Path to Transcendence

"Haha, I told you I could do it," he weezed to Rebecca as he used a little bit of [Phoenix Renewal] to recover his stamina and his missing limbs. "It was a piece of— mmph."

He was interrupted by Rebecca appearing in front of his face and shoving a bottle of something down his throat.

He flailed around but the woman was much too strong for him and managed to pin him down with ease, forcing him to swallow the potion. He kicked his legs instinctively, but there was nothing he could really do. Rebecca's Domain had kept him immobilized and he didn't think exploding his soul to escape it would be the smart thing to do.

Truth to be told, he enjoyed the cooling sensation of the injected life mana flowing through his stomach and heading to his injuries.

However, his skill quickly took over this life mana to repurpose it for its own use. In a brief flash of fire, his arm and leg, which he had sacrificed, were regenerated just like how it was before. He couldn't help but notice that the small scars he had around his forearm were still there too and gave them a soft smile.

"What the hell was that?" She asked, staring at him with a look mixed with disgust and fascination as she grabbed his newly healed arm tightly.

"I told you he had some sort of healing skill," Richard mentioned from behind his wife, not showing as much surprise as Rebecca.

"You never said that he had something quite like this. Is this why you were so confident in allowing him to go on that mission?" She asked Richard with narrowed eyes.

The man in question put his hands high up into the air. "I didn't know it was quite like that. But yes, I had a feeling that it was more powerful than he was telling us. There was no other way Julius should have been able to push himself that hard in our spars."

With one final dark look at her husband, Rebecca turned to look back at Julius.

"Even if you have such a skill, you shouldn't be using it like that. It's much too dangerous for something as simple as dodging an obstacle."

He looked at the ground guiltily. He hadn't meant to do something so rash. As a matter of fact, he hadn't even been planning to show the extent of his healing skill to them. He was just so distracted by completing the course that he hadn't bothered to hide his skill. Everything just happened so fast and before he even fully realized what he was doing, his arm and leg were gone.

He had gotten the idea from when he was fighting that Tier 5. But this time it wasn't for more power, it was merely to give the threads less physical flesh to hit.

Furthermore, if there was anyone he didn't really care about knowing in all of Blumand, it was the two of them. Reinera had already seen his healing skill in action so he wasn't worried about her. Marcus and Stella had seen his skill in action, so maybe it was only fair that Richard and Rebecca saw it too.

Seeing that he was truly regretful, Rebecca didn't scold him further. She merely sighed and stood up.

"Are you okay though?"

He grinned at her and showed off his arm. "Yep, completely fine," he said as he waved it up and down.

She shook her head at his antics but begrudgingly smiled at him. "It was a stupid move. But still congratulations. You are the first person I have seen to finish this course without the use of some sort of spatial skill or other cheating skill."

Julius couldn't help but get up to his feet and do a little excited dance. Funnily enough, he was excited about doing this than completing the Challenge Rift or beating the Tier 4. For some reason, he felt this immense sense of satisfaction.

"Do I get some kind of reward for finishing it?" He asked excitedly to Rebecca.

The woman chuckled and before he knew what had happened he got slapped on the back of the head.

"There's your reward," she said smugly.

He rubbed the back of his head, which was still ringing from the hit, looking at her in disbelief before looking at Richard and Reinera for support.

Richard was in the middle of backing up, distancing himself from Julius.

Reinera on the other hand was looking at him with a look of supreme disappointment.

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***

"You all set?" Marcus asked him, barely giving Reinera's presence any attention.

"I think so," he replied with another quick check of his storage ring. "Did the two of you finish everything else you needed to?"

Stella, who was standing next to Marcus, sighed dramatically. "Yeah, as much as we could in such a short time. That Tier 5 had some nasty soul contracts attached to him. We actually got more information out of the two Tier 4s instead."

"Anything of importance?"
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"Not really, that list you got was probably more enlightening than anything else we managed to get from them. Like you said, they were smaller pieces of a much larger group. If we are going to find anything worth finding, it is going to be from that Tier 5. But breaking through the restrictions of his soul contracts is going to be very difficult and time consuming," she explained.

