Path to Transcendence

Ten minutes was more than enough for him to recover all of the mana he expended.

The wave wasn't hard, it had only taken a couple of minutes and that was with him being stingy with his mana usage.

However, one thing did bother him. Are all hard-difficulty challengers supposed to be able to beat ten Tier 3 monsters on their own?

Especially for the ones who don't have Concepts yet, it was hard to see people like that being able to take on the wave he had just finished.

It just further assured him that there was some sort of personalized challenge for each individual. Otherwise, a wave like that last one wouldn't make sense.

With that being said, that didn't matter that much right now. At the moment he needed to keep focus on the next wave.

Thus he quickly finished the meat pie he was eating and got up to his feet before the ten minutes were up, making sure to dust any crumbs from his pants as he did.

Like he had expected the sixth wave was similar to the last one. There was another group of hobgoblins staring at him from below his vantage spot on the hill.

This time there was more than the previous ten, but not that much more. There were about fifteen of them this time.

That didn't help them though. He plowed right through them just as easily as he did the last wave. He used the warrior hobgoblin's shields to bash them into a bloodied pulp and took out the archers soon after.

It didn't matter if they had five more hobgoblins. He wiped them out and watched as they faded into light.

Congratulations, Sixth Wave completed… Please wait ten minutes for the Seventh Wave.

Another ten minutes went by and he recovered all of his mana by the time a new crowd of monsters showed up below him.

The first thing he noticed was that the number of monsters remained the same, only fifteen of them.

But the more troubling thing he noticed after a moment was that one of the monsters had a Concept.

A monster who had a Concept versus one who didn't showed a large difference in strength. Every Tier 3 monster he faced who had been strong, had a Concept of their own.

Thus, seeing the largest hobgoblin strutting up the hill toward him displaying signs of a Concept put him on guard. This one was slightly different not just because of its size or Concept, but because it was the first one he had seen that didn't have an offensive weapon.

It only bore a large pavise-style shield off to the side with a single arm. The shield was practically the entire size of the monster and it looked very high quality.

A lot of the other weapons he had seen during the last wave while better than the previous ones, weren't that impressive.

They were cheap weapons he saw all the time when he strolled down a market.

This one shield though, had a greenish-silver luster to it that pulsed with mana. The rest of the hobgoblins all had bows.

It seemed like the Challenge's new curveball was to send a single strong frontliner to agress him while the rest of them would shoot from a safe distance.

Although, he doubted the effectiveness of this plan. He already had several ideas on how to deal with this new formation.

Hence, when he watched them stop at a relatively flat spot on the hill, he made his move before they could get in position to rain arrows at him.

He sent a volley of spikes at them, freezing the scary-looking frontliner as he did.

He did that for several reasons. For one, he wanted to test his willpower against it to see how well it would defend against it, and for two, he didn't want the frontliner using some kind of defensive skill to protect them.

Fortunately, his technique worked and he was able to freeze the hobgoblin in its tracks and it could do nothing as his spikes soared toward the archers.

However, he was surprised to see not some sort of movement skill from them, but a barrier of mana appeared in front of them.

It appeared it came from a few archers who activated some kind of protective skill as they noticed the attack. Unluckily for them, they didn't quite realize how strong his spikes were, even if they were only the size of a hand. Thus, the barrier was only able to hold for a few moments before the power from his constructs overwhelmed the barrier and shattered it like glass.

A few of his spikes made it through and exploded at the center of the group. Sadly, their trajectory was slightly changed due to their impedance, but he was still able to hurt a couple of them.

However, before he could send another volley, he heard a roar come from the goblin who he had pinned down. He felt a large surge of mana and then the kinetic energy he controlled around the hobgoblin seemed to break away.

He was slightly surprised by this development. The only way he had seen that technique broken was through using their willpower to prevent its influence.

But now he was sure he had just felt the usage of a skill.

He had heard of skills like this before. In fact, Edgar had a skill just like it. In Edgar's case, Julius believed that the older boy utilized his aura and his fire affinity to break down any obstacles in his path.

These 'anti-debuff' skills were usually for allowing a warrior to ignore movement control skills such as [Ice Chains] or [Earth Trap], or like Tia's vines she used to control the battlefield.

Julius just didn't think that this monster would have a skill like that. Not to mention something that would work on his own kinetic technique. Find exclusive content at empire

However, he also realized that the hobgoblin had used a lot more mana than Julius had used to immobilize it. Therefore, it was safe to say it wasn't very mana-efficient.

That was why he did it again and made sure to send another volley at the archers while it was distracted.

This time around, the archers decided to split up among each other. Making sure he couldn't hit multiple archers with a single attack.

