Path to Transcendence

Chapter 290: Teacher Julius

Tia had shown up not long afterward and asked to join their little session.

“So you and the princess, huh?” Tia asked with a knowing grin on her face, immediately going for the throat.

“Why do you care so much about that? That’s like the fifth time you asked me about it since I came back.” He said to her.

“Because it’s such a romantic cliche,” she said with a cheery smile.

Joshua scoffed from the side. “What? Get pulled through a dangerous spatial trap and find themselves stranded inside a Tier 3 rift? Oh yeah, and almost dying as well. Sounds very romantic to me.”

“You know what I mean,” she argued before turning to Julius. “Also, I have seen the two of you together. I know it’s not just me who sees how close the two of you are.”

He shook his head at her but couldn’t argue against her. He had heard people talking about it, too. Some of the rumors have been getting quite out of hand, though.

“Are we going to practice, or are we going to gossip the entire time?” He asked her.

“Okay, okay. But just to let you know, I am going to ask you again after this,” Tia promised with an evil grin.

He ignored her, but that only seemed to invigorate her.

***

“Youʼre still using too much mana. Maybe you should take a break. You are getting a bit sloppier than you were earlier,” Julius commented to Joshua across the room.

“What do you mean he is using too much mana?” Tia asked as she worked on some of her skills.

“It means he is using too much mana,” he said plainly.

She sighed exasperatedly at his sarcastic answer. “He is already using so little mana. Isn’t that good enough?”

He paused and let Polux’s fist connect with his shoulder, not worrying too much about it because even though it was quite powerful for a Tier 2, the punch didn’t even penetrate his defenses.

“He is wasting a bunch of mana because he is letting a good amount drift off into the air,” he said while pointing at all of the wasted water mana he sensed drifting from Joshua.

She gave him a disbelieving stare. “How can you even filter out the water mana and sense it? I certainly can’t.”

“Well, that might be something you should work on,” he said as he ducked his head to avoid the overhand right from Polux and threw a frontkick at Polux, sending the wolfkin boy flying through the air. He still hadn’t completely forgiven the other boy yet. Or rather, he didn’t want to. He enjoyed hanging it over the wolfkin boy and using that as an excuse to be rougher on him during their sparring.

“That’s what Domains and Authorities, to an extent, are meant for,” the girl said to him with a deadpan stare, clearly not liking the tone of his response.

“I don’t see a reason why you can’t start now though. Plus, you won’t be able to get either of those if you don’t already have some proficiency in those areas,” he said to her much more politely, realizing how terse he might have come across.

“Because it would probably take me focusing on my perception skill for the next couple of months even to get close to making any kind of meaningful progress. The prelims for the tournament are next week, I have to focus on my strengths,” she said with a frown.

He sighed. He quickly found out that Tia loved plants and skills that revolved around that. However, for anything else, she was very unwilling to put in the effort. He didn’t know if it was because she didn’t like practicing something she wasn’t good at or if she just found it boring, but he was confident this would be something that would keep her behind the others in the long run.

She couldn’t just focus on plant magic the entire time. She needed to round out her skillset just a little bit. Her physical abilities were quite substandard, as were her general perception abilities, not just for mana but for aura and threat detection as well.

Additionally, he found out that her aura control wasn’t that great; with his new skill, he was able to read her intentions practically without much work. It would always be at a huge disadvantage if she ever fought someone with good aura senses like Polux. The wolf boy could literally read her like an open book. It was why she never won in their mock battles.

“Look, I know you want to win the tournament, but I am going to be honest, like you asked me to when you joined this training. Currently, you don’t have much of a chance of winning against someone who can avoid your plants. If you don’t pin them down, it’s pretty much over. That is why I have been advising you to add something to your toolkit. It doesn’t have to be mana sensing. It can be something else. But it needs to be something that can help you when your main weapon is ineffective,” he explained calmly to her.

“But the tournament-” she tried to argue, but he quickly cut her off.

“Forget the tournament. Think about what is going to happen in the real world when you come across a monster you can’t pin down with vines. What is going to happen to you? Are you going to rely on your teammates every time? I thought you said you want to be as strong as Edgar?”

“I do!” She said fervently.

“Then prove it,” he said before turning away. This wasn’t the first time he had a similar conversation with her this week. Only this time, he wasnʼt as patient with her. She was just stubborn and didn’t like to listen to otherʼs advice. He didn’t entirely blame her either. He was ‘just’ a Tier 3 to her. While it was a mutual agreement that he was stronger than her, she probably thought he was stronger merely because of the tier difference.

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As he was walking away, Polux came up to him, rubbing the front of his chest where Julius had kicked him.

“Don’t you think you were a little harsh on her?”

“She was the one who asked me to,” he said with another sigh.

Polux nodded his head. “Fair, but she is stubborn. I have found that out the hard way these past several months.”

Julius looked over to where she was still playing with plant magic.“Then she will fall behind, I guess.”

“Why don’t you spar her for real?” Polux offered.

“Yeah, but what is that going to prove? That I am stronger?” He asked Polux.

