Chapter 20: His Friends

The main thing Julius noticed about the difference between his and the troll’s skill, was that his was flat in comparison, as if there was no dimension to it. His was like a line on a piece of paper, while his opponent’s was like an intricate woven rope.

When he noticed it, he was surprised that he hadn’t come up with a similar idea. Weaving strands together would be similar to what he does with compressing mana, but doing it in a slightly different way. It was something that he could probably apply to all his mana manipulation uses. Especially, his fire mana and maybe his kinetic mana, but kinetic energy worked a bit differently than fire and life mana, so it was hard to predict.

Julius began to condense several strands of life mana around his shoulder. Then he started to weave them together like he would a braid. Immediately he could feel the strands latching together creating a strong bond and giving off a stronger aura. His [Heal] skill was different from the troll’s skill, in that it tried to infuse his body with mana, gently suffusing each nook and cranny of the injury with life mana. The new method Julius was going to try would be similar to strangling his injury with a rope of life mana. He was going to wrap it around the injury, creating a noose, and tightening it.

It was much more aggressive than what he expected out of a healing skill, but it definitely worked for the troll, so he was open-minded to trying it. If it didn’t work, then he wouldn’t lose anything but some time and energy.

After a little while, it still hadn’t accomplished anything. The rope of life mana was still squeezing his shoulder but it wasn’t healing it. However, he belatedly realized that his intent was still the same as when he used [Heal]. He had already recognized that this new healing technique was more brutal and domineering, but he was still trying to gently caress it to work.

Julius needed to become more ruthless and commanding if he wanted it to work. He no longer allowed his mana the option to not do exactly what he told it. It would listen to him, he didn’t give it another choice.

Suddenly, there was a swift reaction from his shoulder. It began to hurt, even more than when he broke it. However, he could also see his flesh and bones weaving together at a rapid pace, it was still slower than the troll’s but it was very mana-efficient.

The more aggressive nature of the technique allows for faster and more efficient healing, but in return, I experience more pain. This is probably because I am not gently infusing life mana anymore. That said, I will gladly take that trade-off. Julius observed.

Julius would estimate this new technique was around five or ten times faster than [Heal]. It also would seem he received a new skill for his actions.

Would you like to learn the skill [Regeneration]?

Congratulations, skill [Regeneration] acquired.

Synergy detected. Would you like to evolve [Regeneration] and [Heal] into a single skill?

Congratulations, skill [Restoration] (Uncommon) acquired.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was still a nice upgrade to his skills. Julius tried out this new skill right away. Activating [Restoration], his shoulder which was almost already healed, finished healing in a second. Then, some of the soreness that he was feeling after the fight was also healed. It seemed like [Restoration] was able to deal with his fatigue just as well as his wounds.

He assumed that it would become more handy once he was fighting multiple opponents over a long duration. So far, most of his fights have been relatively short.

Finally, he felt like he was a little less vulnerable. His defense was still non-existent and he had to find a way to remedy that, but having a much better healing skill would be crucial to improving his survivability.

Julius found himself walking again. He had always imagined a day when he would be adventuring and fighting monsters, but he didn’t realize how much walking was involved. Nevertheless, it did give him time to practice some of his skills

He was still attempting to create hotter flames by adding kinetic energy to the reaction, but improvements were slow. He also still wanted to create some sort of defensive technique. The idea of absorbing kinetic energy from an attack was still on top of his list, but so far he hadn’t been successful.

It was weird because he was able to absorb kinetic energy from the environment already. He would have expected to be offered some sort of kinetic absorption skill by now. However, it might only become available after he raised [Kinetic Release] to level 10.

[Kinetic Release lvl 8 -> lvl 9]

Speak of the devil. As if it could hear Julius’s thoughts, [Kinetic Release] leveled up to level 9, just a single level away from ranking it up. Up ahead, he could finally see the large mountains looming in the distance. They were the only landmark miles around and the reason he chose to walk in this direction.

Rifts varied in size quite a bit. However, the rule of thumb was that the higher the tier the larger the rift. And it certainly seemed like this rift was quite expansive. Luckily it seemed like there was some natural wildlife spread around the plains, so he wouldn’t go starving. But he hadn’t found any water yet and had hopes that the mountains in the distance had some.

When he approached the base of the large mountain, he spotted a small group of trolls patrolling the area. He instantly lowered himself down into the tall grass and observed them.

There were four trolls walking side by side coming down from the mountainside. Unlike the one he fought, these ones had some clothing and weapons on them.

It looks like the troll from earlier had some friends, Julius commented to himself.

The clothes at a glance seemed like they were made out of some plant-based materials, rustic and tribal looking. Their weapons were massive grey clubs that resembled stone, but the largest of them had a dull silver axe strung over its back. If he had to guess, he would think that this one was the leader of them.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Julius had no intention of fighting them. One of them was already hard enough, taking four of them on would be suicide. He should just allow them to walk on by and make his way up the mountain in the meantime.

Except, there was something inside Julius that wasn’t allowing him to back away. As much as he wanted to ignore the group, something within him was fervently disagreeing with him. It wanted him to take on all four of them.