Path to Transcendence

He kept his back toward the assassin. He did so for good reason though. He was purposely luring the man to attack. Perhaps he would think that Julius would have his guard down and make some mistake.

Sadly, he didn't fall for it and kept his distance.

"So you're saying that the Conclave is not working for or with any Houses?" Julius asked in a tone that plainly revealed his skepticism.

"Nope," the man said with another grin, not disclosing anything to him.

The one thing that Julius did notice though, is that the man was ever so slowly shifting his position so that he placed himself between Julius and the woman that was incapacitated.

"She important to you?" He asked the man with a wondering tone.

He felt the man's entire body tense for a brief moment, the first real reaction he got out of him so far.

"I don't know what you mean," the man played ignorant.

Julius shrugged, with his back still toward the man. "That's good to know. I guess I will-"

He was interrupted by a flashing sword slashing toward the back of his neck. With a quick burst of mana, he covered his hands with constructs and parried the next flurry of attacks with careful precision.

It would appear that the man was quite protective of the woman and thought that Julius was maybe threatening her. Of course, this wasn't true at all. Julius would never try to beat someone by threatening someone they care about. His pride as a fighter would have him rather die than do something like that.

But he did hope to bait the man.

Of course, the Tier 4 didn't know that and was pressuring him with quite the ferocity. It took all of his focus to avoid getting slashed by those scary-looking blades. However, the most dangerous attack was done by the man's Authority which tried to suppress Julius. Unlike some of the other Authorities he had experienced, this one was quite different.

It wasn't as outright oppressive or strong, but it was sneaky. If Dustin's Authority was like a sledgehammer that crushed him, then this was like someone was trying to stab him in the dark with a knife.

No matter how strong his willpower was, it was a different battle than anything else he had fought before.

Thankfully, his new aura helped a lot with this. The ruinous effect was the first thing confronting this Authority. And it helped keep it at bay. More than the Tier 4 was clearly expecting.

Julius could see the man's surprise and took advantage of it.

Unleashing more of his body enhancement skill than before, he got in close and smashed a fist covered in dense mana in the man's chest, but the man leaned toward the side just enough that he simply sent him staggering backward.

He sent a volley of spikes screaming at him and grinned as the explosions rocked the man. Using [Flash Step], he kept up the pressure and sent a kinetically charged leg at his opponent, but clicked his tongue as the man was wrapped up in a thick cloud of black mana and disappeared from sight.

Stupid teleportation skills, when can I get one, huh? He grumbled to himself as [Spatial Perception] tracked where the man appeared and he sent several spikes at that location without hesitation.

The man's composure cracked even further as he was swarmed instantly by more mana constructs. He used another quick teleportation to escape but it didn't help. Julius found the man once more and bombarded him.

It would also seem that his teleportation skill was on some sort of cooldown and couldn't just run away.

Thank god for that.

But Julius could only shake his head in utter bafflement as the man displayed an intangibility skill much like the one the woman had used and watched as the construct passed right through him without harm.

Teleportation and intangibilty? What? Is he afraid of ever getting hit? Julius thought with a shake of his head.

Typical of an assassin.
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Despite being annoyed at this, he already had an idea of how to handle such an ability from fighting the woman.

He sent a bunch of smaller constructs toward the Tier 4, trying to keep the man focused on using the intangibility skill. While he was doing this, he sent a blast of condensed aura much like he had with the woman.

Unfortunately, the Tier 4 had a much more sturdy will and his aura didn't have quite the debilitating effect. But this didn't mean he let up. He kept sending lots of smaller constructs at the man.

He was aware of the skill's proclivity to use a lot of mana while it was active. Thus, until he found another way to get around the skill, he was content with just wasting the man's mana.

If there was one thing he wasn't worried about, it was using all of his mana before the man had to deactivate the skill.

Sure, the man might have a larger mana capacity than he did by sheer advantage of his tier, but the intangibility skill was much more mana-hungry than his small constructs. So if there was someone who was going to run out of mana first, it was going to be this man.

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Unfortunately, the man was not unaware of this fact either. While he didn't know just how deep Julius's mana pool was, he soon realized that he was in a losing battle of mana attrition.

To Julius's surprise, the man dropped the skill with zero hesitation. The constructs tagged him a few times, but instead of relying on the skill to avoid them, the man had decided to use his superior speed to dodge them and his tough Tier 4 body to withstand them.

The Tier 4 closed the distance and weaved in between his spray of constructs, only getting hit occasionally. But since they weren't that powerful individually, the attacks left minimal damage.

The man was an assassin, which also meant his defenses were not even close to someone like Rolus or the other Tier 4s the man was currently fighting. Small lacerations and burns were appearing on the body of the assassin with a growing number.

Unfortunately for Julius, this was all the man needed. Julius sensed the man disappear from ahead of him and reappear at his back. A dagger plunging downward toward his skull.

