Path to Transcendence

The pressure was so intense that he was utterly helpless. He could feel his mana channels being strained just from being in contact with this mana. He had rarely come across something like this. Most of the time, it was from a flood of aura or a domain that pressed down on him.
However, in this case, it was pure dense mana. There was so much that it acted like an unstoppable force, pressing down on his chest. Even more worrisome was that he could feel his body slowly getting poisoned by this mana radiation.
As he experienced this deluge of mana, he couldn’t help but think about how it made his pool of mana seem like a small puddle in comparison.
The pressure slowly increased, and Julius did everything he could to stay conscious. He ramped up every skill and used everything at his disposal to enforce his body. As he strained himself, he realized that he was wrong. There was something else on top of the mana.
There was an invisible force pressing down on him on top of the mana. It felt like gravity magic. He wasn’t an expert by any means, but he had felt gravity magic in the past when he had trained in some of the specialized rooms. With that being said, this felt different than those times.
This gravity magic felt a lot less structured; it felt wild and dangerous. His body was practically on the verge of collapsing onto itself. He tried to teleport away, not caring about hiding his [Void Step] skill. He needed to get away from this situation and hoped that by moving locations, he would be released from the mana and gravity influence.
However, to his shock. He found himself unable to use the skill. [Void Step] wasn’t working; each time he tried to channel it, the overwhelming amount of mana being released on him collapsed the skill structure before it could activate.
It was a form of mana disruption that he had never experienced before. There weren't any fancy techniques or skills. It was just sheer mana that prevented his skill from working. And it was extremely effective. If he weren’t in the middle of being squished to death, he would have been very excited to experience such a thing.
As things were, he just wanted to get out of there. His knees were getting sore.
He didn’t know how long it went on for, but suddenly the pressure alleviated, and he accidentally shot himself straight into the roof because of the rapid loss of resistance. He dropped back onto the ground with a dull thump, and he groaned, rubbing his head as he stood up.
“Damn, what the hell was that?” He murmured to himself, looking around, seeing if he could find out who had done this to him.
“I think I should be asking that question,” a deep, gravely voice called out sharply. They sounded supremely annoyed.
Julius shot to his feet, preparing for another attack.
“Relax, if I wanted to kill you or make sure you kept on eating dirt, I wouldn’t have let you up,” the voice said flatly.
Julius shrugged and took a brief moment to relax. They had a point. “I’m sorry, but did I do something to offend you?” He finally asked after a few seconds of silence.
The voice grumbled, and the cave shook along with it. “'
?' the boy asks.” Julius could have sworn he heard the voice scoff. “I don’t think anyone would be happy if someone came into their home and started to destroy their damn walls.”
Julius paused. “Wait, this is your home?”
“No, I am just visiting,” the voice said snarkily.
Julius didn’t quite realize it was sarcasm and held one of his hands on his chest in relief. “Oh, I am glad. I thought you might have been mad since I was punching the wall.”
He was promptly sent flying back face-first into the dirt. He felt some of the bones in his face crack and some of his teeth get chipped.
“That’s exactly why I am irritated,” the voice growled out, each word was emphasized with an additional slam of gravity.
“My bad,” Julius groaned out.
He heard an irritated sigh, but the pressure lessened again. He was better prepared for the change in resistance this time around and didn't send himself flying into the ceiling.
“Why were you beating your worthless fists into my home?” The gravely voice demanded.
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“Worthless?” Julius mumbled out in offense but was quickly sent back into the ground with another dull thud. This time, it didn’t last as long, and it felt like the voice was trying to make a point as if it was warning Julius to stop being so deliberately dense.
Unfortunately, the voice was just the type of person Julius was. Furthermore, he kind of wanted to be smushed again. He wanted to try various methods to deal with this kind of attack. Nothing seemed to work, but he hoped that with enough attempts, he would be able to find a workaround.
While he knew that this voice could likely kill him, he didn’t think they wanted to do that. If they did, then they wouldn’t have let him up the first time. They would have pressed him into the ground until he was nothing more than a blood smear on the hard rock.
Regardless, he wanted to push his luck.
