Path to Transcendence

Chapter 292: Rematch Against Edgar

Julius stepped back and ducked under Aubrey’s swinging fist with a small grin.

The other girl had gotten much faster during his time away. She must have picked up a new skill or evolved one of her prior ones because now she was displaying speed that she definitely didn’t have before.

Aubrey had never been the fastest of people, and although she had a pretty powerful defensive skill, the fact that it was harder to hit her was a significant improvement for her. It also posed a very annoying problem for her opponents because she still had her mirage skill, which already made it hard enough as is.

Luckily for him, he was still able to detect which clone was the real one. However, it was a much more difficult thing to do as each clone had more substance than before. It was almost easier just to use his aura senses to determine the real Aubrey and the fake ones.

He had been training with her as she got acclimated to her new speed. She wanted him to help her instead of Edgar or Derek because Julius had always been able to perceive where she was easily.

This meant that she had to use her newfound speed much more efficiently than she otherwise would when fighting Edgar or Derek.

He wasn’t using his full speed, either. Shockingly, it wasn’t even his idea; it was Aubrey’s.

She had asked him to dial back his speed when she started sparring. Something he was certain pained her to ask, but he got where she was coming from.

She wanted to gauge her progress against someone relatively equal in speed, and once she showed some improvement, she would ask him to go a little bit faster.

With that being said, it wasn’t easy to dodge all of her strikes. Because although her clones weren’t the real her, the attacks were much more threatening now that they had some substance behind them.

What had once been her best skill at avoiding attacks was now one of her strongest attacking skills. It was kind of hard when almost a dozen Aubrey’s were trying to punch you in the face.

“Oh yeah, by the way, we already signed you up for the Tier 3 tournament coming up,” Aubrey dropped a bombshell in the middle of their sparring, making him lose his concentration and get hit by one of the clones at his back.

He blasted a short burst of kinetic energy at the clone to destroy it and looked at the others with a confused frown.

“What do you mean you already signed me up?”

“Well, after talking with Professor Kellar we were able to figure out how you would be able to participate in the prelims in a couple of days,” Edgar said proudly from where he was working on his aura training with Lily.

“That wasn’t what I was asking about, and you know it.”

“Do you really think we were just going to allow you just not to participate?” Aubrey asked, stepping back, signaling their sparʼs end.

“Yeah, that was what I was hoping for,” he said with a firm nod of his head.

“Well, then we would be bad friends. There is no way you shouldn’t at least try. I mean, you have already decided to stop pretending to be inconspicuous. Most of the students in the school already know about your existence if that’s what you are worried about,” she pointed out to him.

“But it sounds like a huge pain,” he complained.

“That’s a poor reason to give up free rewards.”

“It would probably take me winning the entire thing to make it worth it. Plus, I already have rewards House Easten is supposed to give me.”

“What? You don’t think you can?” Edgar asked with a knowing look on his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Lily told us some of the things that happened to you when you were gone,” Aubrey said with an exasperated sigh.

Julius couldn’t help but wince. Marcus apparently had told Lily a tiny amount of details about how he and Stella found Julius a few days ago, though it was unavoidable since he was still a retainer of her House.

While Marcus hadn’t told Lily everything that happened, he might have mentioned that he found Julius getting beat up by a Tier 5 upon their arrival. It wasn’t like he could avoid it either because House Violet was supposed to help interrogate the Tier 5, and eventually, it would come out how he was captured.

This predictably didn’t go over very well with Lily, and she had been giving him the silent treatment for the past few days. She hadn’t even tried to scold him like usual. Normally, she would be yelling at him for being dumb and irresponsible. But instead, she gave him a disappointed look every now and then.

And now she must have told them something.

He looked over to where she was doing her own thing, still ignoring him.

Like it had been for the past few days, she wasn’t even looking in his direction, even though she was totally listening to their conversation.

The only silver lining to it was that Marcus didn’t tell her everything. The man had the mercy not to say to her that Julius had been voluntarily blowing his limbs off while fighting the Tier 5.

