Path to Transcendence

Chapter 96: Covered in Blood

Gabriel POV

Gabriel hadn’t seen Julius for a couple of weeks at this point and was a little worried. He did end up talking to the young granddaughter of Count Violet a few days after Julius hadn’t shown up to any classes. Gabriel had seen the two of them talking often in his class. She had let him know that Julius was alright, just busy doing something else and wouldn’t be in class for a little while.

That wasn’t unusual, many students took time off to make breakthroughs or other advancements. However, two weeks was a long time for a first-year. In that period, Julius had not come to any classes or even their own sparring session. Using his administrative privileges, Gabriel was able to find out that Julius had last used his student identification card to access a training room a couple of weeks ago. Yet, there had been no other activity after that.

The room was still occupied and had no other records of anyone else entering. So Gabriel knew that Julius was still most likely inside that training room. The problem was that Gabriel didn’t even see the boy come out to eat or sleep. And he was beginning to worry if the young boy was still alive inside of there.

It wasn’t uncommon to see people go into extended meditation or training sessions, but that was reserved for higher-tiered individuals who were trying to understand a Concept. Julius was still just Tier 1… well actually Tier 2 now. But that still didn’t make much of a difference. The gap between Tier 2 and Tier 1 was the smallest among all the tiers.

Therefore, Gabriel couldn’t imagine why Julius was taking such a long time. Not to mention, how he was surviving in there. There wasn’t any food, only water inside those rooms.

That was the reason Gabriel was making his way to the first-year training facility. It was mid-day so some students were already getting in some practice or training in between their classes. But many more students were just hanging around with their friends.

Gabriel had to be honest, he was a little disappointed in the state of the school in recent years. For the better part of the last decade, there has been a serious decline in the overall standards of the school. When he had attended Goldencrest many years ago, it was during a time when many monster floods were threatening the region. So, it made sense that there was more urgency to learn how to fight.

Looking at this generation, he did not see that same urgency. There were some admittedly who were doing everything they could do in order to get stronger. But for the most part, most of the students, even among upperclassmen, did not have that drive.

In his class at Goldencrest, almost every student, regardless if they were a commoner or noble, had someone they knew die from the attacks. That had lit a fire under every last one of them, nobody in his class had taken it easy. Each day had been spent preparing themselves to fight a war against a horde of monsters.

On one hand, the Empire had never seen such a peaceful era in a hundred years. Which, was a good thing for him and his family. He didn’t want his newborn daughter to grow up in an era of death and war like he did. It was the reason why he and his comrades had fought so desperately.

On the other hand, this meant that this generation didn’t have that same resolve. They didn’t know what it felt like to see entire villages and towns razed to the ground by swarms of monsters. But he did.

So it wasn’t fair to blame these children for not training like maniacs. However, that was what drew Gabriel to Julius. There was a look in the boy’s eyes that came out when he fought him. Gabriel had only seen that look from a handful of people, all of whom went on to become some of the strongest people in the world or died alone in a Rift somewhere, forgotten. It was a look of pure desperation and madness. A look of fear that he wouldn’t become strong enough in time to make a difference.

That was why Gabriel had high hopes for Julius. Even over geniuses like Melody Maxine, Derek Zenith, Liam Abrams, Edgar Crow, and even that first-year, Helen Cromwell.

They worked hard, he wouldn’t take that away from them. But they were missing something. The spark, or rather the chip on their shoulder’s that made them throw caution to the wind and not relent until they got what they wanted or died trying. But Gabriel was able to see that Julius had it, and Stephen agreed with him if the man’s interest in Julius was any indication.

The students recognized his staff uniform and it distinguished him as a Senior Professor and gave him space to pass them. For many, they hadn’t had many classes other than their mandatory classes. Not every student chooses to pick an elective. There was only so much time in a day and so much time to train. Not to say that everyone who doesn’t choose an elective uses that free time to train, but some do.

He arrived at the room where Julius was supposedly still training in. It was a room far away from the others, Gabriel would guess that Julius had chosen this room for that very reason.

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He thought about not knocking and just using his card to open the door, but he didn’t want to come off as rude so rapped his knuckles over the enchanted stone door. He couldn’t sense or hear anything from the inside and waited for Julius to respond.

Just when his patience was running thin and was about to open the door on his own, he heard the door unlatch and begin to open. He stood there as a young boy with medium-length hair draped over his manic eyes stared back at him. Julius was covered in blood, both fresh and old. The old blood had dried into brown crusts around his face and arms. But the new blood was still recent enough that it was still flowing down his neck.

