Path to Transcendence

This time around, she was enjoying herself with someone who wasn\'t her family. Which was new and exciting.

It had been around a week since she had met Julius in the library and apologized to him. During that time, they met daily at the library before their classes. It became sort of their routine and unspoken commitment.

They wouldn\'t even talk with each other for a long time. But they were both content as they silently enjoyed the other\'s presence. Most of the time it was the two of them reading their own books while Amelia stood by watching with suspicious eyes.

She still was bothered by not knowing what his skill was. She had tried to pry the secrets out of Julius\'s perception skill every day they were there. She was very perturbed by the fact that a boy like Julius was able to completely see through her stealth ability.

No matter what kind of changes she made, it had no effect. She made sure to vocalize her frustrations to Reinera at night as well.

That created some slight issues. For Amelia that is, it wasn\'t an issue for Reinera. In fact, it was a blessing in disguise.

The problem was that since Julius was able to sense Amelia no matter what she tried, that led to the unavoidable dilemma of Amelia following her around everywhere she went as Princess Reinera. If he was somehow able to sense Amelia following her around like a little duckling, then it wouldn\'t take a genius to guess the relationship between Grace and Reinera.

That was why Amelia had started to give her more space, at least when she knew that Julius might be in the vicinity. She wasn\'t going to lie, she was savoring those moments. Just knowing that she didn\'t have someone watching over her shoulder made her feel more free. It was also funny to see Amelia upset about not knowing what to do about Julius\'s unique skill.

On another note, she started to learn about Julius. It was slow, but she learned that just like her, he loved food with a passion, which she already knew, but was still nice to confirm. She also found out that he had a small little life spirit named Drasil as a familiar.

One day when he arrived at the library, he brought out the adorable green little spirit. Drasil was quite unique even to some of the other life spirits she had seen in the past. This one seemed very aware for a spirit at its stage.

Many of the other spirit familiars she had seen were just simple little blobs of mana when they were that young. Drasil, on the other hand, acted very intelligent. He was also quite the glutton to her immense amusement.

She was pretty confident that the spirit had inherited that particular trait from his contractor.

Amelia was curious as to why Julius would pick a life spirit as a familiar instead of a fire spirit and asked him why. He responded that he had a small affinity for life and chose it because he thought a life spirit would be cute.

Amelia didn\'t quite agree with that logic, but then again it wasn\'t abnormal to choose familiars based on appearances. And to be fair, fire spirits were infamous for being little balls of destruction and mischief.

There was just one major thing that continued to bother her.

It was the fact that she had been lying to her newfound friend. And the pessimistic side of her wondered if he would still be her friend if she told him the truth.

Sadly, she definitely could see him feeling betrayed by her secret and feeling like she had been lying to him since day one. Then not want to be friends anymore. Even worse, she couldn\'t blame him for feeling that way.

That was what scared her the most. The possibility that he wouldn\'t want to be her friend once he knew who she was and she wouldn\'t be able to do anything about it.

So far she had been able to make excuses about what classes she was in. But every time she saw him in Applied Combat, she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. She had talked about telling him with Amelia a few nights ago, but she had been adamant she should not tell him.

It wasn\'t that Reinera didn\'t agree with her either. Amelia made some valid points. She hadn\'t known Julius for very long. It had only been a week since they had been meeting up in the mornings.

But it felt like it had been much longer.

Today was the first time they had agreed to meet with each other outside of the library. He had invited her to eat dinner with him along with the others. To which she readily said yes.

She hadn\'t been able to apologize to the rest of them. That was kind of her plan for today.

She stood out in front of the cafeteria waiting where Julius told her to. Amelia wasn\'t with her at the moment, there were some things she needed to take care of.

While she waited, she tried to rehearse her apology to the others. Julius had already told her that he mentioned their meet-ups in the library and notified them that she apologized to him, but she still wanted to apologize to them directly.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Not too long after, she saw Julius along with Lily, Edgar, and Aubrey approach the cafeteria. Three of them were seemingly cheering up a downtrodden Lily, who looked quite weary.

Julius was the first to see her and waved his hand at her as he headed toward her. She gave a tentative wave back at him with a small grin.

"I see you came," he commented when he got within earshot.

"Of course I did. I said I would, didn\'t I?" She said in mock offense.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don\'t know. I wouldn\'t be surprised if Amelia told you not to."

She playfully swatted him on the shoulder. "She has been much better. You got to admit that," she told him.

She saw him reluctantly grumble out an agreement. She then turned to the others who had also made their way over. They all were wearing friendly smiles, a more welcoming greeting than she had been expecting.

She took a deep breath and looked at each one of them. "I want to…"

Before she could even get more than a few words out of her mouth, Aubrey interrupted her with a slash of her hand. "It\'s okay. Julius already said that you apologized to him as did Amelia. If he said he\'s fine with it, then that\'s enough for me," she said offhandedly.

