Julius found out two things. One, this thing was a lot faster than the other Tier 5 he’d fought. It didn’t seem as physically strong, but damn it was fast. It had a pair of wings on its back and could move effortlessly with them. He was barely able to keep up with it and avoid it from ripping him apart.

The only reason why it hadn’t done so, was thanks to his new skill. [Calm Before Ruin] was showing its worth. It was a difficult skill to handle when he’d been testing it earlier, but the threat of death seemed to be where it truly shined. It was essentially a superpowered version of his old skill, with several very powerful additions. The time-slowing ability was quite nice, and the reason he’d been able to keep up with this faster ant.

His body still lagged behind, but he could predict its movements and track it with his perception skill fairly well.

At least that’s what he thought until the ant exploded with mana and corruption. It had already tried to immobilize him with its domain, but his anti-domain technique worked just as well as last time. In fact, he had an easier time handling it now that he had a better focus skill.

However, domains could do more than just immobilize. Julius was given a firsthand demonstration of this. The ant began to use a different technique, one that was unlike anything he’d seen from other ants. It was like a raging storm of mana and corruption amassing into a thick black halo around them. He watched with a grimace and did his best to disrupt it with his ruinous aura and authority, but his attempts were slapped away with a casual ease.

His willpower was strong, but it seemed that it would only help him defend his own skills and mana. If he wanted to affect other Tier 5s, he would need a lot more power. He could do nothing but prepare his own skills. He tried to escape, but the halo was trapping him from all sides. The ant stared at him with its glowing black eyes.

Clearly, it had been holding back in the beginning. But that wasn’t the case anymore; he could feel how serious it was from its aura.

Then he let out a heavy grunt as the halo exploded into a shockwave of energy; the halo collapsed onto his body. And it was brutal.

He felt his bones shake and his flesh tear from his body, the corruption seeping into his body. Something that his healing skill immediately took care of. He activated his teleportation skill and escaped, but the disruption was so strong it forced him to use way more mana than he planned.

Fortunately, his recent fight with the Tier 5 gave him some confidence. It proved to him that he could take down a Tier 5 given enough time. He just needed to do it again. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

His respite didn’t last for long, and he saw the halo separate into smaller sections. They were simple spheres of black energy, only the faintest hints of light illuminated them. Then, without any warning, they tracked his location and swarmed him. He created several shields of mana, blocking as much as he could, but his constructs were no match for the might of these strange orbs.

His barriers collapsed and shattered. But they gave him enough time to create more powerful barriers around his body. Once again, his new skill helped a lot. He felt like he had more time and attention. This allowed him to create his authority-infused barriers much faster and without any mistakes.

A barrier managed to intercept a black orb before it crashed into his face, and unlike the other barriers, this one held out for longer. However, he didn’t believe that was the ant’s reasoning behind this onslaught, but his realization came a second too late.

He lost track of his opponent for a split second, and when he finally got eyes on it, he already had its arm shoved through his spine and out of his stomach. He activated [Void Step], but a detonation of mana blew his torso apart.

The ant tried to rip apart his spatial skill, but he gritted his teeth and held on. He relied on his new focus skill to handle the pain and to keep his mind sharp. The skill did that perfectly; it was like the ruinous energy ate the pain, putting you into a state of extreme calm.

This allowed him to finish the structure to his skill and teleport away. Sadly, the loss of mass and flesh messed with his skill; he felt his body get even more damaged by the void before he pulled himself out.

He started to fall from the sky but quickly halted his momentum with his kinetic energy. The ant was already heading towards him, each flap of its wings sent it screaming across the distance. It must have had a flying skill or something, because it was unnatural how quick and nimble in the air.

Thankfully, he teleported himself far enough away that he was able to heal his injury with the help of Drasil. [Phoenix Renewal] was powerful as usual and his chest quickly wove itself back together.

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Once again, the ant disappeared, using that same movement skill from moments ago. It wasn’t teleportation, it was sheer speed. That made it harder to track.

But he knew what to expect, and so he quickly teleported himself away. He still got hit, but the damage was manageable. He’d only lost an arm this time around.

He was cursing to himself as he flew away, he didn’t even bother to heal his arm, he just created a construct in its place. He learned from his fight with the other Tier 5 that wasting mana on healing could be dangerous. He was only going to heal when absolutely necessary. He could deal without an arm for the time being.

