Path to Transcendence-Chapter 615: Little Birdy

Julius had hoped he would come across the druids once again, but when he returned to the opening he first saw them, they were nowhere to be found. He called out to them, but they didn’t respond. He spent some time trying to track them down, but eventually the rift decided to rudely kick him out.

He had a feeling they were responsible for this, but he didn’t have any evidence. Furthermore, he could have sworn he saw them staring at him through the trees.

On the other hand, he couldn’t figure out how the stupid key worked. He continued to play with it the entire time after he exited the rift, but nothing happened. He was starting to regret selecting it over the other rewards. The only thing that stopped him from throwing it away was the certainty that it was supposed to do something at the very least.

There was no way the rift had given him a useless key. The logical conclusion was that he needed to find a place to put the key before it would work.

He sighed and put the key safely into his storage ring. He had to catch up with the others, and so he removed the token Cassandra had given him before he entered the rift. He sent some of his senses into the token and got a vague idea of where they had headed.

It was as if the token were pointing him in their direction. He felt that they were pretty far away, so he needed to get a move on. On the bright side, he wasn’t limited by Shin or Maya and would be able to move at his maximum speed.

He lifted himself into the air and immediately noticed something different. He hadn’t attempted to fly since he had combined his kinetic skills, but now that he was hovering in the air, it was obvious things had changed.

For one, he kept his balance in the air without any issue. Previously, it required a good amount of focus to keep his body stable in the air. Constantly adjusting the amount of kinetic energy he released or absorbed.

Now, with [Field of the Shattered Will], it was simple to keep himself floating, requiring minimal adjustments and almost no concentration.

Unable to help himself, he felt a wave of excitement as he formed his wings on his back. The blue constructs wove into existence, their brilliance shimmering in the sun. He admired them for a bit. They were still one of his favorite creations.

He didn’t know how far the others had made it. Time was always a bit different in rifts. For all he knew, it could have been a few days from their perspective. He looked up at the sky, noticing that it was around noon.

Hopefully, he will be able to join them by tonight. But that would also rely on him not being sidetracked or delayed by monsters. He was already detecting several Tier 4s in the surrounding area. They must have sensed his mana while creating his wings. They weren’t attacking, though; they were simply watching him from the trees.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to be assaulted, he floated higher and gradually propelled himself through the air until he was just above the trees. Once he was above the tree line, he was a little surprised at how massive the forest looked. The Brightwood Forest stretched on far beyond what his eyes could see.

Making sure he was oriented in the correct direction, he didn’t waste any more time and released a burst of kinetic energy. His body shot forward like a missile, shaking from the abrupt acceleration.

He laughed freely when he felt the air tear over his face. He wasn’t pushing his kinetic energy that hard, but was already going pretty fast. He was pretty confident that he could exceed his prior maximum speed by a lot.

Not seeing a reason he shouldn’t at least try it out, he started to slowly increase his speed. He also had a few ideas about using his wings. They weren’t really necessary anymore for balance, but he still liked the look of them and believed he could find a use.

So, with that in mind, he gathered even more kinetic energy. There was plenty to absorb from the wind resistance. He took control of this energy and shoved immense amounts of kinetic energy into his constructed wings, intending to use them as extra fuel.

The results were… mixed. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

He was able to store the kinetic energy pretty easily. However, it was a little harder to use them to propel him forward. It was hard to explain, but the kinetic energy moved around too much in his wings, sloshing around like water in a bottle that wasn’t full.

This made it hard for him to get a grasp on it and compressed it enough to blast his body forward. It was more of a waste of kinetic energy than anything else.

He frowned but didn’t give up. He adapted his strategy and began testing other ways. It wasn’t like he had much else to do. So he put his mind to it and experimented with many applications as he continued to travel through the forest.

***

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It took him dozens of trials and errors, but he finally figured out something that worked. Somewhat.

Instead of flooding the entire set of wings with kinetic energy, he painstakingly gathered little bundles of kinetic energy before he gently folded them into each individual feather of the wings. He smiled when he figured this out.

He knew that his over-engineered design would come in handy. The feathers were perfect little storage devices that could hold his kinetic energy. This was only made possible because of his improved mind. He was able to keep control of these countless feathers without too many issues. If he had been Tier 3, he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this.

“And Aubrey said that these wings were uselessly pretty,” he scoffed as he flew through the sky.

It took half a dozen attempts to figure out the optimal amount of kinetic energy each feather could hold, but once he got that down, it was quite easy. Now, whenever he wanted a little extra boost, he could take control of one of these feathers and detonate it.

