Path to Transcendence

Julius stood there, just taking in the wondrous view for a long time. He had been fighting and training so hard that he almost forgot that he was in another world surrounded by magic. It was times like this that reminded him of his hopes to explore the continent and the world beyond.

This was a rift that was in the middle of nowhere and it still contained indescribable beauty. Julius could not help but wonder what other places in the world might hold.

He carefully made his way down the cliffside, walking around the outer rim of the valley to examine it. He was looking for any clues on how to clear this rift. Because until he did, he was effectively stuck in here. However, there were worse places to be trapped if he was being honest. He could have been stuck in a volcanic rift with nothing but heat and the smell of sulfur as a companion. Instead, he was in a scene straight from a fairytale.

The one thing Julius was worried about, was that except for the weaker monsters he found in the caverns, he hadn't seen any other monsters like the trolls. According to the notification, this rift was at risk of entering an overflow state. Which should mean there is an overabundance of mana and monsters.

"I have no idea where they would be. If I didn't know better I would think this was just a normal rift." Julius said to himself with furrowed eyebrows.

"It's not like I haven't seen any trolls either. I know they are out there, I just need to—." Julius paused. Right when he rounded the corner he spotted a large settlement camp next to the side of the lake, filled with a sea of figures. " –find them," He finished.

In front of him was a large campsite that was completely covered with trolls. There were several dozen beat-up-looking tents and campfires littering the encampment. Several large creatures were mounted onto some spits, being roasted over the flames, with most of the trolls just lazing around the camp. He hadn't seen it from where he entered the valley because it was tucked behind several large hills and trees. However, it seemed he found where they were hiding.

He could see why the rift was at risk of overflowing now. There were at least hundreds of trolls down there and there were probably even more scattered around. It would be any day now that the rift will overflow into the normal world. And Julius didn't know what would happen to him if he didn't clear it by then.

He hadn't read or heard about any accounts of people who were in his circumstances. For all he knew, he would be allowed to leave when the trolls were. In that case, he could just hide away until that happened. Or maybe the rift was locked down until he either cleared it or died.

Looking down at an entire army of Tier 3 trolls with ridiculous regeneration abilities, Julius didn't exactly like his odds. If it was any other monsters like orcs or hobgoblins, he wouldn't be as nervous. When he first saw the trolls, he had been hoping they weren't the main monster of the rift. However, trolls were notoriously hard to put down, and an entire horde of them even more so.

It wasn't like he had much of a choice though. The notification said he wouldn't be able to leave without clearing it. And he doubted he would be able to leave if he just waited, that would not make any sense after that message.

So he needed a plan. Julius needed to somehow come up with a strategy that would allow him to take down hundreds of trolls before they swarmed him and ripped him apart. It wasn't an easy task for sure.

The first thing was that he needed to get stronger before he even thought about taking them on. That was obvious. He was thinking that he would be able to pick small groups off at a time, simultaneously ranking up his skills. [Thermal Compression] and [Firebolt] were the closest to advancement, and he believed he would receive some good options for them. [Restoration] and [Kinetic Reinforcement] were not far behind either. Both were over a third of the way there. If Julius could get all his skills up to rare, he would have a much better chance.

He also considered tiering up to Tier 2, but even after suffusing himself with fire, kinetic, and life mana by the barrels, he hadn't made that much progress. He could feel there was much more he would need to do before he was ready.

If only he had exceptional affinities. Affinities affected how fast skills ranked up but more importantly, the higher your affinity the faster your body was able to adapt to your mana. Which in turn, accelerated one's advancement to Tier 2. With the amount of fighting and stress he had been experiencing for the past couple of weeks his progress was already really impressive. However, if he had higher affinities he would have probably doubled his gains, both in skills and in regards to achieving Tier 2.

I am really envious of those with perfect affinities. I cannot even imagine how fast they can advance, even without having to fight for their lives, Julius brooded to himself. Yet, there wasn't anything Julius could do about that and it wasn't worth griping about. He could only focus on what he could do in the present with what he had available to him.

Julius hid behind some cover and observed the settlement for a while. It seemed like some groups would come and go on a regular schedule. Those who came back usually had some sort of meal in their possession. Some had extremely large prey that took a couple of trolls to carry, while others had smaller but still quite large prey slung over their shoulders. He deduced that these parties were sent out to collect enough food for the rest of the settlement. The group of four he fought before probably were doing the same. On second thought, Julius wondered if the other trolls in the group had noticed their absence yet.

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He observed that most of the groups were in parties of four to six. Most of them were carrying the same clubs he had seen before and only a small amount were carrying proper weapons like axes or the occasional hammer.

