Path to Transcendence-Chapter 606: Lost Count

They stayed the night at a really nice inn. They all got separate rooms and could finally relax, lying in beds that weren’t attached to the carriage. It wasn’t like the beds inside the carriage were uncomfortable in the first place, either. In fact, he would argue that the beds in the carriage were as, or even more comfortable than the one inside his room at the inn.

However, there was a weird difference between sleeping inside a carriage and a real room. Plus, this inn had a private hydrothermal bathhouse for its VIP guests to enjoy. Julius didn’t think he could get so much pleasure from a bath, but somehow he did.

The water was definitely special. Large amounts of mana were infused into every inch of the water, and even the stones that made up the baths were treated with some sort of special mana. The food was amazing too. Absolutely divine.

He had already thanked Loreyn several times and would need to thank her a dozen more when he had the chance. He didn’t know how she found the inn, but he was grateful that she had. He went to sleep with a full belly and a skin softer than a newborn’s buttcheeks.

He finally woke up in the morning to the sound of someone knocking on his door. In a rare case of laziness, he ended up sleeping for over eight hours. Unheard of for him, especially since he didn’t need as much sleep anymore.

That wasn’t without reason either. During the couple of weeks of traveling, he figured out a dubious technique that helped him stay asleep for longer. He didn’t really know if it was safe as of yet, but he had been using his ruinous aura on himself.

By using the aura this way, he was able to limit the effectiveness of his healing skill and his new body. It actually wasn’t easy at all, but he came up with the idea after helping Maya with her willpower training.

When he wrestled control over his aura, he sometimes repressed it so much that the backlash hurt him a little bit, and he felt a little bit tired after he was done with a session. So he played around with it and managed to figure out a nice balance that tired him out enough to keep him sleeping, but not so much that he killed himself in his sleep.

Oh yeah, he forgot to mention that he needed to do all of this in his sleep. Thankfully, he had some experience with this from when he used to train his spatial perception years ago.

He heard the door get knocked on again.

“I’m up, I’m up,” he said to Maya, who was on the other side. He could sense her, and she was tapping her fingers against her forearm impatiently.

“Well, then, get dressed. We need to leave soon if we want to get all of our shopping done before we leave.”

He groaned and crawled out of the comforts of his warm bed. He heard Drasil let out a strangled moan as well. The little guy had been tucked up against his neck and had also been enjoying their lazy day. Seraphyne was out of his soul, too, but she didn’t cuddle with him and had her own nest at the foot of the bed. She was similarly waking from her rest, itching her shell as she did.

When he finally got up and dressed, he opened the door. Maya was standing there and shaking her head at him.

“Jeez, I thought you were an early riser. One day in luxury and you turn into a sloth,” she said jokingly.

“You sound jealous,” he commented, noticing the dark circles under her eyes. She clearly didn’t sleep well. Was the idea of them going deep into the Brightwood Forest that scary to her?

She rolled her eyes and turned around to walk down the hall. “Come on. I have a lot to buy today since we can’t rely on anyone else’s storage rings.”

“You don’t already have some stuff prepared inside your storage ring?” Julius was surprised by this. He didn’t use them all that often, but he still had all of his camping gear and even his fold-up kitchen set inside his ring.

She laughed. “No, we never had the need to. We have potions and some other stuff, but most of our rings are full of personal items.”

Julius shook his head. He couldn’t imagine having a storage ring and not filling it with everything he needed to survive the wilderness. But he didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he followed her out of the inn.

They met with Shin outside. Loreyn and Cassandra were waiting for them, too.

“Everyone ready? We only have a couple of hours before we need to head out,” Cassandra said with a smile.

“You’re really not going to help us? You know that I have never done this sort of thing before,” Shin grumbled.

“That’s why you need to do it. Your father and family spoil you too much. You can’t expect to go the rest of your life with someone else preparing your necessities for you. I know you have servants at the sect who take care of your needs, but this is going to be different. You are going to be preparing your food, shelter, and even learn how to remove cores from various monsters.”

“Cores? Seriously? And what are the rest of you guys going to do while we do all of this?”

Cassandra smiled widely. “We are going to enjoy the comforts of the carriage while you sleep outside.”

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“What?! That’s unfair!”

Cassandra’s smile flattened. “Fair? Do you know how young I was when I started to learn how to survive in the wild?”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. “I was twelve and was by myself for over a month, fighting monsters every day. It has become quite clear that you and, to some extent, Maya, have lived too comfortable a life in recent years. I partially blame myself for this. I should have stepped in earlier. But now I plan to rectify this oversight.”

Seeing that she was serious, neither Shin nor Maya argued and looked down at the floor. After a few silent moments, Shin looked up and stared at Julius.

“What about him?”

Cassandra frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Will he be joining us in this training?”

