Chapter 94 (Patreon)

It was fascinating how single-minded Julius could become. For the next couple of weeks, he did nothing other than train four primary skills: [Arcane Construct], [Pure Compression], [Mana Layering], and [Mana Slash]. He completely ignored everything else and stuck himself in a training room. 

However, Julius was a little surprised and frustrated that [Mana Layering] hadn’t already evolved. It had been stuck on level 14 for a while, and Julius didn’t know what else he could do. There were only so many ways one could layer mana. He was at a blockade of some sort. He felt like he needed to use the skill in a new and exciting way, but nothing he had tried worked yet.

[Mana Slash] was coming along wonderfully though. It was a really easy skill to level up. There were so many uses you could use for it, Julius could see why it was such a highly desirable skill and why it was able to synergize with so many skills. 

Julius had previously thought he was able to do exactly what [Mana Slash] was able to, but he quickly realized that he had been naive and ignorant. His version was a poor replication of the actual skill. When he closely compared the two, he was able to see the differences. Julius’s technique had uneven thicknesses of mana in specific pieces along the edge, and worked much less effectively, even if he used fire mana to bolster it. 

Whereas, the skill version had a perfect edge of sharpened and honed unattributed mana. It was a beautiful application of mana that Julius had been trying very hard to replicate on his own without the skill. If he were to compare them to something, he would say his technique was like an iron blade made from the Middle Ages, whereas the skill was like a Japanese Katana made from the sharpest steel by the best smith in the world. 

He knew he would never be able to achieve exactly the same thing on his own for a while longer. But it was good practice for his mana manipulation skills. During the past couple of weeks, he has made a few improvements.

[Mana Layering lvl 13 -> lvl 14]

[Arcane Construct lvl 16 -> lvl 17]

[Pure Compression lvl 15 -> lvl 17]

[Mana Slash lvl 1 -> lvl 10]

He had done everything he could think of to use those four skills in conjunction with each other so that they would have the highest chance of synergizing together. 

Ordinarily, [Mana Slash] was only used on bladed weapons or things that had a functional edge. So Julius first used it on a sword, to test out the skill and how effective it was. He was pleased to find out that the skill did a very good job of sharpening the blade and slicing through the target. 

It felt artificial in many ways. Julius could not detect or notice how the skill was applying mana in such a way that it tore open into things with such ease. It was unattributed mana too, the skill was converting ambient mana and some of his own to activate it. There had to be a reason why, but Julius wasn’t able to pinpoint it.

He didn’t stop at just using [Mana Slash] with a sword, he tried to use it with anything he could get his hands on. There had been nights where all he did for over ten hours straight was swing a tree branch trying to use [Mana Slash] with it. 

At first, it was a miserable failure, hours went by before he made even a smidge of progress. But it did happen, slowly but surely. 

He had been so focused on accomplishing it that he had almost missed when the branch had flickered ever so slightly with mana, running up and down its side. However, that little flicker, proved to Julius that it worked. So with a renewed sense of purpose, he continued to swing that branch for days.  

He even missed his classes because he was so focused. It had worried the others because he had not told them until a couple of days later with his newly bought communication stone, but funnily enough they seemed to understand much to his astonishment. He would have thought they might be more upset with him, but then again they were all hard workers in their own right, so if anyone would understand it would be them.

He wasn’t just mindlessly swinging the branch either. Each swing was made with careful effort and intent. Being able to do it with a branch meant that he would have to be able to do some if not most of the skills job all on his own. So it was very difficult. He got close to having a complete [Mana Slash] but had only gotten a partially activated version.

He did it though. After all that time spent, he finally got it down. The mana flowed through the uneven surface of the branch and gently spun around its rough bark, creating a sharp-honed edge right along its length.

He received some notifications once he brought himself out of his concentrated state.

[Mana Slash lvl 10 -> lvl 13] 

It appeared that keeping up such a concentrated state for almost a week had finally pushed [Mana Slash] enough that it leveled straight up to level 13. [Mana Slash] had almost caught up to [Mana Layering] at this point and was close to its own evolution.

The one thing that he had noticed during his obsessive training, was that [Mana Slash] had the capability to remember and adapt to what he had accomplished. This meant that while it was difficult to initially achieve, Julius could feel innately that he could replicate the same results now with more ease. 

He reached down and picked up the stick from the floor. He had dropped it because of his excitement of joy of finally doing it, but now he wanted to see if he could do it again on the first try. 

He looked down at the stick in his hands. It was just a regular tree branch the length of his arm that he had found in the middle of the night in one of the many school gardens. He had spent longer than one would expect finding a branch that fit his needs, but it had served its purpose well. Though, it was barely holding together he observed it.

The mana and repetitive use had almost destroyed the branch. Honestly, he was surprised that it had lasted as long as it did. Now that he was paying attention to it, he could feel the grains in the wood cracking with every movement he made with it. But he believed that it could take a little more before it was finally done.