"What are you guys going to do with them?" He asked.

"That Tier 5 is going to be kept here and under tight lock and key. Marcus mentioned that in the near future, the man will be interrogated by some specialists of House Violet. If anyone is going to break through the restrictions, it is going to be them."

Julius looked over at Marcus and saw the man nod in confirmation. "It all depends on who created the vows, but hopefully we can see if there is a loophole we can exploit. But that's not really my realm of expertise, we have plenty of talented mind mages who can deal with that," the large man said casually as if the use of mind mages wasn't that big of a deal.

"Can I ask for a favor?" He asked Marcus after ensuring that it was only the four of them around.

"Go ahead."

"If you find anything out about House Greyson, can you relay that information to me?"

The man gave Julius an inquisitive look for a few moments but eventually dipped his head. "That is acceptable. I will keep an eye out for any information they gain from him."

"Thank you."

"Don't worry about it. You played a big role in capturing him in the first place. This is the least House Violet can do," Marcus said to him with a small smirk.

He returned the smirk with a small smile of his own. "By the way, you mentioned what was going to happen with that Tier 5, but what about the other Tier 4s?"

Stella was the one who answered. "They didn't have any contracts attached to their souls, but their lack of information of specific details of their operations makes them less valuable now. The Tier 4 woman, Lyn, seems to have no real allegiance to them either. Apparently, her services were offered by her family. A family she doesn't seem to have any loyalty to, and she expressed a weird amount of interest in working with us."

He recalled the fight he had with the woman. She had been quite the impressive fighter. Their fight hadn't quite been finished, but he had been very fascinated with her fighting skills. She had been a much better opponent than that assassin.

"She wants to work for House Easten?" He asked curiously, a little surprised to her willingness to switch sides.

"Yes, and according to my aura senses, she seemed oddly sincere," the woman said with a frown.

"She did seem like the type of person who was working for them merely because of the opportunities to fight and not because she held any real loyalty," he noted.

"I got the same feeling. I told Marquis Easten that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have her accept a vow of loyalty for the time being and monitor her. It's rare to find such a well established Tier 4 that's not attached to another organization."

"And he agreed?"

"He said he would think about it," she said with an uncaring shrug.

"What about the other Tier 4?" He asked.

She winced at that. "You left that man in quite the disastrous state, you know? I don't think he will ever recover unless someone spends a lot of money on natural treasures or a really powerful healer. He might be executed just to put him out of his misery."

He similarly winced. That had not been a part of his plan when he used his aura against the man. At the time, he had gotten a bit carried away with his new shiny skill and newfound control that he just unleashed his aura onto the man. Looking back, he had absolutely brutalized the man's aura and soul far beyond what he needed to.

The thing that assuaged his guilt was the fact that this man had tried to kill him and the others of the caravan.

Stella gave him a sympathetic smile. "Go on, say your goodbyes before we leave," she said while pointing over at the group of people congregated off in the distance.

***

He managed to say goodbye to almost everyone he had gotten to know over this period. It was a bit sad, but the thing that made it easier to bear was the fact that it wasn't like it was goodbye forever.

With things like spatial magic, they would never be that far away. Although it was hard to predict when he would be able to come and visit them.

But after everything was all settled, he and Reinera were finally prepared to leave.

They stood next to Stella who used some type of skill to wrap a barrier around them and with one last wave goodbye, he felt the familiar tug of being pulled through space and vanished into thin air.

During the transfer, he made sure to pay extra close attention to how Stella was able to do so.

It happened very quickly and he wasn't able to catch much of it, but he did sense one thing. It was as if the woman's will or aura was wrapped around him and was the primarily reason for why the space was folding onto itself before his very eyes.

He didn't know what it meant exactly, but he felt pretty confident that it was a significant hint about figuring out spatial abilities of his own.

However, he didn't have a lot of time to figure that out because the next moment he was spat out and he found himself standing in front of the walls of Heston just like he had been when he first arrived all that time ago.