Path to Transcendence

Chapter 243: Stupid Ants

The eighth wave arrived right on time. However, he was surprised when it wasn’t another group of hobgoblins. The rift must have decided to change things up for him. In their place was something he had been praying not to show up.

Something he had thought wouldn’t show up this late in the waves.

All around him, gathered on every side of the hill was a countless horde of ants the size of small dogs.

There were so many he couldn’t even begin to count.

It was just a black wall of moving dots as they made their way up the hill.

He cursed the rift once more. He hated insects. Ants, cockroaches, mosquitos, and flies.

He understood that ants had their purpose in nature. They helped aerate the ground, but he still didn’t like them too much. It probably stemmed from him falling into an anthill when he was young and came out with scars littering his legs for the rest of his life.

Lingering resentment tended to stay with a person when something like that happened to them. It also didnʼt help that these ants were hundreds of times larger than the ones he was used to.

When he looked down the hill again he couldn’t help but get the creepy crawlies.

There were so many ants.

But on the other hand, he was glad that the rift had chosen ants. Since they were ants, he was free to go wild. He was actually looking forward to crushing them.

He raised his hand upward into the air dramatically and clenched it into a fist. He wouldn’t leave any alive, that was his promise.

The ants weren’t that strong either. Most of them were only Tier 2, but some among them were Tier 3. And he was able to feel one particularly strong one shine out from the rest. This one most likely had a Concept of its own and was the one controlling the rest.

Perhaps, it was their queen or something.

He was already moving before he was even aware of it himself. He tossed out a strong spike of mana at the queen. But was surprised to see a literal wave of ants come crashing down onto the queen and protect it with their own bodies.

The spike detonated and caused an explosion that killed at least a couple dozen ants. But he wasn’t able to hurt the queen. Soon afterward, the ants all swarmed the queen and covered her in countless layers of bodies.

He didn’t think he would be getting through something like that very easily. Not even if he used his blue flames and a lot of mana.

Even if he did, it wouldn’t likely work. The queen would simply just move away once he was close to hitting her.

While these ants weren’t strong there was such a large number of them that he couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.

He wasn’t nervous because he was afraid of dying to these ants but because he was worried about how much mana he was going to have to use to deal with all of them.

He suspected that was the riftʼs plan. It was possible that the prior waves were just to get an idea of his skills and test him in various ways. But now it realized that it would need to drain Julius of his mana.

Or perhaps he was giving too much credit to the rift.

He shook his head, no matter how well he did on conserving his mana, he would have to use a lot in order to take them all out.

However, he did have an idea already in mind though.

It was a little cowardly and wasn’t something he had practiced yet, but he believed it would help him have more mana left over after this wave was complete.

Besides, it was an idea he had been wanting to try for a long time now. He did feel like he was ready though.

Well… he hoped that he was.

With a loud boom, he jumped and released a burst of kinetic energy from his feet.

He got pretty high off of that one jump and right as he reached the apex, he created a panel of mana below his feet that acted like a platform. He then used this panel to jump even higher up. It was a little hard to maintain the panel stable in the air, but his manipulation and willpower had increased vastly in these past couple of months, and was able to do so with a little extra effort.

He repeated this a couple of times until he was happy with his position and finally rested onto a stable platform high in the sky. He wasn’t actually flying, but it would give him a higher vantage point where he could use his long-ranged attacks without being harassed.

This gave him a simple way to relax and conserve his mana.

Getting overwhelmed by sheer numbers seemed like the biggest danger. It also helped a lot that this way he didn’t need to get any closer to them. Now he would be able to throw down as many spikes as he wanted with plenty of time to regenerate some of his mana as he did so.

It didn’t hurt that he also didn’t need to actually touch them, but that totally wasn’t the reason why he chose this strategy. Definitely not.

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He didn’t see any wings on them and didn’t see a way for them to deal with him easily. In fact, he was already mentally preparing himself that the next wave would have something that would prevent him from doing the same tactic once more.

He created a nice couple dozen orbs of mana, each one was made for its explosiveness and how much area it could cover, rather than for piercing defenses. They were beautiful things. Deep swirling blue flames danced around the orbs looking like pretty little balls of death.

Since he was safe up here, he decided to test if his blue flames would be more efficient.

He gave the ants below, who were already at the top of the hill one last smug smile before he dropped all of them off of his little platform like dropping glass marbles to the floor.

The explosions below rang out like a beautiful symphony of fire and death.

Each orb was actually stronger than he thought it would be. These orbs created massive craters that tore apart countless ants in a single blast. He even got a little lucky and took out a few Tier 3s when they got too close to the blast radius.

He didn’t follow up the bombard immediately afterward either, he just sat down on the platform he created and watched the ants run around in chaos as his mana recovered passively.