She saw Edgar nudge the tall brunette with his shoulder. "You shouldn\'t keep cutting people off like that," he lightly rebuked.

Aubrey looked around confused. "Why? We already knew what she was going to say. I just saved us some time and awkward moments," she justified.

The other three all sighed in unison. While she felt a little unsure of what to do.

In the end, they entered the cafeteria together without her being able to properly apologize to them. Which meant that all of her practicing felt like it was for naught.

On another note, when she did enter the upperclassmen cafeteria, she noticed that she garnered quite a bit of attention. One guy and his friends in particular seemed to be really interested in her entrance.

Yet, the others didn\'t even seem to acknowledge the stares they got, it was almost like they were used to it. Even Julius got his fair share of stares.

As they ate dinner together, she started to understand why Julius was able to fit in with such an esteemed group of people. Just like how he didn\'t treat her any differently than a normal person, he didn\'t try to do the same with the others. He made jokes, he teased, and was teased in return.

As a matter of fact, he was getting teased at the very moment.

"I\'m glad you finally found yourself a girlfriend to settle down with," Aubrey said to Julius with a big smirk on her face.

Reinera immediately felt a flush in her face as she realized what Aubrey was implicating.

"Maybe, it will get you to stop training like a maniac and appreciate the finer parts of life," Aubrey laughed loudly at her own joke. "Ouch!" she flinched, holding her head in pain and looking over at Lily with surprise.

Lily pretended to ignore her and continued eating her meal, but there was a smug grin on her face as she did.

Reinera giggled and looked over at Julius who was shaking his head exasperated at her teasing.

Overall, she found herself a lot of fun with them and hoped that she would have the chance to do so again.

***

Julius POV

Julius finally made the choice to invite Grace with him to dinner with the others. And it went surprisingly well, she wasn\'t talkative, but she was a good listener and was always paying attention to whatever stories the others told.

It helped that Amelia wasn\'t there as well. While she had been admittedly better ever since her apology, Julius still thought she was too uptight. She was also very annoyingly persistent in finding out what kind of perception skill he had.

He kind of wished he hadn\'t revealed that to them, but oh well. It was just another thing he had to deal with.

To be honest, the introduction of Grace in his daily routine was a nice change of pace. The past week had involved a lot of time for him just becoming more comfortable with his new Concepts as well as his new skill. He also experienced a wave of soul fatigue after he acquired them. That meant that he wasn\'t able to make it to the Tier 3 delve he and Declan had planned. Which made him sad.

On the bright side, he learned some valuable things about his new Concepts. His Concept of Will: Inexorable Resolve was the easiest to figure out. It was a simple Concept, that acted much differently than his Severing Will Concept.

There weren\'t any offensively powerful applications he was able to figure out yet, but it was very effective at what the name described. His resolve and dedication seemed to strengthen considerably whenever he let the Concept infused throughout himself and [Sage of Savagery].

It seemed more like a passive Concept, whereas his Sharpness Concept was powerfully destructive. One thing that he did notice, was that whenever he and Lily practiced with aura, his aura was much denser than before. It made Lily\'s attempts to move it around and suppress it very difficult for her. While he hadn\'t found a way to use it for offensive aura combat, it was a very good defensive measure against aura attacks that worked very well with Severing Will.

His newly acquired Fire Concept was a different story altogether. Adding it to his [Armaments of the Arcane] was easy, like really easy. It took less than a few minutes to connect his skill with it. However, he felt like something was different about the Concept. It wasn\'t quite the same as the other two Concepts.

He kept on playing around with it, trying to figure out the reason. But he wasn\'t able to see what was the issue.

He even asked the others for help. Edgar, he found out had a Fire Concept, along with an Earth Concept. That made him a perfect person to ask for help.

At first, Edgar had been surprised to learn that Julius already had another Concept. However, the big fourth-year appeared to give up on putting any expectations on Julius. It was also prudent to mention that Julius hasn\'t shared anything about his other Concept or his newly evolved skill just yet.

The big teenager gave him some useful pointers, but at the end of the day, Edgar used his Concept with his physical enhancement skills, not with a mana construct skill. So the amount of information that he could offer was limited.

He did say that he shouldn\'t worry too much. Edgar\'s own Fire Concept took a long time before it became what it is today. Concepts went through growth just as skills did, so he assured Julius that just because his Concept felt like this today, didn\'t mean it would necessarily feel the same next week.

It made him feel a lot better about his Concept. For a little while, he was worried that he had rushed it and somehow gotten a faulty Fire Concept. It was good to know that there were opportunities to improve it. Though, he didn\'t know exactly how he was going to go about that.