Path to Transcendence-Chapter 603: Can I Help You?

Maya POV

She woke up, and her head felt like a dropped stone column on her face. She was already beginning to regret asking Julius to help her with her willpower training. She thought he had been exaggerating at first.

She had trained with Tier 5s and even Cassandra a few times, so she was confident in his ability to hold his own during a battle of wills. However, that wasn’t the case with Julius’s aura. It felt like an apex predator looking down on her while it slowly chewed on her soul.

She glanced over across the spatially enhanced carriage and spotted the boy in question standing by the window, munching on something out of a beat-up lunchbox with the face of a flaming chicken on the front of it.

She didn’t see anyone else. Shin was probably out with Caldrus. The old man enjoyed training others in swordplay. Maya sometimes joined, but her specialty was the staff, not the sword.

Loreyn must have been off scouting the next town or on another mission for Cassandra. Unlike the rest of them, this wasn’t a vacation for Loreyn. Maya tried to help, but Loreyn insisted that she relax and enjoy her time in a new country.

“Enjoy your late-night training?” Cassandra asked when Maya finally crawled out of her bedroll. The woman was reading in her chair, but a knowing smile played on her face.

“You knew?”

“Of course. I’m glad that you took it upon yourself to do so. I was going to push you to ask him yourself if you waited any longer.”

Maya shouldn't be surprised. Tier 6’s were always so gosh darned perceptive. She glanced over at Julius. Him too. I don’t know how he does it, but he is somehow able to track me no matter what I do.

She was pretty proud of her stealth skills. Her ability to hide her mana and her presence was a talent she always had since she was young. She believed that it was due to her living on the streets and hiding from dangerous thugs for years that helped her with this.

But Julius always knew when she was sneaking up on him. Maybe it was her aura. Her ability to hide her aura fell behind her techniques to hide her mana. But that would naturally improve over time, after all, she hadn't had her aura for very long. Regardless, she was determined to surprise him just once before they made it back to Corvus.

Speaking of Corvus, they shouldn’t be too far away. The carriage was much faster than your average carriage, and they were getting closer to the border of the Empire each day. The increasingly larger number of monsters and adventurers around the area proved this.

“Here, take this,” Cassandra said and handed over a small vial. She didn’t even question what it was and uncorked it, pouring it down her throat. She let out a sigh of relief when her headache quieted down. She also hadn’t realized it either, but it was like a weight had come off her chest, as if her soul was revitalized. Too bad it tasted like wet moss and dirt.

She smacked her lips together, trying to get the taste out of her mouth. “What was that?”

“Just a little potion that should reinvigorate your aura. I suspected something like that might happen. His aura is a nasty little thing, so is that crown of his,” Cassandra said, still looking down at her book. But she said it loud enough for Julius, who was still eating by the window, to hear her.

“I can hear you,” Julius said from the window with a mouth full of food.

“You were supposed to,” Cassandra shot back. It was jarring to see how casual the Tier 6 woman acted in front of Julius. It was equally surprising to see how Julius acted in front of her. Most people his age would be scared to be near a Tier 6; nevertheless, he acts casually with one.

Maya had only gotten used to it because she had known Cassandra for years. But even with that, there was still a barrier between them. One built from Maya’s respect and fear of the woman.

She knew that Cassandra wouldn’t hurt her, but she had also seen Cassandra level an entire mountain range before.

“Are you sure you’re okay with me using my aura against her?” Julius asked, polishing off the rest of his food.

“As long as she doesn’t mind. I believe it would be good for her. She and my grandson could use some toughening up. Maya, less so considering her childhood, but I feel that in recent years, she has been coddled a little too much by various elders and teachers. Too bad Shin doesn’t see the value in accepting your help or advice.”

“You know that I’m technically younger than him, right?” Julius pointed out.

“And? That shouldn’t stop him from trying to improve,” Cassandra noted with a disappointed shake of her head.

Julius opened his mouth to argue, but must have decided that it wasn’t worth it, and she watched as Julius’s little spirit made an appearance. He waved at Maya and Cassandra before focusing his attention on Julius's palm, which held a chunk of life mana, and sucking on it with a soft coo.

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The adorable guy had quickly become everyone’s favorite within this past week, she even spotted Caldrus, the grumpy old man looking fondly at the cute life spirit. It wasn’t surprising either. Drasil was damn cute. The only thing is that he ate a lot. She didn’t know where all of that mana went.

She smiled at Drasil’s antics and looked outside to where she heard swords clashing. Speaking of Shin, Maya didn’t even try to defend him. She knew why he was acting like a moody little teenager for the past week. Namely, she was staring at that very reason right now.

“What? Do I have food on my face?” Julius suddenly asked, noticing her attention and rubbing his face, as if removing any lingering crumbs from his meal.

She shook her head. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

Julius shrugged and started to work on his life mana orb thingies once again. She still didn’t quite understand what he was trying to do with those things. To her senses, they looked like plain balls of mana.

