Path to Transcendence

His new skill gained another level. For a skill he only had for less than a couple of hours, he gained quite a few levels in it so far. He wondered if that had something to do with learning a Concept and if learning one accelerates the rate at which he would gain levels in the skill.

Julius was curious about another thing as well. However, it would require him to find another golem to test it out on. He looked at Declan who was deep in thought off to the side. Julius was going to let Declan know that he was going to head off to find more golems, but he decided not to disturb Declan\'s musings. He was confident that Declan would realize that Julius was going to hunt some more golems on his own.

One thing he did notice as he made his way deeper into the cavern was that the blue crystals that lit up the otherwise dark cave started to appear more often. Not only that, but they were much larger than the ones Julius had seen in the beginning.

With the increase in crystals came an increase in the brightness of the cave. It became bright enough that there weren\'t any dark or unlit corners within the cavern anymore. It was also very magical in a wonderful sort of way. Although he was in a cave with a bunch of monsters made of stone, he couldn\'t help but marvel at the sight. There was no doubt that he wouldn\'t be able to find another place like this in his old world no matter how hard he searched.

He eventually came across another golem. He did observe that he hadn\'t seen any large groups of golems yet. Every golem that he had come across had been alone, very different than the other rifts he had done so far.

I\'m making it sound like I am some experienced adventurer who has delved dozens of rifts, Julius laughed to himself.

He took time to watch the golem as he approached it. This one seemed to be a little larger than the other ones that he had come across so far. It was pretty likely that the further the cave went, the more difficult it would become and the more challenging fights he would come across.

Another thing that he noticed that was interesting, was that it was no longer a single cavern anymore. Up ahead he could see and sense several branches of caves opening up. For a little bit, Julius was beginning to think that the entire rift was just a single cave that he had to explore, taking down golems as he went.

Julius turned his focus back to the walking stone monster in front of him. Unlike the past few attempts, he didn\'t bother to use the pebbles. Once he had gotten his Concept, he knew that he didn\'t need the pebbles anymore.

It was like the Concept was able to influence ambient mana and turn it into sharpened mana, it was quite amazing.

That was the reason why he was confident in what he was attempting to do. He tried to choose the golem as his target for [Barrier of Severance], it took a bit of time, but eventually, he felt the skill latch onto the golem. It was like a key sliding into place. Shockingly, [Spatial Perception] made it very easy to target the golem and know where to place the barrier. It was like the skill allowed Julius to lock onto his target with ease.

The good news was that it worked and a pale white barrier of mana appeared around the golem. The bad news was that the second Julius was able to create the barrier, he felt like someone just punched him in the soul.

For a person who had just gotten healed by his familiar for soul damage, it didn\'t make him feel comfortable to take more damage to his soul. It honestly didn\'t hurt all that much, it was more of a surprise than anything else. Still, he had to wonder why something like that happened. He was thinking that his soul was still in recovery from his recent advancements.

He shook his head and got rid of those thoughts before putting his attention back on the golem. His barrier was a surprise to the golem as well. Julius watched as the golem tried to scrub off the barrier from its arms and chest like it was covered in grime.

While it was distracted by that, Julius was trying to figure out a way to use this to his advantage. He had an inkling that he could create a barrier around something that wasn\'t touching him or close to him. However, he didn\'t know what he would do with this knowledge.

If he had to protect someone Julius could see why this application would be useful. Or if he wanted to create a barrier on a construct of his that was already created but didn\'t have the time to touch beforehand.

So at the moment, he stood there with both hands crossed as he thought about what he could do with this barrier. Specifically with the barrier that surrounded the golem he was looking at. Because currently, all the barrier achieved was to give the golem another layer of protection.

Julius wasn\'t always the smartest person, but even he knew that a skill that helped your enemy more than it helped you was not a good skill.

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The thought that he could explode it like he had done with the pebbles crossed his mind. The only thing was that the pebbles had come out of the explosion pretty well considering how close they were to the explosion of sharpened mana.

Knowing what he did about the defenses of the golems, he didn\'t think that it would have any better results on the golem. The idea of trying it anyway was pretty alluring to Julius. Just seeing how it turned out would be an interesting test.

However, he had another idea that he wanted to test beforehand. It was an idea that Julius thought might actually work in theory.

Instead of releasing all of the sharpened mana outward, he could focus on compressing it inward. He was imagining something like a garbage compactor mixed with a blender. He thought the idea had merit.