With a quick reactivation of [Savage Dance], he tried to use [Mana Slash] around the stick again. Focusing on making the skill create an edge of mana that was so sharp that it sheered through anything in its path. He had been envisioning the process of a knife peeling apart the atoms of his target.

He had been a knife enthusiast in his old life, so he understood how to sharpen a knife and polish its edge. So that was what he imagined and it came easy to him.

This time it was like the skill was completely taking over, it didn’t require much, if any manual input by himself before it activated. A pale blue shining edge of mana formed around the branch. 

Julius walked over to one of the training dummies and slashed at it. The branch sliced right into the wooden material of the dummy with a resounding thud. When he removed the branch, the enchantments regenerated the scarred wood of the dummy, but suddenly the branch practically disintegrated in his hands. It just crumpled apart like sand.

It worked though. He was able to use [Mana Slash] beyond the restrictions the skill placed on its usage. The next step was to use it on his constructs. He had already tried but it was surprisingly harder than using the skill on a tree branch. Even if he created a sword-like construct out of fire mana, he wasn’t able to use [Mana Slash] on it. There was some weird interference, something he had not been expecting.

He really thought that if he made a sword-like construct the skill would work seamlessly with it. However, he found out pretty quickly that it didn’t work like that. That was part of the reason why he had been so focused on using [Mana Slash] with a stick. He thought if he could use it on a stick, then he could use it on his own constructs. 

It was time to put that to the test. 

With a quick use of mana, he carefully created a disc of rotating mana. It was just a simple disc, he didn’t try to compress it or use an aura to enhance it and just simply used [Mana Slash] on it.

Within an instant the entire disc had a soft blue glow around the whole edge, gently humming as it floated in front of him. It was so easy now. Previously, it didn’t even feel like it would be possible, but all those attempts made it feel easy in comparison to the branch. 

He slowly let the skill dissipate and tried something else. This time he wanted to see how far he could push it. How strong would one of his constructs be if he used it all the way to its full potential?

This time he used [Arcane Construct] and [Pure Compression] to create the most sturdy and sharp disc he could possibly manage. The practice with [Mana Slash] helped out a lot, Julius could already feel that the disc was much more elegant and was almost perfectly even on every side. A massive improvement compared to his normal constructs.

He also used [Mana Layering] to build intricate layers of condensed mana, reinforcing his constructs to his current capability’s limit. Then he made sure to use [Empowerment of Will] to stabilize his constructs just as a little touch. Just this alone made the construct better than anything he had done before. It was only after he had done everything else, that he began to activate [Mana Slash]. 

That was when he started to feel his mind and soul start to crack from the pressure he was putting on it. He was using so many skills right now, that it was becoming too difficult to keep track of everything. 

But he had an idea. In the past, he had wanted to try and see if he could use [Empowerment of Will] on [Savage Dance]. However, when he tried it he passed out immediately, and ever since then, he has not tried it out, forgetting about it. 

Now that he was Tier 2, he was hoping that it would be possible. He stopped for a moment, letting [Mana Slash] fall away, and focused on using [Empowerment of Will] and [Savage Dance] in conjunction. 

Since both skills were already active, it did not cause his mind any more pressure, but it was an unusual sensation to get used to. He created a gentle thread connecting [Empowerment of Will] to [Savage Dance] and fed his concentration skill a little aura. 

His mind opened up like he hadn’t felt before. The world felt as if it had stopped and he was in the middle of nothing except for him and the disc floating above his hands. 

Without pausing for a second, he immediately began using [Mana Slash] alongside his other skills. This time it didn’t even feel difficult, he could not imagine why he had been having such a hard time before this. It was laughable how simple it now seemed.

The disc radiated with mana along its edges and Julius began to make it spin rapidly with a surge of kinetic energy. Even after that, he was still able to keep everything together, albeit with a little more effort. There was so much power in the disc, that his will was having a hard time holding it still.

Of course, that meant that Julius wasn’t finished yet. He was on a roll and there was still more he wanted to do and add to it. He had been thinking about it recently and really wanted to give it a try. [Mana Layering] was already a very useful skill, but he was curious if it could work with [Mana Slash] more than just reinforcing the construct. So he pushed the skill beyond its normal abilities and tried to force it to create another layer of [Mana Slash] on top of the pre-existing one.

To his amazement, it worked, barely and it was outrageously unstable, even with [Empowerment of Will] holding everything together. But it did work. 

So before it could blow up in his face, he let out a burst of intent and sent the absurdly dangerous disc of mana right at the wooden dummy. He watched as it sheered completely through it like a hot knife through butter. The dummy was made to take hits and regenerate, but at its core was some sort of enchanted alloy that Julius was never able to damage no matter how much he threw at it. Until now. 

The disc tore through the alloy and straight into the nearest wall, smashing into the heavily enchanted surface. He saw the entire room flicker as runes flashed quickly all over the room and the disc got jammed right into the stone walls of the training room. 

The only sound left in the room was the sound of Julius’s harsh breathing and the sound of blood droplets hitting the floor.