It was getting close to dusk now and he was planning to stalk after one of the smaller parties if they went out. Just as he was going to head back to his ravine, Julius got lucky and spotted a group of four leaving. He quietly followed them as they made their way through an opening back into the mountains. Julius was aware of their sense of smell being better than most monsters so he kept a liberal distance from them. Thankfully, they didn't move quietly. With [Spatial Perception] to help, it was easy to track their movements.

Soon, they exited the cave which led to another valley. This one was much more bare than the first one he saw. It was a simple flat grassland with a large river splitting it in half. On the grassland were many large creatures that resembled buffalo. They were probably the large creatures Julius had seen being cooked on the fires back at the camp.

They were similar to buffalo in their general shape, but their size was much larger than any buffalo Julius had ever heard about. They were the size of a small truck whose heads were about the size of his entire body.

Julius saw the four approach a buffalo slowly and once they got close enough charged right at it with their stone clubs. The buffalo noticed their attack and tried to immediately flee. However, it seemed that as big as they were, speed was not their specialty. The trolls quickly caught up to it and started to lay into the beast. It was a brutal beatdown that displayed no technique, just pure violence and strength.

The buffalo itself put up a valiant fight. It was slow and probably only a high Tier 1 or low Tier 2 at most but its size made for an impressive show of its endurance. It tried to kick or smash into the trolls, but whatever damage it did was immediately regenerated due to their skill.

The result was inevitable. The buffalo fell, but not without giving a fight, something Julius respected. He had considered trying to intervene, but he thought better of it. While he could have saved the buffalo, it was still a rift monster, and he needed to clear the rift. Therefore, he allowed the buffalo to tire out the trolls as much as it could before he stepped in.

At that moment, Julius could hear some loud grunts from the group of trolls standing over the carcass. Based on their body language and sounding like they were arguing. Julius suspected they were trying to decide on who was lugging the buffalo back.

After some intense arguing and a small scuffle between them, two trolls were chosen to carry the buffalo back to camp. Julius waited by the entrance back into the cave. He was simultaneously creating four enhanced [Firebolts] in front of himself. The two who were carrying the buffalo were far behind the other two who were walking ahead. It was perfect.

Julius managed to create the constructs within a couple of seconds, an impressive feat that spoke of his diligent practice. Then once they walked past his line of sight, he unloaded two of them into each troll's face.

The two trolls didn't even have time to react. One moment they were walking, the next their heads were gone in a smokey ash. Julius was able to make the explosions less noisy than before by absorbing some of the excess kinetic energy from the blast. However, it still resounded with a solid boom, alerting the other two trolls.

The other two just stood there for a bit, confused as to what had just happened. All they heard was an explosion and then they saw their friend's headless bodies fall to the ground. They looked around to figure out who had done it.

Julius could have just continued to hide and finish them off like the others, but he was out here to train his skills in real combat. So he came out of his hiding spot and walked directly at the trolls staring them dead in the eyes the entire time.

As he walked towards them, he wove together a dozen of his new spikes out of fire mana compressing as much as he could within a short period. He wasn't able to weave mana into his [Firebolts] so he had to create these without any skill aiding him. However, he wanted to try them out. Unlike [Firebolt] Julius had more control over the trajectory of these constructs. [Firebolt] was only able to go in a straight line, but he was able to curve and control the spikes like they were homing missiles.

One of the trolls seemed to collect his composure before his friend and bellowed in rage as he charged at Julius. He just continued to walk calmly toward the enraged troll. [Savage Dance] was honing his mind to an extreme and he sent a dozen spikes spiraling toward the troll from multiple directions. The troll saw the spikes attacking it but chose to ignore them and continue to charge in a straight line.

The spikes weren't just constructs that were easier to maneuver, they were also harder, like an actual metal spike. Unlike [Firebolt] which was intended to detonate on impact, these were made for piercing. The spikes were shot out to surround the troll and then curved so that they were coming in to attack from all angles. About half of the spikes unfortunately missed due to Julius's inexperience in shooting them at a moving target. However, the other half managed to lodge themselves halfway into the troll's skull and neck.

That still wasn't enough to put down the troll. It had dropped its club but was still making its way toward Julius, albeit more slowly with several spikes impaled in its face and throat. It would seem nothing short of decapitation or destruction of their entire torso would kill them. However, just because the spikes didn't explode on impact, didn't mean they couldn't explode at all.

The spikes were still connected to Julius's control and he sent a small burst of mana to destabilize the construct and a concentrated burst of kinetic mana to blow them up.

While the piercing alone didn't kill it, the subsequent blast certainly did. It took its entire head off in a fine mist of blood. The last troll was charging its way to Julius as well. However, Julius just smiled at it with cold eyes.