Path to Transcendence

Seeing the fully healed hobgoblin stand back up as if nothing happened annoyed him.

That wasn't fair, he was the only one who could heal like that. That was his thing and this monster was stealing it from him.

He let out another breath of air. The seventh wave was proving to be the hardest wave so far, still, that was within expectations. He didn't think he would be able to finish the tenth wave without exerting himself a little bit.

Regardless, he narrowed his eyes as he glared at the beast. Okay, you want to show off your healing in front of me, huh? Let me show you how it's done.

Cracking his neck, he focused his gaze toward the archers who had released another volley of arrows at him as he stood by and observed the hobgoblin heal.

The arrows were fast, but they weren't as powerful as some of the other attacks he experienced from other Tier 3s. They had some sort of penetrative skill empowering them, but compared to his [Armaments of the Arcane] they were lacking in many things.

He casually created a barrier of mana in front of him and blocked all of the arrows without trouble. They weren't even able to make a scratch on his barrier. His Sharpness Concept cut away the arrow's connection to the archers, making the power behind them lessen considerably.

Seeing that, made him pause in excitement.

His Sharpness Concept, Severing Will was something that he hadn't been paying much attention to lately. At least when he compared it to his Will Concept or his Phoenix Concept, it was clearly at a level below them.

If he were to rank Concepts, he would say that his Sharpness Concept was around the upper echelons of the low tier or a weaker middle tier Concept, whereas his Will Concept was around the top of middle tier. His Phoenix Concept was easily in the high tier, it was in a class of its own.

It was just hard to use compared to his other Concepts.

His Sharpness Concept, on the other hand, was quite easy to use. It had one simple ability. To cut anything in his path.

Whether that was the defenses of his opponents or to cut apart the mana making up their constructs or skills, Julius would be able to use Severing Will to do so.

So why couldn't he use the same thought process to cut away the connection that bound the single hobgoblin and the archers?

With a new idea in mind, he smiled and dashed toward the hobgoblin once more. He completely ignored the rain of arrows coming his way and only had the single large hobgoblin focused in his eyes.

It tried to block Julius with its shield, but it was slow. Even with the empowerment from all of its comrades, its speed wasn't impressive. Most of the empowerment was in the form of healing and aiding willpower.

Julius suspected that the hobgoblin wouldn't be able to handle such an increase in speed, with its limited body in addition to what was already flowing through it.

He grabbed a corner of the shield and used a large pulse of kinetic energy and attempted to rip the shield away from its body. While the monster's speed wasn't impressive, its strength was quite noteworthy. It took him considerable effort to overpower the monster. But in the end, it wasn't able to hold onto the shield and protect itself.

Julius crushed a fist covered in [Aura Burn] and [Armaments of the Arcane] into the liver of the monster, sending it staggering back several feet.

[Aura Burn] did its job and he heard the beast roar out in pain as the flames burned its aura without mercy.

However, the real attack, the one he used with [Armaments of the Arcane] was the one he most interested in.

He had pumped a lot of his Severing Will into his attack and focused on severing the connection between the hobgoblin and the fourteen archers off in the distance.

The combined willpower of the fifteen of them tried to stop the attack. But Julius wasn't attacking the hobgoblin directly. He was attacking the thin connection between it and the rest of them. That meant he didn't have to compete with the combined willpower. He only needed to deal with a single side of the connection.

If the archers and hobgoblin were the two anchors on a mountain, the connection was the wire that linked them together. And Julius shredded that wire with brutal precision. The connection fell apart and the empowerment the large hobgoblin was experiencing faded away like nothing ever existed.

He saw the astonishment in the creature's eyes as the glow surrounding its body dimmed to nothing and then fear appeared in its eyes as Julius stalked toward it.

The monster looked back toward the archers with panicked eyes and Julius watched as a massive volley of arrows headed toward him, this time though, not a single one got close to the hobgoblin.

He smiled as his plan seemed to have worked perfectly and went on the offensive once more.

A surge of kinetic energy had him in front of the lone monster and he smashed a front kick at its shield. The strike was so powerful that it was staggered back once again, not being able to deal with such a strong blow.

Julius then used [Flash Step] to get behind the hobgoblin and brutalized the beast with an endless swarm of blows. Each one had [Aura Burn] damaging it and he even used [Barrier of Severance] on the skin of his body to give him even more damage.

He didn't bother to use any of his constructs, this was more mana-efficient, and for some reason, he really wanted to finish this thing off with his own two fists.

