Path to Transcendence

“She is pretty,” the dark-haired one with the sword stated with a satisfied nod as if he were examining something inside a shop. There was a smile on his face as if he found something about her extremely amusing.
“We can have fun later; we might need to help Connor and Darrell soon. You saw what I saw. He’s strong,” the tall one with the shield stated.
“Sure, he’s a little strong, but they should be able to delay him long enough for us to deal with this one,” the swordsman said with a roll of the eyes.
Aubrey scoffed internally.
“Then stop wasting time and get on with it.”
“Don’t act like you don't enjoy this too,” the dark-haired swordsman scoffed.
Aubrey was confused. She had no idea what these guys were talking about. Maybe they were a bit dull in the head or dropped when they were babies.
The moment her attention strayed, both of them attacked. She cursed these little shits in her head. They had done that on purpose.
The shield warrior was much faster than she had ever expected; it was fast enough that it could have been a short-range teleportation skill. She immediately switched places with one of her clones. The clone that replaced her was shattered into particles of mana that she made sure to keep some control over.
If she were careful enough, she would be able to recycle some of that mana for a new clone.
These two guys were stunned and confused by her actions.
“I thought she was just an illusion user,” the shield bearer stated flatly, glancing at his teammate.
“She is, but I think she teleported through one of her other clones. I felt something that resembled spatial magic,” the swordsman said with a confused frown.
“That’s going to be annoying.”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
Aubrey grinned to herself, and before they could get the chance, she went on the offensive, making sure she kept them occupied for the time being. While she did that, she looked over at Julius and shook her head in exasperation.
She had always known that Julius was someone special. The day she had lost to him despite being a tier higher was an unforgettable one. She knew from then on that he would eventually become a powerhouse. Her mother also agreed with her assessment, which was high praise coming from her.
That is, if he survived long enough to get to that point, which was honestly quite a worry considering his habit of literally throwing himself into the fire.
Julius was a freak of nature. It wasn’t just his mana manipulation or his aura control that separated him. It was a combination of everything he was good at. She knew several people with comparable skills in mana manipulation, aura control, or physical body enhancements.
However, how many of these people had all of them? Very few, if any.
He had practically no weaknesses to exploit, which was crazy when you honestly thought about it. Hell, his biggest weakness was himself and maybe cake.
For example, if she fought him for real, she would simply wait until he handicapped himself, then go in for the kill. That, or leave a tasty-looking cake on the floor and spring a trap.
She had half expected him to do that with these opponents. But to her pleasant surprise, he took them seriously from the very start. She sensed that he was a bit uncharacteristically angry when he looked at these opponents.
She wondered what he had picked up on them.
Her curiosity grew tenfold when she saw how brutal he was with his pair of enemies. He looked mad —extremely mad. He tore into his pair like a savage. The archer didn’t have a chance. Not a single one.
They were eviscerated before they had a chance to fight back. Julius ruthlessly tore him apart, and all that was left of his body was a blood stain on the mage's ice shield. Even Aubrey was stunned by Julius’s brutality and violence.
She stepped back and flicked her wrist to parry the sudden sword strike. Her crystal skin was hard enough to parry a sword with ease. It was too rigid to use on her entire body, but a place like her forearm was perfect. They had finally found her after attacking a dozen of her clones. She didn’t know if it was luck or skill, but she decided to teleport herself to one of the further away clones.
Since she had some time before they found the real her again, she chose to observe Julius, who was walking casually to the mage. They had teleported already, trying to escape Julius. But her crazy friend must have already used his stupidly destructive aura skill to wipe out any more attempts to escape because the mage didn’t teleport again for the rest of the fight.
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Now he was approaching the mage with a savage grin. The mage dropped to their knees and screamed out in pain, much like the archer had done. Then they grabbed their face, and Aubrey flinched when she saw the mage suddenly pop like a balloon, spraying bloody mist everywhere.
“What the fuck…” the one with the shield muttered as they saw their friend get imploded.
From their perspective, it looked like their teammate had exploded for no reason. Julius hadn’t been touching them. It was only because she knew Julius’s skills that she was pretty confident that he had quite literally squished the mage to death with kinetic energy.
She still had no idea how much he had grown during his time away. All she knew was that he came back with apparently one of the most skilled kinetic energy users on the continent as his master—someone that even Derek's family feared. That told Aubrey enough information.
She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of secret training Julius had gotten from Cain. It must have been impressive if it enabled Julius to squish an elite Tier 3 like one would pop an annoying pimple.
