Path to Transcendence

Elaria left with her brother and took the remaining girls with her. They still seemed a bit scared of Julius, but they made sure to show their heartfelt appreciation before they left. The little boy even made Julius a small crown of grass as a gift. It wasn’t much, but considering the boy didn’t even own the oversized robe on his back, Julius was touched. He made a show of putting it on, much to the boy’s joy.

However, now that it was over, he could place his full attention back onto Lily and her miraculous appearance. That was why He, Lily, and Marcus went over to a nearby park and found an empty clearing. The park itself was quite beautiful; he was a little surprised it wasn’t as busy. Then again, it was pretty late at night.

There were many little mana lights illuminating the trees and flowers, casting soft shadows on the grass and nearby structures. Julius was sitting right next to Lily, and Marcus was only a few feet away.

Selene and Arthur had gone back to the house. Selene wanted to join them, but she also understood that Julius and Lily wanted some quality time together. They had promised to see each other tomorrow.

They were all nursing a cup of chocolate, and he’d taken out some of those cookies he saved. He also took out his blanket and lunchbox. Drasil and Seraphyne were already lounging on his lap. Drasil was sucking on a mana-dense orb, and Seraphyne was eating a flaky pastry from his lunchbox.

The two of them seemed very happy to see Lily. Which wasn’t surprising; they had always liked her.

“What is this? Is this blanket doing something?” Lily suddenly asked halfway into eating her cookie, staring at the blanket with wonder.

Julius grinned. “Yep. That’s one of my newest additions. You like it?”

“Is that the reason why I’m regenerating my mana so quickly?”

“Yeah, but that’s not all it does,” he said with a smirk.

“What else?” she asked with a curious tilt of her head.

“Take a bite of the cookie while you’re off the blanket and then while you’re on it,” he said with an eager gesturing of his hands.

She seemed skeptical but did so anyway. The look of amazement and confusion was priceless. “Is it improving the taste of the cookie?” she asked with wide eyes.

He nodded. “Yep, it also enhances the effects of all consumables,” he bragged proudly.

She stared at the blanket with awe and envy. “You always get the good stuff. Where did you get it?”

“I got it as a reward from a special trial.”

She looked up at him with a knowing look on her face. “A special trial, huh?”

“Hey, I didn’t even have a choice about entering it. I was yanked in before I could say no,” he pointed out. That was an important detail.

She stared at him flatly. “And you weren’t the least bit excited about entering it?” she asked.

He looked away and nibbled on his cookie. She was right about that part. While it had been against his will, he wasn’t that upset about it. It was a pretty exciting trial, and he got a lot of stuff from it. Though she was probably thinking that he almost died again, and she would be right about that. He technically did die, but to his credit, it was after he completed the trial.

Luckily, she didn’t press him for answers and changed topics. “Why did you disappear for the past several months?” she asked.

He grimaced and told her the truth. “I went into the inheritance trial, but got kidnapped and soul drained by a smelly, grumpy dwarf.”

She scrunched her nose up in confusion. Even Marcus, who had been listening passively so far, stared at him with a slightly accusatory look on his face.

Julius shrugged his shoulders. “What? It’s true. I got kidnapped by him and was forced to spend the rest of my time healing my soul.”

“What is up with you and soul injuries? Why can’t you just lose an arm or something?” she asked exasperatedly.

He smiled and nodded. “I did, a few times in fact,” he said, hoping that would help his case.

When he saw it didn't, his smile slowly faded.

“Where did you even find a dwarf? Last I heard, they were stuck in the mountains, in self-isolation,” Marcus commented with a frown.

“Oh, he wasn’t a real dwarf. He was technically a half-dead dwarf and needed my soul energy to help him recover,” Julius added helpfully. Though he suspected his explanation was less helpful than intended.

“So a random half-dead, grumpy—”

“Don’t forget smelly,” Julius interjected.

“— grumpy and smelly dwarf beat you up and managed to drain your soul energy so he could heal himself?” Lily asked slowly.

Julius glanced up at the night stars and then nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“How’d he beat you up if he was half dead?” Marcus asked.

Julius chewed on his lip with annoyance. “He cheated.”

“Cheated how?”

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“He lured me into a field of powerful enchantments and then chained me down.”

“Wait, how was he able to do this inside an inheritance trial? Shouldn't there be rules that protect you?” Lily asked, confused.

Julius nodded. “Yeah, but it doesn’t work when the creator of the trials himself is doing the soul sucking.”

Both of them paused as they processed what he said.

Marcus was the first to recover, but he was looking at Julius with a dumbfounded expression. “Hold on. You’re saying that the creator of the inheritance trial was the person who drained your soul?”

He nodded.

“So that means that the smelly, grumpy dwarf you were talking about is…” Marcus trailed off.

He nodded. “Yep.”

Lily slapped him from his side and glared at him, also realizing what he meant. “How do you manage to constantly come across these Tier 6s over and over again? Not to mention what you had to do in order to get someone like that to kidnap you and then drain your soul.”

He shrugged. “Good question.”

Lily seemed at a loss for words and simply shook her head.

“So what have you been up to? I noticed you caught up to me,” he said, gently bumping her shoulder.

She rolled her eyes. “I started my advancement after I got almost the rest of my skills to epic, like my newer body enhancement one. At the end, I only had two skills that were rare, but I wanted to try and merge them with another skill later on, so I didn’t mind advancing with them.”

