Path to Transcendence

"You can\'t be sure of that."

"I can sense its mana. It\'s almost for sure a mimic," she said in a disbelieving tone, she couldn\'t believe that he was going to insist on trying another chest after what happened earlier.

There is no way he can\'t sense exactly what I am seeing. I have just seen Julius overwhelm the entire rift so far.

Overwhelm might have even been an understatement. The way he demolished one of the minor bosses was more like a slaughter. It was a really strong one too, its Concept was a top-tier decay or death aspected one. Her own Concept of Light wasn\'t able to hold it off, it needed more development before it stood at that level.

However, that wasn\'t the case for Julius\'s Concept or Concepts. He was able to overwhelm it and then the boy went on to destroy the undead knight so thoroughly that there was barely a piece of bone left. That pretty much established Julius\'s power in her eyes.

He had everything a fighter could want. He had potent fire skills for long-range attacks, kinetic energy for close combat, a healing skill that was pretty much cheating, and numerous other abilities that she could barely start to guess.

But why is he being so dumb? There is no doubt in her mind that this thing was a mimic.

Yet, there she stood as the boy walked toward the chest with a naive smile. She didn\'t feel that worried for him, she had already seen him regenerate an arm like a lizard regrowing its tail. Still, it couldn\'t be fun to lose an arm. The pain must be excruciating.

Even thinking about the miasma she had experienced made her wince at the sheer memory of the pain. Losing an arm must be way worse. And yet…

"At least don\'t touch it with your arm," she told him.

"Sorry, what\'s that?" He asked, already reaching toward the chest with his right arm.

Why did I even bother?

She closed her eyes as she heard the chest open. She heard a sound that resembled a lumberjack chopping down a tree and then a cursing Julius.

"Son of a bitch!" He yelled out toward the chest which was surprisingly a mimic.

The events that followed were like deja vu. Julius started to smack around the chest with his one arm and threatened the mimic. She was a little less surprised to see the mimic effectively cowed this time around but was still skeptical of the whole thing.

Who had ever heard of someone threatening and extorting mimics?

Although, to his credit, the items they got were way nicer than any other chest they spotted. Along the way, Julius had found several other chests, but they all held pretty boring items. Most were weapons that were of questionable quality, likely from dead delvers from the past.

However, this was the second time the mimics gave him really nice items. Like the small buckler that was attached to her arm. This little shield had enabled her to deal with the undead monsters with much more ease. It was able to take much more force than its small size would indicate.

Perhaps, he is on to something, she admitted to herself with a frown.

***

Julius POV

He made sure that the mimic gave him some good items before leaving it alone. Unlike the necklace he got last time, he had a good idea of what these items would do.

One of them was a dagger that had a very complex-looking enchantment etched onto its surface. He was able to tell that it was sharpness-related because of his Concept.

The other item was a ring. A very plain-looking iron ring. He put it on experimentally and was surprised to find out that it was able to deploy a remote barrier upon activation. The information to know how to do so was put into his brain the moment he placed it on his finger.

It wasn\'t that useful to him, but it was still a cool new toy.

Once his curiosity was sated and he had enjoyed his new treasures, he gave the exit another glance. As he was doing so he finally pulled up the notifications he received during the rift that he had been ignoring.

[Armaments of the Arcane lvl 5 -> lvl 6]

[Sage of Savagery lvl 6 -> lvl 7]

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[Phoenix Renewal lvl 1 -> lvl 3]

[Soul Tempering lvl 5 -> lvl 6]

[Empowerment of Will lvl 17 -> lvl 18]

[Flash Step lvl 6 -> lvl 9]

[Barrier of Severance lvl 14 -> lvl 15]

He had gained quite a lot from the short time he had spent here. He suspected that a lot of it was residual gains from keeping the suppression device on, rather than actual progress from the rift, but it was still nice to see.

However, he hasn\'t been putting too much importance on skill-level gains recently. After he had gained his third epic skill and now that he had three Concepts, he didn\'t think there was much left for him to do at Tier 2.

With the acquisition of [Soul Tempering], he had become a little more aware of his soul and how much he could handle. The skill was telling him that there wasn\'t much more he could fit into his soul at Tier 2. He would need to advance to Tier 3 if he wanted to get any more epic skills or Concepts.

That was a little bit disappointing, he had two skills, [Spatial Perception] and [Kinetic Augmentation] that were close to evolving. However, they both needed other Concepts or rather he wanted other Concepts to evolve them with.