Technically, a barrier can act as both to keep things out and to keep things in. When he first used [Mana Slash] to protect himself from Aubrey\'s attacks, he had been focusing on using it for defensive purposes and to keep her attacks from hitting him directly. The goal had been to cut them apart before they reached him.

Now, he just needed to flip it around. He needed to try to tear apart anything that was within the barrier. It just required a change in mindset. What he was actually doing wasn\'t that much different in practice.

Julius took a deep calming breath before beginning. The golem was still trying to remove the barrier from its skin. It had even gone as far as to shoot a blast of mana at its own arm. To Julius\'s amusement, the blast of mana got torn apart by the barrier. It was weird to see the golem getting protected from its own attacks because of Julius\'s skill. Julius was sure that this wasn\'t how delving into rifts was supposed to go.

He was the one who should be trying to hurt the golem and the golem should be the one who is trying to protect itself, not the other way around.

It was especially humorous to see that once the golem found out that it couldn\'t hurt itself, it went on to slam repeated blasts of mana and stones into itself with increasing fury. It was a bit obsessive and displayed a single-minded determination that was impressive even for a monster.

All the while, Julius was playing around with the barrier. His newly earned Concept made it much easier than before. It was like he had a new affinity but for sharpened mana. It just felt that natural and easy.

Finally, he thought he found a method that might work. It piggybacked off of his prior experience with compression. Just like he had compressed his core all that time ago, he could compress the barrier around the golem until it imploded.

He didn\'t use [Pure Compression] though. He didn\'t want to mix up the skill while he was still looking to combine it with [Arcane Construct] and [Composite Mana]. However, he had enough experience with compressing things, that it was quite simple to compress the barrier created by [Barrier of Severance].

So he squeezed. He squeezed as hard as he could, using his entire will to compress the barrier around the golem and dig its sharpened mana into its hardened shell.

And it was working.

Julius could hear the awful sound of something like a sword scaping down the rocks bit by bit. The entire golem was frozen in place, the barrier preventing it from moving a muscle.

Not that it has muscles, Julius thought to himself.

It wasn\'t quite like what Dante did to Declan and Julius, but it was similar.

However, no matter how hard he pushed and squeezed, he wasn\'t able to implode the golem. It wasn\'t until he added [Empowerment of Will] to the mix that he noticed something. [Empowerment of Will] worked well with [Barrier of Severance] and strengthened the barrier quite nicely. The combination of both skills finally allowed Julius to crack the entire surface of the golem and once that happened it snowballed. The entire golem broke down at an exponential pace until it got shredded into practically nothing. All that remained was fine rocks and dust. Nothing, not even the core had survived.

[Barrier of Severance lvl 4 -> lvl 6]

Hah! I even got two levels out of that! Julius happily thought.

Damn," a voice said softly from behind him.

Julius turned around to look at Declan. "What?" He asked confused at the man\'s reaction.

Declan looked at him like he was insane, before looking at the ceiling of the cave and laughed heartily. "Did you just crush that golem with your new barrier?"

"Yeah, I had to use a couple of other skills to help, but yes." Julius shrugged his shoulders like it was no big deal, but his shit-eating grin gave him away.

Declan just smiled and shook his head in disbelief. "I doubt that many people would find a way to use their barrier skill as a giant pair of sharp hands packing in a snowball. It actually reminds me of Clan Skyda and their own users."

"Clan Skyda?" Julius asked.

"A clan of barrier users. They have found many ways to use barriers as offensive weapons and to great effect too. They are often employed as hired protectors by influential houses or other groups," Declan explained.

Julius shook his head. "It looked cool. But I don\'t think it would be worth it or very practical in a fight, at least for me yet. It used a lot of effort and energy. This Concept thing seems to require some expenditure of my soul energy to properly use."

Declan nodded in agreement. "Yeah, Concepts can be quite draining on the soul and mind. But if you can use yours like this right now, I don\'t think you will have an issue once you reach Tier 3. Just make sure you practice using it. Willpower training can be the most boring and stressful kind of training of all."

"You have any tips for training methods?" Julius asked him.

"Honestly, for you, just using your Concept will be better training than any other exercise. Make sure to implement it as much as you can and only stop once you feel your soul start to get drained."

That was good to know for Julius. If that was all he needed, then he believed that he would find it relatively easy to train his willpower. He had already planned to experiment with his new skill and Concept of Sharpness in the future.

With one last look at the pile of fragmented rocks that used to be a golem, Julius went on his way. I need to find another testing subje— I mean golem, he corrected himself. There was much more he wanted to try out before he left this rift.