Path to Transcendence

Chapter 757: Whatʼs Your Name

To his shock, the old woman was still kicking about. He was being literal about that part; only her legs were twitching around. Still, he certainly hadn’t expected her to survive his all-out offensive. She didn’t seem very sturdy, but apparently he was wrong. Despite looking like she had just drowned in a pool of ash and dirt, she was relatively unharmed.

He didn’t understand how she managed to survive the recent attack. He wanted to investigate more, but he didn’t really have much time to think about it. He needed to take care of her before she could lend her assistance again. Every moment Julius kept her busy increased the loyalistsʼ chances of coming out on top.

He let more mana surge through his bones and closed the distance between him and the elder. He suspected the woman had used a defensive item of some kind, and he doubted she could stop another of his attacks.

He was just about to reach out to her when he felt a subtle shift in space to his right. He slammed the brakes on his momentum and redistributed all of it into the back of his fist, spinning towards the newcomer.

To his shock, his arm was stopped right in its tracks. His surprise didn’t last for long, though; he was forced to blast himself away from the new arrival before his head was removed from his shoulders. He didn’t throw himself back into the fray, though; he immediately recognized the danger he was suddenly facing.

He stared at the masked figure standing across from him. The blade that had almost cut off his head was flickering with red lightning. It looked like the masked figure was a male; their height and muscle structure certainly implied as much.

Unlike the older woman, this person was truly a threat to Julius. He wasn’t some sad Tier 5 who he felt he could confidently take down. The masked man’s aura was powerful and very stable. It didn’t tremble so much as an inch, but there was an overwhelming sense of strength radiating from it.

Julius rolled his shoulders and clenched his fists tightly into a ball as he stared at the newcomer.

“Where did you come from?” he asked the man.

The masked man didn’t seem interested in answering his question; rather, he was staring at Julius with a tilt of his head.

“Fascinating,” the masked man’s muddled voice echoed out.

Julius didn’t even get a warning, but his instincts reacted before he could. He leaned back and narrowly avoided the blade slashing at his face. His eyes were barely left unscathed. Even then, he could feel an extremely sharp sensation running over his skin when the sword passed by.

He teleported away and swiftly constructed several sturdy constructs over his vitals as well as his hands.

However, the man wasn’t coming after him. He was standing there, looking down and inspecting his sword as if there was something wrong with it. The man looked up and stared at Julius.

“What’s your name?”

Julius frowned and didn’t respond. Instead, he began to let his skills flow unhindered through his body. He was down a little too much mana than he desired, but he supposed it was what he deserved after using such an ostentatious waste of mana.

“You weren’t a part of the intelligence report. I would have heard about someone in Clan Yoshu with your skill and talent,” the man said and slowly walked towards Julius. His sword was slightly lagging behind his body; the lightning was still flickering along the length of the blade.

“What’s your name?”

“You first,” Julius shot back with a dark glare. He didn’t see or sense a single opening while the man walked toward him. His posture seemed relaxed, but Julius’s instincts, the ones that helped him so much during a fight, were telling him not to rush in. That he would be punished for it.

“Forgive me, I would, but I would get in trouble for doing so,” the masked man said, which sounded like genuine regret.

The battle all around was still raging, but it felt like it was just Julius and this person at the moment.

“Why don’t you tell me who you are, and I can bring you with me. I’m not sure why you’re here, much less why you’re helping out a falling clan like this one. But I promise you that I can find use for someone with your level of talent. It would be wasted here,” the masked man said to him.

Julius frowned and closely examined each breath the man took. “I would consider such an offer if I knew who was offering it,” he countered.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you that. But I promise you that we value competency more than anything. Someone as talented as you would be treated very well and raised to Tier 5 without any hesitation.”

The old woman finally staggered to her feet and stood beside the man. “Is this really the time for all of this? We need to get out of here,” she said, frantically looking around at the chaos.

Julius barely saw the man’s sword move, only a flash of red lightning. One moment it was at the man’s side and the next it was extended beside the woman’s face.

A spurt of blood erupted from the side of the woman’s head, and only then did Julius notice that her ear was no longer there. She let out a pained shout as she dropped back to the ground and held her hand over the bleeding wound.

The masked man turned around, not caring about showing his back to Julius, and bent down to the older woman as he whispered in her missing ear. “Can’t you hear? I am talking to someone. Considering he was about to kill you given another couple of minutes, you should be glad that I even intervened. Considering how pathetically weak you are, I probably should have. In fact, I am sincerely thinking about whether or not to allow him to finish the job.”

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The woman didn’t so much as raise her head and shivered in fear as the man’s aura blanketed her. After a few moments, the man turned around and looked back at Julius with a slight crease at the side of his mouth where the mask didnʼt quite cover.

“So what do you say?”

“Say to what?”

“Coming back with me.”

Julius shook his head. “Nah, Iʼm good.”

He expected the man to lash out as he had with the woman, but instead he felt the man was amused by his answer.

The scary Tier 5 took a step closer to Julius. “Why not?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“For one, I don’t know who you are. And secondly, you seem to be working with her,” Julius said, tilting his head at the shivering elder.

“If I kill her and everyone here, would you come with me?”

The man said this with such casualness that Julius actually believed he would do it. He didn’t even know how to respond to this, so he stayed silent.