Unlike his usual strategy of gathering kinetic energy first before using it, this was instantaneous; no gathering or build-up time was required. Not that his gathering took much time in the first place, but there was a noticeably lower response time. One that he suspected would help outside of flying.

It still took a lot of finesse and skill, though. He spent some time adjusting to this new method. The branches and leaves tangled in his hair were evidence of his failed attempts.

The good news was that he was moving quickly through the forest. He didn’t think that it would take him very long to catch up to them. The only issue was that he was being harassed by numerous annoying monsters, slowing him down. He was constantly forced to fend off the attacks of a few unruly monsters who thought he looked delicious.

As he was thinking about this, he was suddenly alerted by an incoming object. It was tiny, but also ridiculously fast. It crossed his entire sphere of perception before he could fully realize what was happening.

He reacted as quickly as he could, detonating several feathers of charged kinetic energy. One to throw him to the side and one to blast the incoming object with.

It barely made a difference. The object moved to track him, and the pulse of force only nudged it. He grimaced as the small object tore through his entire left shoulder, missing his heart by a hair. Then, before he could grab a hold of it or see what it looked like, it was gone, leaving only a faint trail of mana behind.

He snapped his head back and forth from where the object had come from and where it had gone. His shoulder was already healing, so he wasn’t too worried, but he was concerned about how quickly the attack had been. It was faster than anything he had experienced so far. Very rarely was he unable to track an attack with his perception. He might not be able to move fast enough to react, but he was almost always able to follow it with his senses.

He tried to find where the attack came from and who had shot at him, but despite his best efforts, he was unable to find it. Either they were underneath a powerful stealth skill, or they were far away. Both scenarios were not ideal.

He immediately deployed several barriers around his body, reinforcing them with aura and ruinous flames. He also enforced his own body with as much power as he could.

He was glad he had done so, because not long after, another object of the same size came at him. It was from a totally different direction from the last time, but he was more prepared, and his barriers met the object head-on. To his astonishment, the barriers shattered the moment they were touched. It was like something shrouding the object was able to destroy or disrupt the mana that the barriers consisted of, rather than actually breaking the barrier itself. It sort of acted like his [Void Strike] skill.

The object clashed against his reinforced body, doing a much better job at holding than his barriers. However, it was only just barely. The small object pierced his flesh easily, only slightly delayed by his defenses. This time a hole appeared in his stomach, blood flowed out of his wound and he quickly staunched it, activating his healing skill.

Feeling a little bit irked by this, he gritted his teeth and floated there. He was pretty sure that his opponent wasn’t hiding close by, but the attack was coming from far away. Even more frustrating was that the speed was so fast that he was unable to react properly.

He knew the smart thing to do was to go back to the ground and use the trees for cover. But his pride was hurt, and to be honest, he didn’t feel that much danger from this attack. While fast and able to penetrate his defenses, he didn’t think it could do any substantial damage to him. With his new body and healing skill, it would require a lot more than piercing him with a small object to put him down for good.

He hovered there with his arms crossed as he waited for the next attack. He didn’t bother to create any barriers. This thing seemed able to rip apart mana-based constructs and instead focused on keeping his body empowered with kinetic energy and aura.

He didn’t have to wait long for the next attack to come. This time it came from above. He consumed all of the kinetic energy in his wings and used it to fuel [Field of the Shattered Will]. Every ounce of his focus and will went into this skill. He layered on several waves of kinetic energy. Each one was denser than the last.

He infused his Seed of Authority into actions, letting the authority rampage without restraint.

This seemed to finally work on the object. It entered the field of compressed kinetic energy and willpower. He couldn’t completely immobilize it. Some kind of energy prevented him from doing so. But the field slowed it down, and he was able to finally see what it was made up of.

It was a weirdly shaped black oval. He flooded his arm with kinetic energy and reached out to snatch the object. Now that it was slowed by his field, he was fast enough to do so. Time slowed as he closed his fingers around the object. The energy shrouding its form, the same energy that had torn apart his constructs, tried to rip apart his skin.

He bore with it, though, and held on tight. He used every scrap of his strength to hold it in place, using his aura to rip the object apart. Finally, the object lay still, and he let out a sigh of relief. Only then did he open his hand up to see what this object was made from and perhaps find out who had attacked him.

However, he hovered there, completely frozen in shock. As he spread his fingers open, he watched as a pair of black wings unfolded before his very eyes. What greeted him were the eyes of the most adorable little bird he had ever seen.