Unfortunately, that didn\'t seem to be possible at his current tier. Even these level gains he just got were quite stuffing. It was like eating another plate of food after he was already full.

Alice had told him that at some point, he would just be unable to gain any more levels. He shouldn\'t be in as much danger of hurting his soul as the last time, but he would start finding it impossible to progress any further.

***

A part of him didn\'t really want to leave. He had been enjoying this rift so far and wanted to explore more of it. That last fight was a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it wasn\'t just him who had been trapped here. Reinera was also with him.

If she wasn\'t then he would be much more inclined to stay. However, he knew that he couldn\'t do that to her. It wouldn\'t be fair because she wasn\'t wrong. She would have died several times if it wasn\'t for him.

"Are you ready?" He asked her.

She gave him an exasperated shake of her head. "You really have to ask that?"

He just nodded his head and started to walk toward the ominous black void with Reinera following him from behind.

When they got close to it, he could swear that the void was almost trying to pull them into it.

"I don\'t know about you, but this doesn\'t feel like a welcoming exit, right?"

"Yeah, I don\'t know why they are like that, but it\'s just a thing you get used to I guess," she said agreeingly.

There was a prolonged silence as the two of them stared into the black abyss.

"I never really got the time to thank you," she said, suddenly sounding very serious.

"You don\'t need to, I was trapped with you," he reminded her.

"Yeah, but you wouldn\'t be in here if it wasn\'t for me in the first place."

He gave her a reassuring smirk. "I\'m kind of glad you did."

She gave him a look of confusion and surprise. "Why would you say that?"

"It was fun, well for me that is. I got to see a bunch of new things and even got to fight that undead knight at the end. Plus, we both got stronger, I know for a fact that you gained a good amount of levels in your skills, especially your physical enhancement one," he said.

While he didn\'t outright show it, he had been paying very close attention to her. She had made some incredible improvements and she was much stronger than she had been a day ago.

That was what fighting monsters a whole tier above you would do for your skills. He would know.

"If that\'s your idea of fun, I don\'t want to know what you think of your idea of not having fun."

Hey! That\'s uncalled for.

***

They walked through the scary-looking void and he was half expecting for them to be torn into pieces but he was excited to see that they weren\'t.

In fact, unlike their way into the labyrinth, this transportation much much smoother.

However, when he opened his eyes he couldn\'t help but notice that something felt familiar. He and Reinera were placed in the middle of an open plain. Tall grass tickling their skin.

"Where are we?" He heard her ask out loud.

"No idea."

"Where\'s the rift entrance? I don\'t see anything that looks like it around here," she said while inspecting the surroundings.

"Probably underground somewhere. I heard that many rifts are hidden in caverns beneath the earth. People don\'t know they are there until a rift breaks open," Julius explained something he had read a couple of weeks ago.

"Shouldn\'t we let people know that there\'s a rift hidden around here?"

"That\'s a good plan. If we can find anybody that is."

"Good point."

Julius gave her a smile. "But it wouldn\'t be a bad idea to mark down the location and let the Adventurer\'s Guild know."

"Agreed. But like you said, we got to find a way back to civilization first."

He nodded his head and gave a look around. They hadn\'t been inside of the rift for that long all things considered. The sun was just cresting over the horizon.

He didn\'t sense anyone waiting for them, which was slightly surprising. He was half expecting the people who had orchestrated all of this to be waiting for them. And although he was happy that they weren\'t... a small piece of him was still jacked up from that fight with the knight and had him wanting for some more.

Perhaps, they couldn\'t accurately predict where they would end up and believed that the Tier 3 rift would have taken care of the princess.

He pointed toward the opposite direction of the setting sun. "It wouldn\'t hurt us if we started to walk east and see if we can find anyone on our way. However, we might want to find a place to settle down for the night. Let\'s keep an eye out for anything that might look like a good spot."

He wasn\'t worried about supplies either. His storage ring was full of food, water, and even some camping equipment. Wherever they ended up they would be pretty comfortable, but he was just worried about what kind of monsters roamed around this area.

While cities like Heston didn\'t have many monsters around, it couldn\'t be said the same for places in the middle of nowhere. Dangerous monsters still were out and about. Thus, he was more concerned about finding a safe place before it got too dark.

He wasn\'t expecting to find a town or people before the night. The sun was already quickly fading and it was time to get a move on. The more time they wasted now, the more time they would have to make up tomorrow morning.