He couldn’t help but draw comparisons to people in his old world who would burn down antshills or pour molten metal down them. He had never done that before so this was a novel experience for him.

He could understand why these people used to laugh when they did it too, because at the moment he was close to cheering out in joy.

While he waited, he thought he might as well check the notifications he had been putting off since the beginning of the rift.

[Armaments of the Arcane lvl 7 -> lvl 8]

[Sage of Savagery lvl 7 -> lvl 8]

[Flash Step lvl 11 -> lvl 12]

[Barrier of Severance lvl 15 -> lvl 16]

[Thermal Empowerment lvl 13 -> lvl 14]

[Aura Burn lvl 7 -> lvl 8]

A bunch of skills leveled up by one level. [Armaments of the Arcane] and [Sage of Savagery] weren’t that surprising to see, he had been on the cusp of another level for a while.

Neither was [Flash Step], [Thermal Empowerment], or [Aura Burn]. But seeing [Barrier of Severance] was a little bit of a surprise.

He hadn’t gained a level in this skill for a while. It had been kind of stagnating and left forgotten in his skill slots. But perhaps this was a sign that he should begin to focus on it again.

After all, it had been of great use in dealing with the previous wave.

It was also a guaranteed epic skill once he got it to level 20. His Severing Will Concept would quickly assimilate with it and evolve it from there.

He was very excited for [Thermal Empowerment] to reach level 15 though. It was only a level away and he was very tempted to forget about hiding up in the sky and go down there. But he reminded himself that there was a good chance he would have an opportunity pretty soon and to be patient.

Although he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of skill he would be offered.

He was hoping that since he infused his Phoenix Concept with his fire mana, it would generate better options, but it was hard to say. He wasn’t really able to use his Phoenix Concept to its full strength because of the limitation of it being an uncommon skill.

***

Once he felt like he regenerated enough mana, he created some new orbs, this time he played around with them a little bit before he let them go.

This time around, he added his Sharpness Concept and packed it between the layers of the orbs in specific arrangments. He was hoping that this would release waves of sharpened mana outward once they exploded.

So with curiosity shimmering in his eyes, he dropped the orbs and focused on how effective this addition would make them.

To his disappointment, he sensed that the layers of Sharpness-infused mana didn’t release as he had planned. Instead, the layers were quickly destroyed by the overwhelming power of the explosion.

In fact, not only did it not add anything to the orbs, it actually might have hindered their effectiveness.

Since the blast had to take time to destroy the new layers he created, it probably wasted some energy to do so.

Back to the drawing board, it would seem.

He completely ignored the devastation he created below him. After the second bombardment, a significant number of ants were blown up. Probably leaving three-fourths of them still alive.

This was perfect for him. This meant that he had several more chances to see if he could improve these orbs and test out some more theories. He clapped his hands together in excitement.

***

There was only a small number of ants left. A fraction of what had been an endless horde of creepy insects.

The ground all around him was littered with deep craters that were smoking and ash was floating in the air.

While he hadn’t been able to create an advantageous environment for himself before the wave started, it seemed that he was able to once it began. Or at least if it was by accident.

Shockingly, the queen was still alive, it had sacrificed most of its underlings to protect itself. It even used some kind of skill that allowed it to heal itself and take the mana of the other ants.

It would seem that taking out all of the ants before was the simplest option.

He didn’t really care about that though. For the past half an hour he had been solely focused on adapting his explosive orbs using his Sharpness Concept to improve its damage output.

And only after many attempts, did he believe he had it right.

He stood up on the platform that he was still relaxing on and released a single orb.

This one though was very different than the ones he had been sending down, it was quite volatile.

He had realized after multiple attempts, that what he needed wasn’t to find a delicate solution to use his Sharpness Concept more effectively.

He was going for destruction which meant that straightforward methods would work the best.

And that required him to pack as much of both energies into the small orb.

There was no need for multiple elegant layers, he just needed to jam them all together and hold it together with pure willpower.

And that was exactly what he did.

This tiny orb the size of his hand, now had more energy than he ever used in a single construct. But by adding more, he was able to add more of his Sharpness Concept as well using [Barrier of Severance] as an aid.

It worked out wonderfully though, the other energies balanced in a way he wasn’t able to do by layering it.

When he let go of the orb, it didn’t simply fall like the other orbs he had dropped. This one plummeted to the ground like it was made of a tungsten alloy rod smashing toward the surface below.

He could only smile in glee as the entire hill below him was wiped out in a flash of bright light and a deafening boom. It was so big that the shockwave exploded upward and almost knocked him off of his platform.

But in the end, there was not a single ant left standing.

Hell, there was barely a hill either, it was just a scorched hole in the ground. It was only then that he allowed himself to chuckle.

Congratulations, Eight Wave completed… Please wait ten minutes for the Ninth Wave.