Chapter 121: More Testing Subjects

Julius turned and looked at Declan who was also surprised at the difference the Concept had on his damage output. Declan had been around when Julius was throwing the pebbles before. He saw with his own eyes how Julius was unable to do much more than give the golem some ornaments on its body.

[Barrier of Severance lvl 3 -> lvl 4]

His new skill gained another level. For a skill he only had for less than a couple of hours, he gained quite a few levels in it so far. He wondered if that had something to do with learning a Concept and if learning one accelerates the rate at which he would gain levels in the skill.

Julius was curious about another thing as well. However, it would require him to find another golem to test it out on. He looked at Declan who was deep in thought off to the side. Julius was going to let Declan know that he was going to head off to find more golems, but he decided not to disturb Declan’s musings. He was confident that Declan would realize that Julius was going to hunt some more golems on his own.

One thing he did notice as he made his way deeper into the cavern was that the blue crystals that lit up the otherwise dark cave started to appear more often. Not only that, but they were much larger than the ones Julius had seen in the beginning.

With the increase in crystals came an increase in the brightness of the cave. It became bright enough that there weren’t any dark or unlit corners within the cavern anymore. It was also very magical in a wonderful sort of way. Although he was in a cave with a bunch of monsters made of stone, he couldn’t help but marvel at the sight. There was no doubt that he wouldn’t be able to find another place like this in his old world no matter how hard he searched.

He eventually came across another golem. He did observe that he hadn’t seen any large groups of golems yet. Every golem that he had come across had been alone, very different than the other rifts he had done so far.

I’m making it sound like I am some experienced adventurer who has delved dozens of rifts, Julius laughed to himself.

He took time to watch the golem as he approached it. This one seemed to be a little larger than the other ones that he had come across so far. It was pretty likely that the further the cave went, the more difficult it would become and the more challenging fights he would come across.

Another thing that he noticed that was interesting, was that it was no longer a single cavern anymore. Up ahead he could see and sense several branches of caves opening up. For a little bit, Julius was beginning to think that the entire rift was just a single cave that he had to explore, taking down golems as he went.

Julius turned his focus back to the walking stone monster in front of him. Unlike the past few attempts, he didn’t bother to use the pebbles. Once he had gotten his Concept, he knew that he didn’t need the pebbles anymore.

It was like the Concept was able to influence ambient mana and turn it into sharpened mana, it was quite amazing.

That was the reason why he was confident in what he was attempting to do. He tried to choose the golem as his target for [Barrier of Severance], it took a bit of time, but eventually, he felt the skill latch onto the golem. It was like a key sliding into place. Shockingly, [Spatial Perception] made it very easy to target the golem and know where to place the barrier. It was like the skill allowed Julius to lock onto his target with ease.

The good news was that it worked and a pale white barrier of mana appeared around the golem. The bad news was that the second Julius was able to create the barrier, he felt like someone just punched him in the soul.

For a person who had just gotten healed by his familiar for soul damage, it didn’t make him feel comfortable to take more damage to his soul. It honestly didn’t hurt all that much, it was more of a surprise than anything else. Still, he had to wonder why something like that happened. He was thinking that his soul was still in recovery from his recent advancements.

He shook his head and got rid of those thoughts before putting his attention back on the golem. His barrier was a surprise to the golem as well. Julius watched as the golem tried to scrub off the barrier from its arms and chest like it was covered in grime.

While it was distracted by that, Julius was trying to figure out a way to use this to his advantage. He had an inkling that he could create a barrier around something that wasn’t touching him or close to him. However, he didn’t know what he would do with this knowledge.

If he had to protect someone Julius could see why this application would be useful. Or if he wanted to create a barrier on a construct of his that was already created but didn’t have the time to touch beforehand.

So at the moment, he stood there with both hands crossed as he thought about what he could do with this barrier. Specifically with the barrier that surrounded the golem he was looking at. Because currently, all the barrier achieved was to give the golem another layer of protection.

Julius wasn’t always the smartest person, but even he knew that a skill that helped your enemy more than it helped you was not a good skill.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

The thought that he could explode it like he had done with the pebbles crossed his mind. The only thing was that the pebbles had come out of the explosion pretty well considering how close they were to the explosion of sharpened mana.

Knowing what he did about the defenses of the golems, he didn’t think that it would have any better results on the golem. The idea of trying it anyway was pretty alluring to Julius. Just seeing how it turned out would be an interesting test.

However, he had another idea that he wanted to test beforehand. It was an idea that Julius thought might actually work in theory.

Instead of releasing all of the sharpened mana outward, he could focus on compressing it inward. He was imagining something like a garbage compactor mixed with a blender. He thought the idea had merit.

Technically, a barrier can act as both to keep things out and to keep things in. When he first used [Mana Slash] to protect himself from Aubrey’s attacks, he had been focusing on using it for defensive purposes and to keep her attacks from hitting him directly. The goal had been to cut them apart before they reached him.

Now, he just needed to flip it around. He needed to try to tear apart anything that was within the barrier. It just required a change in mindset. What he was actually doing wasn’t that much different in practice.