She shook her head and refocused her attention on the warriors who were dealing with her clones. They weren’t bad at all. The swordsman was actually quite strong; he was even stronger than she had been after the Goldencrest Tournament had ended. The shield bearer was even stronger.
Unfortunately for them, she had improved a lot since the tournament.
The two warriors had been slowly testing Aubrey. They hadn’t said many nice things, so she already didn’t like them. However, she grinned when she saw them unnerved.
She would have taunted them if she had found a way to talk through one of her clones, but she hadn’t figured that out yet. If she spoke now, then they would locate her pretty quickly. Julius had helped her figure out how to mimic certain things like breathing and blinking, but the clones weren’t actual versions of her.
She hoped that would change in the future. If she could do something like that, it would become quite a fantastic skill.
Aubrey looked at the guys who were still fighting her clones. They were pissed off and were slaughtering her clones at a rapid pace. They had wanted to help their friends, but Aubrey had kept them occupied, constantly slamming beams of light or straight up throwing her clone's bodies at them.
The shield warrior was the one to worry about. The large guy was smashing his shield with relentless strength, using his shield like a massive broadsword.
Each blow took out a clone, sometimes several of them at once. The man didn’t care that her clones were doing damage either. Whatever his shield and armor didn’t take care of, he let his body soak up the rest of the damage without so much as a wince. What was even more annoying was that he had a healing skill just like Julius, so he kept up his ridiculous pace.
Obviously, the healing skill wasn’t as good as Julius’s, but it was still regenerating him at an impressive rate. She was more worried about her mana situation. As much as she had been training to make her clones more efficient and to get the most out of them, they still cost a good amount of mana. Not everyone could have the reserves that Julius had.
She wasn’t just lazing around either. She was figuring out these guys’ skillsets. Cygnus had been very insistent that she learn to be patient during a fight, especially when she had her clones to help her.
So while she looked like she was relaxing and fooling around, she was already planning how to deal with these people. That plan revolved around taking care of the swordsman first. As much of a threat the shield bearer was, she didn’t want to be forced to fight him with another person trying to stab her in the face. She would like to avoid something like that if possible.
The problem was that the shield bearer took a lot of her attention. He had an annoying skill that magically drew her attacks to his body. It wasn’t anything mind-related or like a traditional taunting skill; this was different.
It was like some unknown force was warping her attacks so that they ended up hitting him. The few times she had the swordsman on the back foot, the shield warrior protected him. She had even caught him teleporting to help on an occasion.
However, she knew how to get around that now, and she grinned before making her move.
She created several more clones; these were much more powerful than the ones she had been sending at them so far. Those were to get some chip damage on them before she really made her move.
These new versions were her new and improved clones. They took a lot more mana, but they were much more powerful and dangerous. This was shown when the two opponents were knocked off their feet.
They had been getting used to fighting the weaker clones and hadn’t been expecting to receive such resistance. She made sure to jump on the opening. Her clones quickly closed in and began exerting a lot of pressure on these two.
She even joined in on the fun. She teleported to one of the closer clones and waited until the swordsman turned his head around. As much as she loved her clones, they were still just that…
Clones.
The swordsman wasn’t expecting her to smash aside his weapon with so much force. One of her other clones blasted him in the chest with a beam of prismatic light, allowing Aubrey to slam her fist into their chest, knocking the air out of his chest.
She didn’t relent. She kept on moving in, piling on the pressure, making sure that the swordsman couldn’t keep up. On the other side, the shield bearer was being swarmed by her clones. But he must have seen the situation his friend found himself in.
So with a burst of mana, he disappeared and was right beside Aubrey, swinging his shield into her hip.
Or at least that was what the shield bearer believed he had hit.
She smirked when the swordsman was sent flying twenty feet into the air, his armor damaged pretty badly from the direct hit from his own teammate. She saw half of his torso get folded inside out from the impact.
She was embarrassed to admit that it had taken her far too long to figure out that her illusions could be used in other ways that didn’t include creating clones. Cygnus and Stella had fixed that problem for her.
It took some time, but she had learned how to make small illusions that would trick her opponents—simple illusions like flipping the positions of her and the swordsman.
It was such a basic illusion, but that’s what made it so easy to trick her opponents. They didn’t even notice it until it was too late.
The shield warrior certainly didn’t, and he stared at her, where she was now in the place the swordsman had been in the illusion.
“You fucking bitch,” he snarled.
Aubrey laughed in his face. “That’s not very nice.”
“I’m going to make you and your little friend beg by the time I am done with you two,” he said darkly.
She just laughed again, and the actual fight started in earnest. But now that she had handled his friend, she liked her odds.