Path to Transcendence

Chapter 650: Endless Tunnels

Julius did his best to remain stealthy, and he found it a bit amusing. He hadn’t been forced to sneak around like this for a very long time. It was sort of fun, in an exciting and exhilarating kind of way.

He didn’t have a dedicated stealth skill, and so he went with his good old tried and true method; just destroy every remnant of his mana and presence with his aura. It worked pretty well, so he didn’t have much to complain about.

He didn’t have anything for the visual part, though. Even the items he got from Reinera didn’t work that way. There were some slight illusion aspects to it, but it wasn’t meant to hide his form. Not like Aubrey or Reinera’s skills. If he got spotted or sniffed out, there was nothing he could do about it.

He tried to erase his scent, but he had no clue if it worked. He was essentially using his ruinous aura blindly, destroying anything within the area. He didn’t have a good enough understanding of that to properly accomplish it and thus had no idea if it worked. He would need to find out the hard way.

He was surprised that he didn’t come across any more ants during his walk. The small ant that he fought briefly hadn’t been among the dead, which meant it had escaped at some point. Hence, the ant colony or whatever should have known about him.

Or maybe not. They were corrupted, and he couldn’t be certain of their intelligence anymore, if they had any in the first place.

He took this time to examine the gorge he found himself in. He was shocked by the size of it. It kept on getting larger the more he explored. There were several branches of tunnels that ran in every direction. Some of these tunnels were massive, easily able to fit two large school buses. Others were smaller.

With so many tunnels, he did his best to narrow down which one to explore. To be honest, it was pretty easy to spot tunnels that had potential. There were some tunnels that practically glowed with corruption, and he had a good feeling that these tunnels would lead him to something interesting.

He decided on the biggest one, for no other reason than he didn’t want to be claustrophobic inside it. As he walked down this tunnel, he quickly found out that he was on the right track.

A large group of ants was ahead, but they didn’t seem to sense him as of yet. He did his best to stay hidden and slowly crept up on them. He wanted to test how good his stealth was without a skill aiding him.

The results were… inconclusive. He didn’t know if they had seen him or if they had just used some other sensory organ to locate him. But they quickly turned his way, and before he knew it, he was being attacked by ants again.

There was a larger proportion of Tier 4s in this smaller group. Around half of them were Tier 4.

He didn’t bother with an axe this time around. He created two large disks around his hands. The reason for this was that the axe was pretty impractical the moment they piled on him. He had no leverage or freedom to gain momentum.

So he was left with these two-bladed disks, and he let his authority infuse into them. He actually found it much easier to do so compared to the axe. An axe was a weird shape with a handle and a blade. However, these disks were essentially circles sharpened at the edges, making it much easier to funnel his authority through them evenly.

He spun them with kinetic energy, letting his Sharpness Concept and other skills pile on, making them as powerful and dangerous as he could. They hummed loudly, sounding like a bandsaw right next to his ear. They glowed a dark midnight blue, the same sparks from before flaring around their surface, the power within them barely contained.

Once he was ready, he loaded his limbs with kinetic energy. He wanted to really focus on conserving his energy and stamina. Concentrating on each movement he made and absorbing as much leftover kinetic energy as he could. He wouldn’t let any go to waste, and his [Field of the Shattered Will] helped him accomplish this.

The skill contained all of the energy, and he was able to repurpose it for other things. He stomped the ground hard, letting the impact release even more kinetic energy he could absorb.

His Concept of Force, Resonating Burst, really helped out with this. The resonance of the kinetic energy gave him more than what he used to create the stomp. It was surprisingly self-efficient, and he already had several ideas of how to take advantage of this.

The ants were already closing in, and with another stomp forward, he gathered the kinetic energy and threw it at them. They were thrown off balance by this sudden attack, and this was the moment he struck. He moved like a viper, dashing and ripping through the staggering ants with his new blade disks. He danced around, twirling in circles, trying to maintain as much force and momentum as he could.

The disks didn’t have as much power as the axe, but he was able to force even more of his Sharpness Concept and his ruinous aura around the edges to give it more power. Their exoskeletons were hard, but they couldn’t withstand his disks.

If this were the other, more powerful variation of ant, he might have been forced to make adjustments, but as things stood, he was able to cut into their shell easily enough. He let them come to him; they weren’t exploding yet, which was a good thing and something he was worried about. But they threw their lives at him with no hesitation, and he cut them down with the same ruthlessness.

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When he was done with the last ant, he looked around, half expecting another hundred more to come flying out of the tunnel. But to his amazement, there was nothing but silence. Some people may have been relieved by this, but not him.

He knew his luck better than anyone else. Fate didn’t just leave him be and let him be lucky. If he was stuck inside a pit full of angry, corrupted insects, he was fully expecting every one of them to come running at him, trying to eat his face.

Was it weird that he was more bothered when that didn’t happen?

He narrowed his eyes, suddenly feeling very suspicious. He extended his senses outward, but still didn’t notice anything popping up. However, he continued to make his way through the tunnel despite his reservations.

