Path to Transcendence

Chapter 289: Getting Used to the Attention

“Hey! What do you think you are doing?”

Julius turned his head to look at the dude with an innocent expression on his face. The guy was quite the handsome fellow, but it was marred by the severe frown on his face.

“Have some respect. You can’t treat her like that!” The guy berated him.

Julius confusingly looked toward Reinera and she just shrugged her shoulders, as if saying she didn’t know what to do either. Not knowing who this person was, and since she apparently didn’t think to try to explain things to him, he decided to ignore him.

Julius gave him one last glance before pulling away with Reinera in tow.

Unfortunately, the other boy wouldn’t allow him to leave so easily. A hand latched itself onto his shoulders once more. This time, a little more strength went into it. Julius could feel the mana flowing through the guy’s body as his enhancement skill activated.

“I was talking to you,” the unknown boy said angrily enough that the people around them realized something was wrong. The chatter died down a little as they became curious about what was happening.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Julius said with a soft bob of his head before whispering over to Reinera. “Do you know this person?”

She leaned forward and gave him a soft shake of her head. “Kind of, his name is Adam, and he’s not really a bad guy. He’s just a bit…” She trailed off.

“A bit like a noble?” He finished for her.

“Yeah, like a noble,” she admitted in a soft hush.

“What should I say to him?” He whispered back.

“I don’t know, it wasn’t like I was expecting you to come over here. I thought you wanted us to pretend like we didn’t know each other?” She mumbled with a quick look at all the people who were staring at them.

“I did, but then I thought about how annoying it would be to pretend to do all of that and that it would eventually come out anyway. Also, you looked pretty miserable over here and thought you could use some help,” he said with a light laugh.

“Well, thank you. I thought when I gave you that look earlier, you decided to ignore me,” she said to him with a grin.

“I thought about it,” he said with a matching grin.

She shook her head and kicked him in the shin for his teasing.

The boy who had obstructed them seemed pretty close to blowing his lid while they forgot about him as they talked.

However, Reinera thankfully turned over to this ‘Adam’ person. “It’s alright, Adam, I’ll see you and the others later,” she said gently.

“Who is this?” Adam asked with a derisive look toward Julius.

“This is Julius, the other student who was transported with me,” she explained before turning away. This time, she was the one who began dragging Julius along by the wrist.

“Woah,” he said as she almost made him fall off his feet, but luckily kept up with her. He also felt Adam reach out once again in an attempt to grab his shoulder, but this time he did something about it.

The first two times Adam grabbed his shoulder, he could accept. But after she had explained things to him, he didn’t think the guy had any need to touch him again. This is why he used a brief pulse of kinetic energy to halt Adam’s movements.

It was surprisingly easy to do. Since he was only Tier 2, Julius didn’t even have to focus on overcoming his willpower. It felt like it was barely there in the first place.

He didn’t completely immobilize the boy, either. He simply made sure that he could not reach over and grab him. He released him quickly afterward, and by that time, they were already out of reach.

Thankfully, the boy didn’t come chasing after them, and he followed along amusingly as Reinera dragged him off to the cafeteria.

However, he couldn’t help but notice the weird looks he was getting from the other students as they all spotted the princess hauling him away.

***

“How have you been enjoying your first day back?” Lily asked him.

“Some stares, but for the most part, it has been pretty boring, to be honest,” he said to her, looking around at the cafeteria.

Whereas the first years had swarmed Reinera, now that they were in the upperclassmenʼs cafeteria, the other students didn’t really give them much attention. Of course, there were some stares, but it wasn’t bad at all. Most of the older students didn’t seem to care all that much about the princess’s return, at least not enough to come storming towards their table to interrupt.

Reinera, who was sitting on his other side, chuckled. “I suspect that things might change pretty soon,” she said with an empathetic shake of her head.

There is that, he thought to himself sadly.

“Yeah, I noticed that you aren’t exactly hiding that you know each other,” Edgar said with a mouth full of food.

“Chew before you talk. You are getting food everywhere,” Lily said to the big guy.

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“No, I’m not,” Edgar said while crumbs were falling off of his face.

Lily pinched her nose and turned back to Julius. “Anyhow, why did you decide to do that? I thought you were still trying not to attract attention?”

“I went over what we talked about last night, and you guys were right. There is no way that I am going to be able to hide things for very long anymore. If it’s not my recent advancement to Tier 3 getting attention, it will be something else, like my relationship with Reinera. So I thought it was better just to get it over now.”

“See? I give some good advice,” Aubrey stated proudly.

He ignored her, much to her displeasure.

“I am still wondering if it’s worth it to stay at Goldencrest. I feel like this place is limiting me,” he said to them.

“Where is this coming from? You said something like that last night.”

“Just something I was realizing when I was sitting in my classes. There isn’t much that I find useful in those classes. Physical Training is something I can do with or without school, Professor Stewart is not someone who teaches mana the way I use it, and while Professor Rowe and Professor Youma are great teachers, they were limited by what they can teach the rest of the class.”

“What would you do though? Leave and go adventuring?” Aubrey asked, sounding genuinely curious.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but it might be the better option to get stronger.”