This Tier 5 was much more challenging than the one he beat in the tower. Was the one he beat defective in some way? Was that why it was left behind? Or maybe it was their equivalent of a janitor or nanny babysitting the eggs?

He started to retreat, gaining some distance as he tried to figure out ways to deal with this ant. But it didn’t allow him to get any space; it blitzed him again, and he quickly released the accumulated ruinflames from his crown. A sphere of fiery flames covered him from all sides.

The ant seemed a bit wary and, for the first time, actually pulled back. It hovered in front of the sphere of flames. Julius thought he had scared the ant off, but just as he was planning, it created another halo of black mana and corruption.

This halo wrapped around his sphere of flames, squeezing it from all sides. And to his annoyance, the halo started to siphon and disrupt his flames. He knew his flames didn’t rely on oxygen. They were purely fueled by his mana and aura, but that didn’t stop the halo from suffocating his flames as if they were.

The ant just watched as it pressed its skill against his flames and no matter how much aura he threw at the halo, he wasn’t able to disrupt it. The reinforcement from its domain was extremely strong, making it ridiculously resilient.

He needed to do something, so he began throwing things at the ant. Spikes of compressed mana, fiery swaths of fire, blasts of kinetic energy, it didn’t matter; he threw it all. Unfortunately, the ant was fast as hell and avoided his wild attacks. One flick of its wings was enough to dodge them.

However, that was what he was hoping for and before it could figure out what he was planning, he dove down. He was heading straight for the barrier surrounding the camp and pushed his kinetic energy to its limit as the wind tore across his face, trying to get there as fast as possible.

He grimaced when he felt the ant coming after him like a falling comet of murderous intent. It was right on his heels, and he detonated even more kinetic energy to hasten his speed, but it wasn’t enough. It was gaining on him, and he was forced to send several spikes and barriers behind him to delay the creature.

That only did so much. It stopped using its domain to support its skill and instead used it to reinforce its body. This created a thin layer of energy around its body and allowed it to smash through everything as if it were made of glass, while it continued to gain speed.

He teleported just out of the way before it pulped his head. He managed to keep some of his momentum, but he was still slowed down. He kept on heading down, the barrier was in reach now, but since he was closer to the surface, he came across other ants.

He clicked his tongue in frustration when streaks of mana headed toward him. Thankfully, these attacks weren’t from Tier 5s, but it was still scary. He wrapped his body with as much mana as he could, then pushed forward, weaving in and out of the blasts.

There were too many to dodge outright, so he ended up taking several blasts to the face, but he was still way more concerned with the Tier 5 hot on his tail. He had to teleport again, barely avoiding it.

Though that last teleport had been more difficult. The ant had changed something about its domain and almost disrupted his skill. His willpower and new focus skill helped him overcome it, though. He was able to rip through with some effort.

When he got to the barrier, he didn’t even try to break his way through. He used [Void Step] to go straight through. It didn’t seem like it was going to stop him, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

When he was inside, he glanced back, and to his confusion, the Tier 5 wasn’t chasing him anymore. He’d been expecting it to chase after him, and he could lead it down where he could sense some of the elders from the sect residing. But it must have been smarter than he gave it credit for and halted at the edge of the barrier.

But from the signs of its irritation, he had a feeling that it wasn’t following him for other reasons. Was it outside its "jurisdiction"? Or perhaps it was unable to enter the barrier at all?

He wasn’t able to think about it too deeply because he found himself under attack by the other ants. Though compared to the Tier 5, these ants’ attacks seemed relatively simple to dodge, he instead focused on examining the camp down below.

The sect's disciples were in a brutal battle with thousands of ants below. They were stationed right at the border of the array, protecting the camp. People were running back and forth to either support the frontliners or to bring the wounded to the healers.

It was chaos, and it looked like they could use some help. He was tempted to start throwing out large blasts of mana to help clear out the ants, but he didn’t know what their plan was and didn’t want to mess it up. Instead, he held back and found Elder Huan near the front lines. The older man was already staring directly at him, so he dropped out of the sky towards him. The array didn’t prevent him from entering, he was able to slip right through.

Elder Huan glared at him. “Where have you been?”

Julius rubbed the back of his head and chuckled lightly. “Yeah, I went exploring a little bit.”

Elder Huan didn’t seem amused and continued to glare at him. “Explain.”

Julius didn’t know how to explain what had happened to him over the past week or so. But the beginning was usually a good spot, and so he started there.