Almost an hour later, he sensed another group. It was a little larger than the previous one, and to his curiosity, there were a couple of different ants this time around. They didn’t have the powerful aura of the smaller ant from before, but these ones were different because they shot out blasts of mana at him. It made things a little more troublesome, but in the end, he handled it without too many issues. But he couldn’t help but feel as if something was off.

Half an hour later, he came across another group with the same mix of ants as the previous group. He took care of them, but at the very end, a particularly sneaky ant tried to ambush him. He almost didn’t detect it. Only at the last second, his skill pinged its approach, and he cut off its head with his bladed disks.

He stared at the corpse with a deep frown. This ant had used some kind of skill that allowed it to sneak past his senses. It was only due to his kinetic energy and [Field of the Shattered Will] that allowed him to react in time. He didn’t think it would have hurt him too badly; it was weaker than the other ants, but the fact that it could bypass his perception in such a dark place was worrying.

For the next couple of hours, he came across several groups of ants. They didn’t vary much. Occasionally, there was a new variant, but for the most part, they were the normal soldier ants. Furthermore, unlike his initial confrontation, there were never more than a couple of dozen of them at once.

He did notice that he was getting a little tired, though. The constant stress and random attacks were slowly eating into his stamina. He used his healing skill to remedy that, but it could only help so much. The mental strain was something he needed to pay attention to more than anything else. Using all of his skills and aura for hours upon hours was challenging.

Finally, the massive tunnel came to an end, and he found himself standing in the middle of the largest cavern he had ever experienced. The walls were so high that he couldn’t even see where they ended. His skill didn’t extend that far.

Not only that, but he felt an extreme amount of corruption seeping into this cavern. The entire tunnel had been full of the nasty stuff, but it was so thick that he could feel it crawling along his skin. He shivered and was about to send out some aura to clear out the corruption around him when he was forced to use [Void Step], narrowly avoiding the pincer about to pierce his skull.

He didn’t get time to gather his thoughts either, before he knew it, he felt countless objects falling from the cavern’s walls. He moved to the side as the same attacker came after him again, he knocked the limb to the side, surprised by the strength of it.

He then did something he probably should have done when he realized he couldnʼt see the entirety of the cavern: he launched several orbs of mana upwards to illuminate the area.

He let out a laugh of disbelief when he saw what the cavern looked like. Holes were littered across the whole roof and sides. Small tunnels where ants were flooding out from. The objects he sensed coming down were, in fact, ants falling down and trying to grab a hold of him.

He teleported once again, avoiding a sudden wave of attacks from a group of those mana-flinging ants he had fought previously. They were climbing along the walls as they rained down mana at him.

It was then that he realized the cavern wasn’t just a cavern; it was a death pit, one specifically created for him.

Julius didn’t waste any time and immediately went to work. He needed to reduce their numbers as quickly as he could. He already learned just how dangerous it could be if he got surrounded by them.

Teleporting upwards, he began to fly up to the mage ants. He sent a barrage of his spikes at them, smashing into the cavern with resounding booms. Some dodged, and he was forced to chase after them. He didn’t hold back on mana at the moment; he needed to take care of the long-range attackers first.

Unfortunately, the other ants weren’t about to let him do this so easily. Ants were falling from the ceiling trying to stab him in the air, he did his best to avoid them, but he heard an ear piercing shriek come from the same ant who ambushed him.

His eyes widened, knowing what would follow; he threw up several barriers around him and concentrated his [Field of the Shattered Will]. The resulting blasts of powerful corruption energy still chucked him to the side. He slammed against the cavern wall; there was so much force that he wasn’t able to siphon all of it.

He ignored the attacks on him and focused on the mage ants. With an annoyed grunt, he created a dozen more spikes and sent them at the retreating ants. He took several blows to the face for his actions, but it was worth it. He managed to take out a significant portion of those long-range attackers.

The explosions were quite powerful, though. He smashed back into the ground, the stone exploding from the impact. He could feel several of his bones shatter and his skin torn apart from the explosion.

The corruption was the most annoying part, though. It delayed his healing skill by a little bit, but he managed to heal himself after some effort.

He peeled himself from the ground and watched as the ants all swarmed toward him. Once they got close enough, he stomped his right foot, releasing all of the kinetic energy he had gathered. The pulse of kinetic energy was powerful enough to shatter their shells. It sounded like hundreds of eggs being cracked at once.

If that wasn’t enough to kill them, then the following wave of flames did. With the help of his crown, a tsunami of ruinflames rushed from his body, burning the injured ants into charred husks.

The ant that had attacked him first managed to protect itself, but he spotted it off to the side. He could feel its angry little eyes focused on him. Its limbs were trembling with rage. Thus, he did the only thing he could think of and raised his hand, waving it with the biggest grin he could manage.

For some weird reason, the ant didn’t like this and let out another shriek, dashing toward him with murderous intent.