If she knew that, he expected she would be giving him much more than the silent treatment.

“And why does that change your mind about me participating in the tournament?” He asked.

“We didn’t change our mind,” Aubrey pointed out. “We always thought you should have signed up for it. Even if you didn’t do that well, it would serve as a good experience for you. But apparently, Marcus told her that you were very strong, which is a huge compliment coming from that man.”

“That doesn’t mean I can win the entire thing,” he argued.

Aubrey was about to respond, but for the first time in a few days, Lily spoke to him.

“How strong are you exactly?” She asked, looking at him with a weird look in her eyes.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought about how he wanted to answer.

“I don’t really know. But I can say that I am stronger than I was when I left; that’s for certain,” he said in all sincerity.

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“And do you think you can win the entire thing?” She asked, looking directly into his eyes.

He shied away from her intense gaze. “Yeah, I have a pretty good shot at winning the entire thing,” he admitted.

“Then there’s no debating or arguing about it. You are going to participate in the prelims in a couple of days,” Lily said with finality.

At some point, he knew when to admit defeat. There was no way he was going to be able to get out of this. She was very serious about him participating.

But that brought up a new problem. He hadn’t told them that he didn’t just have a good shot at winning, but he was very confident that he would. He also hadn’t told them the real reason he was against signing up in the first place.

From his perspective, Aubrey, Derek, and Edgar were all in their fourth years, which meant that this was the last chance they had to win the tournament. He felt that if he were to participate, he would be taking away their own chances of glory.

He wanted to see all of them succeed, and if he were to join, he would be another competitor.

He understood that he was being very arrogant, declaring that they wouldn’t have a chance against him, but that was how he felt this past week when they asked him to participate. He didn’t feel like he needed to win any rewards, and seeing one of them win would give him greater pleasure. But he also realized that they would smack him in the face if they knew he was treating them like one would a child.

But it was at the exact moment that he realized that not participating for that reason would be wrong.

“Okay, I will do it,” he said with a defeated shake of his head.

Aubrey clapped her hands together happily. “Wonderful! See how easy that was? But now that is settled, let’s get you ready, too. I feel like we have been the only ones training. I haven’t seen you actually train this entire week, and that’s not like you at all.”

“Agreed, I want to see how much stronger you have gotten,” Edgar said with an excited smile. “None of this half-hearted stuff you have been doing since you returned. I want to see you really fight.”

Julius chuckled at the two of them.

“Well, if you insist.”

***

Edgar POV

Edgar wasn’t lying when he said he wanted to see just how much Julius had improved.

He already had some inclinations about just how much stronger Julius was now. When Julius was a Tier 2, he was able to keep up with him very well. He had even been able to beat Aubrey pretty consistently too.

So now that Julius was at the same tier as them, Edgar was genuinely curious to see how much he had changed.

He had been making his own improvements during this time Julius was away. He had finally gotten his third Concept and got himself an Emblem, something he had learned was essential for advancing to Tier 4.

He had made some progress in cultivating his Emblem, but it was slow work. It might take a lot of rift-delving to hasten the process. Professor Keller had already told him that fighting monsters and going through real-life battles would make his advancement much easier and seamless in establishing one’s Authority.

However, he also knew that Julius already had at least two Concepts and possibly even three before he even was at Tier 3. Thus, he wouldn’t be shocked to learn that Julius already had an Emblem of his own, making him close to the same stage as Edgar if you disregarded skill levels.

He had also sensed that new enhancement skill. Whatever it was, it was quite a scary skill. He didn’t know how it worked, but there was no doubt that it was a combination of at least two other enhancement skills.

“Are you ready?” He asked Julius as he readied his fists.

The other boy nodded firmly and looked serenely calm, just like usual. His focus skill always allowed him to keep a measured composure, one of the many skills Edgar was envious of.

Without any preamble, Edgar activated their simulated combat devices and dashed toward Julius, activating all of his skills.

He appeared right in front of him and threw a powerful punch at his chest.

