Chapter 21: Pushing His Limits

Julius tried to gain distance between them, but they closed the gap instantly. He was trying to survive as long as he could so that [Restoration] could heal his most critical injuries, but the trolls didn’t give him any space. They brutally attacked Julius with rage-filled swings, leaving him desperately dodging for his life. His movements were sloppy due to his injuries and took a couple of clips on his arms that fractured more bones. It was only due to his skill that he hadn’t taken another direct hit.

All the while, Julius was creating an enhanced [Firebolt], compressing as much mana as he could into it. He couldn’t create a second one, not while he was healing and using kinetic mana to evade. But he needed to kill or disable one of them with a single strike. It was the only way.

Julius needed to use kinetic energy to increase the intensity of [Firebolt]. He had been practicing relentlessly ever since he had the idea, but he hadn’t succeeded a single time. If there was ever a time it was now, because if he didn’t, he would soon be crushed into a nice paste. As he dodged, Julius focused everything on generating even more kinetic energy into the flame. He envisioned it bursting with a brilliant intensity.

He could feel something shift. Not hesitating, he threw every ounce of will into it. Julius unleashed a primal roar of pure desperation and pushed the final key in place. Something snapped into place and the entire construct underwent a qualitative change. It twisted into itself and then expanded to become much thicker and longer. It now resembled a baseball bat in size and form.

This [Firebolt] was much different than the enhanced version. Instead of a violet hue, it was a pale icy blue bolt of mana and released a terrifying pressure of its own. Then using the momentum of an incoming swing, along with a shit ton of mana, he blasted himself as far away as he could. Managing to give himself a good amount of distance, Julius sent the enhanced [Firebolt] at the larger troll. He could feel its weight pressing down on him as it shot toward the troll.

It reached the troll so fast, that he could barely track it. One moment it was hovering over his shoulder and the next it was surging across the plains in a blue line.

The icy blue [Firebolt] tore straight through the troll’s head. Leaving a perfect one-foot hole where its eyes and mouth were. The bolt continued flying even after it went through its target, detonating against the mountain in the distance. Leveling the mountainside in a violent explosion, creating a shockwave you could see from far away.

It was so astonishing, that even the other troll had paused and looked toward the destruction Julius had caused. It looked at its leader’s corpse and then at the mountain, and then shifted its attention to Julius with wide eyes.

The anger in its eyes had faded. Now there was only fear present in its gaze. It didn’t even try to fight anymore, it just turned away and ran. It took Julius some time to comprehend what had just happened but he got his bearings back before the troll could make it very far.

He created another compound [Firebolt], this time with much less mana. And sent it screaming towards the retreating troll’s back. This one didn’t tear through his target, but it detonated on impact, annihilating half of the thing’s back in a single attack. It fell toward the grass, twitching in jerky motions. It still wasn’t dead, its ridiculous skill was keeping it alive and trying to heal it.

These things were truly cockroaches. They don’t even die with half of their body blown apart, it was insane. However, he did not let it suffer for too much longer and put a [Firebolt] in the thing’s head. Julius had barely any mana left and most of it was life mana, which was still trying to heal him back to health.

He dropped to his knees, the pain and exhaustion finally catching up to him now that it was over. [Restoration] had almost healed him, with just some minor fractures and fatigue remaining. Thus, he just laid down for a moment and waited for it to finish up.

The new technique he created at the end still shocked Julius. He knew it would increase its power, but he didn’t expect it to increase by that much.

When he had been practicing he had been trying to feed kinetic energy to the flames. In the end, he realized that wasn’t the correct line of thinking. Julius was already condensing a lot of kinetic energy and fire mana when he made an enhanced [Firebolt], but he never thought of them feeding off each other. Typically, they would interact separately, one was hot and the other had force.

However, he figured out how to blend them so that they each amplified one another. It was more effective than he could hope for. However, the amount of mana it took for the [Firebolt] that took the leader out, cost over a quarter of his fire and kinetic mana. It wasn’t something he could use that often in a fight, but its firepower spoke for itself.

Out of nowhere, his stomach started to grumble, making its displeasure known. Julius also noticed how thirsty he was. He almost forgot that his main reason for going to the mountain was to find a water source. For the first time, he was envious of those with a water affinity. However, he didn’t waste any time. He got up to his feet and before he made his way to the mountain, he went over to the bodies of the trolls. Rummaging through their chests, Julius found several cores with life affinities.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He didn’t know what he would do with them yet, but they might come in handy later on. While he was walking, he took a look at the massive mountain range in front of him. It was hard to estimate how tall it was, but there were many crevices, overhangs, and trees littered all across its surface. Now that he was closer, he could tell there were many towering peaks dusted with snow that were separated by large canyons. It almost felt a bit unnatural the way the rock formation was structured.

As Julius was walking toward it, he checked his notifications.

[Firebolt lvl 5 -> lvl 9]