Path to Transcendence

Julius had breakfast with Rebecca, Richard, Cory, and Reinera before they went for their daily training session. It had recently become a thing especially since they were already meeting in the morning, it just made sense that they would eat breakfast as well.

It was actually Richard's idea. One that was becoming a good one as time went on.

Julius learned a lot about the family of three during this time.

Surprisingly, Rebecca was quite the sloppy person in the morning. It took several cups of coffee and a couple of hours until she really woke up. Before then, she could barely stand on her two feet.

On the other side of things, Richard and Cory were both the complete opposite. The two of them were like two peas in a pod. They were abnormally excited to eat breakfast.

Cory loved to have pancakes but in a complete surprise to him and Reinera, the boy didn't like anything on them. No butter or syrup. Just plain old pancakes.

Whereas his father loved to smother his own pancakes with a criminal amount of toppings, enough for everyone at the table and more.

Usually, Julius was with the two of them. He loved breakfast but this morning he couldn't help but feel restless the entire time. It took all of his willpower and Inexorable Resolve to not tell them about his recent breakthrough the night before.

Richard wiped the excess syrup from his face and went over to Cory to clean up the flakes of pancakes from his face as well before looking toward the rest of them with a smile.

"Are you guys ready to go?"

Rebecca was still barely awake, sitting there with both eyes perpetually trying to close shut. But she nodded regretfully.

***

After they finished breakfast, they went over to the training course and did their normal routine.

But then it was his turn with Richard for their body skill training.

However, before the two of them could even get started, Richard was looking at him with a knowing grin on his face.

He knows something is up, he told himself with a sigh.

That was sad, Julius really thought he had a better poker face than that. But he wondered what Richard thought he was hiding. Did he suspect it was his skill option notification?

"Did you finally get it?" He asked Julius.

"Did I get what?" Julius acted ignorant.

"My guess was something along the lines of [Fire Enhancement] or [Fire Augmentation]," Richard said with a shrug. "Was it something similar or did you get something entirely different?"

Julius could only shake his head in exasperation. "[Thermal Empowerment]," he admitted with a smirk.

"Really?! [Thermal Empowerment]?" Richard asked in surprise.

"What is that unusual?" Julius asked.

"Absolutely. Empowerment skills are usually reserved for aura-based skills. The modification of your aura skill must have been the main reason for you being offered such a skill."

"Should I take it?" He asked the man the most important question.

He saw the man shake his head. "I don't see any reason not to. It doesn't sound like a basic skill at least. Considering your difficulty in obtaining a skill at all, I think that it's a good choice to pick it up. If you don't like it, then you can always try to evolve it and get a better fit for your next skill."

"What are the odds that it is an uncommon skill?" He asked. Like he had thought about before, he would rather go through the process of evolving an uncommon skill to rare in order to get a rare skill that was a better fit.

"Truthfully, it is pretty high odds that it is uncommon ranked. Fire skills that have the word 'thermal' are normally advanced uncommon skills in my experience, there are exceptions though," Richard told him.

Julius could only smile. He had hoped that was the case. He remembered his previous skill uncommon skill, [Thermal Compression]. It had been a wonderful skill that greatly enhanced the power of his constructs and its evolved version had combined with [Arcane Construct] and [Composite Mana] to create [Armaments of the Arcane]. His very first epic skill.

Realizing that there was no need to hold back any longer, he brought up the notification once more.

Would you like to learn the skill [Thermal Empowerment]? Enjoy exclusive content from empire

He mentally selected yes and waited for the results.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

He felt the familiar sense of mana flowing through him and information flooding through his brain.

Congratulations, skill [Thermal Empowerment] (Uncommon) acquired.

He did a little jump in joy as he read the notification.

"Quick! Try it out!" Richard exclaimed with wide eyes. The man was possibly more excited than Julius was to see the new skill.

However, Julius wasn't going to let either of them keep waiting. He swiftly activated the skill and observed the difference.

The first thing he noticed was the warming sensation he felt throughout his entire body. It was like suddenly being dipped into a bath of warm water.

The next thing he did was to dash toward Richard with a grin.

The Tier 5 didn't even look surprised as Julius threw a punch at him. He only smiled and didn't move as Julius's fist crashed into his open palm with a loud thud.

During their attempt to gain a new body skill, they had set up a few rules. One of them was to limit the activation of any other skills that might interfere with it. Skills such as [Kinetic Augmentation] and [Flash Step].

It was the same thing now. He had only used his recently acquired skill to attack Richard.

It was a massive difference already. Now that he officially had a skill, he was able to empower his body with fire mana with an ease that he hadn't been able to before.

As skills often did, they streamlined the process and made it automatic. This allowed Julius to focus solely on putting as much fire mana into his body as he could. The process that had been difficult to concentrate on before was now a simple thought.

With that being said, it was still only an uncommon skill. Unlike [Kinetic Augmentation], which was a rare skill, it wasn't even close to as powerful.

However, that would hopefully change with time as he levels the skill up.