“Just get out of here,” the voice called out once Julius got back to his feet. Instead of angry or annoyed, the voice just sounded defeated.
“You are just going to let me go?” Julius asked after he brushed himself off again.
“Yes, but every second I look at you, I find myself changing my mind. What kind of idiot spends that much time punching a fucking wall?” The last part trailed off as the voice sounded as if it were talking to itself rather than Julius.
“To be honest, I thought the wall was hiding some kind of treasure,” Julius explained, even though he had a feeling that the voice wasn’t looking for one.
“Treasure, huh?”
“Yeah, I sensed something coming from the wall and thought if I punched it hard enough, it would reveal something shiny,” he answered truthfully.
“Shiny…” the voice just sounded tired now.
“Wait, what did you mean you sensed something weird?” The voice suddenly asked, sounding much more interested.
Julius glanced over at the wall he had been bashing his face against and explained what he had felt to the voice.
There was a prolonged silence after he finished his explanation.
“You sensed that?” The voice asked, sounding skeptical.
“Yeah?” Julius said, a little confused by the voice's surprise. While it was very minute, Julius was still able to sense the mana coming from the wall as it tried to repair itself. He didn’t think it was that big of a deal to have been able to feel something.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?” Julius asked again.
“Yes, now get out,” the voice said grumpily.
“Like here? Or like the realm? I am not qui—” Julius’s words were cut off when his body went flying off to the other side of the cavern. The previous times he had been smashed downward, yet this time around it was sideways.
Not only that, but it would seem that he had finally pushed the grumpy voice’s patience too far. Julius knew he was playing a dangerous game, but he didn’t like feeling helpless and not knowing why he couldn't do anything to resist this attack.
Too bad that resulted in him being slammed ear-deafeningly hard into the stone walls. Half of his bones were immediately shattered into small fragments. The pain was intense, and he was dizzy from the impact, but he was surprisingly fine, at least for his standards.
Weirdly enough, none of his vital organs were damaged. It was almost like something had protected his organs to make sure he didn’t die.
Once again, he had been unable to do anything. His mana wouldn’t respond to him, which meant he was unable to use [Void Step] to escape, nor use any mana to protect himself. All he had was aura and kinetic energy. However, even they were being affected, albeit to a lesser degree.
He had been trying to find a way around this, but had been unable to figure anything out. However, funnily enough, the last attack might have crushed his body, but he was able to ascertain more from it than he had before. Despite resembling a crushed can, he was excited.
He immediately began working on various techniques and methods to free himself.
“Stop it. What are you doing?”
Julius ignored the voice and continued to work his aura into his body. His emblem did a lot of heavy lifting, too. It was similarly tied down like the rest of his mana, but the impact it was able to make was by far the greatest.
Julius constantly changed how he used his emblem and aura. However, just as he was getting in the groove of things, his body fell back to the ground with a loud smack.
“Are you seriously torturing yourself so that you can gain a skill?” The voice asked with a hint of disgust.
“Umm, no,” Julius said as his healing skill was already fixing his broken bones.
“Just leave, please,” the grumpy voice was practically begging at this point.
“Why aren’t you trying to kill me? What is stopping you from doing that?” Julius asked, wanting to satisfy his curiosity.
“What are you talking about? I just crushed your bones into shards.”
“You protected my vital organs, though. If you were actually trying to hurt me, I don’t think you would have done that,” Julius pointed out.
“Are you pretending to be stupid? Or are you actually just an idiot?”
Julius shrugged. “Probably the latter, at least that is what most people seem to believe.”
He felt his body get grabbed once again, but to his confusion, he wasn’t thrown across the cave or into the ground. Instead, the mana fell apart, and he was left alone.
“Come on, I feel like I am getting close,” Julius proclaimed.
“Yeah, and I am not going to help you do that,” the grumpy voice stated with a scoff. “If you want to figure it out, you can figure it out with someone else.”
Julius nodded softly and decided it was time to use his trump card. “I’ll leave if you tell me how it works,” he offered magnanimously.
He was barely able to get out his words before he found himself slammed face-first into the ground. If his face weren’t pressed into hard rock with half his teeth missing, he would have been smiling like a child on Christmas morning.