Lily gave him a soft bump to get his attention. “You really think that’s the best option? Remember, not everything is about getting stronger.”

He gave her a small, unsure smile. “Iʼm not saying I have decided just yet.”

“Well, before you start getting ideas about leaving, you should focus on how you two are going to deal with the mess you got yourselves into,” Aubrey said while chewing on her food.

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” he said tiredly, already knowing that after lunch was over, they would be swarmed once again.

***

It was chaos. For the next week, he and Reinera found themselves getting nonstop attention from all of the other underclassmen, specifically first years.

It was so bad that Julius and Reinera had straight-up avoided going to class. However, after the first few days, it died down a little, and he was able to start getting back into his routine.

The only time he had to himself was when he was hanging out with the others or in a training room.

People were very suddenly very interested in finding out who he was. Previously, he was a nobody. Most students didn’t even know his name, and he was more well-known to the older students who saw him with the others.

However, that had changed very quickly.

People tried to talk to him and ask him questions all the time. At first, it was questions about Reinera and how he had gotten close to her. But recently, the questions had become more about him rather than her.

A very funny development was that he suddenly became very popular with the girls in his year. It would seem that being ‘friends’ with a princess made girls want to befriend him as well.

During class, girls would frequently approach him and try to initiate a conversation. Somehow,, they had found out things about him beforehand. Most of them already knew that he was friends with Joshua and that group.

A much bigger shock to him was that it had also come out that he was friends with Lily and the others. After some thought, he suspected that Henry’s friends had told some students who then told everyone else. He remembered that Aubrey had literally threatened Henry and his friends earlier in the year, so it would make sense for them to know about their relationship and they would only need to ask some older students to verify it.

The fact that he was friends with them wasn’t exactly unknown to the upperclassmen, but for the first years, this was big news—news that garnered him a lot of attention regardless of his connection with Reinera.

This meant he had quickly become one of the most popular or rather most sought-after guys in his year. He still didn’t know how he felt about that quite yet.

It certainly felt better than being ridiculed or looked down on, but the fact that everyone always looked at him when he passed by them didn’t make him feel comfortable.

“You are still using too much mana,” he commented offhandedly to Joshua, who was in the middle of some training. The other boy had been asking for his help quite often after Polux spilled that Julius was stronger than he pretended to be.

He didn’t mind it, though. Joshua was surprisingly hard-working when he wanted to be. He had already tightened up a lot of his techniques. While nothing too impressive so far, it had only been around a week of training so far.

Julius was also sparring with Polux, who was trying to get used to a new skill the boy had earned a few days earlier.

It was a skill that used some properties of mana to enhance his attacks.

The boy decided to get this skill because he had some trouble against enemies who had an aura-based defense skill. They weren’t that common, but apparently, several students had one, and it always gave Polux a hard time whenever he sparred with these people.

It wasn’t quite a body enhancement skill, the skill was more like a spontaneous burst of energy instead of a sustained flow of mana which was probably better for the wolfkin boy.

It was quite a simple skill that literally burst an amount of mana through his fist and at the moment, it was a little lacklaster and wasteful. However, Julius believed that there was potential for it to grow into a powerful skill one day.

A good old burst of mana never hurt anyone. It was actually similar to what he did for [Flash Step] but just for a fist.

With that being said, Polux always had trouble with mana-specific skills so he was still having some difficulty adapting to it. Currently, he was trying to speed up its activation and asked for Julius’s help.

Julius was still upset at the boy and decided that this was a good time to get back at the other boy. It was basically a free chance to beat up on the tattletale.

Polux stepped forward and activated the skill. Julius sensed the manipulation of mana and placed a barrier of aura in front of him, blocking the attack easily.

That was probably the biggest problem with the skill. It just took way too long to activate, and by that time, he could create any number of barriers to block it or simply avoid it. However, Polux already knew that, which is why they were practicing.

“Don’t even think about making it pretty,” he advised Polux.

“What do you mean?” Polux asked after taking a step back.

Julius looked at Joshua, who was training his mana control. He was still making sure Joshua was paying attention in case he had to give advice to the other boy, too. After seeing that Joshua was trying to limit the amount of mana wasted during the spellʼs formation, he nodded his head approvingly and turned back to Polux.

“The skill itself isn’t very complicated. At its core, it is pure mana exploding outward. Don’t worry about controlling every bit of it. We can worry about mana conservation later. Right now, just focus on throwing your mana as swiftly through your fist as possible.”

Polux nodded his head firmly and closed his eyes before lashing out in another strike. This time, Julius noticed that it was slightly quicker this time around, and while it wasn’t elegant to watch, it was effective.

“Better, just focus on pure speed until you run out of mana, okay? Try and actually land an actual strike if you can,” he said challengingly to the boy.

Polux smiled and proceeded to try doing just that. Whether he was able to accomplish that, well… that was up for debate.

For the time being, he enjoyed himself and occasionally hit Polux a bit harder than necessary. However, it didn’t feel as satisfying as it could have because the other boy seemingly enjoyed it more than he probably had any right to.