It was smart, but also annoying to deal with. A few of the archers managed to dodge his attacks completely. Their barrier-making comrades had placed a small barrier over each of them. The barriers weren't in place to stop the attack, but its sole purpose was to delay the attack long enough so the archers were able to use their movement skills to get out of the way.

This meant that even the attacks that managed to hit some archers, didn't do that much damage.

After he saw his attack successfully thwarted, he placed his attention back to the hobgoblin warrior who had once more roared out while breaking out of the technique.

However, this time around, Julius was able to sense something bloom right before his eyes. When the hobgoblin got up again, Julius sensed this weird connection between this warrior and the rest of the archers behind it getting established.

The connection was weird enough, but what really caught his eyes, was what was being transmitted through this connection.

It was like this connection allowed the archers in the back to donate their mana as well as merge their willpower with the frontliner hobgoblin. He was able to feel the immediate difference because when he tried to gather kinetic energy around the monster and freeze it once more, he felt powerful resistance that hadn't been there just seconds ago.

He could only shake his head in exasperation. It was basically a group of devotees all simultaneously empowering a single individual.

Regardless of how powerful his own willpower was, he wasn't able to overwhelm fifteen wills combined, especially not when one of them already had a Concept.

Seeing his first confrontation not go so well, he took a step back and re-evaluated his situation with calm eyes.

Hmm, that might work actually, he thought to himself with a grunt.

After a few seconds, he decided on his new path forward.

He tossed out a single powerfully enhanced spike and followed that with a dozen smaller and weaker ones.

As expected, the warrior hobgoblin had some sort of skill that protected the archers. Julius could only watch as the shield slung in front of the monster glowed and a massive opaque green wall planted itself between Julius and them.

The strong spikes and the single, really strong one struck the barrier hard with a loud boom.

The barrier shook and wavered for a second. However, unlike the barriers from before, it was able to hold up against Julius's spikes.

Seeing that his gut was right, he could only shake his head and slowly approach the hobgoblin with his own two feet, no longer content to sit back.

He believed that if he really wanted to, he could bombard the barrier of the warrior until it broke or until all of the mana it was borrowing from its comrades ran out.

However, he felt like that would be a gross waste of mana.

He had a better idea which required him to use much less mana. It would just wear him out physically instead. If only he had a healing skill that solved that problem for him… oh wait… he did.

He laughed to himself as he was once again grateful for his powerful skills.

His walk slowly transitioned into a jog, which then turned into a full-on sprint as he charged the large green monster with a challenging grin on his face.

He didn't bother to create any armor over himself. He only covered his fists and lower legs with condensed mana, and that was only because they were more for offense and not really for defense.

If this thing wanted to protect all of its friends from him, Julius would just have to bash through it to get to them.

He used [Flash Step] to close the distance before the hobgoblin was ready for him. Taken off guard, Julius was able to send a powerful kick at the kneecap of his opponent. He aimed right at the joint so that if he connected, he would completely dislocate the knee.

He did connect and when he heard the crushing sound of cartilage he quickly sent another blow at the same spot. Almost disintegrating the joint within the blink of an eye.

Once it dropped to one knee, Julius smashed his mana-covered knuckles into the cheekbone of the monster. Making sure to send a huge burst of kinetic energy through his fist, breaking through its Concept-infused defenses and tearing a chunk out of its face.

Julius was able to deliver such a brutal attack but not without some cost.

While he was busy brutalizing the warrior, the archers didn't just sit back and do nothing. They sent a rain of arrows at him.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

They had some sort of skill attached to them as well that made them seem more penetrative and then suddenly multiply when they were in the air. The fourteen archers were able to shoot close to a hundred arrows at once.

Even though Julius noticed them incoming, he decided to take a few of them in return for dealing with the warrior quickly. He did manage to come out relatively unharmed.

Three arrows hit him, two of those scraped him as he was unable to dodge and a single one lodged into his shoulder.

Their frontliner had taken much more damage though. The warrior was a pincushion of arrows.

That was another question he had about the effectiveness of their strategy. How were they going to hit him without hitting their comrade?

His question quickly got answered, they weren't about it at all. It almost felt like they didn't even try to avoid the warrior. In fact, he would daresay some of them purposefully hit it.

He couldn't help but give a confused look at the archers and down to the critically injured hobgoblin at his feet.

However, that confused look quickly turned into one of bafflement as he saw the arrows sticking out of the hobgoblin start to glow and then get absorbed into the monster in an instant.

Once they were absorbed he felt a surge of life mana wash through the monster and he watched as all of its injuries were healed in mere moments.

He could only stare at it with disbelief.

Was this what other people felt like when fighting him?

He could start to see why Dustin and the others complained about it.