She scoffed. “What makes you think he needs this sort of thing? In your case, you two need to toughen up. But in his case, he needs to learn the opposite. He needs to learn how to chill out and relax.”

When she saw the confused expression on both Shin and Maya’s faces, she shook her head. “You understand that someone’s skills give a glimpse into one’s past and their path, right?”

Maya was the first one to nod her head, but Shin slowly followed suit.

“Okay, then what does someone with Julius’s skills tell you?”

“I don’t understand,” Maya said quietly.

“Destruction aspected aura, violently powerful skills, and an extremely effective self-healing skill. Do you know what that means?”

“That he has two powerful Tier 6s as teachers,” Shin said snarkily.

Cassandra whipped around, and to everyone’s surprise, the woman slapped the young across the face. Not hard, obviously. If she had, she wouldn’t have just torn Shin’s head off his body, but destroyed the entire street. No, but hard enough that his head snapped back and blood trickled from his mouth.

She stepped forward and grabbed his chin firmly. He could hear the bones of Shin’s jaw creak from the force of her fingers. Her eyes bored into him.

“I’ve had just about enough of your attitude. I love you as a grandson and have been patient on account of your young age and immaturity, but no more. You have been given enough chances to rectify your attitude and find some way to solve your stupid jealousy and envy. You are being treated differently from him because you are weak. Weak because your parents have coddled you since birth. Talented as you are, you are far behind someone like Julius.” She dropped her hand from Shin’s face with a sharp glare.

“Do you know why healers specialize in healing others, rather than using their skills to heal themselves in combat? You would think that their skills would make them a very useful fighter, right?”

“Because it would require them to practice healing their own injuries in battle,” Maya said softly.

“Correct. The only way they can improve their self-healing skills is to get injured frequently. The requirements of this only grow with the skill’s potency. It is why people who have powerful self-healing skills are monsters in combat. It requires a special kind of crazy and stubbornness to fight until they are on the edge of death. Almost every single self-healing warrior I know is a battle maniac with a screw loose in his head.”

Suddenly, her gaze drifted to Julius, who was doing his best impression of a fly on a wall, trying to ignore getting drawn into this conflict.

“How many times have you almost died in the past year?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know or lost count?”

He looked away, choosing not to answer the loaded question.

Cassandra seemed satisfied that she got her answer and looked over at the other two teens. “See?”

Shin and Maya were staring at the ground now.

“If you don’t want to get stronger, then that’s more than fine. Not everyone’s life leads down the same path. But I’m also not going to waste my time trying to pick up someone who doesn’t want to put in the work. So you either take this training seriously, or we can go our separate ways. What do you say?”

Julius didn’t really know if either Shin or Maya had much of a choice, but to Cassandra’s credit, he noticed that both of them had a more resolved look on their faces.

Cassandra looked pleased and nodded. “Good, now let’s get going before it’s too late.”

***

The first of their stops was for food. Loreyn usually carried all the food, but now they were required to bring some of their own. Julius tried not to laugh, but it was pretty funny to see the two of them try to buy food.

It was like they had never shopped for food in their entire lives. Even Maya seemed lost. They tried to ask for advice, but Cassandra didn’t let anyone, not even Julius to help them.

In the end, they found a store that sold rations and got a bunch of them. Julius didn’t know if their storage rings had any preservation features like his own, but he suspected they were going to regret their choices a few days from now. That bread looked more like a sandstone brick than food.

They had enough potions, but Cassandra had them get a bunch of camping supplies. They chose some tents and even had the foresight to get a few defensive anchor points for their camp. Much like the Guardian Pillars he had seen at the crafting competition, but these were clearly of lesser quality.

But they were probably enough. At least he hoped they were; the price of the anchors was enough that Julius almost tripped over his feet in shock. He couldn’t believe that four spikes of enchanted metal cost that much. It was also where most of the budget Cassandra had given went. He suspected that the merchant might have price-gouged them, but he wasn’t an expert on money either.

It didn’t help when most of his money was either given to him by others or stolen from his fallen opponents.

Still, Julius noticed a few things that they overlooked. Unfortunately, Cassandra glared at him, as if to warn him to keep his comments to himself. He reluctantly acquiesced to her demands, but knew that he would feel bad when the two of them ran out of clean water. Neither of them got a purification device or a rune-enchanted water bottle. He hoped that they had one already stored away in their rings.

As for armor, they were allowed to use some of their existing armor. But it wasn’t their main armor. They were able to use their main weapons, though. Cassandra said their weapon would be the one thing they could always count on.

Julius even got himself a couple of items. He found a shop that was selling an incense kit. Normally, this wasn’t a good idea in the middle of a forest, but apparently, this incense was helpful for meditation and increased aura recovery. He didn't know if it would work, but at the very least, it smelled amazing.

Then, after a couple of hours of shopping, they were all ready to go. Julius was excited, but it was clear Shin and Maya were a little more trepidacious.