Path to Transcendence

Julius swung his body around in his makeshift hammock as he cradled the mug of hot cocoa one of House Zenith’s chefs prepared for him.
He had been making a habit of leaving the estate late at night after he was done with his training and wandering around the inner districts of the capital. Nobody had any issues with this. The security in the inner districts was notoriously strict, and he doubted any trouble would find him out here.
He had even found a nice little park not too far away from the estate. It was amazing how well managed the park was. Lush greenery and dozens of magnificent structures created by magic made it a paradise.
He had found a small alcove among the trees and set up his hammock there. His hammock was basically extra training for him. He still did his best to practice his mana control at all times of the day, and creating superfluous objects was a great exercise for this. For example, creating the hammock wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
It required over a dozen layers of various techniques. It needed to be both sturdy enough to carry his weight, comfortable enough that he wanted to lie inside it, and look enough like a hammock so that he didn’t feel embarrassed.
Making it comfortable was a weirdly difficult task. It wasn’t just about softening his mana as he had practiced. It required specific sections to be made of various ropes of mana. Each rope needed to have a different tensile strength. The ones closer to the anchors he placed in the trees were stronger, whereas the ones he was lying directly on were soft enough to be comfortable.
But if they weren’t strong enough, then he would fall right through. He had learned that lesson the hard way.
He kicked his feet as he took another sip of his hot cocoa, making slight adjustments to his construct whenever he thought of something new. Some worked, and some didn’t.
On another note, the hot cocoa was absolutely delicious. The chocolate's richness was incomparable. The perfect balance of sweetness and slight bitterness of the chocolate tingled his tongue in a mesmerizing manner. He was half convinced that this chocolate had been made with pure magic.
The chefs at House Zenith certainly knew what they were doing. He would have to ask for the recipe when he returned.
After he took another sip, he felt a poke on his cheek. He rotated his head slightly and saw Drasil’s tiny pleading face staring straight at him. Apparently, the gluttonous little fellow had already finished his meal and wanted more.
Julius turned to look at Seraphyne, who had also decided to relax outside his soul. She was currently lounging on a smaller hammock that Julius made for her. She had insisted that she get her own hammock. He was more than glad to acquiesce to her request.
He saw that she was still slowly eating her orb of life mana. It was halfway in her mouth, and she was sucking on it like a massive gumball.
Apparently, Drasil was quite the anomaly in that he ate a lot more mana than other spirits. Seraphyne was confident that Drasil was some kind of spirit of gluttony or greed rather than a spirit of life.
He was poked again by Drasil. The little guy whistled at him dramatically, swooning in place as if he were dying of starvation. The small leaves on Drasil’s crown were wilting before his very eyes.
Julius rolled his eyes and passed over another orb of mana. This one was flavored differently from the last one. This version had a little more of his aura mixed in.
Drasil threw his arms around Julius’s face with a coo, rubbing his face against him. Julius laughed lightly and watched as Drasil savored the orb of mana, gently sucking on it.
Julius asked himself with a chuckle.
He turned away, a smile still on his face, while he pulled up his status.
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His status was getting quite long at this point. Compared to a year ago, it was quite a dramatic change. A year didn’t sound like it was very long ago, but to him it had felt like an eternity.
He noticed he had no slots left for skills. This was slightly saddening, but he reminded himself that he would hopefully combine at least three of them pretty soon. Once he did that, he would have a lot more space to gain more skills.
Plus, he had already decided that he would try to get the new kinetic skill before he advanced to Tier 4. Cain and Freya said it wasn’t that important since he was already so strong and prepared, but he wanted to advance to a total of 10 epic skills.
He mused to himself.
He would feel really proud of himself if he managed to do that. He doubted many people had ever done that before.
He took a small break from making adjustments to his mana and switched over to his life mana exercises. He was constantly running it at all times; he hadn’t blown himself up or his arm for a while.
Well, except for that incident in front of the Emperor. But that one was a reasonable mistake, and he didn’t fully blame himself. Though he was a bit embarrassed that it had happened in front of someone of that prestige.
He also realized several important things about why he was being forced to practice this technique. As time went on, it was clear that these exercises helped his life mana control. However, it also seemed to toughen up his mana channels in a way he had never seen before.
The sheer stress he put his channels under forced them to constantly heal and repair themselves. The result? They were already stronger than they had been a month ago. There was another benefit as well.
His channels had gotten larger. It was barely noticeable, and at first, he thought he was just seeing things because he wanted to. However, now that enough time had passed, he was sure of it. His channels had increased marginally.
The funny thing is that he didn’t think he was supposed to keep the technique active at all times, like he had been doing. Furthermore, he suspected that if anyone else had done this, they would have permanently damaged their mana channels beyond repair.
Otherwise, everyone would have been doing what he was doing to his mana channels.
More resilient mana channels? Larger mana channels so you could route even more mana into skills? Most people would gladly hop on board, mage or not.
However, they would have a better chance of crippling themselves before they accomplished what Julius did. He could see why not many people followed Tezuko’s path. It was for the insane people who didn’t care about their health.
Fortunately, Julius wasn’t crazy like that. He just had a nice little healing skill, which helped him, nothing more. He was quite sane in his opinion.
He hummed and drank his hot cocoa as he continued to improve on his life mana. However, he paused when he felt something prick his senses.
He stopped what he was doing immediately and threw out his perception in all directions. He even changed the frequencies several times just in case someone was hiding from his skill.
He didn’t sense anything, but his gut was telling him otherwise. He sat up in his hammock and looked around.
“Who’s there?” He called out into the empty park.
“Oh? You could sense me?” A surprised voice rang out above him, higher in the trees.
Julius didn’t hesitate for a moment; he was already sending several spikes of ruinous flames at the figure. He knew right away that this person was stronger than him, since they avoided detection and didn’t hold back.
The bright blue spikes illuminated the dimly lit park, heading straight toward the voice. Julius didn’t see them but had simply attacked in the direction the voice came from.
“Hey!” The voice shouted out in a panic.
However, despite sounding panicked, Julius felt every one of his spikes ripped to shreds by their will. Not a fleck of his mana remained intact, and little particles of blue light floated into the night sky. He didn’t even have a chance to fight back or resist.
“Who are you?” Julius asked while he gathered as much power into his body as possible. He already knew from that one exchange that he had no chance against his person. But if they wanted to kill him, he wouldn’t just take it lying down.
“Ah, you don’t remember me?” The voice called out, sounding depressed.
“Not a single clue. Why are you stalking me this late at night?” He questioned right back.
Did he know who this was? They made it sound like they had met before. Just who was this person?
Could it be someone from the Conclave? Or someone from Corvus? He shook his head, no. He couldn’t remember anyone from those groups who sounded like this man. That meant it was someone from the Empire.
But who could it be?
“I’m not stalking you. I was walking by and saw you playing around with your mana, so I stopped to watch you from up here.” The man sounded offended.
“You’re hiding in a tree. That’s literally stalking,” Julius scoffed, letting his accumulated mana calm down. It didn’t seem like this man wanted to attack him. If he did, Julius would already be dead.
“I’ll ask again, who are you?”
“Oh, that’s right, you can’t see me,” the voice said with a gasp of realization.
A bright light suddenly illuminated the treetops, revealing the silver-haired man sitting on a tree branch. Julius held himself back from cursing loudly because the person who was revealed was none other than Cassian Luminous, Reinera’s uncle.
"Hi there!" The man greeted Julius with a warm smile.