A barrier of dense fire mana appeared in front of Julius, but Edgar made sure to use [Forceful Disruption] to weaken the construct. With that being said, he found it quite difficult to break through. By the time he did, the strike was severely weakened, and Julius easily avoided it.

But he also noticed how swift the other boy was. Much faster than he had been before and might have been faster than himself.

Rolling his shoulders, he stared at Julius for a brief moment before blitzing back in. He didn’t let Julius have time to prepare any constructs, and when he did, he made sure to use his skills to destroy or weaken them.

However, unlike when he was Tier 2, Julius was able to keep up with his speed and strength much more easily. Edgar was actually finding himself on the back foot when it came to sheer physical abilities, something he didn’t experience very often.

He scoffed to himself. When Julius had told him that he had gained a pretty decent enhancement skill, he didn’t think it would be this much better than Edgar’s own.

While he was technically still more skilled in hand-to-hand combat, Julius must have been practicing because the openings he used to exploit were no longer there.

He realized that Julius was baiting him into trying to use them.

He took a sharp leg kick in the hip and was blown backward. The force of the impact was quite brutal and was backed by some kind of Force Concept. He knew this because he had a Force Concept of his own and felt it resonate with it.

After he rolled back to his feet, he decided to take a risk. Julius stopped disrupting the mana constructs as he dashed forward and started to pile on the pressure.

Instantly realizing that Edgar was no longer restricting his constructs, Julius created a swarm of spikes all around them and sent them shooting at him.

Predicting all of this, Edgar decided to use a huge chunk of his mana on his legs, and he threw himself at Julius. A few of the spikes hit him, but the ones tracking toward his back were still coming.

And so just before he got within handʼs reach, he disrupted the constructs. However, his real plan wasn’t to actually disrupt them, it was merely to distract Julius and hope that the boy would use to much of his attention toward keeping the constructs together.

Julius always had the bad habit of fighting for everything, whether necessary or not.

He grinned, as he was right, and Julius kept a tight grip on these constructs. Unlike the ones that had been disrupted before they were fully formed, these ones were much harder to destroy.

But when Julius’s focus shifted slightly, he implemented the next step of his plan.

He understood better than almost anyone how ridiculous Julius’s perception was. There was no truly surprising the boy in a fight. The only way he found he could was to not let the boy react in time.

So once he got close enough, he activated his epic skill, [Volcanic Disaster], and the entire room was lit up as magma exploded from Edgar’s body.

He had developed a skill in case he was surrounded and about to be overwhelmed. He didn’t have the mana control like Julius or Derek, but he could still just let it all out.

He smiled when he saw that Julius was still able to react in time. The boy completely discarded his spikes and created several layers of mana around him, protecting him from the blast.

But their hasty construction left them weakened. They didn’t hold up all the way, shattering upon contact, and Edgar’s fist was already soaring toward his face through the opening.

However, just when he thought he was going to connect, he felt a wave of an absolutely terrifying aura wrap around him. It overwhelmed him, and he could do nothing. He tried everything he could.

He desperately threw all of his aura at it, but it was to no avail. The aura seeped through and started to eat away at his physical enhancement skills. It was like trying to hold back a tidal wave, and aura had never been his strongest suit.

He couldn’t help but grimace as his enhancement skill flickered out, and he found himself entirely immobilized by Julius’s kinetic energy.

And there was nothing he could do as Julius walked up to him and gave him an apologetic shrug.

What the hell had that just been? Edgar thought to himself in shock.

“Was that the new aura skill you mentioned?” Lily asked with similar wide eyes from the other side of the isolation barrier.

“Yeah, it can be a bit brutal at first,” Julius admitted.

He heard Aubrey scoff. “You think?”

Julius turned around and started to argue with her while jabbing his finger in her direction.

As the two of them started to bicker with one another, Edgar laid down and put his head back, still not quite believing what had just happened. He had already expected to lose but thought it would have been closer.

In the end, there was nothing he could do. Still, there was one thing he was certain of. He needed to work on his aura skills.