Path to Transcendence

Chapter 561: Sudden Invitation

Julius sat down as the healers checked him over. He didn’t even bother fighting them. He let them do their inspections. It was the same guy as the other day, and he didn’t try anything funny. He did his tasks and left everything else alone.

He let out a yawn and distractedly cleaned himself of blood, using gentle manipulations of aura to get inside all of his nooks and crannies. It was mainly Liam’s blood anyway.

On another note, he was surprised at how stubborn the other teen had been. Despite Julius beating him black and blue, Liam didn’t give up. He was forced literally to deliver a fatal strike to finish the fight. The old Liam didn’t have such spirit.

It wasn’t just his friends who had undergone extreme changes.

While he waited, he mentally reviewed the fight. He wasn’t that upset about showing off his teleportation skill. Not as much as he thought he would be. It helped that he didn’t have to worry about someone trying to kidnap him in his sleep. He had the support of powerful families like House Zenith and House Violet.

Not to mention, Cain and Freya were pretty scary deterrents.

He also wasn’t too upset because he didn’t have to show the skillsʼ most important feature, which was why it was so powerful in the first place. The fact that it could ignore many anti-spatial enchantments was an extremely dangerous detail.

He was also glad that he had faced Liam. During their last fight, Julius hadn’t been able to figure out how to get past Liam’s intangibility skill. It was the same case in the early parts of the fight. It took a lot of experimenting and examination before Julius figured out the trick to bypassing the skill.

Or rather, it didn’t bypass, but more accurately, he figured out how to use his aura and ruinous flames to damage Liam despite the other teen being incorporeal. Once he had figured out that particular thing, he had been able to deal with Liam a lot more easily.

The pseudo domain skill technique was a little worrying, but with enough of his own mana and concepts, he had been able to take care of it without too much trouble.

It turns out that flooding the entire pseudo domain with an egregious amount of fire mana and kinetic energy worked pretty well.

The fight had taken more mana than he would have liked, but now that he had figured out the trick, he was more confident in facing an opponent who had similar tricks.

He was still reviewing the small details of the fight. The moments when he made small mistakes or areas where he could change so that he could be more efficient in the future. His brain kept replaying the fight while he waited for the healers to finish.

While this was happening, he noted that he had gained a few levels from this fight.

[Kinetic Shell lvl 7 -> lvl 9]

[Spirit Fortification lvl 13 -> lvl 14]

[Armaments of the Arcane lvl 24 -> lvl 25]

He even got a level in [Armaments of the Arcane]. It was pretty rare to see a level now that it was getting really close to the threshold. He would gladly take it, though.

When they were satisfied with what they found, they finally let him go. However, to his surprise, he was accosted by another official. He asked what was going on, but the man only explained that he had orders from the Royal Family to bring Julius somewhere.

He knew that it was likely Reinera, so he didn’t bother arguing, following the man with a shrug.

He inspected the official with a gentle prod of his aura and was surprised to sense that the man wasn’t some regular official. No, this man was a Tier 5.

The man glanced back at Julius, likely sensing Julius’s proddings, but didn’t say anything. While what Julius did could be considered rude in some circles, Julius investigated with such carefulness that it was hard to consider it an offense.

What he had done was like the equivalent of someone staring a little too closely at someone. Compared to most people’s prodding, which felt like grabbing another person’s shoulder and turning them around to look at them, his senses probably felt positively delicate.

He found himself standing in front of a large door, decorated heavily with gold and reinforced with so much mana that it almost blinded Julius when he examined it closer with his mana senses.

The official knocked on the door and waited for a response. Julius didn’t hear anything, but the man must have gotten some kind of response, because he opened the door and pushed Julius forward, slamming the door behind him before he even had the chance to stop him.

Julius slowly turned around, scratching his head as he examined the occupants in the room. He spotted Reinera standing up and coming over to him, a large smile on her face.

“Congratulations on another victory,” she said to him.

“Thanks, Liam was a little more difficult than I expected,” Julius commented.

She was about to say something else, but before she had the chance, a large figure literally shoulder checked her out of the way, sending her sprawling to the ground with a yelp of surprise.

“Hello, Julius! My name is Cassian, and I have so many questions for you!” The guy said, grabbing Julius’s hand with such quickness that there was no avoiding it.

While the man continued to shake Julius’s hand in excitement, he glanced down at Reinera, who was staggering to her feet with a vexed expression on her face. To his surprise, she suddenly blasted the man with a powerful beam of light magic.

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The man didn’t even glance backward, but Julius felt something reach out and intercept the attack before it touched him. The light magic fell apart into small particles of mana, and the man absorbed this mana into his body.

Reinera didn’t seem surprised by this and instead walked up and shoved the guy in the back. “What was that for? You want to shove me to the ground after I brought him here?”

The man reached back and ruffled Reinera’s hair. “Sorry, I was excited and didn’t control my strength,” he said with a laugh.

She still walloped the guy, but he didn’t seem to care at all.

“Reinera.” A voice called out calmly, but there was a hint of warning. “I know he is your friend, but don’t forget that you still need to behave as appropriate for one of your station.”

Julius looked over and spotted a man sitting on a loveseat, deeply engrossed in a metal tablet in his hands. Julius hadn’t even sensed the man with his spatial senses. In fact, he hadn’t even sensed anyone in this room.

