Chapter 126: Celebratory Cake

It was the middle of the night. Tomorrow was their planned day and the six of them had already decided to leave earlier in the day to walk around the city before dinner. Therefore, Julius wanted to get his skill tonight by any means necessary.

He should be able to as well. He could feel it. For the past couple of days, he had been so close, it was teetering on the edge. All it needed was a little push and he would be able to learn an epic skill.

His ability to use his Severing Will Concept was leaps and bounds better than when he first got it. It was starting to feel as natural as using his mana and he could see why people who had a Concept were considered more powerful than those who didn’t.

The main advantage that Julius found out was the Concept’s ability to be used in conjunction with all of Julius’s abilities, not just his skills. Even his aura took on some aspects of Severing Will. It felt sharper and from some perspectives, more harsh. When he cranked up his aura, it felt like someone was holding a giant broadsword over another person’s head.

There was an undeniable feeling of intimidation looming over whoever was subjugated to it. Julius could see how it could be a good deterrent in the future.

At the current moment, Julius was concentrating on covering his entire body with constructs. He had always had a troubling time creating an armor-like construct that covered his entire body while still maintaining flexibility.

However, the time that he spent practicing making chairs and other furniture helped him focus on the softer applications of mana. He was then able to transfer this ability and apply it to his armor construct.

He looked down at his hands which were covered in dark red hardened mana. They resembled something closer to gloves. There was barely any additional thickness around his fingers and they looked too delicate to be of practical use.

However, that was exactly what Julius had been practicing to make. His old gauntlets were more like big pistons attached to his hands. They were mainly meant for punching things and delivering a payload of energy.

To his pride, he was now able to create something a little more elegant and a little more practical for various other uses. He made sure to create softened sections of mana, specifically around the joints and where his fingers would curl. Thanks to [Composite Mana], there weren’t any cracks or separate layers either. It was one single piece of mana that was reinforced with [Arcane Construct] and [Pure Compression].

These gloves were strong. They hummed with the power that was held within them. Not to mention they literally vibrated from the sharpened mana Julius was able to add due to getting better with his Concept.

The gloves were the hard part. The follow-up parts of the armor were much easier. The chest plate was shockingly the simplest to create. It was pretty much just a really dense and strong layer of mana. The most difficult was creating a mechanism for him to absorb and store kinetic energy from impacts from his opponents.

Slowly but surely Julius was able to wrap his entire upper body with rippling red mana. Woven fibers of mana wrapped around his limbs. He was able to create the lower half of the armor without any issues as well. The armor around his feet took a little longer to find a comfortable configuration, but with the generous application of softened mana, his feet were soon surrounded by little mana clouds. They became one of the most comfortable shoes he ever had.

That just left the helmet. The helmet was a little more complicated than what he had been expecting. It wasn’t like he needed more complex or intricate control, but he did need to work on the aesthetics. The rest of his armor had a rugged edge to it. It had sharp but tasteful angles around the chest plate, greaves, and shoulders, but the joints were flawless and smooth.

The faceplate took him longer to decide on the look he wanted to go for. Finally, he decided on a helmet that had sharp spikes adorned all across the top, making it look like a crown of thorns. The helm looked vicious and way over the top.

It’s perfect, Julius smiled to himself.

It was intimidating and completely dark crimson red. He looked more like a villain than anything else.

Just like his gloves, the entire suit of armor was thrumming with a pale white light of sharpened mana. The light felt like it was cutting apart everything that got even remotely close to its vicinity, even the air.

It was everything he could have hoped for when he first got the idea of a suit of construction armor. It took a lot of mana, even for his standards, but he didn’t feel like it was a waste.

It wasn’t easy to hold together though. It took a lot of concentration and willpower to keep it up. He felt as if any second he could lose control of it and the construct would slowly start to fall apart. It would most likely take a while, but it would crumble away eventually if he allowed it.

Once he had the entire construct armor up and going he didn’t stop there. Julius pulled as much mana as he could and began creating a spike of mana.

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However, this spike wasn’t like his usual constructs. This time he was going to use the blue fire that he had been wary of since the day he first used it.

A big part of why he wanted to create a mana construct epic skill was to use this dangerous kinetically enhanced fire. He never felt like he had been able to control it in the past. It had only been due to extreme circumstances and luck that he hadn’t killed himself when using it.

However, he truly believed that once he had an epic skill, he would be able to handle it with more confidence.

He used [Arcane Construct] to create the framework of the skill. Then he used [Pure Compression] to pack in as much mana and his Concept of Severing Will. Once he had that all set, he used [Composite Mana] to intertwine the various energies together into one homogeneous mass.

Once he had that all set, he got to work on using the kinetic energy to feed fuel into the existing fire mana. Like normal, he felt himself barely keeping it from blowing up in his face. It was only due to his increased skills, experience, and willpower that held it together.

However, Julius was happily surprised to observe that [Composite Mana] helped out the process by a significant margin. The way the skill helped facilitate the two different mana types into a singular one made a massive difference in how well it went.

Previously, it felt like he was trying to balance on a wire a thousand feet in the air while also trying to wrangle a cat that didn’t want to be held. Now, it felt like he was just balancing on a wire. It was much less stressful.

Which is why he was glad that he was able to create a glowing spike of deep blue mana. It was blistering hot, even from his perspective with his innate resistance.