[Kinetic Augmentation], [Thermal Empowerment], [Aura Burn], and [Barrier of Severance] all worked in perfect tandem.

One enhanced his overall explosiveness and power, the other helped his body handle this power, one burned his opponents aura, and the other shredded the skin and defensive layers of the monster.

It wasn't able to even get in a single hit before it crashed to the ground, a smoking husk was all that remained after he was done with it.

He then turned to the archers who had been much more careful about their attacks now that their connection between it and their protector was gone. They only sent out several attacks and tried to reestablish the connection multiple times, but he always made sure to cut it off before they could.

Giving these archers a wide-eyed stare, he charged the closest one with murderous intent. Now that they didn't have their protector, they were sitting ducks.

He was already on top of a lone archer who released an arrow as he threw a punch. [Barrier of Severance] was enough on its own to destroy the arrow before it penetrated his flesh.

The barrier that one of its comrades created in front of it wasn't enough either. Now that he knew how strong the barriers were, he used just the right amount of mana and kinetic energy to tear through the barrier.

He ignored the rain of arrows that was heading his way, it would seem that the other archers already decided to shoot regardless of who was caught in the crossfire. He sidestepped one last desperate swing from the archer it made with its bow and sent out a charged fist.

The archer didn't have anything left and was torn apart with a swift punch to the head. But not soon after, the now dead archer was pierced by a dozen arrows like a pincushion.

After he was done, he glared at the rest of the archers who had decided that friendly fire was now the better choice.

[Barrier of Severance] had been enough to protect him from most of the arrows that hit him, but some of them were still able to penetrate his skin since he wasn't wearing any armor. He casually pulled out the couple of arrows that had managed to hit him.

He didn't bother healing his wounds. They weren't that bad and he would rather heal using his natural regeneration rather than using an intensive skill like [Phoenix Renewal] to do so.

It wasn't like they were poisoned or cursed either, so there was no real need. He would be able to fight just as well even if he had a couple of new holes in his body. He had dealt with much worse before.

Two down, thirteen to go, he noted to himself as his eyes locked on to the nearest archer.

He took off in a burst of speed using [Flash Step] to appear next to the archer and quickly dispatched it in a similar manner.

Twelve more…

***

Congratulations, Seventh Wave completed… Please wait ten minutes for the Eighth Wave.

After he took down the hobgoblin with the Concept, he had taken out the rest of the archers within a minute or so.

Without their protector, they were just monsters with a few useful skills and some long-range attacks.

Nothing he wasn't able to handle.

He was curious about what kind of Concept that hobgoblin had though. He wasn't able to get a close enough look at it to determine what it was, but it was probably something that allowed it to establish such a connection with the other hobgoblin archers.

Some kind of Concept that revolved around unity or cooperation perhaps? He knew that there were many esoteric Concepts out there, but he wished he had a way to determine what kind of Concept someone had with greater accuracy.

It would help him a lot with analyzing an opponent and their potential strengths and weaknesses.

Julius could only shake his head and sit back down on the ground.
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He had been about to create a chair made of mana out of pure instinct, but he stopped himself at the last moment and reminded himself that he needed to save as much as he could. He had splurged on the prior waves, but he knew that it wasn't smart to do so now.

Conserving mana became more important than ever, especially considering that this was the first fight where he wasn't going to be able to recover all of the mana he used during the fight.

It wasn't by much, but it was still something he noticed.

He could have used one of the constructs that were still hovering above him and remolded it into a chair, but even something like that wasted a small amount of mana during the conversion process.

It didn't matter if he had an absurd amount of mana, he wanted the best chance to complete this Challenge then using his mana appropriately was crucial.

Thus he had tried to remove a chair from his storage ring but was surprised to find that he was unable to do so.

Richard had already told him that using potions and other items that give an unfair advantage weren't allowed to be removed from his ring. However, he had been allowed to take out food from his storage ring, which made him believe that he would be able to take out a chair. But he found himself being restricted from doing so.

He would understand if the rift prevented him from taking out a powerful weapon or a special treasure to heal himself with, but this was a chair he was talking about.

What did the rift think he was going to do with a soft leather chair? Use it as a deadly weapon that would help him complete this Challenge?

He could only shake his head in disbelief and relegated himself to sitting on the grassy dirt while munching on his snacks with a sad frown, internally cursing whoever controlled this rift.