Julius didn’t seem to acknowledge it or if he did, it didn’t bother him.

“What’s up?” Julius casually asked him as if he was seeing him for breakfast.

“What’s up? That’s all you have to say?” He asked the boy, taken aback by his casualness.

“Um, yes. Why? Should I know something or did something happen?”

Gabriel ran his large hand over his smooth bald head in frustration. “You haven’t been seen in almost two weeks, and that is all you have to say?”

He watched as Julius winced and looked apologetic before saying, “I’m sorry. I had something I wanted to work on.”

“Something that required two weeks of isolated training? Did you even leave the room? The room’s enchantments certainly believe that you haven’t left that room since you entered,” he scolded the boy.

Gabriel noticed that Julius didn’t refute that. Which must have meant that he hadn’t left, which also meant that he hadn’t been eating properly for two weeks.

“What have you been eating these past couple of weeks?” He asked him.

“I packed some snacks and things to eat before I came in here,” Julius said unconvincingly.

“And where have you been sleeping?” Gabriel didn’t see any bedding or mats laid out. “On the floor?” Gabriel appreciated hard work, but he also knew how important it was to take care of one’s body during and after training.

He looked around the room behind Julius and all he saw were some blood stains strewn over the room, a pile of what looked like wood chips, and a disc made out of mana sticking out of a wall that oozed power even as the mana it was made of dissipated slowly. Not a sign of any food or places where someone would sleep. It definitely didn’t look like a training room that had been occupied for two weeks straight.

Before he turned back to Julius, Gabriel snapped his head back to the disc of mana that was stuck in one of the walls. He almost missed it but quickly realized what had felt off. The disc was stuck in one of the walls. Walls that were made of extremely durable materials and had multiple layers of enchantments placed on them. From what he had seen personally from Julius, there was no way for him to pierce the material and the enchantments necessary to do that.

What in the hell’s name has he been working on? He asked himself. Now that he was paying attention, the enchantments seemed to be working very hard to repair themselves from whatever damage this young boy had done to them.

He ignored the weird look that Julius was giving him and walked over to the disc of mana. It was for sure one of Julius’s constructs. There were signs that Gabriel recognized after seeing Julius’s constructs up close. The disc was created by some sort of mana object creation skill and was condensed very tightly with another skill. However, he was able to press his Authority around the disc and tried to see what else there was to it.

What he saw almost made him laugh out loud. On top of the two skills he initially identified, he was able to detect three other skills that worked in harmony with each other. One was for stability and helped hold the construct together even with the immense amount of mana that was pushed through it with the use of aura. The second one was some sort of version of [Mana Slash] covering the entire edge of the disc.

The third was harder to decipher. He could see that it was used to create multiple layers of mana but it was also used to enhance the [Mana Slash] skill. He would guess that the skill was [Mana Layering], based on what he had seen previously from Julius, but this application stumped him.

However, what really got his attention was the presence of something lingering around the disc. He couldn’t believe it but there were remnants of a Concept drifting away as the construct slowly broke apart. From his senses, it felt like something very very close to a complete Sharpness Concept.

He turned to look at the origin of the construct. The boy was still looking at Gabriel like he was a weirdo. Gabriel didn’t even think Julius understood what he had just done. The disc of mana was already an enormous feat. Using up to five skills within a single construct was practically unheard of for a Tier 2. Gabriel was also pretty sure that Julius had used his concentration skill, so that would technically make it six different skills used for a single strike.

There shouldn’t be a way for a Tier 2’s brain or soul to handle that type of load. Gabriel had seen many others die or go into a coma from the consequences of something similar. Yet, here Julius stood before him, completely unfazed.

Well, not completely unfazed. It was most likely the reason for all of the blood. He wouldnʼt be surprised to learn that the blood was the result of this disc of mana. He was glad that Julius had a healing skill of his own. If he didn’t, then Gabriel assumed that he would have entered to find the boy’s body face down in a pool of his own blood.

It must have been some healing skill though, maybe even more than one if he was being honest. The boy felt perfectly healthy to his senses. Were the healing skills the reason why Julius didn’t need to eat? There were some healing skills that Gabriel had come across over the years that did some amazing things. Some healed at an unbelievable rate, while others completely changed the anatomy of the person, to the point where they didn’t even need to eat or sleep anymore.

He looked over at the bloodied boy with an inquisitive gaze. Gabriel was becoming more and more interested in him the longer he knew Julius. How many more surprises did this young boy have in store?