“No, don’t just beat her. Beat her in the same way other people are going to. Force her to acknowledge that she needs another method of fighting. I try to work with her, but she says that I am too fast for her vines to work. I don’t think she realizes that someone of significant skill can avoid her vines without being extraordinarily fast or strong,” Polux stated.

That isn’t an awful idea, he thought to himself.

“And you think I can?”

Polux scoffed. “I know you can. The others have no clue about how strong you really are. I told them some things, but experiencing it versus hearing it is something else entirely. I think she needs to experience how someone in Tier 2 can beat her with sheer skill.”

“You do remember that I am Tier 3, right?”

Polux gave him a deadpan look. “No, it’s not like you haven’t mentioned a hundred times.”

“It has not been a hundred times,” he argued.

“Close enough. And you can always limit your physical abilities to Tier 2. I have seen you do something similar already.”

Julius bounced the idea around in his head. Eventually, he came to a decision. Because, at the end of the day, he wanted Tia to succeed. He wanted all of them to succeed. And what was the point of becoming strong if he couldn’t help his friends?

They were nice people, and if he needed to deal with the occasional hard-headedness, he would. After all, he knew better than anyone how hard-headed he could be at times. He couldn’t exactly criticize her, considering all of his own… issues.

Resolving to at least give it a try, he went over to her.

“Let’s spar,” he said without beating around the bush.

***

Tia POV

She kicked imaginary dirt on the training floor. What did he want from her? First, he suggested that she start learning better body enhancement skills, and now he thinks she should learn a new mana perception skill.

Who does he think she is?

First of all, she was a mage. She didn’t believe that she needed to learn how to fight like Polux.

Secondly, her mana sensing was just fine. It was just his that was abnormally good, a fact that she was very jealous of. Of course, she would want to have amazing mana-sensing skills like his, but it didn’t work like that. Believe her, she has tried.

Finally, she did not believe that she needed to change her style, which was one of the main reasons she had been one of the more powerful students in their year.

She remembered that Polux said Julius was much stronger than he initially led them to believe. However, you would think Julius could do no wrong when Polux talked about him. He even went as far as to say that Julius at Tier 2 was stronger than Helen or the princess, two tough things to believe after seeing both of them in action.

She still recalled when Julius had difficulty dealing with weak Tier 2 monsters. And now, all of a sudden, he was a Tier 3 on his return.

Don’t get her wrong, she liked Julius a lot. But she didn’t know if she needed to listen to all of his advice just because he was a tier above her.

However, his offer took her by surprise. He wanted to spar for some reason, and she could smell Polux’s stupid furry fingers all over it.

She looked at Julius for a little while as she processed his words. Eventually, she came to a decision. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t hurt, and it would be a good experience to fight against someone stronger than she was. While she had no expectation of winning, she believed she could gain some valuable insight into the difference between her and a Tier 3.

“Okay, right now?” She asked.

“Sure, why not? We have plenty of room,” he said to her unbotheredly.

She nodded her head, headed over to an emptier space, and got into position. Polux and Joshua had both come to observe, as well. Polux stepped toward the middle to referee the match.

“You guys both ready?”

She vocalized her assent and saw Julius nod his head as well. Seeing that both of them were ready, Polux signaled the beginning of the fight.

She already knew what she was going to do. Julius liked to fight up close and personal, which meant that he would most likely blitz toward her before she could activate her skills. He would want to prove to her that she needed another method of fighting.

She sent a thick wall of thorns as he dashed toward her. Although she was surprised at this speed, it wasn’t as fast as she had been expecting from a Tier 3. It would seem that he was holding back for her sake.

He avoided the wall of thorns quite easily, but that was expected. The wall helped delay him enough so that she could activate her other skills. She targeted a large area around Julius and areas where she believed he could move.

Then, in an instant, a wave of vines covered in thorns swarmed his location, and she saw him not make a move to dodge them and stay right in the middle of them.

He must really be underestimating me, she thought to herself with a slight smirk.

However, that smirk quickly fell off her face when he effortlessly danced through her vines. Julius wasn’t even using his superior physical abilities to get through them as Polux had done in the past.

In fact, he was moving pretty slowly, all things considered. Each step was methodically planned and executed. It was like he always knew exactly where every one of her vines was.

There were no fancy skills activated or big explosions. All that he used were small bursts of mana and minimal movement. Unfortunately for her, that was all he needed.

Realizing that he would make it through her field of traps, she threw everything she had at him.

But it wasn’t enough to stop him. He fluttered around her vines, and when he arrived several feet in front of her face, she activated one of her failsafe skills.

It was a skill that released a bunch of paralytic spores; the range wasn’t that big, but when someone was already so close to her, it was hard for her to miss.

However, she groaned when she saw a barrier of mana appear in front of him and mold around his body, protecting himself. The spores tried to get through the barrier, but it was well made, and they were rebuffed.

And before she could do anything else, his hand was on her shoulder, looking at her in the eyes. He didn’t show an ounce of tiredness or exertion. It was like he had just strolled through a park on a sunny morning, not through a field of thorns that would have shredded anyone else.

So, she had to admit defeat with a tired droop of her shoulders.