Julius reacted instantly and created a plate of condensed mana between him and the dagger. To his surprise, he sensed a large gathering of mana wrap around the dagger and when it made contact with the barrier, it shredded the thing open. He tried to lean out of the way with a burst of kinetic energy, but the blade plunged right into his back. The man also clinging to his back like a murderous monkey.

Making a bold split-second decision, he sent a suffocating blanket of kinetic energy at him. Instead of pushing him away, he did his best to trap him. So even though some sort of mana was continually infecting him through the blade that was still lodged in his back, he used all of his willpower to freeze the man for a mere moment.

However, that moment was enough time for him to get some retribution. In the time before the man realized he was stuck, Julius blasted the man with as much kinetic energy and fire as possible.

Halfway through the explosion, the assassin understood what was going on and used his intangibity skill once more, letting most of the damage to wash over him. On another note which piqued Julius's curiosity, was that the man was intangible but somehow was able to keep in contact with the blade even though the blade was not.

With that being said, he had predicted that the man would use his intangibility skill and he sent the prepared aura burst at the man with as much power as he could.

This time, the aura worked. While the man was too busy keeping his intangility skill active and pouring whatever nasty mana into Julius's body. He couldn't maintain his aura defenses well enough and was brutalized by Julius's aura.

The Tier 4 let out a choking scream of pain and let his defenses drop even further. But kept flooding Julius's body with the unknown mana. Mana which was literally corroding his flesh and organs at a swift rate. His skin was blackening and was already in the middle of peeling away in large chunks.

Julius ignored it though and pressed harder, pushing even more of his ruinous aura into the man, absolutely flooding him with destructive aura. The other interesting detail that he found out was that the man wasn't completely safe from his kinetic restriction technique.

On the contrary, in his intangible state, it was actually much easier to restrict him once he got past the man's willpower.

At this point, it was a battle of who could injure the other more before the other fell.

Typically, it would be a battle that this assassin would win ninety-nine times out of a hundred. His skill that was wrapped around his blade was a deadly one. One perfectly suited to an assassin like him.

Unfortunately, he didn't take into account that Julius had a ridiculous healing skill.

And so Julius watched the horror blossom on the man's face as [Phoenix Renewal] rushed through his body and destroyed all of the invading mana which was in the middle of eating away his organs with some sort of Death related Concept. The Death Concept was no match in the face of his Phoenix Concept.

His skin was gradually healed and while not as fast as it normally did, it was still quite fast. The black chunks of flesh fell off and were replaced with brand new healthy flesh.

Additionally, since the assassin had given up all defenses to take Julius down before his aura could take the man down, he was left in a very dangerous spot. Because now Julius had the man completely wrapped in his ruinous aura and there was nothing he could do.

The Tier 4's Authority was unable to help as his aura crushed the will of the assassin who was still trying to inject more mana into Julius. Even going as far as to jam another blade into his spine. But that didn't help. His healing skill was more than enough to let his body take a beating.

He had gone through much worse than this and merely laughed out loud as the assassin frantically tried to pull away. However, he couldn't. Julius had him stuck with kinetic energy, focusing most of his attention on the knives that the man had such a strong grip on.

The assassin tried to teleport away, thinking it would let him escape, but being in such close proximity to the ruinous aura was already disrupting much of the man's focus and seemed to prevent him from using his spatial abilities.

Julius could only grin like a madman as he firmly kept the assassin in his grasp. He was dedicated to not let this person go no matter how wildly the man's Authority tried to wrestle back control.

The downside of having such a subtle Authority meant it wasn't very good when it came to direct clashes, which was exactly what he was going for. He brutally pushed his Emblem, his willpower, and his aura to metaphorically sit on the man's soul with pure weight.

If the man had been physically stronger than Julius, he might have just thrown him off. But since the man specialized in speed and evasion, his other abilities were quite lacking.

Instead, he was totally stuck.

Knowing that he needed to do something, the Tier 4 released his intangibility skill and also his grip on his daggers that were still jammed into Julius's back.

Julius gritted his teeth at this. He had been hoping the man wouldn't realize that being intangible was a benefit to him and keep it active. Ironically, the man probably dropped it because he thought it was a waste of mana.

The Tier 4 then used Julius's back as a springboard and sent a huge blast of mana through his feet and into his back. Unable to keep restricted, Julius had to release his technique.

On the bright side, since the man was now tangible, it meant that Julius was able to throw an empowered spike at the man who was still mid-air. Unsurprisingly, the man teleported to evade it, able to use the skill again once he was not in direct contact with Julius.

However, that didn't mean he was safe. Julius sensed the teleportation and sent another spike toward the location. Already preparing for the second and final teleportation the man could use before there was a cooldown.

And just as expected when the man saw the next spike soaring toward him, he teleported again… right into the spike of mana that was waiting for him.

Julius connected with his first real strike of the fight and it was glorious. The Tier 4 was smashed directly in the chest and his weak defenses weren't enough to protect him from the massive explosion from the spike.

The Tier 4 was blasted off of his feet like a ragdoll and eventually came to a stop in the dirt completely motionless.