This only seemed to intrigue the man even more, and Julius was taken aback when the man flicked his wrist. He almost attacked the man on pure reflex, but held back when he noticed the man’s sword vanishing back into his storage ring.

What is he doing? Julius thought to himself with concern.

The man slowly stalked toward Julius. “How about this? You survive for thirty seconds, and I will tell you my name. How is that?”

Julius could practically feel the smirk on the man’s face.

“How about we just talk for a little bit more instead?” Julius offered with a pained smile. He really didn’t want to fight this man. Everything was telling him that this man was very strong, and despite Julius’s confidence in fighting weaker Tier 5s, he had no confidence in taking down a Tier 5 of this man’s quality.

He might have been able to hold his own against Marcus in a spar, but that was only a spar, and Marcus hadn’t been trying to kill him. Julius suspected this man didn’t know what it meant to hold back.

The masked man laughed brightly. “Talk? Where is the fun in that?”

“Talking is really fun. Plus, I didn’t even get to ask you the most important question yet,” Julius said quickly.

To his relief, this made the man pause momentarily. “And what is that?”

Julius gulped and desperately tried to think of an actual question. However, his mind went blank, and he resorted to the one thing he was always thinking about. “Do you like pickles?”

He cursed at himself the second the words vomited out of his mouth. What kind of question was that? Couldn’t he think of anything better? Not even something about cake? Was he stupid or something?

The masked man actually flinched back, whether in surprise or in sheer shock at Julius’s idiotic question. “Pickles…?”

“Umm yeah, pickles,” Julius said lamely.

“Don’t worry, we have plenty of good healers who can help fix whatever psychological ailment is plaguing you if you return with me,” the man said with a shake of his head.

“Sorry, I didn’t—” Julius was about to respond, but threw himself to the ground when the man appeared out of nowhere. A fist just narrowly missed his ribcage.

“You’re really quite fast for a Tier 4,” the masked man noted, looking down at his fist, which was sparkling slightly with red lightning. Then he vanished again.

Fortunately, Julius was a bit better prepared; the man’s speed was insane, but Julius let his instincts guide him. He ducked underneath another punch and used his leg to block a leg kick. He let out a grunt when his leg felt like an adamantine bus had just rammed into it, and he was sent flying a dozen feet into the grass.

The masked Tier 5 was already on top of him before he got up. Julius was forced to use his teleportation skill to avoid the axe-like kick coming at his head. A three-foot crater was all that was left where his head had been.

The man seemed to know exactly where Julius appeared as well. He swiveled around and arrived in his face with a flash of red light, his fist heading straight for his face. Julius managed to get both arms up, his constructs layered over his forearms. Yet it still felt like someone dropped a building on him. He was blasted into the ground and tried to teleport away, but to his shock, the skill failed to activate in time.

He got picked up by the throat; the man’s iron-like grip choked him. And the man simply stared at Julius through the mask.

“That’s all you have?” he said with a slightly disappointed frown.

Julius felt his face twitch in annoyance as he hung there in the air. His opponent had somehow stopped [Void Step]. It was something that nobody had ever really done before.

Understanding the dire situation he found himself in, he did what he did best. He went on the attack.

[Lord of the Dying Sun] woke up like a pissed-off dragon. White and red flames exploded from his body, washing over the Tier 5. His crown appeared over his head, pulsing angrily as well. Julius let his anger bleed into his aura, using it as fuel.

The masked man let out an amused chuckle, but didn’t let go of Julius. Instead, he continued to choke Julius even as his clothes started to burn.

Julius grinned savagely at the man and reached out to grab the man’s hand. The constructs on his arms broke down and quickly reformed into sharpened spikes. The spikes didn’t pierce the man’s hand, but they were sharp enough that he was finally forced to let Julius go.

However, Julius didn’t back up. No, instead he stepped closer; his kinetic field was pulsing in every direction. The domain of the Tier 5 was strong, and his anti-domain technique seemed barely enough to keep it at bay, but that was enough.

Julius smothered the man with flames and threw a [Void Strike] enhanced punch at him. He missed, but he expected it and continued to press forward. He used every bit of his concentration and focus to attack at the most annoying angles possible. He didn’t give his opponent a chance to regain momentum. Julius couldn’t afford to; the man was too fast if he was given the space.

And while the force and power behind his blows might not have been enough to overwhelm the Tier 5 outright, they were enough to make any Tier 5 conscious about taking a head-on blow.

Julius also made sure to leverage the flexibility of his constructs. He constantly shifted their form, adjusting their length with each second. One moment he had a gauntlet, or a hammer, and the next he had a sword stabbing out at the man’s face.

After he missed a slash with his sword, he spun around and used his forearm to parry an overhand right from the masked man. Even through the plate of mana around his arm, he felt his dense bones shudder from the impact, but he ignored this and let the weapon melt down into the form of a spear.

He calculated the distance between him and his opponent. Then he thrust the sharpened point at the man’s face. However, his opponent was extremely fast, and he managed to snatch the spear just before it struck him in the face. To the man’s surprise, Julius didn’t dissolve it as he had with other weapons that had been grabbed; rather, he used it as a lever and pulled himself closer.

He leaped forward like a wild animal, tackling the Tier 5 around the waist. His plan had been to grapple his opponent; unfortunately, he made one critical error. He forgot about the man’s red lightning.

Shit, he cursed to himself when he felt the first spark touch his skin.