not want to waste any resources on his trial?

He didn’t really know, but he did know he was hungry. And that there was a delightful aroma coming over from the other street. He didn’t know what kind of food dwarves ate or if he could even eat the food inside here, but he was quite eager to test that out.