He looked at her with an impressed nod. That was quite a feat in itself. While he had a lot of them, epic skills, especially before Tier 4, were not exactly common. However, it was more impressive that she had gotten her body enhancement skill all the way to epic. Considering where she’d been when he was at Goldencrest, that was quite an accomplishment.

“Well done,” he said with a small nudge and tapped his mug of hot chocolate against hers.

She tried to hide her delight on her face, but her mind was still connected to him, so it shone through.

“What about the others?” he asked.

“Derek was preparing for his advancement while I was leaving, as was Edgar. They should advance around the same time. Aubrey is off with her mother doing god knows what. And Kyle is still apprenticing under his master; he might not advance for a little while.”

“What about Cain and Freya? Have you heard anything about them?”

Lily tightly pressed her lips. “When you left, they went to visit Duke Greyson and had a few words with him.”

“What? I told them not to,” he said with a frown.

“Yeah, well, they did and managed to scare the living daylights out of the duke. The next day House Greyson announced that Wesley Greyson was responsible for the attack on the capital and was disowned. They also said they were going to hunt him down, but who knows if that is really true.”

“Have you heard from them since?”

She shook her head. “No, I tried to reach out to them, but neither I nor any of my family’s contacts were able to get in touch with them.”

Julius clicked his tongue. “They might already be inside that rift. Apparently they were going to help Doren with something.”

“Doren? That same guy who helped us in the Endless Forest?”

Julius nodded. “Yeah, same one. He said he needed their help with a special rift or something.”

Lily winced. “I wonder what kind of rift requires the help of both of them. I can’t imagine there are many things on the continent that can threaten them.”

Julius nodded. “Yeah, Doren made it seem a little dangerous. So I hope they are okay.”

Lily gently patted him on the back.

He smiled back at her. “So your family just allowed you to come all the way to Corvus? I’m surprised they weren’t more against it.” He said that last part with a brief glance at Marcus, knowing the man wouldn’t be here if her family wasn’t aware of what she was doing.

“They were… reluctant. But I explained to them that I wanted to build a large trading hub in Goldmere and hopefully extend it throughout the rest of Corvus. They also were worried about you.”

“What about the Golden Cauldron Sect? Are they fine with you coming into their market?”

Lily nodded. “They understand that the venture will be profitable for both of us. We’ve worked together in the past, and as long as we don’t encroach on the things they consider important, it will be fine.”

“Have you had any issues with any of the clans or sects yet?”

Lily sighed. “Yeah, a few of them have already made moves to interfere with our new business. Several of our contractors within Goldmere had been paid off by others to sabotage or delay the project. It’s ultimately not that big of a deal, though. We’ve expected as much and already have our own team handling it. But enough about this; we can talk about it later. Tell me what else you’ve been up to. I’m sure you’ve gotten up to some interesting things. It’s almost been a year since we last saw you.”

Julius nodded and leaned back against the blanket. “Well, there was this Gleaming Azure Drake named Velmora…”

***

They talked late into the night, and it wasn’t until Marcus dragged them back to the estate Lily had rented out that they finally went to bed. He told her what he’d been up to and a lot about what he'd learned in Goldmere specifically. He let her know the Conclave was doing things in the city, and this worried both her and Marcus.

They understood that the Conclave was largely responsible for the attack at the capital. He also asked Marcus about the limbs he found in Celestine’s warehouse. Marcus didn’t know what they were for specifically, but he said it was possible they were ritual reagents. What kind of ritual was the real question, though.

Julius had a feeling it was involved with whatever reason Celestine had for holding something over Kaito. She wanted something from the man and needed leverage to force him to do it.

He also wondered how Lora was doing with her spirit. He had left so soon after they bonded. He hoped that Celestine hadn’t done anything to her. Although Kaito was very overprotective and was probably keeping a very close eye on her.

The next morning Lily and Julius headed over to a nearby cafe. Marcus surprisingly didn’t insist on coming along. He seemed fine with Julius watching over her. That was saying a lot, considering how Marcus could be just as overprotective of Lily as Kaito was with Lora.

Lily didn’t have an item that allowed her to disguise herself, but Julius decided to try and give her his own Lightweave Necklace.

He would have normally kept it, especially with him needing to hide his identity. But ever since he underwent his third soul evolution, the item was behaving erratically. His hair was changing colors randomly, and his small flickers of light flashed constantly. It was doing the opposite of its job, which was keeping him incognito.

The issue with this was that Reinera’s uncle had keyed his aura specifically to the artifact and said that he wouldn’t be allowed to transfer over to someone else. But Julius had a workaround for that. He actually got the idea when he was playing with those storage rings from the kidnappers. His ability to manipulate aura as well as sense the various intricacies of soul energy had been… magnified.

He felt somewhat comfortable with playing with the soul-bound enchantment Cassian had placed on it. Or maybe he was just being a bit presumptuous.

Still, he wanted to see if he could play with it. Because at the moment, the necklace wasn’t working that well.

That being said, he wasn’t that upset about it. There was something a little annoying about hiding his face. He knew why he did it, but he also didn’t think it was that big of a deal anymore. Not to mention, his name was still the same. If he was seen beside Lily, people who already knew who he was were going to quickly connect the dots regardless.

He wondered what the future held, especially now that Lily was with him in Corvus.

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