Chapter 122: Soul Stress Test

The Concept of Severing Will was a very nice addition to Julius’s toolbox of powers. It wasn’t like it was an end-all-be-all type of power, but it was certainly like adding wings to a wolf. Or something like that… he forgot what the actual saying was.

Admittedly, there was still much practice that Julius had to do. Declan warned him that working on his Concept would take a lot of time and require diligent practice. The process of training it would be similar to aura control and other related abilities.

Julius smiled as he heard that. To others that might be bothersome and take up a lot of time. But for Julius, that was what he had in abundance. He was already planning to spend many boring hours training his willpower alongside his aura at night.

After testing his new skill and Concept on a few golems he managed to find, he was able to use this new remote barrier creation with a little more finesse.

Instead of using it to cover the entire golem, which used an extraordinary amount of soul energy and to some extent, mana, he was able to surround just the core of the golem. It was a much more efficient way of taking down a golem. But, it was only possible because he had [Spatial Perception] that allowed him to know exactly where the core was placed.

It wasn’t like a [Mana Sense] skill would work either. Since [Spatial Perception] gave him the ability to distinctly feel where objects were within his sphere, it was as if he was feeling the core with his hands. He doubted he could have accomplished the same thing with another perception skill. His perception skill kept on giving him more pleasant surprises.

The other benefit of using [Barrier of Severance] around the golem’s core was that it was much simpler to destroy than trying to destroy the entire golem’s body. Who would have thought that tearing apart a core the size of an apple was easier than tearing apart a stone monster the size of a truck?

The next thing he ended up testing was the defensive ability of the skill. Although he had been using the skill for offensive purposes, [Barrier of Severance] was still supposed to be a barrier at the end of the day. It had “barrier” in its name after all. Therefore, Julius would have been pretty let down if it didn’t perform well as a barrier.

Oh, how ironic it would be if his “barrier” skill worked better as a sword than a shield.

Julius found another golem pretty quickly. He also found that the further he went into the cave, the more populous it was with golems. Actually, it would be more correct to say that the more crystals he found, the more golems he found with them.

He walked up to the golem, not hiding his presence from the monster at all. When the golem finally noticed him, it went straight into attack mode. Running at him while sending blasts of orange mana from its face plate.

To someone who wasn’t used to fighting, Julius would expect seeing a ten-foot stone giant chasing them down while sending blasts of energy would send them running in the other direction. However, he was somewhat proud to say that he wasn’t exactly normal and didn’t have enough self-preserving instincts to do just that.

Instead, he found himself running headfirst into the beam of mana. He actually noticed that he had a smile on his face as if the dangerous blast of mana was a hug from an old friend. He really had to consider whether or not he was all the way put together in the head department.

Perhaps mana and magic had changed him. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that mana and magic accentuated the more volatile aspects of his personality. When he was younger in his old world, he would often throw himself down flights of stairs or off the playsets just to experience what falling felt like.

It seemed like that part of him hadn’t been left behind, as much as simply hidden away deep inside of him. He noticed it a little during the troll rift, but he had mostly blamed the emotional turmoil of losing Lukas and Edwin. Now that he had some time to look back, it wasn’t that clear what the real reason was.

And now it was rearing its head and showing its presence again. Such as this need to put his face in the direct path of a dangerous blast of mana. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in a world where overcoming challenges gave him strength.

At least he wasn’t dumb enough not to have [Barrier of Severance] activated around him, which had been the whole point of this exercise in the first place.

As the mana blast reached the barrier, he could feel the barrier tear into the mana blast, ripping it apart into harmless light.

It was very similar to how Aubrey’s attack had been affected by Julius’s [Mana Slash] shield. The main difference was how much more effective it was and how it didn’t just split the attack into two, but that it destroyed the entire attack.

The golem seemed very shocked that Julius was able to deal with its attack so easily. Well, as shocked as a golem without emotions could be at least.

Julius paused for a moment. Did they have emotions? He had seen them behave in ways that would indicate that they weren’t just simple drones with cores. Curious.

He was brought out of his internal thoughts because a big stone the size of his chest was hurling at him. Now this he was a little more worried about. He had seen how well [Mana Slash] handled a more hard and rigid object before. The effect the skill had on Aubrey’s [Diamond Skin] was negligible. Thus, he had learned that sharpened mana had a more difficult time taking apart things with a little more robustness to them.

However, he held his ground. If he ended up taking a big rock to the face, he just needed to trust his healing skill to take care of him afterward. It wasn’t a very pleasant thought, but he needed to see how well his barrier handled physical attacks. There was still the possibility that his new skill was good for mana-based attacks and sucked at dealing with attacks that had more material substance behind them.

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And what better way to test it than live in the field?

Julius braced himself as best as he could. He closed his eyes and prayed for a positive outcome.

When the massive rock hit his barrier, he waited for it to just go through the barrier like it wasn’t even there and bash his face in. Hence, he was very grateful that it was stopped instead of continuing forth and smashing his face open like an egg. He had gotten used to losing limbs and dealing with pain, but getting hit by a boulder that weighed close to a ton was still not an enjoyable activity.

[Barrier of Severance] actually surprised Julius with how effective it was. The pale white layer of sharpened mana did a very nice job of protecting him. It didn’t completely destroy the rock into dust, but there was enough power behind the barrier to prevent it from reaching Julius.

Compared to his mana constructs that he often used to cover himself and use as armor, [Barrier of Severance] had this emanating force that was released from its surface. It was mainly made up of sharpened mana, but it was enough to halt the rock’s force and protect Julius from eating a stone in the face.