He also took note that he had now used ten of his eleven skill slots. Granted, he was planning to combine at least two of his skills into one singular body skill, but in the meantime, it left him only with one more slot until he was able to get a new one.

Considering that he had gotten his extra one a little bit early, he was anticipating that his next one was soon on its way.

"Not bad," Richard said after he looked at his palm which had taken Julius's strike with ease.

The surface of his skin was slightly smoking, the only evidence that Julius had attacked him at all.

The good news was that it seemed his strikes included a form of fire damage to them. He didn't know how powerful that would be at the moment, he didn't exactly have a good test subject in front of him.

The defense of a Tier 5 was not something Julius was expecting to go against in the future very often. At least not until he got stronger along with his new skill.

It would be interesting to see what kind of effects would happen if he included his Phoenix Concept along with it.

"What do you think?" Julius asked Richard.

"It's definitely more powerful than a standard uncommon skill. The only thing I would be worried about is how much power you can deliver each strike with it. On second thought, you do have the other skill. That might actually synergize pretty well with each other."

"You think so?"

"Well, your kinetic skill is definitely more explosive and packs a bigger punch. However, the possible secondary effects of [Thermal Empowerment] could be pretty nice. If you work on that while also utilizing the other aspects of your kinetic skill, they could go really nice together," He told Julius.

That was an idea to think about.

He had previously been going for sheer impact and force. He thought that two enhancement skills would allow him to hit twice as hard. Richard quickly drove that idea out of him, explaining how that wouldn't be possible.

It was disheartening to hear, but it made sense. Otherwise, he expected more people would just acquire multiple body skills instead of just primarily using one.

He could only imagine if someone could learn ten body skills and become the most physically powerful person in the world.

However, he hadn't really given much thought about the secondary effects of his fire affinity yet.

His mind couldn't help but go toward the game of Pokemon and how burn damage worked. He played the game when he was younger and he loved to use the move Will-O-Wisp against his opponents. Not only did it do residual damage to them, but it decreased their attack stat as well.

It might not be a bad idea to try something like that out. He had seen firsthand how effective debuff skills were and how annoying they were to deal with.

He shared his idea with Richard, wanting to hear the man's opinion on his possible intention.

"It's not a bad idea. I know some deadly curse users use fire as a medium. I also fought against a ghost-like monster who used some sort of mystical flame to great effect. I personally have a skill that uses fire mana to eat away at people's mana," Richard shared.

"Eat away at people's mana?" Julius asked.

Richard shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, it's a skill that ignites a person's mana pool into creating flames of my own. I then use these flames to burn them from the inside out," he said, completely casually. As if what he had just said was not horrifying or anything.

Julius merely stared at the man with wary eyes and backed up slowly.

The man saw his reaction and put his hands up pleadingly. "Don't look at me that way. It sounds worse than it actually is. It usually does very little damage to people at my level and is mostly used to control their resource regeneration. If it helps, I also have a skill that similarly burns away their stamina."

No, that didn't help the man's case at all. In fact, it made Julius even more wary of the man. It sounded like Richard was quite the monster himself.

Julius knew very well how much mana he had in his own pool and could only imagine what would happen if Richard was able to ignite all of it. Not to mention the man admitted he could do the same with his stamina.

Furthermore, he strictly said that it didn't do that much damage to people of his own tier. He didn't say what would happen if he used it against a Tier 4 or god forbid a Tier 3 like Julius.

"Stop looking at me like that!" Richard protested.

"Stop looking at you like what, dear?" Rebecca asked as she approached the two of them, with Cory and Reinera in tow.

"Like I am some sort of evil person," her husband complained to her.

"What? Are you telling the boy about your scary mana-eating skills?" She turned to Julius. "Don't worry, he's too timid to use them against people most of the time."

Most of the time? Julius picked up on her admission that he did use them.

"They are not scary and I am not eating people's mana!" Richard argued with his wife.

"Sorry sorry, burning. You burn their mana," she said while rolling her eyes. "Like that makes it sound any better," she muttered.

"I heard that!" He exclaimed.

"You were meant to!"

Julius ignored the two's bickering. It was quite common to see the two of them bickering like an old married couple. It was almost always over something silly as well. Just the other night the two of them got into a heated argument about which elder had the most troublesome child that lasted for almost an hour.

Funnily enough, Beth, the female elder that Julius had seen when he first arrived was one in heavy contention to win this award.

"How does your skill work?" Julius asked, changing the subject before they could get too derailed. He had already seen with his own eyes how long some of these debates could be.

"Oh! That's a good question," Richard happily said. "It's a mixture between my Greed Concept and Fire Concept. I had two skills that incorporated these Concepts pretty well. One of them was [Dominion of Fire] and the other was [Blazing Ruin]. The skill still allows me to do many of my previous skill's functions, but it also allows me to do things such as burn away someone's mana pool. There are other factors as well, such as willpower and authority, but that is the general gist of it," he said with a lot of pride.

Julius couldn't help but start to share the man's enthusiasm and smiled alongside him. He would love to have an effect like that added to his [Thermal Empowerment].