She sighed. To be honest, she couldn’t even find it in herself to blame Shin for his envy or jealousy either. Julius was an insane example of talent and was already someone worth envying. Especially when it was clear that the boy who had won his way through the tournament they came to watch was clearly holding back.

Julius’s use of his healing skill demonstrated this quite emphatically. It wasn’t even a subtle healing skill, either. It was clearly insanely powerful. The type of healing skill that would become someone’s signature skill. Yet, he hadn’t used it the entire tournament.

She doubted he got something that powerful just from his advancement, which meant that he’d been sitting on it this entire time. Which was a terrifying prospect.

It was no wonder that Tier 6s such as Cain and Freya were teaching him. And why someone like Cassandra was so interested in him.

In fact, if he had used this healing skill during the tournament, then the fight with Eren wouldn’t have been as close. That much was easy to see. She hadn’t been sure who would have won between him and Isaac since the other boy had a healing skill too, but now she was convinced that Julius would have won that fight too.

She went over to the window and watched Shin flow through his sword forms. There was a bit of anger and aggressiveness that wasn’t there before. She empathized with him.

Watching your own grandmother treat a newcomer with more familiarity than you could not have been easy. It was obvious that Shin's feelings were hurt.

Maya seriously doubted that Cassandra wanted Shin to feel this way either. But Shin also failed to realize that Cassandra treated him the way she did, partly because he was still so rigid with her.

She glanced over at Julius and saw that Drasil was swinging from the other boy’s ear while he tried to ignore the little spirit. A grin curled to her lips.

“Hey, do you think you can help me with my willpower training in a little bit?” She asked him.

Julius looked up from his mana orb. “Already? Shouldn’t you recover from last night?”

“I feel better since I drank that nasty potion.”

He shrugged. “Sure, whenever you want to. It’s actually pretty good practice for me, too.”

“Good practice for you?” She repeated with confusion.

He stretched his arms, and Drasil, who was swinging from his ear, flailed around as he was suddenly displaced.

“Yeah, it’s kind of hard to hold it back from shredding your aura into pieces. But last night was a pretty effective exercise in gaining control over my aura. It’s gotten pretty unruly now that I have advanced,” he explained.

She stiffened when she heard this. She knew that he was holding back for her sake. But she hadn’t known that he was holding back his aura that much. Perhaps her willpower training was a little more dangerous than she suspected it would be.

***

Julius POV

They were currently camped out in the woods. He knew that they were towards the edge of the Empire’s borders now, but he wasn’t exactly sure where they were.

On the other hand, these woods were gorgeous. The amount of life mana suffused into every inch of the woods was intense. He could faintly detect the way the roots of the trees spread all around him, seeping even more life mana into the surrounding wildlife. It was some kind of feedback loop.

The trees injected life mana into the environment but also absorbed the ambient mana created by the other creatures and plants, making even more life mana. It was delicate work and honestly quite impressive to watch.

It was only because he had advanced to Tier 4 that he managed to sense such elegant manipulation, and it was breathtaking. He was even more glad he had chosen to advance. Without it, he would not have been able to experience such a wondrous sight.

He let his feet dangle as he continued his observations. He had found himself a nice little area further away from the carriage and was sitting on a large boulder that overlooked a small lake. The night sky was clear of any clouds he could see the sparkling stars reflected on the lake’s softly rippling surface.

He took several deep breaths and smiled widely as he enjoyed this scenery. Not far from him were Seraphyne and Drasil. The life spirit and turtle were playing on the edge of the lake’s gentle waves.

Seraphyne was trying to relax in the water, but Drasil insisted on playing and splashed around wildly. Seraphyne was forced to snap her beak at Drasil before he settled down, properly chagrined.

A little bit afterwards, Julius held back a laugh when he saw that Drasil had somehow morphed his new belt into a kind of raft, floating on the surface next to Seraphyne. The little guy was kicking his feet, swimming in circles around Seraphyne. The occasional splash of water hit Seraphyne, but she seemed to accept this was the best she was going to get.

While he enjoyed this peace, he wasn’t idle. He was still practicing his life mana continuously. With all of the life mana around him, he felt inspired and was trying several new things. He tried to implement the feedback loop he sensed from the trees.

He failed spectacularly, but part of the enjoyment was experiencing the failures. Each time, he made slight alterations. Some of them worked, while some of them didn’t.

He did feel that he was getting close, though. The second chapter of Tezuko Willow’s manual was supposed to open when he reached Tier 4. Now that he was getting used to his new mana, he felt that time was nearing.

Of course, he was never allowed to have true peace and deflated when he sensed a person quietly approaching him. They were hiding their mana, but Julius was still able to detect them.

He leaned back until his body was folded over the backside of the boulder. With his head upside down, he looked at the robed figure of Caldrus.

“Is there something I can help you with?”