Path to Transcendence

Alice on the other hand wanted to learn his skill for herself. She had plans to incorporate the skill into her existing perception skill, [Spatial Awareness] or rather the evolved version of it. Alice unfortunately didn\'t give him the details of her actual skill. She said it was a legendary skill and that [Spatial Awareness] was an epic skill, but that was all about what she shared with him.

Her reason was that he was a long way off from acquiring a legendary skill and if he knew the requirements for one, he would just try to get one as soon as he could.

To be fair, it was a good reason. Because in all honesty, he would absolutely try to get a legendary skill as soon as he was able to, damaged soul or not. He couldn\'t blame the woman for telling the truth.

Am I really that predictable?

Even with half of his time spent griping about being forced to create an item like some servant, Dante made the item in record time.

It quite literally might have taken Dante about ten minutes to create a device that satisfied Alice\'s requirements. The man was an absolute genius. Julius couldn\'t even follow along with the intricate enchanting and mana manipulation the older man was showing off so casually.

It made him appreciate the little piece of black cloth he had even more than he already did. Not that he would tell Dante that.

The device was supposedly meant to act as a sort of weight or shackles around his soul. Normally, this wasn\'t that big of a deal. It would just restrict skills, mana, and aura abilities by a small amount. However, Alice made sure that Dante tinkered with the effects of the device so that it perfectly fit Julius\'s needs.

The woman personally oversaw the delicate adjustments that Dante had to make, much to the annoyance of the crafter.

When it came time to try it on, Julius became a little nervous. The device was a small bracelet that was attached to his arm. However, he could feel an ominous aura coming from it.

Alice assured him that it should be safe even for Julius with his unique condition. Still, that didn\'t exactly make him feel confident when the woman had an excited and restless expression on her face.

Very slowly he attached the bracelet to himself and tentatively pushed a little bit of his aura through the skill, activating it. Immediately he started to feel its effects. It felt like the device managed to weave into his soul like lead wire and make his entire soul feel like it was being crushed by the pressure of the deep sea.

The pain was excruciating. It was as if all of the wounds in his soul were being torn apart again but times a hundred. He couldn\'t even breathe for the first thirty seconds. He just dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes and smashed his face into the wood floor of Dante\'s cabin, drooling all over the wood panels.

It took another ten minutes for him to get acclimated to the pain and get to the point where he could even crawl to his knees. He subconsciously felt Lily right by his side, prepared to help him whenever he needed, but otherwise left him alone.

He heard Dante, the grumpy old man, chuckling at Julius\'s misfortune. "It\'s working perfectly!" He announced proudly, not caring for a moment that his creation was torturing Julius.

The only thing that saved him was his [Sage of Savagery] skill alongside his Concept of Inexorable Will.

After about half an hour, which felt more like half a year under the effects of pain-induced trauma, he was able to get to his two feet. The first thing he noticed was Lily by his side, just barely touching him, making sure he didn\'t fall back on his face.

Alice on the other hand had a very impressed look on her face. However, Julius didn\'t care about that. All he did was give her the most menacing glare he could muster under his pain.

She just smiled even more widely despite that.

"I… I don\'t t-think that you ex-explained the pain well e-enough," he stammered out.

Alice just shrugged at him apologetically. "I thought it would be better for you to feel it for yourself. I didn\'t want to scare you away from the pain before you even started."

Julius gritted his teeth at her. "Next t-time, just tell me," he angrily stated.

She gave another aggravating shrug. "I\'m doing this because you asked me to, remember that. Don\'t be mad at me for helping you," she rebuked him.

She made a really good point. She didn\'t really have any need to help him. Other than his perception skill that she wanted to know how he obtained it, she had no other benefits of helping him. She was a Tier 6, a level of strength Julius couldn\'t even begin to understand the full grasp of.

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He swallowed his pride and the irritation he felt from the pain. "You\'re right, thank you," he managed to squeeze out without stuttering.

"You can thank me by telling me how you got your perception skill," Alice told him with a gentle smile, clearly appreciating his apology.

Julius attempted to reciprocate a smile of his own, but it came out more like a constipated toothy snarl. "I will," he promised. "As soon as my brain starts to work again, I will tell you all of the details."

Alice held up another device and pressed a button. Immediately, it felt like Julius could breathe again. His soul was no longer being pressed together by a hydraulic press. He almost cried for joy at the relief.

"This here, is the device that controls the one you are going to wear. Lily will have control over it and she will manage your usage of it," Alice explained to him while handing over the device to Lily.

Then the woman walked over to Julius where he was now splayed out like a starfish, just appreciating the pain free moment he was experiencing. She dropped to one knee and placed a bottle of something next to his head.

