Path to Transcendence

Chapter 376: Spirit Fortification

He was extra glad that he decided to stretch out his fight because he learned that the wraith had more tricks up its sleeve. It would sometimes use some sort of skill to teleport using the surrounding fog.

There was obviously some sort of cooldown, but from what he could tell, there was no mana or aura cost to do so. It completely relied on the huge quantity of fog to do so.

It was quite the fascinating technique, one he doubted he would be able to learn without help from another person to explain it to him. It was such a shame that he wasn’t a prodigy like some of his friends.

He kept on letting this wraith bombard him with slashes. Each time the monster broke through his barrier of mana, he made some adjustments. Some worked better than others, but what remained the same every time was that the wraith slashed right through it.

This made him feel both wildly confused and curious as to how this creature managed to break through something that Tier 4s were unable to. It wasn’t like the monster was stronger than these people. It was just that its skill seemed supremely well suited to cutting through things.

The best way to protect yourself from its attacks was to avoid getting hit altogether. He might have found himself in danger if it had longer claws.

It would appear that the only actual way to block the attack was to create a barrier with just aura. The problem was that aura wasn’t that great at blocking physical attacks compared to mana. Thankfully, he came up with a workaround.

He could inject his aura into his mana barrier.

However, this wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The first thing he tried was to cover his barrier of mana with aura. It was the simplest way he could think of accomplishing this, but it didn’t work that well. He might as well not even have done anything.

The aura barely hindered the claws from reaching the mana barrier, and like it had for the past several minutes, it tore right through it.

Next, he tried to create mana channels throughout the barrier and inject aura into the shield that way. It was quite simple, and because of his prior practice with the technique, he managed to fill it up without difficulty and with decent speed.

To his excitement, this seemed to work. Admittedly, it didn’t work amazingly well, but it withstood the claws for a few moments. Unfortunately, like the prior times, it eventually failed.

The failure points were the places where there wasnʼt any aura. The channels didn’t flow throughout every inch of the barrier. There were small pockets where plain mana still resided. This was where the claws made it through.

What he likely had to do was to create individual threads of mana and weave aura into each individual one. So that was exactly what he did.

***

He didn’t care that the wraith kept on slicing him up. He had a healing skill to rely on and honestly, the cuts weren’t even that deep. It barely took any mana to heal himself, which was why he felt comfortable doing this.

Weaving aura into his mana was an extremely difficult thing to do. He thought it would be similar to weaving his mana, but he was wrong. It was much more difficult. He ended up with something more akin to a toddlerʼs first attempt at sewing a blanket. It was ugly work at best, but he couldn’t help but laugh because it worked amazingly well.

The wraith, who had been tearing through his mana barriers, found itself unable to even touch him. He smiled brightly and watched with satisfied eyes for several minutes as the wraith desperately tried to get through.

It had already been tiring at this point, the physical exertion of constantly slashing at him must have taken its toll. He continued to make some improvements to his new creation. Some adjustments to places where the woven aura was fraying at the edges.

The aura not only prevented whatever attack the wraith was using, but also strengthened the entire construct. It also had a weird effect that he believed originated from his ruinous aura. Whenever its claw got near it, the aura which was woven into the barrier automatically broke it down. It was fascinating to watch, and not what he had planned when making it.

He kept on making small changes, and it was only when it was barely able to stand that he finally made his first real move.

Taking some inspiration from his recent technique, he took control of his barrier and molded part of it into a small spike. He then charged a lot of kinetic energy along with his Sharpness Concept.

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The wraith must have realized what he was doing and was already trying to escape. However, Julius wasn’t going to allow it the chance. How dare it try to run away now that it was on the back foot? He had been letting this monster wail on him for so long. It was his turn now.

He used these emotions to power his aura and wrap it around the wraith. It took a lot of effort, but he was able to prevent it from moving or teleporting away long enough to send the spike screaming at the monster. The newly created spike tore through the wraith with ease.

However, what was surprising was that it didn’t just go right through. No, the spike for some reason detonated the moment it entered the monster’s chest and exploded the wraith into dust. He barely had a chance to examine what the spike did.

He let out a deep breath as he looked around. He still had his protective bubble of aura around him that kept the fog away, but he couldn’t sense anything else around. He didn’t know if he actually defeated the monster or not.

He wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t. It was such a weird creature after all.

However, he didn’t let that keep him from moving on and he continued on his way out of the forest. He checked his mana and winced when he saw that he used quite a bit more than he had been planning. But he also couldn’t find it in him to care all that much.

He had found out a cool new technique because of this and the mana seemed like a cheap cost in the grand scheme of things.

He also took the time to check his notifications.

[Armaments of the Arcane lvl 15 -> lvl 16]

[Inexorable Aura of Ruin lvl 11 -> lvl 13]

He grinned widely when he saw that he had gained a whole whopping two levels in his aura skill. It would seem that his newfound technique had earned him some recognition. He had a feeling that he hadn’t even touched the surface of what was possible by combining his mana and aura in such a way.

With that being said, he still had no idea how the wraith tore through his regular mana barrier so easily. It was quite an intriguing thing, and he believed he might find it useful when upgrading his own Sharpness Concept.

He tilted his head when he sensed a different notification, it was older than his level up notifications. He must not have noticed during the fight.

Would you like to learn the skill [Spirit Fortification]?

He paused as he read it, for the first time in a while, he had no idea what to do when offered a skill. Generally, he leaned toward one side when offered a choice. For example, he had no actual intention of choosing a skill named [Reckless Stampede]. He was already a brute and didn’t need a skill that reminded him of that fact.

However, this skill seemed very different from the usual skills he was offered. And it was for this very reason that he dearly wished to choose it immediately. If the skill had anything to do with what he had just done with his aura and mana, he believed it would be a potent skill.

He was just confused as to its name. What did it have to do with spirit? Was it similar to something like fighting spirit? Maybe something more esoteric or witchy?

He had no clue. But he was kinda tempted to accept it because it sounded cool.

Perhaps spirit magic was what the wraith had been using? That might be a plausible reason.

He sighed as he felt another headache coming on. He didn’t like it when he had to make these hard decisions. He has already made mistakes in the past when choosing skills. He believed it was a big reason why he was finding it hard to upgrade his Sharpness Concept. If he had patiently waited to get a better skill in the past, he might have earned himself a better Concept as well. A Concept that could improve more easily than Severing Will.

Of course, on the other side of things, he had gotten some amazing skills to balance it out. So he shouldn’t complain too much. Most people would be happy to earn a single Concept in the first place.

He was so distracted thinking about this new skill he was being offered that he completely failed to realize that he had already walked out of the forest. There wasn’t even any more fog. He turned back with confusion and was even more shocked to see that there was nothing behind him.

No fog and no sign of anything pointing to where he had been walking. It was weird.

However, he got the clear message like the past floors he completed.

Congratulations, Third Floor Cleared. You will be transported to the fourth floor automatically in ten minutes or if you would like to immediately head to the fourth floor, just say “Next Floor” out loud.

He wasn’t a dumb-dum, though, and decided to wait out for his mana to regenerate. He didn’t know what kind of floor or condition would greet him when he entered the fourth floor. This third floor was already beyond his expectations.

He was curious if every person got the same floors as he did or if they were slightly personalized like the Challenge Rift.

He would have liked to ask the others, but he already knew that they wouldn’t be able to share with each other.

He did create a small chair of mana beneath his butt as he sat down and relaxed. All the while trying to infuse the chair with his aura. He would gently remove sections of the already constructed chair and then proceed to regenerate the missing piece with the new technique he had created.

Weaving each individual thread of mana with aura was a complicated task. One that required time and patience.

However, before he got too distracted, he removed a mana potion from his storage ring and took a quick swig. While he hated mana potions, he knew that sometimes he needed to make a sacrifice. The taste of the unaspected mana was gross, but he would be able to slowly aspect it manually. It would take some time and effort, but it was faster than waiting for his natural mana to regenerate.

In the meantime, he waited until the time was up and kept on practicing his new technique. He knew it would take a while before he was proficient with it or at least, wouldn’t be until he chose the skill. However, it wouldn’t hurt to get started now.

When the ten minutes were finally up, he broke down the mana and repurposed it into another pair of gauntlets, shrouding his hands. Then the rift swept him up and took him to the next floor.