He realized that the room must have some anti-spatial properties, despite being inside the space. Typically, when [Absolute Spatial Perception] was blocked out, he was still able to use it when he entered the actual space it was protecting.

He also noticed there were two other people in the room. One was a person Julius recognized right away. It was Reinera’s brother, Jaxson—the Crown Prince of the Luminous Empire.

The young man was sitting in a chair as well, but he had placed his own tablet down, looking at Julius with a sharp gaze, as if he were analyzing every movement Julius made.

If Reinera’s brother were here, then it would be safe to say he knew who the last person who had just reprimanded Reinera was.

He looked very different from when Julius last saw him at the welcoming gala. There was no crown or fancy clothes. No, the man was wearing a simple white shirt with black pants. A gold necklace dangled over his chest. However, now that Julius was looking closer, he recognized the Emperor straight away.

Julius held his breath as he stood in front of the Empire’s ruler. The man hadn’t even bothered to look at Julius, but there was a pressure exuding from the man that Julius hadn’t sensed from him when he had seen him at the welcoming party.

It wasn’t the same pressure he felt from a powerful person, but a far more regal one. Julius found himself wanting to do as the man commanded, despite the man not addressing him directly.

He also noticed that he was standing extremely straight, as all the etiquette lessons he had gotten from Edwin replayed in his mind.

He glanced over at Reinera, looking for any help about how to act in this situation.

Reinera had calmed down and straightened her shoulders. However, there was still a fiery glint in her eyes. “What about Uncle Cassian, though?” Reinera asked with a frown.

“Cassian is a lost cause. I learned that lesson long ago. But I expect you to be better,” the Emperor said, looking up to stare at her directly in the eyes.

Reinera scrunched her nose but nodded in acceptance.

Julius stood there, waiting patiently for them to finish up. When they did, Reinera was a little flushed, but she looked at Julius while pointing at the tall guy.

“Meet my Uncle Cassian. As you can see, he is quite eccentric, so don’t worry about being rude around him. He deserves it most of the time.”

She then turned and pointed at the other two men in the room. “You have already briefly met my brother, Jaxson.”

“Finally and more importantly, this is my father, Lucerius Luminous, the Emperor of the Luminous Empire.”

Julius immediately bowed his head, following Edwin’s directions, making sure he was bent at exactly ninety degrees from the waist.

“It’s an honor to meet Your Imperial Majesty,” Julius said respectfully.

The Emperor finally swiveled his gaze to Julius and stood up. Julius felt his spine stiffen when the man walked up to him with a casual grace that Julius didn’t expect. He felt his skin buzz underneath the intense gaze.

“Surprising. From how Reinera made it sound, I wasn’t expecting such a… practiced greeting,” the Emperor said curiously.

Julius swallowed.

“Anyway, you can relax. You don’t have to worry too much about etiquette or proper decorum when we are behind closed doors. In many ways, you already have the status of a high-class noble or of an important foreign dignitary.”

“Wait! What about what you just said to me!” Reinera exclaimed from the side.

“You’re my daughter, which means you have different standards to live up to. Unless you would rather I not make an exception for your special friend?”

Reinera stayed silent upon hearing that.

The Emperor, who felt more like a father than the ruler of this country, stared at Julius once again.

Julius was expecting the man to say something. Anything really. But the silence stretched for an uncomfortably long time. Then, to Julius’s disbelief, the man simply nodded once before he turned away, walking back to his loveseat and grabbing his tablet from the cushions, sitting back down.

“You can have your fun, Cassian,” the Emperor said with a wave at his brother.

Fun? What did he mean by fun?

Julius glanced over at Cassian, who was walking up to Julius with a weird sparkle in his eyes. His arms were outstretched, and Julius subconsciously backed up and moved toward Reinera.

When he saw that the man was still walking toward him, he grabbed Reinera by the shoulders and hid behind her, using her as a shield.

“What does he want with me? And what did he mean by ‘fun’?” Julius asked her quietly.

“I think he saw something during your match and wanted to ask you some questions,” she said with mirth in her voice.

Julius swallowed and was about to say something back to her, but before the words could escape his throat, something banged loudly against the door.

It must have been something extremely powerful, because Julius spotted several large golden runic circles suddenly appear around the room as countless enchantments flared up.

However, the Emperor, from his position on the loveseat, didn’t seem bothered by this.

“You can open the door. I invited them to come over,” Reinera’s father said with a dismissive tone.

“Invited who to come over?” Jaxson asked with a worried look on his face.

“Youʼd better open up this door before I break it down!”

“Calm down, they wouldn’t have invited us over if they didn’t plan to let us in.” Julius heard a pair of voices behind the door.

Julius walked over to the door and twisted the doorknob, feeling a bit overwhelmed when he sensed several dozen enchantments fold away as he pulled it open. It was quite a complex working of magic. One of the more extreme demonstrations he had ever seen, which made sense considering this room held the Emperor.

However, he didn’t have time to enjoy or explore these enchantments because he suddenly got snatched up by a pair of massive, meaty hands.

“They didn’t do anything to you, did they?” Cain asked worriedly, grabbing Julius by the shoulders.

Julius could only let a gasping wheeze as Cain squeezed the life out of him. While he was getting crushed to death, he couldnʼt help but wonder why Cain and Freya were suddenly here as well.

”Itʼs good to see you too,” he offered weakly.