"This is a concoction that a friend of mine made. She originally made it for Tier 5 and Tier 6s, and it is technically a failed product. However, it will suit you perfectly. The healing effects are quite gentle and slow, but unlike many other potions or soul healing, it will fix deeper soul tissue damage," she described the item to him.

"How is this method not worse than me just trying to evolve my healing skill?" He asked breathlessly. He understood the basics of what Alice explained to him, but considering the pain he was experiencing, he would think that his soul would experience more stress than just learning a new skill or Concept.

She calmly spoke to him. "The pain is only so bad because of the damage that has already been done to your soul. Damage by the way that has been done by your own reckless actions. I am pretty certain that this method won\'t result in you dying, not at this stage of the process at least."

Pretty sure? What does that mean?

"The worst-case scenario is that you are unable to bear the pain and have to stop. If it comes to that point, you can always still heal the natural and much slower way," Alice told him.

Julius made an ugly face at the thought of him giving up because of a little pain.

Alice just smirked at him. "Yeah… That\'s what I thought."

He was able to see Lily looking at the two of them with a disgusted expression as if she couldn\'t understand why the two of them had so easily accepted that this was the best path forward. Dante was yet again, pretending not to acknowledge them and went back to the project he was working on.

Alice stood up and dusted off the imaginary dirt that got on her hands. "Take one bottle cap dose per night before bed and let your familiar heal you as much as it can. Get at least eight hours of sleep, and please for the love of the Gods, don\'t train your skills like before. While you will find that leveling any of your skills to be next to impossible with the device, which will make most training pointless, don\'t try, please," she pleaded with him.

She sounds like a physical therapist, he thought to himself.

"If you\'re lucky, you will be fully healed before the year ends and much better prepared for the next tier. And if you\'re not… Well, that probably means you are either dead or have a much weaker will than I gave you credit for," she said harshly.

Harsh but fair. If he failed, he understood it would be because of his own failure of willpower. He could deal with the pain. While this was a pretty large setback for him, he understood he would come out of this for the better. He remembered the many years he spent training without the fancy level increases or the tier advancements. He had simply gotten used to large and frequent increases. He could bear several months of this.

He also didn\'t miss the hint of a challenge within her words which unsurprisingly lit a little fire under his feet.

He would get this [Soul Resistance] skill and upgrade his Concept of Fire to whatever Alice had in store for him. He would trust the process and bear with the pain. After all, the pain was only temporary.

***

Alice POV

Julius and Lily had left a little bit ago, leaving her and Dante sitting around together.

"Why didn\'t you tell him?" Dante asked her as he stopped pretending to work on his project.

"What good would that have done?" She responded with a sigh.

"Don\'t you feel like he has a right to understand what you are putting him through?" He asked.

She turned to look at the older man. He still looked strong even with wispy silver hair, but he didn\'t have the edge that he used to have. He felt like a typical cranky old man.

One wouldn\'t suspect that the man in front of her was once one of the most vicious people on the continent. The blood he spilled during his younger days gave birth to countless Blood Horrors.

The number of associations, nobles, and various other people who wished to see him dead was numerous.

It was only after he lost his entire family that he changed. It was like he finally gained a conscience and turned his life around for the better.

He spent many years desperately trying to make things right and absolve himself of guilt by doing the right things. It was admirable and something that Alice truly respected about the man. Not many people were able to become such a different person within a span of a hundred years.

Ironically, it was Dante\'s perseverance and ability to find his true self that allowed him to finally cross the vast threshold of Tier 5 and become a Tier 6.

It was funny to see a person who had been drowning in despair at his failure to reach Tier 6, so much so that he killed countless people, finally reaching it only when he no longer cared about it. Only when it was meaningless to him.

"If he were to know, he would just try to push himself harder. I know that you can see the same thing," she explained to Dante.

"Yeah, he reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger," Dante said solemnly.

Alice didn\'t say anything, but she nodded her head in agreement. She wasn\'t going to say it, but she noticed the same thing. That desperate hunger to get stronger was frightening. It was a trait that would either get him to the pinnacle or would ultimately kill him, or even worse, would turn him into a monster.

"You think he can do it?" Dante asked.

"I don\'t know," she freely admitted. "But I think he has a chance."

"I do too," Dante said softly. "Maybe if he does he will be able to tell two failures like us, what\'s on the other side," he said with a soft chuckle.

She smiled self-deprecating. He wasn\'t wrong about that. The two of them in the grand scheme of things were considered failures. Their paths had no future. They would be stuck at Tier 6 for the rest of their lives and they both accepted it.

However, she wanted to see how far a person like Julius could go.