Chapter 100: I’ve Seen You Before

“Hey, I’ve seen you before.” the guy said to Julius.

Julius finally turned to look at who these individuals were. The guy who was speaking was actually familiar to him as well. He was the tall guy from his Physical Training class and Professor Hashen’s Swordsmanship elective. He had never talked to the guy before or even heard him speak, so it was quite a surprise that he had approached Julius like this. He had dark hair and was also very handsome, with angular features and a chiseled jawline.

The other three looked like they were this guy’s friends. The other guy was also tall, but he had more plain features, nothing ugly but nothing outstanding either. Julius was able to see the curiosity on the guy’s face though. It seemed like he too was surprised that his friend had decided to stop and talk to Julius.

The two other girls both had brown hair and were very pretty in their own right. They didn’t seem to care as much as the other guy did about Tall Guy’s decision to stop and were quietly whispering amongst themselves about something about something.

He finally looked back at Tall Guy’s eyes and said, “Yeah, I have seen you around as well. So what do you need?”

If his cold reply offended the guy, then he didn’t show it. “Oh, nothing. I just wanted to say hi. I have seen you around and I never got the chance to talk to you.”

Julius wasn’t going to lie, the guy had a very kind smile and came off as a nice guy. Which made him feel bad for being so cold off the bat, so he decided to tone it back and be a little more nice himself. “Oh, well it’s nice to meet you. I’m Julius by the way.” He extended his hand to the tall first-year who took it in stride and gave a nice firm shake.

“Nice to meet you Julius, my name’s Joshua. I admit I am a little surprised to see another first-year who knows about this spot,” he waved his arm around at the beach. “I only know of it because of my older cousin who is a third year. She invited us tonight along with some of her friends. Were you invited by someone else too?”

“No, some others showed me this spot a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was just very peaceful out here,” Julius truthfully told him. “I had no idea about all of that,” he waved his hand at the crowd of students off in the distance.

“Yeah, we found it a little too much for us. That was why we decided to take a walk down the beach and came across you,” Joshua said while staring off at the softly crashing waves.

One of the girls gave him a poke and said, “Hey Josh, stop bothering him. Let’s go before it gets too late.”

Joshua looked over at her and his other friends before looking back at Julius with a chuckle. “Sorry, I guess I was bothering you. Anyway, I will take my leave and let you enjoy your night. It was very nice to meet you though.” Then he walked away with him and his other friends.

Julius watched him leave and went back to watching to rippling waters of the ocean. The moonlight illuminated the crests and shone brilliantly over the dark sky.

He went back to working on smoothing out the hard rigid sections of his blanket. Slowly, but surely, he was able to create a small area that was very similar to the texture and softness of a real blanket. It took way too long, but he was confident that he would get better with practice.

The hardest part of doing it was keeping the other parts of the construct soft as he made changes to other sections. If he didn’t maintain focus on what he had made soft, then sometimes he would catch the construct reverting back to its rigid structure.

While he was doing that, he was also attempting another thing. He wanted to figure out how to use [Empowerment of Will] to boost [Savage Dance]. It was for a specific goal he had in mind. The mindset he was able to achieve was on a completely different level than when he used [Savage Dance] normally.

Most of the time [Savage Dance] was used as a concentration skill, Julius sometimes forgot that the skill wasn’t originally meant to be used just for that purpose.

It was a combination of two skills, [Brutal Strike] and [Combat Trance]. However, it felt like he had been using the skill mainly as an evolved [Combat Trance] skill instead. The part of the skill that gave him hints of where he needed to strike had become instinctually engraved into Julius’s fighting style and didn’t have as much of a purpose anymore. At least that was what he felt, who knew, perhaps the reason it was so ingrained in him that he didn’t notice it.

However, did that mean that he wasn’t using [Savage Dance] to its full potential? It certainly didn’t feel any weaker than his other rare skills. What if the skill had slowly transitioned from its original parameters and had taken a new direction? He had always thought that skills were more flexible than what others made them out to be, but how far did that extend?

That was also another reason why he was experimenting with [Empowerment of Will] and [Savage Dance]. He was looking for a way to get into a deep meditative state where understanding Concepts was more natural.

The only problem was that using the two skills in conjunction only worked for a short period before he felt the drawbacks. It was better than before when he had immediately lost consciousness. At least now, he was even able to use both in conjunction for a short period. But he wanted more, or at least something a little more gentle and longer lasting.

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[Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] was such a blessing as he tried out his ideas. Even active for only a couple of seconds, his brain and soul felt stretched, and he had to use the skill to heal the damage. At the moment, he was trying to use less aura to enhance [Savage Dance]. He was literally trying to use only a trickle of aura and it was much harder than it seemed.